Lionheart

Year 2, Day 72 - 3/13/10 - Movie #437

BEFORE: I put this on a DVD with "Ladyhawke" a couple of years ago, but I know almost nothing about it, sort of flying blind with this one...

THE PLOT: A young knight sets out to join King Richards crusaders. Along the way, he encounters The Black Prince.

AFTER: Ugh, this was really terrible. Loosely based on the story of the Children's Crusade, but it was just so hard to understand the narrative, and so little got explained along the way. You sort of expect that a movie will at the very least explain itself, or proceed in some kind of logical progression of events, and that's just not the case here.

Robert, a young knight (Eric Stoltz) sets out to find King Richard and fight in the crusades (why?) and along the way he finds a group of Paris orphans who are being hunted by slave dealers (again, why?) and they band together to find safety by locating said King. I'm not sure this makes any sense - why would an English King care about the safety of French orphans? It's not even his country!

And the Black Prince (Gabriel Byrne) is capturing children to sell to the Muslims - why? What are the Arabs going to do with a bunch of grimy, smelly French kids?

There's one good sword battle between Robert and the Black Prince, but other than that, nothing redeeming about this movie in the slightest way. This movie made "A Knight's Tale" look like "Ben-Hur".

RATING: 1 out of 10 crossbows

A Knight's Tale

Year 2, Day 71 - 3/12/10 - Movie #436

BEFORE: I've been avoiding this movie for a few years, since my aunt tried to play it for the family one Thanksgiving, when the rest of us just wanted to slip into our turkey comas...but I really shouldn't hold that against the movie, I should just watch it and judge it on its own merits.

THE PLOT: After his master dies, a peasant squire, fueled by his desire for food and glory, creates a new identity for himself as a knight.

AFTER: The story of William Thatcher (Heath Ledger), a commoner who creates a false identity as a noble, so he can train for and enter jousting competitions.

Problem #1 - there's much, much more to being a knight than just jousting. There's this bit about going to war, and crusading and such. William wants all the perks without doing the legwork, and are we really supposed to respect him for that?

Problem #2 - as exciting as a single joust might be, seeing it happen over and over again over the course of a movie has a high reduncancy factor - most sports related movies understand this, and compensate by changing things up. Seeing a lance shatter for the 200th time causes it to lose it's thrill.

Problem #3 - the use of contemporary music like Queen's "We Will Rock You" and Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town". I know WHY this was done, to make the story acceptable for the MTV generation, but that still doesn't excuse it.

Also starring Mark Addy, Alan Tudyk (Steve the Pirate from "Dodgeball"), Paul Bettany.

RATING: 6 out of 10 tunics

Just Visiting

Year 2, Day 70 - 3/11/10 - Movie #435

BEFORE: And this is the reverse of "A Connecticut Yankee", with a knight traveling forward to modern times. This will be the last movie about time-travel in the chain, I swear.

THE PLOT: A knight and his valet are transported from the 12th century to the year 2000. There the knight meets some of his family and slowly learns what this new century is like.

AFTER: This is a remake of a French film called "Les Visiteurs", and features a unique way of traveling through time, via a wizard's potion. The wizard meant to send the knight back in time just a few hours, to prevent the death of his fiancée, but instead transports him forward to the year 2000.

Thibault, the knight (Jean Reno) and André, his idiot peasant manservant wake up in a medival museum exhibit in Chicago, and have to deal with a strange new world of cars, television and indoor plumbing. It's a slow process, and there's lots of slow slapstick as they dispense ice cubes all over the kitchen floor, fall down, bathe with toilet water, eat dog food, etc.

They encounter Julia (Christina Applegate), a museum curator who looks exactly like Rosalind, Thibault's deceased love from the 14th century - so logically, she must be his descendant (what are the odds?) and this must mean that he eventually returns to the past to rescue Rosalind, and succeeds in having descendants. For that they'll need the help of the wizard (Malcolm McDowell) who also drank his own potion and traveled to the modern world - but he seems more comfortable in the future, wearing cowboy hats and knowing how to book a hotel room.

Interesting casting for Malcolm McDowell, since he's been typecast as a villain for the past couple of decades, plus he had roles in at least 2 other movies about time-travel: "Time After Time" and "Star Trek: Generations"...

Thibault learns about the modern world, and how to treat other people with respect, from his great-great-great-great granddaughter, and Julia learns to assert herself and cast off her cheating boyfriend, who was only interested in her inheritance anyway. Meanwhile, André does pretty well for himself, hooking up with a neighbor's gardener (Tara Reid) and pawning a stolen 14th century artifact for cash...

Cameos from George Plimpton as a museum curator and Kelsey Grammar as the narrator.

RATING: 6 out of 10 urinal cakes (mmm...minty!)

Like Thibault, I'm going back to Medieval Times, and I'll be spending a week there watching films about (what else?) more knights...

Black Knight

Year 2, Day 69 - 3/10/10 - Movie #434

BEFORE: Essentially, this should be (more or less) the same movie as last night's film, just with Martin Lawrence in place of Bing Crosby. It's another take on the "get hit on the head and visit Camelot" idea.

THE PLOT: Jamal, an employee in Medieval World amusement park, sustains a blow to the head, and awakens to find himself in 14th century England.

AFTER: Actually, he doesn't get hit on the head, he drowns in a theme-park moat, and wakes up in medieval Times, thinking that it's a new rival theme park, Castleworld (very authentic, right down to the smelly animals and dirty latrines...

Jamal "Sky" Walker arrives at the castle of the pretender king, and is mistaken for a messenger from France (South Central France, apparently...) and his antics and inability to ride a horse are explained by his moonlighting as a court jester.

Of course, he falls in love with one of the princess's maids, and the princess herself falls for him, and he's eventually knighted as Lord Skywalker (cute...). He also befriends a drunk, down-on-his luck ex-knight, Sir Knolte (Tom Wilkinson) - is that a reference to "48 Hours"?

And the "Johnny B. Goode" moment comes when he hastily instructs the medieval musicians how to play Sly & the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music", despite its extremely tricky bass line and horn riffs - this was probably the highlight of the film for me.

The well-timed eclipse is replaced here with a well-timed rebellion plot against the king, which seemed slightly more realistic - and I liked how Walker's getting in trouble and being thrown in the dungeon actually provided the break that the rebels needed.

Unlike other (unnecessary?) remakes like "King Kong" and "Clash of the Titans", I felt this was a story that really needed the update - of course there's a vast difference between Bing Crosby as a 1912 blacksmith and Martin Lawrence as a modern guy from the 'hood, and that all added to the humor.

Also starring Darryl Mitchell ("Galaxy Quest"), Kevin Conway (last seen as a general in "13 Days", and cool, he also had a small role in "Slaughterhouse Five").

RATING: 5 out of 10 broadswords

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)

Year 2, Day 68 - 3/9/10 - Movie #433

BEFORE: Enough dallying around in pre-history - let's time-travel away from Mayans and Spanish Conquistadors to the land of medieval knights, with this classic Bing Crosby film based on a Mark Twain story. I've already seen "Timeline", but I nabbed this one off of TCM to go on the same DVD as a sort of companion piece.

THE PLOT: A singing mechanic from 1912 finds himself in Arthurian Britain.

AFTER: This is one of the original time-travel stories, back in the day when all you had to do was fall and hit your head, and soon you'd be in Arthurian times (or the land of Oz, if you were a chick...)

I'm not going to sell this one short, it seems kind of influential, since Der Bingle's teaching the medieval lute + fife players how to make swing music reminded me of Marty McFly turning Marvin Berry's band on to "Johnny B. Goode" in "Back to the Future".

Hank Martin (Crosby) is a blacksmith from 1912 sent back to 6th century Camelot, and after using a magnifying glass to set fire to things and prove himself to be a powerful sorcerer, he becomes a knight (with a blacksmith business on the side?) and starts hitting on Sir Lancelot's girlfriend by singing her some corny songs.

Fortunately for Hank, the people of the Dark Ages are fascinated by simple household items like safety pins and kitchen matches, and all of the knights are either braggarts or buffoons. So he's able to use a rodeo lasso during a joust, and build a working pistol in his forge, timestream be damned.

And he's fortunate enough to have an almanac with him, which forecasts a certain astrological phenomenon and saves him from being executed once again. And in the kind of coincidence that I've come to appreciate, it's the exact same phenomenon that saved Jaguar Paw last night in "Apocalypto", now how about that!

But this film does show signs of wear - after all, it was filmed over 60 years ago. Seems in need of an update...

RATING: 4 out of 10 anvils

Apocalypto

Year 2, Day 67 - 3/8/10 - Movie #432

BEFORE: With all the mastodons/mammoths in the last film, I could play off of that and watch "Ice Age 3", but that movie's still only available on PPV, and I'm not paying $4.99 for it when it will probably be on premium cable in just a few months. Instead I'll stick with the theme of primitive warriors, and watch this film about the Mayans.

THE PLOT: As the Mayan kingdom faces its decline, the rulers insist the key to prosperity is to build more temples and offer human sacrifices. Jaguar Paw, a young man captured for sacrifice, flees to avoid his fate.

AFTER: There are a LOT of similarities between "10,000 B.C." and this film - enough to make me think they were developed simultaneously at rival studios. They both feature one primitive tribe capturing and enslaving members of another, both feature pyramids (Egyptian? and Mayan), both have main characters who travel a great distance to reunite with their mates, and both have long, detailed prophecies that turn out to be incredibly accurate.

In this film Jaguar Paw is one of many Mayans captured and taken to the rather gory sacrificial altar - you have to figure the Mayans sacrificed thousands, and each one has to have a back-story, right? I won't reveal how he manages to escape, or all the twists along the way, but the second half of the film is a mad race through the jungle, pursued by about a dozen trained Mayan warriors.

Jaguar Paw is wounded and outmatched, yet still must find a way to return to his village, where his pregnant wife is about to give birth, despite being hidden in a well which is rapidly filling up with water. Needless to say, it's something of a tense situation.

I'm giving the edge to "Apocalypto" here because it felt more believable, and was more of an action-packed thrill-ride, without all the fancy-schmancy CGI creatures. I could have done without all the gore, but again, completely believable given the nature of the action.

RATING: 6 out of 10 howler monkeys

10,000 B.C.

Year 2, Day 66 - 3/7/10 - Movie #431

BEFORE: Another film about primitive man, but this one an action film.

I know that I should probably at least acknowledge the Academy Awards that are happening tonight, but I'm sort of locked into a chain of films, and besides, I don't feel very connected to tonight's awards - even though they increased the Best Pictures nominations to 10, I still managed to see exactly zero of the nominees. This is largely since I've been concentrating on movies I missed in the past, and I have managed to watch a number of Best Picture winners in the past 14 months, like "The Departed", "No Country for Old Men", "Schindler's List", "The Deer Hunter", "Million Dollar Baby", "Slumdog Millionaire", and "From Here to Eternity". I do have some other winners on my list of films to watch, like "On the Waterfront" "The French Connection", "Kramer vs. Kramer", "Chicago", and "Bridge On the River Kwai", but that would mean bouncing around on my list, and I'm honestly not in the mood for that.

THE PLOT: A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

AFTER: I struggled with this one late last night, my eyes kept closing as I tried to follow this film's plot. Which either means it's a terribly non-interesting film, or perhaps I was just exhausted, or suffering from the dreaded movie burn-out. After a few hours of falling asleep, rewinding, trying again, falling asleep, etc. I finally gave up, went to bed and finished the film the following afternoon.

Perhaps it would have been better on a bigger TV - I usually watch films on a small TV in my basement, and I've been meaning to shore up the entertainment center down there so it can support a larger, heavier TV, but it's hard to find the time to accomplish this. I really need to take a week's staycation and take care of some of these things around the house...

The film, right, the film...it's exciting enough, I suppose - there's lots of CGI mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, and armies of warriors, and slave revolts. But also there's a lot of supposition about what life in ancient times was like - I understand that there are a lot of gaps to be filled in, and every story is going to fill them in differently, but in the strictest sense, what we have here is an event movie created out of pixels, with no major stars, a loose battle/quest plotline, all flash and very little substance.

If I'm judging just on the spectacle of it all, the CGI mammoths are a little better than what you might see on a History Channel documentary - but for some reason the story failed to hold my attention. I found a lot of the dialogue hard to follow, like when the army marching through the desert found their way by following "the eye of the snake", which I think was a star, but was never really properly explained. The giant birds that were like ostriches crossed with velociraptors were also pretty weird (and supposedly died out about a million years before...)

RATING: 4 out of 10 sailboats