I, Monster

A Freudian Jekyll & Hyde set in 1906.

The drug is to make the unconscious perceptible and thus understood. It unbalances the psyche, suppressing the superego or the id and rendering the subject a pathetic cringing mass of fears or a monster.

The subtleties of all this have mainly escaped reviewers, also the beautiful technique deployed by Weeks, notably in slow lateral camera movements that tell a tale or describe a scene.

Sword of the Valiant

A grand work, stylistically at the center of a constellation including Boorman’s Excalibur, Battiato’s I Paladini, Hodges’ Flash Gordon, and Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs for the comedy of Fortinbras storming the toy castle, etc.

Tessari’s Zorro is another kindred work, also Desmond Davis’ Clash of the Titans.

“The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.

The four-part riddle is the sole governor of form, after the prelude at the King’s court of well-fed drunken knights he takes issue with.

The parody materials and general good humor give way to the essential poetry of the riddle, the Green Knight’s twelvemonth “game”.

The extraordinary, increasingly rapid treatment of action scenes is only one part of the adroitness that went entirely unobserved by critics, notably in Time Out Film Guide.

The romance of Gawain and Linet in the lost land of Lyonesse, at the castle of Fortinbras, the castle of Bertilak, the Green Chapel. An unreal place, a dark place, a golden place, each with its contrary, and the place of loss, wisdom there.