Female Film Critics 24/375
The hero is King Arthur’s nephew, and the tale defines the chivalric romance with themes of honor and humility. The film is dark. Very, very dark. Also turgid and confusing. The Green Knight issues a challenge to all viewers: if you can sit through this thing without longing to have your own head lopped off, you deserve to be knighted. But don’t be greedy: once a knight’s enough.
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Years ago, as an English major, I had to read a rather long, boring 14th century epic poem from the Arthurian legend called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Now, visual storyteller David Lowery has revitalized and enhanced this chivalric romance. On the road to meet his destiny, Gawain must face a series of fearsome trials, tribulations and temptations as he gradually learns the true nature of chivalry.
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Intrigued by the title? I was too, particularly since 2020 marks the 150th year since the death of Charles Dickens, but it’s certainly not the semi-autobiographical tale that I remember. Scottish director Armando Iannucci’s revisionist version begins in 1850 in a London theater, where David Copperfield (Dev Patel) addresses the audience, speculating on whether he’ll turn out to be the hero of his own life.
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The ever-versatile Oscar nominee Dev Patel leads a terrifically talented troupe selected through colorblind or nontraditional casting, a practice still more common in modern-day theater than filmmaking. It’s refreshingly lovely to see outstanding actors of color like Patel, Benedict Wong and Nikki Amuka-Bird bring the classic novel’s characters to life.
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Director Iannucci and writer Simon Blackwell are known for cursing and biting satire. Here, however, they lean on Dickens. Cramming a beloved, 800-pp. novel into a 2-hour film does not work totally. The cast may have had fun exercising, but the audience will be left longing for a few of Iannucci’s signature F-bombs to spice up this interpretation.
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With a feature filmmaking career that has spanned almost 25 years, although Michael Winterbottom has had some are undeniable misfires, he has simultaneously illustrated time and time again that when he’s good, he’s very good. The Wedding Guest adds to Winterbottom’s oeuvre while donating to his experiments with the crime/thriller genre, joining previous projects such as The Face of an Angel and 2010’s controversial The Killer Inside Me.
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If you’re looking for a romantic comedy, look elsewhere. This is a kidnapping caper. Inscrutable Jay is an espionage expert who flies to Lahore, Pakistan, from London, ostensibly to attend a wedding. But is real mission is to kidnap the bride, Samira.
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Hotel Mumbai backs away from being exploitative in the way films based on real-life tragedies can often be, accomplishing this by sticking to the story and not adding too many overly dramatic flourishes, and by offering interiority to both the attackers and the attacked.
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From the title, you might think this film is going to be fun. From the cast, you might think this film features a Bollywood wedding. You would be so wrong as to require a good 15 minutes to re-orient yourself before figuring out what you’re seeing.
Read moreAt the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 74th annual Golden Globe Awards, La La Land took all seven awards for which
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