A Knight's Tale (2001)

I never loved A Knight's Tale. I figured that I should start with that confession, mainly because I have always found it slightly bewildering to be reminded of how beloved it is by many. I'm really not sure why. There are things that work very well (the main cast members being a big plus), but many other things reflect some poor decision-making from writer-director Brian Helgeland.

Things start with a death. Despite winning his latest joust, a knight has succumbed to some mortal wounds. There's still some money on the line, however, and that leads one of his squires, William Thatcher (Heath Ledger), to don the armour and do well enough to win the much-needed prize. Getting a taste for it, and knowing he could become very good, Thatcher decides to maintain his charade, travelling between tournaments with Roland (Mark Addy) and Wat (Alan Tudyk). They pick up a couple of strays on their travels, in the shape of the verbose Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany) and a female blacksmith named Kate (Laura Fraser). There's a fair maiden to impress (Jocelyn, played by Shannyn Sossamon) and a mean nemesis to be conquered (Count Adhemar, played by Rufus Sewell). That's about all you need to know. Oh, and the soundtrack was/is praised for being enjoyably anachronistic.

Ledger is the main selling point here, providing a lead performance that is charming, adorable, and impossible to be impressed by. Poised on the very edge of greatness throughout the 1990s, this 2001 feature allowed him to fully showcase his charisma and presence in a way that declared him a fully-fledged star. He's helped by the fun performances from Addy and Waltz, but things step up a notch when Bettany joins the fun, the actor relishing the opportunity to deliver such great dialogue with a consistent selection of theatrical flourishes. Fraser doesn't get to do as much, but she's a good addition to the team in time for the third act. Sewell makes a fine villain, really just in that position because of his talent for jousting, as well as his attitude to the rules and rigid social hierarchies that he prefers to rigidly adhere to. The only one who doesn't really work is Sossamon, who remains one of the very worst model-turned-actress individuals to have ever been given big roles in some big hit movies. She's absolutely awful here, although admittedly not helped by the screenplay not knowing how to best treat her character. Imagine this film as it is though, but replace Sossamon with someone like Rachel Weisz, and tell me it isn't immeasurably improved.

For as much as he gets right, Helgeland must also be held responsible for what he gets wrong. The use of a huge Queen hit at the start of the movie works really well. The rest of the song choices aren't as good, due to them being less attuned to a primal beat, and also not incorporated quite as seamlessly. There's also that big failing when it comes to the romantic element, messed up by the casting and the writing. Last, but not least, it's worth considering that, unless you're at a live event, jousting . . . isn't really that exciting, certainly not in a cinematic sense. It's two people covered in metal trying to hit one another with pointy poles. And if they aren't fully in your vision at all times, as happens when a film sequence is edited, then you might just struggle to remember who you're supposed to be rooting for.

And yet, despite the mis-steps, and despite the convenience of plot points converging in time for the expected final battle (thanks, in no small part, to a very enjoyable performance from James Purefoy), I enjoy A Knight's Tale more nowadays than I ever used to. It feels more old-fashioned and cute now, a film based around a simple enough concept and one star turn, and I can see why many would happily revisit it when they want a sweet escape from the wild world around us. I still don't understand ALL the love it gets, and I don't think I'll ever view it as a great movie, but I am pleased that I gave it a rewatch after all this time (I'm pretty sure my first, and only, viewing of this was on a VHS copy rented from my local Blockbuster). It may not rock me, but it's worthy of being more than just a one knight stand.

7/10

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Prime Time: Momentum (2015)

I have said it on numerous occasions, but there are people who will always get me to watch any movie, for all sorts of reasons. I have been a fan of Olga Kurylenko since her time spent being the highlight of a very messy Bond film, Quantum Of Solace. So I went in to Momentum with the small hope that it would provide me with some easy, unsophisticated, entertainment. That hope soon disappeared.

Things begin with a robbery, one that doesn’t go to plan, and everything is about to get very tricky for the robbers, who have inadvertently stolen a drive that contains some very sensitive information. Olga Kurylenko is Alexis, the most skilled of the robbers, and she ends up being aggressively pursued by the ruthless Mr. Washington (James Purefoy) and his assistants.

That is all I want to say about Momentum. Trust me, that is plenty. The first feature directed by Stephen S. Campanelli, this is an absolute mess from start to finish, a muddled heap of clichés and ineptly-shot action beats. It’s so bad that I am amazed Campanelli has been allowed to make more movies after it.

To be fair, most of the awfulness is delivered by the script, by Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan (two people who have done much better work on films actually directed by Marcus). It’s absolutely ridiculous throughout, and not in an entertainingly knowing way. The main character is always a step or two ahead of the villain, despite relying on one piece of good fortune after another, and the supporting characters are so barely sketched out that they really needn’t even be there. And you get Mr. Washington taking every opportunity to pretend to be reasonable and eloquently comment on the situation as it is unfolding.

Campanelli takes the script and does nothing to help distract from it. Every decision made seems to highlight either the incompetence or the lack of budget, or both, and most viewers will be keen for this to get to the final scene. There’s one wince-inducing torture sequence, but it feels as if it has been placed here from some other film.

Kurylenko isn’t at her best here, and cannot really sell herself in the role, unfortunately, so the saving Grace turns out to be Purefoy, who at least seems to enjoy being committed to the performance of his one-note villain. Everyone else seems to come from either the cheapest supporting actor agency or Rent-a-thug, with the only other standout being Shelley Nicole, as a badass woman named Ms. Clinton. You also get a cameo from Morgan Freeman, who can easily now put this film as one of the very worst he has been involved with.

You may just glean enough enjoyment from this if you go in with the lowest of expectations, maybe, but it’s pretty terrible, even for the type of entertainment it aims to provide. That still won’t stop me from checking out the many other Kurylenko movies I have yet to see though. I’ll just never revisit this one.

3/10

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Prime Time: Lighthouse (1999)

Certainly deserving of attention for being a bit different, and sometimes a bit more stylish, than many other British horror movies from the decade, Lighthouse is (it would seem) a bit of a forgotten horror from the end of the 1990s. I wouldn't go as far as saying that it's ripe for rediscovery, and it's no overlooked classic, but there are enough moments throughout to make it worth 90 minutes of your time.

The lot concerns a prison ship that ends up crashing on to a tiny, rocky island. That's not a good situation to be in, and it gets worse when a psycho killer (Leo Rook, played by Christoper Adamson) sets out to kill everyone.

Directed by Simon Hunter, who also worked on the story with writer Graeme Scarfe, Lighthouse is a strange mix of various elements. First of all, the prison ship itself seems quite incongruous. Perhaps nothing we see onscreen is meant to be taken literally, which would explain this choice, but it's definitely an odd starting point. Second, the usual mix of characters don't really get to do enough, aside from wait to be offed by the killer. In fact, they're only made memorable thanks to the actors picked to play them (such as Paul Brooke, Don Warrington, and one or two others).

The third thing worth mentioning is the fact that there are a small number of set-pieces that feel as if they could have been lifted from some classic gialli flicks. More of these moments filter throughout the third act, with impending potential death intercut with vague memories taking root in the forefront of the mind of one character, but Lighthouse has stuck in my mind over the years thanks to one brilliant sequence that involves someone hiding from the killer in a bathroom stall. The layout of the bathroom itself, the camera angles used, and the way in which the tension is drawn out, all of these things add up to a moment in the movie that the rest of it fails to match.

James Purefoy is the main prisoner we know is capable of being a hero, of course, and Rachel Shelley is Dr. Kirsty McCloud, who may just end up pairing up with Purefoy to stay alive until the end credits. As well as those already mentioned, you also get roles for Christopher Dunne, Bob Goody, Pat Kelman, and one or two others. None may be household names, but most will be generally recognisable, even if you cannot recall where you last saw them.

It's a shame that Hunter and Scarfe couldn't manage to tighten this up, to tweak and polish the script until it was developed into something much better than what we ended up with here. The skill is there, and Hunter certainly shows that he is more than capable of delivering bloodshed and vivid imagery, but there's not a strong enough framework, in terms of story, characters, and dialogue.

5/10

You can buy the DVD here.

High-Rise (2015)

Based on yet another "unfilmable" novel by J. G. Ballard, High-Rise has been a film that many people have been trying to bring to the screen for decades. The man who finally succeeded where others failed is director Ben Wheatley, helped along by a screenplay by Amy Jump.

The plot sees a man named Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moving into a modern apartment block (aka a fancy block of flats) in 1970s England. The block is full of amenities and luxuries, but only those higher up in the building get to access more of the good stuff, turning the whole building into an obvious microcosm of society. And when people start to upset the order of how things should be, it's not long until the whole environment devolves into an anarchic mix of violence, debauchery, and death.

The thing that threw me about this film is how quickly viewers are thrown into some outright strangeness. Even the earlier scenes, which are supposed to be showing normal life in the apartment block, are just plain odd. And then things go from 0-100 very quickly, with oddness turning into the bizarre and then the absolutely insane. I kept wondering what I had missed, or what scenes had been excised in the editing process and never put back where they should have been. Then I stopped wondering about it. I just started to enjoy the atmosphere of the film, immersing myself in the environment, which is when I started to appreciate everything that this had going for it.

First of all, even by his own standards, this is impressively ambitious directing from Wheatley, managing to make the central building seem both like an entire city and also like a horribly claustrophobic cocoon, depending on just how well things are going. He also keeps all the character shots and cinematography in the strange retro-futuristic style of the apartment block.

The script by Jump may be a muddled mess at times, and that's hard to deny, but it's also full of cutting lines, great individual moments, and a smoke-filled, languid, atmosphere that becomes hazier and hazier as the minds of the central characters start to fray and break.

Then you have the cast. Hiddleston is great in his role, barely holding on to his precarious position in the building from the very beginning, and there are also fantastic performances from Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans, Peter Ferdinando, and Jeremy Irons, the latter as the architect of the building and the top resident (of course). Sienna Miller, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, and Reece Shearsmith also lend solid support, each one playing a memorable resident who may be for or against Hiddleston's place in the heirarchy of the structure.

This isn't a film to watch if you want an easy ride, and it's not even one to watch if you need something that makes sense throughout. It's a dazzling, dizzying, strange experience. Almost like leaning over the top balcony of a tower block and looking down through a kaleidoscope. While other people throw protesting victims over to meet their gravity-hastened demise. And of course I mean that as a compliment.

8/10

Get the disc here.
American friends can pick it up here.