The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Why have I waited so long between movies when not on vacation? Well, mainly, I've kinda painted myself into a corner by insisting on Halloween-type movies every October. Now that Netflix has ceased disc delivery, I find their streaming horror and pseudo-horror options lacking. Disney+ is no better for that. In desperation, I resorted to a faintly gothic offering.

In medieval Paris, Minister of Justice Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) regularly assumes the worst about the Roma, consistently called by the slur "Gypsies" in this picture. He kills one at the Notre Dame Cathedral, only to find that she was carrying not contraband but a deformed baby. The archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers) tells him to raise the child as penance. Frollo keeps the boy in the cathedral bell tower, dubbing him Quasimodo and self-identifying as his master. After 20 years, Quasimodo (now voiced by Tom Hulce) finally ventures below during the Feast of Fools, when lots of people try to look freaky anyway. There he meets Esmeralda (Demi Moore), a Roma dancer who's not nearly as bad as he was led to believe. Quasimodo isn't the only one to fall for her, but Frollo has a twisted way to show it....

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

This is one of those movies I watched for education more than entertainment. It still gets cited now and then, particularly for a handful of quotable lines, but I was warned that it could really use a best-of cut. If it weren't streaming, I probably wouldn't have bothered checking it out.

In an unspecified land and century evocative of early medieval Europe, young Conan (then Jorge Sanz) sees the army of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) slaughter all the adults in his village and sell the children into slavery. Between manual labor, pit matches, and oriental training, Conan becomes quite the brawny fighter (now Arnold Schwarzenegger in his star-making role) before his voluntary release. He allies himself with two thieves, archer Subotai (Gerry Lopez) and fellow swordmaster Valeria (Sandahl Bergman), in his quest for vengeance. But Doom is worse than a mere warlord; he leads a snake-themed cult whose adherents readily kill themselves at his bidding, even tho he himself is reportedly more than a millennium old.

The Green Knight (2021)

I enjoyed reading about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in college, tho I've been a mite fuzzy on events in the middle. With the general praise for this adaptation, I went to a theater on a whim. Had I known that A24 was involved, I would have been more apprehensive.

An Ent-like horseman (Ralph Ineson) rides up to the Round Table with a challenge: Whoever strikes him gets to keep his nifty axe but has to show up at his Green Chapel a year later for recompense. Gawain (Dev Patel), nephew of King Arthur (Sean Harris), wants to make a name for himself at last, so he decapitates the Green Knight, only to find that such a mystical figure doesn't die that easily. As the rather literal deadline approaches, Gawain heads out for no other reason than a thirst for honor....

DragonHeart (1996)

I half-surprised myself with this choice. The movie didn't tempt me even when new (and I was more in the target age range), and it's not particularly esteemed or widely discussed. Nevertheless, it won some lesser-known awards, it's had enough of a cult following for multiple sequels, and a late online acquaintance of mine used the dragon's face as an icon. Besides, I felt like watching a dragon.

In an alternate medieval England, an English-speaking dragon with a name unpronounceable to humans (the only voice role I've known for Sean Connery), who later answers to Draco, donates half his heart to save newly crowned young King Einon (David Thewlis) from a lethal wound, on the condition that Einon stick to the old code of honor in contrast to his despotic dad. Alas, all he took to, eheh, heart from mentor Sir Bowen (Dennis Quaid) was sword fighting, so he becomes no kinder a king. Since Bowen hadn't noticed this side of his charge before, he mistakenly assumes that Draco corrupted Einon and swears to kill every dragon he can.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

After how much I enjoyed HtTYD2, I decided that if the threequel was any good, I would not wait long to see it -- this time in a theater. This being an evening show, I avoided the noisy brats who detract from some family features while still getting reinforcement of positive reactions from older viewers.

There's less of a time jump from the second movie than there had been from the first. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), now 21 and chief of Berk, leads successful viking raids on dragon captors' ships. This presents two problems: Their isle is running out of room for newcomers, and they've gained the attention of powerful enemies. When the most accomplished dragon hunter, Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), demonstrates how dangerous he is, the Berkians pull up stakes. They want to make their next camp their new permanent home, but Hiccup has designs on reaching the fabled hidden world his late father (Gerard Butler in flashbacks) spoke of, where dragons should be safest. Unfortunately, his personal alpha mount, Toothless, gets distracted by the first female of his species to appear in ages, which is what Grimmel has in mind.

Ivanhoe (1952)

In the interest of narrowing my many choices, I usually avoid movies with IMDb overall ratings less than 7, barring unusual circumstances like a vacation. Adaptations from classic literature are an exception. This version seemed like the best way to get the gist of the story in less than 2 hours, tho I read up on key divergences. Besides, it did well at the box office and garnered some Academy Award nominations.

In 1194, Wilfred of Ivanhoe (Robert Taylor) has discovered that the missing King Richard (aptly named Norman Wooland) is being held for ransom. Rather than taking the prison by storm, Ivanhoe runs around seeking money from people who prefer him to regent Prince John (Guy Rolfe). During this endeavor, he re-encounters his crush, Rowena (Joan Fontaine), and two John-aligned nemeses from the Crusades, Bois-Guilbert (George Sanders) and de Bracy (Robert Douglas). In surprisingly large roles, both financially and plotwise, are a pair of Jews: patriarch Isaac (Felix Aylmer) and his daughter, Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor, no relation to Robert), the latter earning the jealous eye of Rowena and the lustful eye of Bois-Guilbert.

Time Bandits (1981)

I mentioned that I would see another consecutive movie about a boy. Thankfully, it's quite different. In fact, despite the PG rating, I hesitate to count it as a family flick. IMDb doesn't. (Non-American studios, I find, are more likely to have kid-unfriendly stories starring kids.)

Kevin, 11, suffers from parents uninterested in his interest in history. One night, his bedroom is accidentally invaded by six time-traveling dwarves. They're interested in history, of course, but not for the same reason: They want to steal the riches of the past. Despite his disapproval of that plan, Kevin tags along, with nary a language barrier. He learns that they've worked for the Supreme Being himself on maintenance of the space-time continuum, and since they swiped his temporal map, they have to keep moving. (They've been around for eons but seem as vulnerable as humans.) Little do they realize that the scarier threat is from Evil himself, looking to grab the map for his own ends.

Army of Darkness (1992)

It's unusual for me to watch a threequel (well, third entry, anyway) before either of its predecessors. Perhaps I was tempted by the title, which suggests a big departure from the unappealingly named The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. I've mentioned my concerns that director Sam Raimi tends toward more grotesque violence than I like, but I heard that this outing was relatively comedic.

What I had missed was the setting. Apparently, tampering with the mysterious forces associated with the Necronomicon tome not only arouses the wrath of the undead; it can open a time portal. Protagonist Ash (Bruce Campbell) gives us a brief synopsis of his past troubles to explain how he came to be chained up in the Middle Ages. Fortunately, his modern technology, knowledge, and general badassery get him out of immediate trouble and into good graces. Unfortunately, he's not quite sharp enough to reuse the tome properly. Soon he brings danger to the castle of one Lord Arthur (not necessarily the king; Ash estimates the year 1300) and must decide whether he cares enough, particularly for one Lady Sheila (Embeth Davidtz), to help rather than flee.

Andrei Rublev (1966)

This may be the longest movie I've seen since I started this blog. Running nearly 3.5 hours with no overture or intermission, it feels like it could easily have been edited down to less than half as much. Even for a Russian classic, that's a lot.

It had also been one of the British Film Institute's favorite films that I hadn't seen yet, at #27 on their list of 50 greatest. But that did nothing to get me psyched for it. I have to say, the BFI's taste doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as the AFI's. Perhaps I'm something of an ugly American after all.

Chimes at Midnight, a.k.a. Falstaff (1965)

You can tell it was pretty late in the directing career of Orson Welles. Not having enough friends left in Hollywood, he turned to European production companies I'd never heard of before. His use of black and white at this point probably had more to do with budget than artistry. Oh, other famous people still got involved -- Harry Saltzman, John Gielgud, and Jeanne Moreau come to mind -- but a sizable portion of the (rather few) credited names reflect Switzerland, France, or especially Spain for a reason. Thanks to contested distribution rights, you'll be lucky to find the film in the U.S. My luck took the form of a Welles festival at the AFI Silver Theater.

As you might have guessed from the second title, Welles plays Sir John Falstaff, a popular minor character from several Shakespeare plays. His moderate-length screenplay combines mostly relevant portions of the tetralogy consisting of Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V, plus some dialog from Merry Wives of Windsor and details from a 16th-century history text. Believe it or not, Welles saw fit to lose weight for a role consistently described as obese.

How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2

I was going to review only 2 here, since I saw 1 four years ago. But this sort of sequel seems hard to evaluate without making many references to the original.

DreamWorks continues to move up in my estimation. The HtTYD film series is not its most original effort, but both entries to date hold their own against at least half the output of Pixar. They are more likely than anything else to make viewers, young and old, male and female, want a pet dragon.

Into the Woods (2014)

Yup, a second mashup of kiddie folklore featuring Chris Pine in the same day. My family has a strange habit or inadvertent tradition of seeing unhappy musical movies on Christmas: Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables, even Inside Llewyn Davis in a pinch. I wanted us to see something else but was narrowly outvoted, partly on the basis of schedule. At least this one has a partly happy and victorious ending.

I'd seen the play as a teen and reacted as many viewers do: The first act is cute fun, but the second is uncomfortably dark to subvert the idea of "happily ever after." The junior version understandably drops the second act, thereby missing Stephen Sondheim's point. If you already know the story, you may well wonder why Disney would dare touch it. I figure the company has been trying to subvert its own history at least since Enchanted in 2007, no doubt inspired by the likes of Shrek. The results are usually pretty popular, but that doesn't stop Disney from reverting to standard fare, as evidenced by a trailer for a live-action Cinderella. In the case of ItW, things have been toned down slightly in questionable good-guy ethics and body count, but it still feels about as dark as Disney ventures.