Resurrecting the Movies thread...

[Ellemeno]

You mean like the sprezzatura you exhibited in the way you dropped the word into your post?

I had to look it up, it's new to me.

Serendipity!  I learned the word just in time.   http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,462.msg572850.html#msg572850

[serious crayons]

You mean like the sprezzatura you exhibited in the way you dropped the word into your post?

Wish I could take credit, but initially it was the movie critic who dropped it into her review.

Serendipity!  I learned the word just in time.   http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,462.msg572850.html#msg572850

Looks like you're exhibiting some sprezzatura yourself!

[serious crayons]

Saw "Robin Hood" yesterday and loved it.

Not that we'll ever know, but it sure does have a ring (whiff?) of authenticity about it. Another one of those movies that is so realistic, you can practically smell it!

Gladiator in Lincoln Green!

Wonderful escapist fantasy. 

9/10   

I saw it on Sunday and liked it. My biggest gripe is that I often had a hard time understanding what was going on. So many bad guys in the movie -- pretty much everybody in the film is a bad guy except for Robin, Marion, the dad and the Merry Men. Oh, and William Hurt. The bad guys include: the new king, the old king, the French king, the traitorous scheming Mark Strong, the Sheriff of Nottingham, even for a while the feral forest children. They were all against Robin (except the forest kids), but often they were against each other, too. I found it hard to keep straight which bad guy was in league with or plotting against which other bad guy.

I still wish somebody would do a really realistic movie about the Middle Ages. I think this movie made some headway, but it was still somewhat glamorized. I think life in that period really was nasty, brutish and short, but movies tend to make it look pretty much like our life except with old-fashioned clothes. For one thing, in real life back then there'd be far fewer teeth.

I did really like the relationship between Robin and Marion, though. And Marion is a good, strong character. I can see why they picked Russell Crowe rather than someone with more sprezzatura -- they're going for a more noble, wise, mature Robin than, say, Robert Downey Jr. or Johnny Depp would have created. Next to them, Cate Blanchett's Marion might have looked too stern and stodgy; instead, she was a good match for Robin.

 

[Meryl]

I saw "Robin Hood" the other day and agree with Kerry and Katherine - great entertainment, and very nice depiction of the Middle Ages, though somewhat cleaned up.  

It was reminiscent of two of my favorite films:  "Gladiator" and "LOTR: Return of the King."  The opening was just like "Gladiator" what with the armies of the king on campaign in a foreign land, and the successor to the doomed Richard was just as self-centered and sneering as Joaquin Phoenix's nasty little Commodus.  The manor in Nottingham reminded me of Maximus's home that he so longed to return to, and its pillaging did the same.  The end was pure LOTR, though, with the giant horse emblem on the hillside, the Rohirrim Brits mustering and riding to battle with the orcs French, Cate's Eowyn Maid Marian tagging along in battle garb, right down to the hobbits feral boys on ponies.  Loved the unsubtle Hollywood one-liners and dispatching of the bald bad guy, too.  Oh, and the gratuitous chest-baring scene?  Icing on the cake.  

[serious crayons]

It was reminiscent of two of my favorite films:  "Gladiator" and "LOTR: Return of the King."  

It reminded me of my favorite LOTR, "The Two Towers," particularly the battle scenes. I loved that movie expressly because it felt like a pretty accurate depiction of what warfare in the Middle Ages would have been like, sans Hobbit feet and Elvin ears.

My very favorite moment in the entire 11-hour LOTR trilogy is when Orlando Bloom rides a shield or something down a huge castle staircase like a kid on a skateboard. If only Orlando had exhibited that kind of sprezzatura in any of his other roles!

[Jeff Wrangler]

I saw "Robin Hood" the other day and agree with Kerry and Katherine - great entertainment, and very nice depiction of the Middle Ages, though somewhat cleaned up.  

It was reminiscent of two of my favorite films:  "Gladiator" and "LOTR: Return of the King."  The opening was just like "Gladiator" what with the armies of the king on campaign in a foreign land.

I forget who it was did the review in The New Yorker, but he suggested Ridley Scott filmed both openings at the same time and held one back. 

[ifyoucantfixit]

    I liked Robin Hood a lot, but them doing the pc thing with Marion, was off the charts
hard to believe.  The women in that time were not warriors, or sword players or even
spear throwers.  It just reminds me of the modern day womens movements complaints
about the womens roles needing more chutspah. 
    I think Russell Crowe is one of the best actors of our time.  He did himself proud in
this bad boy romp.  I can say he is not one of my favorite people personally, but I don't
have to be his friend, just an admirer.  He is magnificent on screen.  The film was great
with authenticity of time and place, that I haven't seen equaled since Heath's Knights Tale.
They obviously went to great effort to make the movie not all cgi.  I thought there was
little sex appeal between Blanchett and Crowe.  They were ok, but not much chemistry.  I thought she was very believable and authentic until she tried to be a warrior.   That just seemed
cartoonish.  JMO.  All in all I enjoyed it. 

[serious crayons]

Salon reviews SATC2:

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/sex_and_the_city/index.html?story=/ent/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/05/26/satc2

Sample representative sentences: "It would have been more merciful for writer-director Michael Patrick King to have rented Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda out to the "Saw" franchise, or to Rob Zombie, so we could watch them get shot in the head or skinned alive by Arkansas rednecks. Instead of that, we get something that's truly sadistic: the SATC girls as haggard specters, haunted by their freewheeling '90s past and stupefied by the demands of work, marriage and/or motherhood."

So do you like it or don't you, critic? Don't be shy, just come right out and say!  

[Meryl]

I didn't think after these reviews that another sequel was possible, but that "Saw" franchise idea has legs. 

[delalluvia]

SPOILERS

I saw "Robin Hood" the other day and agree with Kerry and Katherine - great entertainment, and very nice depiction of the Middle Ages, though somewhat cleaned up. 

It was reminiscent of two of my favorite films:  "Gladiator" and "LOTR: Return of the King."  The opening was just like "Gladiator" what with the armies of the king on campaign in a foreign land, and the successor to the doomed Richard was just as self-centered and sneering as Joaquin Phoenix's nasty little Commodus.  The manor in Nottingham reminded me of Maximus's home that he so longed to return to, and its pillaging did the same.  The end was pure LOTR, though, with the giant horse emblem on the hillside, the Rohirrim Brits mustering and riding to battle with the orcs French, Cate's Eowyn Maid Marian tagging along in battle garb, right down to the hobbits feral boys on ponies.  Loved the unsubtle Hollywood one-liners and dispatching of the bald bad guy, too.  Oh, and the gratuitous chest-baring scene?  Icing on the cake. 

 

    I liked Robin Hood a lot, but them doing the pc thing with Marion, was off the charts
hard to believe.  The women in that time were not warriors, or sword players or even
spear throwers.[ It just reminds me of the modern day womens movements complaints
about the womens roles needing more chutspah. 
    I think Russell Crowe is one of the best actors of our time.  He did himself proud in
this bad boy romp.  I can say he is not one of my favorite people personally, but I don't
have to be his friend, just an admirer.  He is magnificent on screen.  The film was great
with authenticity of time and place, that I haven't seen equaled since Heath's Knights Tale.
They obviously went to great effort to make the movie not all cgi.  I thought there was
little sex appeal between Blanchett and Crowe.  They were ok, but not much chemistry.  I thought she was very believable and authentic until she tried to be a warrior.   That just seemed
cartoonish.  JMO.  All in all I enjoyed it. 

My biggest dislikes.  Maid - er Lady - Marian and the Lost Boys.  The Lost Boys were in two scenes and mentioned once before the Big Battle.  No relationship, no explanation, no important scene of Lady Marian using example, courage and rhetoric to bring together a band of punks.  Yet there she is at the end, leading the boys. 

I can buy her knowing how to wield a bow, but a sword?  Skinny Cate?  You needed muscles like Russell Crowe's to fight with a sword.  That was completely ludicrous as was the taking time out for romance in the middle of a battle.  That was a big