Next time, don't let medievalists anywhere near your terrible "medieval" movies

Got Medieval, (a medievalist), reviews Kingdom of Heaven. And it is funny:

"Orlando does get knighted, and he acquires a rival in the person of Guy of somewhere-or-other, a snooty French Templar who's in line for the throne of Jerusalem. We know Guy is a bad person, because he's rude and French and talks about God a lot. In fact, anytime anyone talks about God a lot in the movie, they're bad. Orlando, who is struggling with religious doubt brought on by the death of his wife and child, is good, but not really very good at making you understand that he's struggling with religious doubt unless he says outright, "I'm struggling with religious doubt," but he does say it, so don't worry. Then his dad dies, and they all decide to go see his lands in Jerusalem.

...it only gets worse when the Archbishop of Jerusalem instructs people, fearing they're all about to be captured, to 'covert to the heathen faith and repent later'. This is supposed to show that he's a craven fake, but not five minutes ago when Orlando was telling us, 'all religions are bunk,' we were supposed to see him as a champion of "the people" and a crack theological thinker."

Read the whole thing! His remarks on Orlando Bloom's macho-speech-giving abilities are priceless. He somehow found the time to also review Beowulf, and even the Footwear in Beowulf. I particularly liked this part:

"I put the blame mostly on Neil Gaiman, because he has a solid track record for taking well-worn cliche's, stock characters, and stale plots, adding some black-eyeliner, and calling it Deep, Dark, and Meaningful. He thinks that he's some sort of revolutionary for making a movie where the evil woman is a slinky seductress and the virtuous woman is an ice queen."

Yes! It's true! Thank you!

[via the Sci-Fi Catholic]