Have you ever seen those movie ads on TV filled with gushing quotes from critics and thought to yourself, “I saw that movie; it was terrible. Where did they find these positive reviews?” If you have, you’re not alone — and you’re going to love ScreenCrush’s series, Critics Are Raving!, which balances the cinematic scales with trailers full of slightly more accurate (and slightly more negative) lines from reviews. Real critics. Real quotes. Really bad movies. That’s what’s Critics Are Raving! is all about.
Game of Thrones cameos are rarely so intrusive as to draw one out of the scene; more often background musicians performing their craft, or the odd extra. That said, we’d almost certainly have noticed Charlie Hunnam, as the Sons of Anarchy star claims he’d once been offered an appearance.
The last King Arthur movie from 2004, the one directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, made just $52 million domestically against a $120 million budget, numbers that don’t exactly suggest a hungry audience clamoring for more Arthurian content. But not even a marginally popular brand is immune to Hollywood’s current reboot fixation, and so here is Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Fuqua’s version, made in the wake of Gladiator, purported to be “the untold true story that inspired the legend.” Ritchie takes more liberties, unless I’m mistaken and the real Arthur’s dad fought elephants the size of mountains and wielded a sword that could stop time. His film draws inspiration from superhero stories and medieval fantasy shows. The target audience for his film appears to be people who wish Game of Thrones was less complicated and didn’t have any sex or nudity.
I’m not sure why, but I’m really excited for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for a supporting class that includes Eric Bana and Jude Law leveling up his Young Pope to a Young Evil Sorcerer. Maybe it’s because the last few trailers featured music by Led Zeppelin and I really enjoyed the synergy of folk-inspired rock with the film. Or maybe it’s just because there’s something endearing about Ritchie’s fight aesthetic, one that seems about ten years out of date (or whenever it was the last Matrix movie hit theaters).
Less than 100 years ago, there were still uncharted areas of this planet. In an age of cell phones, satellite images, and instantaneous access to the totality of human information, it can be difficult to envision such an era — at least until a film like The Lost City of Z brings it to vivid life.
Popular culture travels in waves. A decade or so ago, when every studio was trying to copy The Matrix and start their own action franchises dripping with self-serious stylization and slow-motion fights, I would’ve killed for a summer movie that took a grounded approach to heroes and villains. Now, after several years of Marvel movies and grimdark blockbusters, the pendulum has swung back the other way. It’s not that Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword looks like a good movie, per se. It’s just that I’m in a place where I can really appreciate its goofiness.
James Gray’s newest film The Lost City of Z has quietly become a hit with critics and Gray devotees ever since debuting at last year’s New York Film Festival. It’s about to hit theaters here, and its newest trailer, while the briefest look we’ve gotten of it so far, shows off the immense scope of what looks like a modern movie that dreams of being an Old Hollywood epic.