Or The Court Jester.
I caught that on TV when I was in my teens and it’s one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. I remember it being very good.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks was the very first movie I ever saw in a movie theater.
Finally went to see Nolan’s Odyssey today. Lots to unpack here. Well, it’s a three hour movie
I know of at least two other movie versions of the story. My favorite has been the Hallmark miniseries one from 1997 starring Arman Assante and a pretty impressive cast. It was overall faithful to the original, as Hallmark movies tend to be. I’ll be comparing it to Nolan’s partly because there really isn’t much else to compare it to, and because it had handled many of the issues.
First of all, Nolan’s film uses CGI sparingly, preferring to avoid it altogether if it can, and using practical effect. Second, the film almost completely eliminates the gods, as the earlier Troy did. About the only explicit intrusion we get is Zendhaya occasionally showing up as Athena.
The music is striking, with only gongs, lyres, and a lute – even starker than Bernard Hermann’s score for Jason and the Argonauts, which also had brass horns.
The Trojan Horse is pretty impressive – half-buried in the sand, not on wheels, portrayed rampant.
There’s something odd right from the start – people talk about “THe Prople from the Sea” constantly. These were threats to other Mediterranean civilizations, but they don’t feature in the Iliad or the Odyssey. Nolan sets up a background where Greek Bronze age civilization is under threat from this bunch of pirates, and idea 've cseen nowjhere else.
There’s also stress on the idea of Xenia, the required hospitality towards guests imposed by Zeus. The idea pops up constantly in the Odyssey, as when Odysseus lands on Phaeacia, and the way the Cyclops doesn’t honor it. But it is harped on in this film to a much greater degree than I’ve seen in any other film on Greek myth, and especially in adaptations of the Odyssey in film or graphic novel. It’s implied that the breakdown in Xenia contributes to the threat of the People From The Sea.
After the teaser flashback to Troy, the story starts in Ithaca with the situation at Penelope’s hall and the problems of Telemachus, just as the poem starts there. Good idea – it’s too tempting to leap right in to Odysseus’ voyaging.
Odysseus and his ships set out from Troy. WE skip over the visit to the Land of the Lotus Eaters (the lotus will be used elsewhere). It also skips over Odysseus and his men raiding the city of Ismarus, slaughtering the men and enslaving the women and taking provisions. I think they skipped it in part because it would show Odysseus violating that Hospitality, and because they wanted to establish that they were low on provisions.
They visit the land of the Laestrygonians, an incident generally overlooked in pop version of the Odyseey. They’re giants, and, as in the poem, they destroy all but one of Odysseus’ ships. My compkaint – they’re giants, but did you also have to cover them completely in armor? Being giant ought to be enough of an advantage. Odysseus only gets to kill one with an arrow through his eye-slit.
They get to the land of the Cyclops. The story is pretty close to the original, except that the Cyclops doesn’t speak to them (he does speak, later, but never addresses the Greeks). He’s odd-looking, with a vertical eye and twisted nose, so his face looks like it’s twisted. Nolan reportedly based him on Goya’s painting of SAturn devouring his son, but I think the Cyclops looks more like the one in Odilon Redon’s painting
The effect is done with minimal CGI, and much makeup on an actor. It’s pretty effective. But it denies us a chance to see Odysseus’ ingenuity and inspired lying – what he was supposed to be known for. Assante displayed it in spades in the 1997 miniseries, here and in other places, but Matt Damon doesn’t do much lying at all. And when he does, he feels bad about it.
Most of them escape and put in up the coast at Circe’s lair. Circe lives all by herself in this version, in a ruined temple converted to a home. There are exotic big cats – lion, tiger, panther – which, as in the poem, appear tame. Circe offers the men food, which they eat greedily like pigs. Circe (who is usually portrayed as a great beauty, but not here – a welcome change) manipulates the men into pigs, a neat bit of practical effect and intercutting. Odysseus, who has been out hunting game, which turns into a man after it dies, catches on and visits Circe himself. With no Hermes to give him magic Moly, Odysseus is on his own. He and Circe verbally fence. Odysseus convinces her that he and his men are only in need of food and would do nothing to her. He basically offers his neck to her, and invokes that law of Hospitality again. Circe restores Odysseus’ men. She tells them to go to the underworld and interview Teiresias about how to get home.
They do. Iceland was reportedly used as a stand-in for Hades. Odysseus speaks to Sinon, rather than the crewman who rolled off Circe’s roof and to Agamemnon and Tiresias, but not to Achilles or his own mother. THey flee. Following Tiresias’ advice they pass the Sirems (as in the classic, Odusseus is the only one to hear their song, tied to the mast. Everybody else has their ears stopped up with wax. Well, almost everyone. One crewman takes out the wax, hears the Sirems, and dives into the water.
They steer between the whirlpool of Charybdis and the monster Scylla (a in the Hallmerk version, Scylla is a rock cliff-dwelling whatzit whose six arms or mouths strike with lightning speed to catch one man each. The ship finally gets to the Island of the Sun, where they’re becalmed for a long time, and the men eventually kill and eat one of the cattle of the sun. When they get out to sea, the ship is wrecked and Odysseus washes alone up on Ogygia, where he is rescued by Calypso.
Ogygia is a pretty bleak low island, appartently inhabited only by Calypso, who has no bevy of maidens with her. She catches fish by hand – the demigoddesses in this film all work for a living, catching, raising, and cooking their own food. She nurses Odysseus back to health, giving him extract of lotus to lessen his worryuing about his men and Penelope, just as Helen uses an unnamed drug (almost certainly opium) to lighten the heart of Telemachus in the poem. Under its influence he heals, but he gorgets everything.
There is no episode in the land of Phaeacia with Nausicaa and Alcinous. Instead, Odysseus recounts his adventures to Calypso – well, to himself and Calypso, since he is remembering it all. He builds a raft and washes up directly on Ithaca. He meets Eumaeus, the loyal swinegerd, who is virtually blind in this film, and learns about Telemachus and the plot the suitors laid to kill him. There follows a pretty pointless section not in the poem where Odysseus rescues Telemachus fom them. They sail back home and plot bto kill the suitors.
In this version, Odysseus strings the bow and shoots the arrow through the axe-heads, then begins to kill the suitors. Unlike in the poem, he does this single-handedly, not with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and the goatherd at his side. I think they wanted to establish that Odysseus alone was responsible for the killinbg. Not all the suitors get killed – after Antinous is killed, the rest pretty much give up.
There is no marriage-bed test. No intervention by Zeus is needed to stop the vendetta against Odysseus – he voluntarily goes into exile.
There is a long speech between Odysseus and Penelope that goes with a flashback to the destruction of Troy. Odysseus feels immense guilt, because his clever scheme about the horse violates Xenia in a major way. It is apparently because of this, as much as the mass killing in the hall, that makes him accept exile at the end.
An interesting and moving film, with great cinematography. But it departs from the poem and even from a lot of Greek ideas – no wonder Emily Wilson wasn’t happy with it. But it does do more to empower the women. Penelope comes off as a very strong character, with some excellent lines. Odysseus doesn’t threatenm Circe with death and then have sex with her – he reasons with her and submits himself. Calupso isn’;t a self-centered greedy bubblehead who wants to keep Odysseus as her persona;l toy, but a responsible healer who cares for Odysseus for years to get him well. Helen is believable, too. (Incidentally, she’s shown with half her face scarred. The IMDB notes suggest that her husband Menelaus did this to discourage anyone from stealing her again, although nothing in the script supports this. I thought she had acquired the scars escaping Troy.)
Constantine 2005 Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton
Definitely one of the stranger action/religious movies that I’ve watched.
There are many good moments as John Constantine battles to save lost souls.
The opening as he fights to save the possessed Hispanic woman is very good.
The movie’s ending indicates a 2nd chapter for John Constantine is about to begin. It’s frustrating that a lot of unanswered questions were never resolved.
This movie isn’t for everyone. I nearly turned it off a couple times. Nearly drowning a woman in a bathtub to unlock psychic powers seems a tad silly.
8 out of 10
Ah, Constantine, how they ruined that comic. In fact they seem to do a bloody awful job in anywhere he’s portrayed.
Let’s explain. John Constantine is a character which spans multiple comic books. He features in Swamp Thing, Books of Magic (the original Harry Potter), Sandman, Doom Patrol, Lucifer and a bunch of others. His main comic, Hellblazer (which is what that film SHOULD have been called, but they thought people might confuse it with Hellraiser), ran for 300 issues, as well as reboots and mini series. Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Jamie Delano and a multitude of others have written him.
And he is a character. That is his defining trait. Looks like Sting, Liverpool accent (think the beatles), total bastard, trickster. Supposedly a sorceror but his main skill is guile, and tricking demons and angels is his thing. Ie: a pretty interesting character.
Drowning a woman in a bathtub to release psychic powers is more like the real character, didn’t give a crap about anyone.
Cue the blank slate of actors, Keanu Reeves, playing him. With absolutely zero of his attributes. But ironically his name in the film. While it hits the beats of some of his storylines, without the horrible shittiness of him, it is half the film it should be.
And Supernatural pretty much stole his universe, especially the heaven and hell politics, so it lost a lot of its power. Preacher did the same sort of stuff too, but it was Garth Ennis, who wrote some of the classic Hellblazer comics, who wrote that.
Apparently a version of him appeared in the Arrowverse too. Never watched that. The Sandman one was a weird one too. Stories from that had the idea that Constantine was a reoccuring character in history and the one around 1600s was female. Then made the modern one female, and made out that was probably the one from the 1600s who lived forever. Maybe, I fell asleep a lot during that series.
So taken on its own, its probably ok. But man, they could have made a fucking great movie there.
The Long Walk is the sort of dystopian game show that would fill that Must See TV Thursday slot between The Hunger Games and The Running Man.
FWIW I enjoyed the film. I suppose there’s some metaphor for the meaning of life and inevitability of death in there somewhere.
Some recent films I’ve watched:
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die - Sort of like 12 Monkeys meets The Matrix meets Groundhogs Day meets the diner scene from Pulp Fiction. Sam Rockwell plays a crazed man ostensibly from the future trying to recruit a bunch of random people in a diner to help save the world from a rogue AI.
Normal - Elderly action hero Bob Odenkirk stars as the temporary sheriff of a small town with a dark secret that turns into a 90 minute Tarantino-esq running gun battle gore-fest.
Masters of the Universe - A surprisingly fun and self-aware take on the 80s He-Man toy line / cartoons.
Let me clarify a bit: it’s not that I wouldn’t think people would watch the show. I don’t think you could get anyone to be in the show. “Well, you’re going to walk, until you drop dead. If you decide to stop, we shoot you. Everyone that starts the Walk save for one, will die. Deal?” Even in the Hunger Games people were forced to fight to the death. People voluntarily chose to be in the Long Walk.
Plus, you know, they walk. Not compelling drama. 
If the story is a metaphor for life, he could have done better.Hence my Ambien comment.
I had a similar impression. The Constantine story has great potential. This movie missed the mark.
I mean, it’s entirely possible they were in part said pirates. The Ekwesh who were part of the ‘Sea Peoples’ loose confederacy were probably synonymous with the Ahwiyya who were probably synonymous with the Achaeans who were the Bronze Age Greeks of Homer. Nobody knows exactly why it happened but the Mycenaean Greek “collapse” may have caused some displaced Mycenaean Greeks to join the ‘Sea Peoples’. But I don’t think that is at all settled historiography - it’s all very muddled.
Yeah, sorta. But I’ll still stand up for the film. It’s not quite the comic, I’ll grant (and I’ve read most of Hellblazer). But I think it works as a movie all the same. You just have to detach yourself from your fandom 
.
Katniss volunteered for the Hunger Games, as did “careers” from the wealthier districts who trained since birth. People choose to sign up for The Running Man and the Squid Game too.
Of course the main reason they “chose” to play those games was because their lives were so desperately horrible that they were willing to face death for the slim chance of reaping a huge windfall.
There will always be some subset of people who are like “you know what, I’m a pretty big dude with a chip on my shoulder” or “I haven’t really found a civilian use for my tier 1 special forces training” or “I’m really fucking awesome at archery…I think the odds might actually be in my favor. Or I can go back to eating rats and avoiding being gang-raped by mutant bikers.”
I would disagree with you about the compelling drama of The Long Walk. It’s more psychological. Most death games distract you with the spectacle of the game itself. The Long Walk focuses more on why the contestants are there and how they choose to spend their remaining hours before the inevitable conclusion. The game itself is obviously very simple.
Then again, such a Death Race might be more compelling television if the contestants were to…I don’t know…drive souped up muscle cars cross country?
NOW YOU’RE TALKING!
And everyone has a ‘personality’. If you set it in the far future, like the year 2000, people will believe it.*
OK, I see your point about The Long Walk. I will say the base description is still flat for me, which is all I was commenting on originally.
*as for Long Walk comparisons, in the original DR2K movie the goal wasn’t to kill the other drivers, just win. It was the revolutionaries killing the drivers.
But it would have reinforced the “reveal” at the end: “We are the sea people”
People, especially young people so sure of their immortality, voluntarily choose to be in the military, too, and I think this book (and the movie) is very much intended as an allegory for the mix of financial desperation and hubris that leads young people into war.
Remember, it was published in 1979.
Cool video about Constantine here. I really like this guy’s film analysis.
https://youtu.be/oQzBHIhsszE?is=PfTINL7ft8XUhomV
I thought it was hella cool when I saw it, and I perversely enjoyed the bathtub scene, in fact that’s the only thing I remember from the film.
I’m with you. I’m a fan of the comics and I thought the film managed much better to capture the vibe of the character than I had any expectation of a Hollywood version starring Keanu Reeves to, even if it was comparatively watered down.
I think the idea is that the volunteers’ families got something out of it. The whole point of the show is to glorify sacrifice.
Yeah, I was a bit disappointed by the remake. All they had to do was do the same movie again but with Jason Staham.
Calibre (Netflx) - A 2018 Scottish production about two lifelong friends who go on a hunting trip in the Highlands. One bad decision leads to another and the two find themselves at odds with the locals of a small, close-knit community.
The story isn’t particularly original, and in fact isn’t the type of thing I generally go for. I only put it on after a recommendation from Claude AI when I asked for “psychological horror”, and boy does it deliver. There is nothing supernatural about it; just constant tension from start to finish, with a couple of scenes I was very tempted to look away from. It kind of made me think of if the Cohen brothers remade Deliverance in Scotland. Highly recommend.
Coyote vs Acme
It’s no Roger Rabbit but, at least, it’s not just a marketing cash grab like Space Jam. It’s mostly a showcase for revisiting some of the absurdist gags (and Acme products) conjured by Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. I could have waited until it hit streaming but an air conditioned theater and some popcorn were particularly appealing last night.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (on DVD in a friend’s backyard)
I have not seen this in a while and I thought it was still funny. Michael Caine and Steve Martin are competing conmen in the French Riviera. They bet on who they will con out of $50,000 with the loser leaving town, settling on Glenne Headly as the mark. Martin poses as paraplegic Navy officer (in an Army dress blues uniform with corporal stripes) looking for the money for psychiatric treatment, in turn Caine poses as the psychiatrist, and they try to con Headly up until… do I spoil a movie from 1988?
Directed by Frank Oz, who does a fun job with some non-Muppet hijinks, Miles Goodman’s music is memorable and serves the movie, and the three leads (as well as Anton Rodgers, Barbara Harris, and Ian McDiarmid) all have funny, neatly defined characters. I had a lot of fun watching it again.
At the end, my wife commented that there was quite a bit of sexism in the story, I agree but I also think that Caine and Martin get their comeuppance at the end (spoiler!).