Of course the film is iconoclastic, challenging in the best way and a time capsule of a particular moment that already seems a hundred years ago and fading. When I learned that Rose and Todd had picked up a camera, taking to the streets of Los Angeles in the first days of the pandemic to shoot a new, experimental project inspired by Luis Buñuel called Traveling Light, I was grateful for an excuse to interview Rose. It's been one of the honours of my life to encounter brilliant creators and to benefit so richly from the association.
During that first visit, Rose and I spent a couple of hours in a bar discussing Tolstoy, which, besides being bracing under any circumstance, is an exceedingly rare event outside of academia. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for the Candyman sequel that sees Helen as the bogey perhaps the idea of a white lady academic gentrifier is already scary enough. Not long after, he returned with Tony Todd for Candyman and a rousing post-film discussion that teased a reunion for the director and actor, which has come to fruition not once but twice since then. 126 minutes.I met Bernard Rose a few years ago when I flew him and his 35mm answer print of Paperhouse out to Colorado for a special screening of the film. Email: Twitter: Arthur: Legend of the Sword
#GUY RITCHIE MIKE THE SPIKE KING ARTHUR MOVIE#
Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle’s movie critic. He just reduces them to his own vernacular and his own level, and he ends up revealing nothing about them and everything about his own narrow vision. Ritchie aspires to be a great British director, but his project of working his way through British icons - even Sherlock Holmes wasn’t safe - does no one any good.
But the one who gets it the worst here is King Arthur himself.
Astrid Berges-Frisbey, who was compelling in “I, Origins,” is left to look silly as a sorceress who communicates with animals. The strategy backfires as it always does, and soon the struggle that most engages the audience is the one to stay awake.Īside from Law, no one fares well. But the result is a movie that’s uninflected, in which every scene is given the same grand importance, even the least important ones. In the absence of any organic propulsion, Ritchie must resort to muscling the audience into excitement, through quick cutting and loud, thumping music. It doesn’t make him just like the audience. A protagonist without a goal or passion doesn’t make for a modern spin on a classic tale. Basically, Arthur doesn’t want to do anything, and that’s a big problem. Hunnam is a sturdy leading man, but he’s the victim of a script that keeps him from driving the story. But you know how it is - when you pull a sword from a stone, it has a way of attracting attention. It’s the only instance in “King Arthur” in which Ritchie employs flash and dazzle to compress events rather than belabor them.Ĭharlie Hunnam plays the grown-up Arthur, who has no recollection of how he started out in life.
#GUY RITCHIE MIKE THE SPIKE KING ARTHUR SERIES#
It’s one more installation in Law’s ongoing study of high-strung selfishness.Īrthur is just a boy as the story begins, and the movie takes him into adulthood with its sole imaginative sequence: With a drum machine pounding on the soundtrack, we see him growing in a series of staccato cuts, which are interspersed with other quick cuts that show what’s happening in Vortigern’s Camelot. Law is the one unalloyed pleasure of “King Arthur.” He drapes himself over the throne with studied casual elegance, and yet the look in his eyes reveals a man coming apart. It’s an achievement we haven’t seen since the days of silent film: A movie that’s lousy before a single line of dialogue is spoken.Įric Bana plays the good King Uther, Arthur’s father, and Uther would actually win the day, were it not for the treachery of his younger brother, Vortigern, played by Jude Law. A huge foot comes down with a thud, and we see elephant-like monsters trampling soldiers - and fire throwers causing the Camelot soldiers to spontaneously combust. Immediately, we see how he did it, as the battle against Camelot is under way. Before the credits even roll, we find out that Mordred, the evil sorcerer, has employed his magic to take over all the world except Camelot.
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