I found the book a bit preachy but they really could have made a better mini-series from it.
good one! It might work! “Mrs. Brown, this is …my…Uncle Merle, come to stay with me. The robe and sword? Oh, he’s a RenFaire actor. Really gets into it…”
*La Reine Margot * with Isabelle Adjani, set during the Huguenot St Bart.s Massacre of 1572.
The Joseph Fiennes *Luther *wasn’t as bad as I expected.
Most of the best stuff (that I know of) has been covered - I’ve really been getting into Pillars and the Tudors (which is also on Netflix watch instantly, btw) lately. Great stuff.
Some other thoughts, most of which are simply related to what you’re after:
Thirteenth Warrior
Master and Commander
Spartacus (TV series)
Doctor Who (no seriously, it’s a great way to see little bits of period pieces, with horror/fiction thrown in of course)
Last Samurai
The Seventh Seal (subtitles)
I really liked Knight’s Tale, regardless of the camp.
Blasphemy! I’d say the Welles is actually better than any of the ones on your GOOD list.
Also, I’m surprised nobody’s brought up Bergman’s The Seventh Seal or Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (both masterpieces), so I will now.
I own all of those (except the Knight’s Tale thing). Good list.
I would add:
Taming Of The Shrew w/Burton & Taylor.
Excaliber, fun film.
Flesh And Blood, w/Rutgaer Hauer, a guilty pleasure 9but not for the kids).
Throw in Elizabeth and ye have a fine olde double-feature. Geoffrey Rush and Joseph Fiennes are in both movies (if you happen to like them) and Cate Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow are luminous.
Seconded! I loved that series; both Richard E. Grant (as the Pimpernel) and Martin Shaw (as Chauvelin) were great.
From a comedy standpoint, I’d recommend the first two series of Black Adder…the first is set in the Middle Ages, the second in the Elizabethan era.
“The Black Shield of Falworth,” starring Tony “Yonda lies da castle of my foddah” Curtis. Yeah, I know, he doesn’t actually say those words, but he might as well.
Does Caligula count as a period piece?
Sure, except the OP was asking about Medieval/Renaissance and that was Roman.
Actually, it started off as a “serious” piece (as attested to by John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole); the sex scenes were added later.
I just watched the real Lion In Winter last night, due to this thread mostly.
Incredible.
This isn’t really a recommendation unless you like graphic, vicious, bloody historical pieces on the ugly side of human nature, but it’s kind of a funny story.
If we’re edging over into the Renaissance period, Rutger Hauer’s Flesh and Blood was an overdone take on a particularly brutal period of religious warfare in 1501. The violence of the movie is extreme and I found it off-putting; the ugliness of the characters and their motivations is also memorable. But the violence is contrasted against (equally brutal and dehumanizing) sex scenes, probably as a deliberate directorial technique.
Unfortunately the unintentionally hilarious title of the movie is Flesh and Blood. So as the pattern became clear, the rapid shifts between leering rape and graphic murder soon led to those of us watching chanting “Flesh!” and “Blood!” at each shift of scene.
Well the OP did include Rome:The Miniseries in his list, and I’m almost positive that that was Roman as well.
“Mother! He has a knife!”
“Of course he has a knife. Richard always has a knife. We all have knives. It’s 1183, and we’re barbarians!”
(Or something to that effect. )
AAARGH! I haven’t dared watch it ever since it was described to me as “300, but without the plot”.
Paul Verhoeven also directed a very nice little series for Dutch TV called Floris, starring Rutger Hauer. Unfortunately, it is in Dutch. There has been a dub at some point but that was never heard from again and no subtitles are available…