THE GREEN KNIGHT was one of my adventures in mostly-empty Covid-era theater-going, but I’m always working on a million things at once and I didn’t finish the review until after it’s left most theaters and most people’s minds. And yet I continue, undaunted. (It’s on VOD now and comes to disc October 12th.)
It’s the latest from director David Lowery (PETE’S DRAGON, A GHOST STORY, THE OLD MAN & THE GUN), and it’s his weird arty take on a fantasy knight movie, released, as you would imagine, by A24. I enjoyed this at a mostly empty matinee, just as I did with pre-pandemic movies like 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE, HERCULES and KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD. But I don’t consider this to be in that same genre I call “fantasy sword guy movies,” and not just because he uses an ax. It’s different because the whole appeal of it is different. It’s more about deconstructing the things we expect from that genre, or at least finding a different angle on them, than reveling in them.
It’s based on an anonymous 14th-century poem called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. And I tend to like movies based on anonymous poems, judging by the only two I can think of, BEOWULF and BEOWULF. I never heard of this one, but it has been adapted before, including as SWORD OF THE VALIANT, which I went ahead and watched afterward. And I certainly didn’t get this from the movie, but Sir Gawain (Dev Patel, CHAPPIE) is one of the members of King Arthur (Sean Harris, PROMETHEUS)’s Round Table. (read the rest of this shit…)
CASH ON DEMAND is a 1961 Christmas crime movie that I learned about from that 
Oh, thank the Maker’s, there’s a new one! I don’t know what the fuck 20th Century Fox were thinking ending part 3 with all our space heroes dead or running away to hide under a rock. Not everything has to be a Hollywood ending, but that was a little grim there, fellas.
Well here’s another American classic from AMC, the british version of The Mummy. Chris Lee plays the mummy and Pete Cushing plays the British archaeologist who gets bit on the ass by the mummy’s curse. I mean I don’t mean the mummy bites him on the ass or anything, that never happens. But after Pete, Pete Sr. and Uncle Joe unearth the princess Ananka in Egypt (best line: “There’s something evil in there Uncle Joe, I felt it. Oh well, let’s get it open.”) this angry Egyptian follows their British asses home and starts reading scrolls at em. Next thing of course the mummy’s come back from the dead and the Egyptian is commanding him to kill the party of three who fucked with the princess’s tomb.
