Two crusaders, Behmen and Felson, have been friends for a while and they signed up for the crusades together. So, they leave the crusades together and find themselves in the midsts of a raging plague. To be specific, the bubonic plague. Villagers have reason to believe that a girl who is a “witch” has cast a terrible curse on them and that she is the cause of the plague. If the two crusaders can get her to the monks and cure her of her “sickness” then the world can be saved and the plague cured. When the cardinal of the church asks them to join their quest. Finally, after a little thought they willingly oblige. They set off: the two friends, a priest, a faithful soldier, a merchant and a wannabe knight to deliver this girl to the monks and to perpetually save the world.
What We Think
What We Think
Reviewed by ShoreWhisperer
Run Time: 98 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
Rating: PG-13
I had never seen previews of this movie when I went to see this movie. I had heard that Nicholas Cage was doing another movie about a witch, or something like that but I wasn’t thinking about going. When I heard that this movie was quite gory, and a tad scary I perked up. Hopefully, there would be a reason to go see this movie after all. I will be honest, Nicholas Cage’s performances have been decreasing in talent and in actual good quality acting for a while. I liked National Treasure and I love the movie The Family Man, but really Sorcerer’s Apprentice did not floor me and left me wanting more. When he agreed to doanother about witches I got a little nervous. This was nothing like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. First off, Disney would never allow the language in this movie. Second, the details to all the diseases and other things was not lacking in anything, quite unlike in Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This isn’t a comparison of the two movies though.
I liked this movie, I really did. After a while you get tired of watching all the attractive men in the world being stolen by equally as gorgeous women in a number of ways. So the movie that creeps me out, grosses me out, doesn’t make me cry but rather makes me want to go crawl under my blankets and pretend that I am in a world where nothing will hurt me is the movie that I wanted to go see. This movie succeeded in those terms. I was scared, but it wasn’t scary, in a weird way. It was a very suspenseful movie I was always waiting for things to jump out and make me scream but a lot of the times that didn’t really happen but that tension made the movie be always on the edge of your seat. In terms of grossness, I had to stop eating my gobstoppers and coke because the detail that they gave plague and what it actually looked like was immense and it was sickening. Luckily there were not too many of those scenes. The creepiness factor was pretty good, it was a very creepy movie and it was all dependent on Claire Foy who played ’The Girl’ or Anna. She was amazing, I was creeped out by her. I think it’s because she was good at looking innocent and poor and beaten that when lines like “let me heal your pain” or some other really un-innocent line came out of her mouth it was unsettling because of how innocent she did look. The whole movie had an unsettling feeling to it. The setting was a primary part of that and they hit it right on, the set was amazing and also the time period was captured really well. I could almost feel what it was like to be living in that time period where there was always this underlying fear of always obeying the rules and loyally following the church no matter if they are abusing their powers. That was all done very well and set the mood of the movie perfectly.
But the script…everything was goood….except the script. Now this is such a fixable thing that it annoys me. Anyone who enjoys watching a movie that is based in a different time periods and appreciates the authenticity that comes with it does not want to hear a man wearing chainmail during the crusades say this: “Did you see the cardinal? He looked like someone just p***ed in his holy water.” A crusader would never in a million jillion years EVER SAY THAT!!!!!! I understand that this movie is not supposed to be strictly a history film but it does have that aspect to it so is it right to through that vital part of the movie right out the window? I don’t think it is, I also understand that we have to ‘dumb down’ the scripts and the language so everyone can understand what they are saying. You don’t have to ‘dumb it down’ so much that it doesn’t even fit in the time period. I thought that the line was funny I do admit that but there was tons of that stuff but only in certain characters. There were characters like Kay and Anna that had lines that actually fit the time period and were easier to understand. It does not even make sense to have someone in a crusader get up speaking like he is from the twenty first century that only works at halloween parties. That bugged me through the entire movie, it was so annoying that I couldn’t even lke those characters as much as I should since it was mostly Felson and Behmen speaking those lines. It is an easily fixable change that would have made the movie so much better.
I also did not like the devil. They had me ready to see this horrendous monster that would make me want to cry and instead it looked more like a dinosaur. Yes it had pincers and and it did this weird thing that it could hug you with it’s wings and then burn you alive, even that did not scare me. I wanted something more grotesque he looked more like a gargoyle come to life. When you are doing a movie like this you have to understand where your oppurtunities are and you can not let them lag especially at the climax. That is the time where you have the audiences feelings in the palm of your hand and you can do anything you want with it. That’s what we want to happen too. We want to be scared or choked up or happy but you have to do something. That is vital but it wasn’t fully there in this movie. I was vaguely nervous because of the monster but it could have been more and that made me upset.You can’t let something like that have missing pieces, it’s ok if there are missing moments during the rest of the movie but if you can just effectively mold the climax so it gets the feeling that you want then I feel like you have accomplished a really good movie. Just to clarify though, you should not overdo the emotional thing because then it becomes obvious what you are trying to do.
I think that’s it, except for the ending because it was lame. It was very lame. I know that it is a classic to have two figures riding off to somewhere unknown on horseback but it is way over used and boring. I wanted something more, maybe with more of a BANG! What can you do right? Endings, like the climax are vital in a movie and they HAVE to be good or else everything that led up to that isn’t as good as it seemed. That’s it… all in all, this movie is not a must see and it was not an I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!!! type of thing it was more like and “oh… that was ok” because it was ok but it was not great.
Real Teen Rating ~ C+ : Just Average
0 comments:
Post a Comment