Epic

Finally a chance for Burt Reynolds to prove he is the great actor we all knew he could be!

Just star in a movie next to Ray Liotta and Jason Statham (who were amazing in Revolver), and make it a “knights of old” fantasy thriller, good versus evil sort of deal – NOTHING can go wrong.

Wow. WRONG!

This movie had every cliche of the “knights of the roundtable” genre. Honestly, I was waiting for juggling midgets to appear (almost surprisingly, they did not).

In case you care, here’s the gist of it: evil sorceror (Liotta) creates army out of mud people using magic, makes pact with evil nephew of King; orphan farmer’s kid gets killed and wife gets kidnapped by said army; farm boy (Statham, named “Farmer”, no less) wants to rescue his wife and runs into others in a similar pursuit, including the King’s army. [Breath] King (Reynolds) gets killed, but trusty and loyal advisor lets everyone know that Farmer was long lost son (don’t blame me for spoiling – you saw this coming); evil nephew gets his due; Liotta defeated; mud army goes home. Farmer becomes the new King and the world returns to good.

The hot forest women (think Poison Ivy from Batman times 10) made for an amazing and original plot element!

Not!

This movie was truly awful. Don’t waste your time or money.

And Jason and Ray – I’m very disappointed! Please don’t do this to me again!

It starts as a primitive civilization doing their typical primitive stuff – hunting, building fires, finding beautiful lovers with perfect teeth, etc.

But the truth is, this was a good movie.

However, in order to enjoy this movie, you must truly suspend reality.

What’s interesting is the way this movie attempts to tie the primitive notions of “Africa” circa-10,000 B.C. with the great civilization of Ancient Egypt around about the same time. In this sense, it was a little bit of a groundbreaking story. We typically see Ancient Egypt as a standalone subject, sometimes with the occasional tie-in to Greece or Rome, but never in contrast to the rest of Africa.

If you cried at the end of Moulin Rouge or City of Angels (like me) because of the tragic ending, you will feel about the same towards the end of this movie. Don’t worry, this is not a complete spoiler – there is an interesting twist!

The Queen (DVD)

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

This is really not a show about the Queen at all; in fact, a movie based on the short period surrounding Princess Diana’s death only portrays a small slice of the Queen’s life. As a staunch supporter of the English royalty, I was offended in the presumption of Hollywood to title such a moment with such an encompassing name.

Helen Mirren plays the queen with sensitivity and understanding, and just the right amount of nose pointing upwards.

The setting is England in 1997; the defining event is the death of Diana. Mr. Blair, played by Michael Sheen, is the new prime minister, an event that was already cause for change in England.

The conflict is the way details of Diana’s funeral are to take place. The Queen’s desire for a sober, private ceremony are not the wishes of the country, which naturally allows the media hype to dictate their emotional response.

While Mr. Blair comes off as some sort of demi-hero – he does take his turn at washing up the dinner dishes – he is also put smartly into his place at the end of the movie.

I hope the Queen does not think everyone hates her for being more upset over the death of a beautiful fourteen-point stag than she appears to be over the death of her grandson’s mother. She did mention the stoic British tradition of grieving silently to oneself, so who can say what feelings she was actually going through. And who can say the events did take place as the movie portrayed, poetic license and all that.

In the end, she did what was best for her people and for the monarchy.

In the end, she is the Queen.

Troy (DVD)

Brad Pitt is the Rock Hudson/Jackie Chan of Ancient Greece. This epic movie, based on The Iliad, and The Aeneid, does take a lot of creative liberties with its portrayal of this noble period of Greek history. However, history exists to be interpreted by creative minds, and the result in this case is an uplifting couple of hours examining the human pathos.

“The face that launched a thousand ships”, the “Trojan horse”, the Spartan method of battle, the gods and the temples – all these images bring back high school memories of beginning awareness of different cultures and the romance to be found in history.

Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Achilles, with a battle style somewhere between dance and martial arts, and a body that would launch a thousand delicate hankies, (well, probably a lot more than a thousand) poses the soldier’s eternal paradox. Why indeed do kings not fight their own battles? And there are good men of honour who will die on each side of the battlefield. Achilles is remembered, and who better to remind us of his story than Brad? Perhaps one of the most fitting incidents in the making of the movie is the delay in shooting Achilles’ big fight with Hector due to an injury to Brad Pitt’s Achilles tendon.

Paris (Orlando Bloom) as prince, lover, poet and coward. This part of the story is open to interpretation, but Hector’s reluctance to kill him as he crawls to his brother’s feet is viable, and probably easier to portray than a rescue by a goddess. As the gods are continually being put into question during this depiction of Homer’s great epic, the mood of the story would be radically changed if a goddess actually intervened in the human drama.

This is a movie to purchase. It improves with multiple viewings, and not many movies live up to that type of scrutiny.