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Reviews
Beowulf (1999)
A late '80s action flick from the late '90s
Honestly, without looking at the production details, I would never have guessed this film wasn't made in the eighties. It's so eighties I feel it perfectly epitomizes the beloved "'80s action B-movie" genre despite being made a full decade too late. And knowing the extremes B-movies actually from the eighties can go to, that's saying A LOT.
It has Chris Lambert playing Billy Idol in a long black leather coat playing Beowulf; Rhona Mitra, "The original model behind Lara Croft in Tomb Raider!"; the kind of ingenious/insane mix of pseudo-medieval, post-apocalyptic and modern fashion and technology I haven't seen since Knights (and that's another one for the B-movie history books); a rather nice, if forgettable, techno soundtrack; more somersaults than you can shake a lever-action clockwork sword at; and Grendel's HOT MOMMA!
I think Beowulf would have approved. It gets the attitude right, and that's what counts - to quote the poem, Chapter IX, "Me thus often the evil monsters/ Thronging threatened. With thrust of my sword,/ The darling, I dealt them due return!" (The full text of Beowulf is available at http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~beowulf/ )
And, by the way, let's not forget that dirty little chuckle Lambert has perfected. I loved it when he played Raiden in Mortal Kombat, and I absolutely love it here.
The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)
Good old-fashioned Sword & Sorcery!
While "Conan the Barbarian" is one of the genuinely greatest fantasy movies ever made - and has one of the greatest film scores ever composed - aside from that silly sword "The Sword and the Sorcerer" is actually a FAR better Conan movie than either of the official Conan movies. There is one incredible shot in particular, towards the end of the film, when Talon leaps up onto a balcony and into a horde of enemy soldiers, that could be right out of a Frazetta illustration to one of R. E. Howard's original stories... and, of course, Talon is far more like the "real" Conan of Cimmeria, as written by Howard, than the musclebound putz played by Ahnuld ever was.
It's exciting, it's fun, it's funNY - both intentionally and otherwise - and it's some of the most unashamedly genuine Sword & Sorcery ever put to screen, straight from the pulp magazines of the '30s to the big screen of the '80s. One of my favorite things to come out of that decade, along with "Conan the Barbarian" (the less said about the sequel the better), "Ladyhawke" and "The Princess Bride".
There are better films out there, make no mistake about that, films of higher objective quality, but very few as unpretentious, genuinely fun and plain lovable, IMO. Giving it anything but a full 10 stars would feel like kicking a puppy.