A different way of telling a story

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The first must-see film of the year.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The old English tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is brought to the screen with a charming blend of action , imagination ,thrills , adventure , and tongue-in-cheek humor . The medieval legend of a supernatural chivalrous young squire who challenges the king's men to kill him . Being middlingly starred Myles O'Keefe as Gawain , Sean Connery as the Green Knight, and appealing Cyrielle Claire as Lynette ("The Lady of Lyonesse"). In Camelot on New Year's Day, King Arthur's court is waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks first to see or hear of an exciting adventure. At this a gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other . He insists he has come for a friendly "Christmas game": someone is to strike him once with his axe on condition that the Green Knight (Sean Connery) may return the blow in a year and a day . There appears Gaiwan (a wooden Miles O'Keefe) , a rookie knight in the court of King Arthur (Trevor Howard) who is sent out on a quest brought on by a challenge issue by the magical Green Knight . Gaiwan must solve a riddle in one year or die .This flabby fairy tale adventure contains witchery , fantasy , cheesy special affects, stagy acting , surreal imagery and grimly marches . The picture has good settings , as thick rolling fog , deep forest , dark castles and rocky seacoast ; this movie delivers on locations ; however , it results to be mediocre and a little bit boring . Connery can only be on-screen for a few scenes but he adds zest to his character , he steals the show as an ironic Green Knight . Ronald Lacey, who played the character Oswald, also played the same character, also called Oswald, in "Gawain and the Green Knight" which was made in 1973, and basically, it was the same movie, same actor, same role .This lumbering film version of one of the Arthurian legends is badly done , as the motion picture was regularly directed by Stephen Weeks . Filmmaker Weeks was one of two young British directors to emerge in the terror field in the late sixties , the other , Michael Reeves died at 25 . He began his professional film career at age 17, directing a series of short films . He made his film cinema short film, 'Moods of a Victorian Church' (1967) at age 19, and his first cinema drama, a film set in the First World War in France '1917' . Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was Stephen's second picture at age of 22 and he realized other horror films such as ¨Madhouse mansion¨ or ¨Ghost story¨(1979) and adventure movie such as ¨Gawain and the Green Knight¨ (1973) also with Peter Cushing , Ronald Lacey , Murray Head as Sir Gawain and Nigel Green and its remake titled ¨Sword of the valiant¨ (1983) and not much of an improvement . Rating : 5/10 . Well worth watching but only for Sean Connery fans .Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, and is of a type known as the "beheading game". The Green Knight is interpreted by some as a representation of the Green Man of folklore and by others as an allusion to Christ. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important poem in the romance genre, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess, and it remains popular to this day in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations. It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who challenges any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight's castle.The poem survives in a single manuscript, the Cotton Nero A.x., which also includes three religious narrative poems .

...And he will thankfully in literature but not this cinematic garbage. The Medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a wonderfully layered poem about old and new, good and evil, pure and tainted. This movie basically rips all the subtext from that work and throws it away so it can add nonsense like the Green Knight turning a sorceress into a red frog. Some mythological land where a woman wants Gawain for his body. Then there is the sub-story about some renegade marauders fighting for an evil baron who take in men just from anywhere to fight in their army. None of this makes much sense. The whole Arthur storyline was excised as well. Forget Gawain being a paragon of virtue and chastity. Here we get pretty boy-look-a-lot-like-a-lady Miles O'Keefe - who as another reviewer noted - creeps me out too! Sean Connery looks ridiculous as the Green Knight spouting out drivel. The whole end of the poem as well as the mid-section are totally changed. In the poem the Green Knight has three whacks at Gawain for Gawain had unwittingly stayed at his castle and received three kisses from the lord, Sir Bertilak's wife. He praises Gawain for his purity and righteousness. Here we get some lame ending about the seasons. We also get a fat monk who steals, a Sancho Panza-like Humphreys, and a host of characters not ever imagined in the poem. Director Stephen Weeks did this as his last film. That says sooo much right there. The acting is dreadful with O'Keefe looking like Fabio at every turn. Poor Sean Connery. I felt bad for Ronald Lacey(always good at playing bad guys like the Nazi leader in Raiders of the Lost Ark)and Trevor Howard just as the King - though for what reason I am unable to fathom was not called King Arthur like he was in the poem. Was it copyrighted by an anonymous poet from the 14th century? The gal who plays the love interest is beautiful but always covered. Alas! Woe is me! Then there is Peter Cushing - an actor for whom I have an incredibly soft spot for in my heart of hearts. This was either his second or third to last film. He is in his early 70s and as always good. Shame this had to be one of his last projects. He did do the film as a favor no doubt for Weeks as he directed Cushing in I , Monster - Weeks's best film to be sure. And the final insult to injury is the over-the-top, totally misplaced musical score. It resonates loudly throughout without any other effect than an incredible annoyance. The film is also cheap-looking in that 80s cheap movie way. Despite what might have been a very good cast, this film - in a word - reeks!

Now...can we take any movie seriously, whose awful soundtrack is a boring copy of the HE-MAN cartoons soundtrack? I feel sorry because this movie is NOT one's typical B production...they shot scenes in lavish locations in England, Wales and France, and were thus beyond typical B stuff... However, this is yet another Golan-Globus-Cannon actioner that turns out awful. Barren the barely decent Connery & Cushing, lead actors seem out of a high school rehearsal; O'Keefe stars as not-so-clever low-steroid musclehead. The storyline is interesting, but what you watch on the screen isn't after all... It's supposedly a deeply philosophical quest for the self and what you watch is a Richard Pryor thing. When the second red knight uses the sword, you clearly see it's fake and not a real sword. I won't watch it again.

This movie is perhaps even more campy than "Conan the Barbarian" but it's also a lot worse.For an adventure movie it's way too boring. The action and sword-fights look pretty lame and poorly edited. On top of that, there are simply too few action moments within the movie.You can never get yourself to care for any of the characters. Characters just come and go in this movie. Way too many. There is no consistency in the story. Every character is in it for like 5 minutes and than disappears out of the story again and the next character get introduced. This is a sort of approach that is common for adventure movies but in this case they simple just overdid it.The story is very simple. The way the story progresses is just incredible bad and disjointed. It doesn't care that it just doesn't make much sense. The story heavily relies on its adventurous/traveling elements but those moments are done so incredibly bad in the movie, that the entire movie becomes a bad one, that at times is a real drag and annoying one to watch. The movie tries to conceal how bad it is by putting in humor, to make this seem like a comedy but it doesn't fool me, or prevents me from seeing how incredibly bad this movie is made and constructed.Amazing that so many well known, respected actors agreed to make an appearance in this movie. I'll admit, the only reason that I ever wanted to see this movie was because it featured Peter Cushing in one of his last film roles. Besides Peter Cushing, the movie also features Sean Connery with glitters, Trevor Howard, Ronald Lacey and John Rhys-Davies. Hope they still enjoyed themselves. I surely didn't enjoyed them!The movie is good looking in a campy sort of way, with simple looking sets and costumes. The atmosphere is made even more campy by the horrible '80's synthesizer music. My head nearly exploded! Also Miles O'Keeffe performance make this a campy one. Apparently his voice got even dubbed by Peter Firth. Perhaps to conceal his bad delivery of lines? O'Keeffe is best know for playing Tarzan in the huge flop "Tarzan, the Ape Man", with Bo Derek.A really bad movie in its sort and simply not worth watching.3/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/