Thursday, July 21, 2011

Saw IRONCLAD last night at Fantasia. It's essentially a samurai movie, but set in England under the reign of King John. After signing Magna Carta, John treacherously hires Danish mercenaries to retake control of his kingdom and murder all the barons who forced him to sign it. A small group of knights seize Rochester Castle and must hold it against the Danish mercs and King John's siege weapons to give time for the French (!) to come to the rescue.

It's a very good, grade-A samurai movie. Lots of hack and slash. James Purefoy (ROME's Mark Antony) is the broody Knight Templar at the center of the story; he's terrific to watch. Kate Mara is the doe-eyed young wife of the castle's cowardly lord (Derek Jacobi) who falls in love with him. (Emma Watson better watch out. She's rocking the same basic look, but rocking it harder.) Paul Giamatti is in actor heaven playing the unbelievably cruel, smart, treacherous, arrogant king.

I really enjoyed it. If you like samurai movies, you will too.

(I reviewed TROLL HUNTER on my screenwriting blog.)

Labels: watching movies

9:08 AM

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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

I saw THE WICKER TREE at the Montreal Fantasia Festival last night. I was disappointed.

/* SPOILERS */

Years ago, I saw THE WICKER MAN (1973). It's a cult classic because it does a very clever thing: it makes you root against the hero. A police detective goes to Summer Isle to investigate a missing girl. What he finds there upsets his priggish Anglican prudery. Summerisle seems to be a place of loose morals. Couples rut in the bushes. Everyone drinks and sings. No one goes to church. It's as if hippies ran the town like one big summer camp.

What Summerisle is, of course, is pagan. And as the cop runs around interfering and meddling, Summerisle is working its way towards one of the great pagan holidays. The cop realizes too late that the locals are into human sacrifice, and he's it. But by the time he's in the giant wicker man and they're lighting up the torches, we pretty much hate him, and love the locals.

It's one of the peculiarities of the big and small screens that we can love murderers if they are adorable enough, and dislike professional heroes if they are annoying enough.

(Your mileage may vary. Lisa was horrified by the ending. Either way the movie works.)

Along comes THE WICKER TREE, 38 years later. This one, director Robin Hardy also wrote. (Anthony Schaffer wrote the original.) Unfortunately, while it's beautifully directed, structurally it's a mess. Some directors should not write.

Essentially, it's a reworking of the same idea. But this time, instead of an obnoxious police detective, the protagonists are two American evangelicals from Texas, a pixiesh Christian Country Music singer with the voice of an angel, and her cowboy boyfriend. They are out of their depth from the moment they come to Scotland to proselytize. But even when confronted with out-of-the-broom-closet pagans, they roll with the punches. She agrees to be the May Queen, even though she's been told May Day is a pagan holiday. He agrees to be the "Laddie."

In other words, they're likable and fairly non-judgmental, for all their loudly, repeatedly professed love for Jesus. So the villagers and their bald-shaven goatee'd landowner wind up having to be cartoonishly evil.

Ah, damn. I'll have to look elsewhere for my pagan kicks.

Labels: watching movies

10:10 AM

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Friday, October 23, 2009

I saw Alexander Franchi's new movie THE WILD HUNT at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema. A group of medieval re-enactors head off into the country for LARPing fun. And the movie has a lot of fun with the cross between high fictional style and the LARPers' reality. But then it heads into the darker worlds of sex, myth and sacrifice.

Tiio Horn is a revelation as the girl everyone's fighting over in real life and in the fantasy. Watch her become a star over the next five years.

It's a love story, and it's about how we need myth to elevate our lives, and it's about how our drive for love and our drive for meaning smash into our mundane lives And you don't know where it's heading, or what the rules are, and yet it's satisfying and inevitable by the end. No wonder the film won Best Canadian First Feature at TIFF.

And it's beautifully shot and cast and all that.

Nice work, Mr. Franchi!

Ah, if only real medieval re-enactments were this much fun.

(Full disclosure: I was a story consultant on the film. But it has way surpassed the script I gave notes on two years ago.)

Labels: watching movies

8:52 AM

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