The Green Knight is the best film of 2021

INT. WHEN HONOUR IS EVERYTHING – DAY 

The Green Knight isn’t another retold Arthurian tale on its 10th remake. This is the intimate tale of Sir Gawain, the not-yet-honorable and not-yet-a-knight nephew of King Arthur, and his journey into a world full of mystical challenges and honorable ones too, to complete The Green Knights seemingly impossible to cheat challenge. 

We start within Camelot’s walls, perfectly protected from the evil and folklore surrounding it nothing is out of the normal here. Like any Arthurian legend, Camelot is safe, but The Green Knight is a world of magic and eccentricity, by easing us in we too experience this journey that Gawain embarks on. We thought we knew the rules of the world, but Camelot is a haven compared to the world we enter together.
We have a backdrop; the stage is set. The Story?...

During the Christmas celebrations, The Green Knight appears to set the challenge.

Should he land a blow, then one year hence, he must seek me out, He shall find me and bend a knee and I will return what was given to me. (Paraphrased) 

Minor spoilers to follow.

Gawain accepts and this is the story we follow. We understand the outcome that is to take place and we follow Gawain to the honorable yet expected death that awaits him.

This film knows what it is, something rare to find these days (Unless it’s an A24 film.) The style, tone, and atmosphere are confidently displayed in every scene, shot, and line. Performances are top class; Dev Patel holds the film together like glue, with one of his strongest performances to date. Minor roles are handed out to established talent, Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Alicia Vikander. Nothing ever feels undercooked when it comes to the characters and their performance, and no character feels over-the-top in this over-the-top world. 

The world-building is epic, in both scale and in how fucking cool it is. It doesn’t diverge from established Arthurian ideas and themes but modernises them in classic indie style. We ease our way into it from the norm set in Camelot to Giants walking across large plains and this is where I can separate audiences that will love or hate this movie. Spirits or warfare, pick one. Because the film has both, however, it will use one as a backdrop and one to continue Gawain’s journey. People either want action or a mystical adventure and as I said earlier this is an intimate tale, so don’t go expecting an Arthurian John Wick (although hit me up when that movie exists.) 

Gawain knows the challenge set, The Green Knight will return what was given, and Gawain straight up decapitated him. The end of Gawain’s journey will hit you, depending on how much you enjoyed this film you’ll either be amazed or just pissed off. But this film stands on its own two feet saying, ‘this is the story we want to tell’, and for me at least, it left me thinking about it for the rest of the week. The Green Knight, right now, is my favourite movie of the year. I challenge another movie to knock it off, but it might make it into my Letterboxd favourites, yet it could be the high I’m on from it. Another sitting will be necessary. 

If you didn’t believe that Dev Patel wasn’t already a king, this movie will help you reinforce that message. 

So, if you couldn’t tell, I loved watching The Green Knight. 

5/5

FADE OUT

Unhinged

Derrick Borte’s UNHINGED explores a What If story of road raging gone to the very extreme. The chronically-late Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is on her way to drop her son Kyle (Gabriel Bateman) off at school when she hooks at a car in front of her that is not driving despite the light turning green. Behind the wheel of the big, grey 4x4 is a driver (Russel Crowe) who gets enraged by Rachel’s refusal to apologize after he did just that to her. What follows is a non-stop chase fuelled by the Stranger’s wrath towards Rachel. Desperately set on teaching her a lesson, the stranger doesn’t just go after her, but everyone she loves.

In a cinematic world and story, there’s this term called Suspension of Disbelief, which is basically an acceptance and willing ignorance towards certain illogical or surreal events that the viewer believes in for the sake of the story. UNHINGED tries to set up a world in which a psychotic road-rager, like the one we see, as the result of “an increase of violence on the streets”. Within the first scene, we get to observe this bitter, psychotic, and broken man that does not back down from harming people who hurt him, as he kills his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. Immediately afterward, we get a drawn-out and overly long montage of news clips showcasing various acts of road rage that try to prime you into a connection between this maniac and people honking at each other. 

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While I was most certainly entertained, thanks for asking, the dread of having a message that is not about mental health but more on how we don’t care about each other on the streets feels like an odd parallel to this movie’s release, which much like many people on the street is much more concerned about being first rather than getting there in a safe manner.

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All that being said, there are some good ideas in UNHINGED. Especially how Russel Crowe has to be overweight to play this part. Right? Okay, now I’m done trashing it.

Crowe delivers a solid performance. He is certainly able to portray a mostly silent menace being a calm and collected killer that must have drawn some inspiration from Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Although Crowe is lightyears away from a performance on par with Bardem.

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I was caught off guard by the R-rated violence displayed in the film, albeit out of place for the characters, grounded this as a world with fatal consequences. Even though Crowe’s stranger was mostly driving next/into NPC’s that did not seem to react to whatever he was doing. Which I get, it was one of the points the story was trying to make. That no one cares in traffic, but come on… Do you really not realize someone rear-ending someone else's car next to you? Unfortunately, this resulted in more than a few unintentionally amusing moments that were supposed to be thrilling. 

The sound that design, on the contrary, was utterly fascinating. Although that might be a result of my almost five-month absence from cinemas.

UNHINGED is a mediocre action film that tries too hard to have some kind of message hidden in between the loud motors of its cars. It is like Harvey Dent’s two-face in that we deserve it, but we don’t need right now. They probably just really had to push for a release because the Fortnite references were already outdated in AVENGER’S ENDGAME, let alone mid-summer 2020.

★★⋆☆☆

Film Release (Switzerland): 30.07.20 - Film Release (USA): TBD

Film Data: Director: Derrick Borte - Writers: Carl Ellsworth - Cast: Russel Crowe, Gabriel Bateman, Caren Pistorius, Anna Leighton, Jimmi Simpson - 90’ - 2020 - USA - Solstice Production - Ascot Elite Switzerland

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Photos: © 2020 Ascot Elite Entertainment AG

UNHINGED is like a dog that sticks his head out the window - it’s entertaining to look at for a while but ultimately cats are better. 

EMMA.

After Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995) comes Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of the Austen novel Emma. The explanation for her stylized title ‘EMMA.’ is, so de Wilde to RadioTimes, “There’s a period at the end of Emma because it’s a period film”. So it is only right that this version of Emma is set in its original setting; England in the early 19th century.

Spoiled young woman Emma lives with her widowed father (Bill Nighy) alone in a big country house in Highbury. In her daily boredom, she soon discovers that she can entertain herself by playing matchmaker. She engineers the marriage between her beloved governess and a widowed man. But as she is now deprived of the only motherly figure she knows, she turns her attention to naive girl Harriet Smith, whom she declared her companion. Despite knowing that Harriet is in love and courted by a local farmer, Emma coaxed her into refusing Mr. Martin and instead orchestrates a relationship between the vicar Elton and her, whom Emma thinks more fitting. The plot thickens when Emma is soon made aware of the fact that not all her arrangements will work out in her favor. Her neighbour and brother-in-law Mr. Knightley is the only one to be mindful of her vanity and naiveté. At that same time, Emma finds herself attracted to good looking Mr. Frank Churchill, while it is rumored that Knightley himself is taken by the accomplished Jane Fairfax. Being at the center of all these events, Emma gets tangled up quickly.  Capering about in the lavish society, she is ultimately confronted with the question of growing up, assuming responsibility for her actions and finding her place in the world. 

Autumn de Wilde’s directorial debut puts a quirky, rom-comesque spin on the already comedic original story. Watching this film wasn’t a completely different experience than watching Clueless, apart from the admittedly gorgeous setting and decor they pulled off. At times it actually felt like they recast Clueless and then had them dress up and talk fancily. In a good way though. It is definitely an enjoyable film, albeit not outstanding. The cast was splendid, with Bill Nighy portraying a valetudinarian old man (quite honestly one of his better roles) and Johnny Flynn being his cuddly and adorable self through his character of Knightley

De Wilde artfully juggles with banter and benevolent bestialities to deliver a nicely dressed up film. 

If you have read the novel it is definitely fun seeing this film I believe. And if you have loved and worshipped Paul Rudd in Clueless as I have growing up (still do tbh), then don’t worry, Johnny Flynn (almost) does him justice. I think you don’t even have to love period pieces to like this film.

Should I see Emma? Go see it if you wanna know what this famous novel is about (always good to know what people are talking about) and like a quirky movie.

★★★☆☆

Film Release (Switzerland): 5.3.20 - Film Release (Australia): 13.2.20 - Film Release (USA): 6.2.20

Film Data: Director: Autumn de Wilde - Writers: Elanor Catton, Jane Austen - Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Bill Nighy, Mia Goth, Josh O'Connor, Callum Turner, Rupert Graves - 124’ - 2020 - UK - Universal Pictures

Photo and Video: © Universal Pictures International Switzerland. All Rights Reserved.