Seventh Son (2015)

... out of frustration at the missed opportunity. The biggest complaint has to be laid at the feet of Jeff Bridges, with his ridiculous pseudo English twit accent. I don't know where that came from, but perhaps he thought anybody called Master Geoffrey must have been an English twit, but even then he only manages a caricature. And this has become an annoying habit of a once good actor with a reputable legacy, as shown in RIPD and True Grit - you can't play The Big Labowski in every role! He isn't helped by his character's bipolar disorder either. The film opens weirdly, with apprentice Kit Harrison calling him to answer the ringing bell summons. But instead of saying "I'll just finish my drink and then we'll be off", he pointblank refuses, prompting a local bully to demand he do his duty. That leads to a fight, the sole purpose of which is to demonstrate our hero's ability to defend himself with no more than a tankard. The bully vanquished, he then pours his unspilled drink over him, then leaves the tavern, chastizing his apprentice for not warning him the bells were calling out. It could have been senility, or his repeatedly confirmed alcohol dependence, or depression at being the only survivor of a noble order of 1,000 knights, but we learn, as Bridges takes us on the rollercoaster ride of his character's emotions, that he was once in love with the evil villain, but married someone else and then betrayed her again after she murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy. This is clearly a couple to keep one's distance from, were it not for the fact that she plans to conquer the world and rid it of humans. He has an equally fanatical devotion to ridding it of witches, so something's gotta give! Therein lies the interesting promise of the film (beyond the talented cast). At heart it should be an Arthurian quest to rid the world of evil, but that noble quest has been subverted into a 'racial' battle. But then a love story arises to rebalance everything, since Barnes and Vikander both have witch mothers who married humans out of love (tho' he doesn't know that at the beginning, despite the clues). Julianne Moore plays a convincing villain (which may well have won her the Kingsman 2 role she played so well). We're not quite sure whether her turning to the dark side was prompted by her betrayal by Bridges or he turned against her after she showed she was turning, but by the time we meet her she's fully committed and relishing it, to a degree that even her sister (Vikander's mother) finds disturbing. She brings lots of allies to her cause, which provides some very effective SFX, as they can all change between human and animal. Indeed one wonders how the humans can possible survive and mystified at the end as to how they actually won. It comes as a shock to see Moore, having murdered her beloved sister - because she stopped her murdering Vikander (who opted for her new love's cause) - meekly turn away and hide in a corner, despite the blood moon being at its height and supposed to make her supreme. It surely can't be the loss of the amulet, since she was pretty awesome even before she got it back. Maybe it was sadness that Bridges preferred to die than rule the dark side next to her. He confesses "I love you once", she appeals to his mercy, but none is forthcoming and so she threatens to haunt him - so the feud can go on and we can get sequels. The lovers also decide to go their separate ways but will surely meet again, another hint at a sequel. Indeed the abundance of sequel hints also becomes annoying. Arny only needed to say "I'll be back", but this one has no right to feel that confident - especially if Bridges insists on hanging onto that stupid accent!

Unlike some of the other reviewers and critics here, I LIKED THIS MOVIE!It was a good fantasy action film and had a decent story line. By the way, ALL heroic and fantasy stories have been told again and again throughout history. Read Joseph Campbell's and others' works on the mythology of mankind and human archetypes that appear again and again throughout all cultures from the Mahabharata, to the Norse legends like Beowulf, to the Lord of the Rings, to Star Wars, to Asian sword movies to many classic American Westerns. The same themes play out, so it always seems rather shallow of reviewers to pan a production for using a classic plot line. This movie had good character interplay (partly thanks to an excellent cast!), it had good action, and in general IT WAS A GOOD AND VERY ENJOYABLE MOVIE. Could it have been better? Probably, but that was not the actors' faults, and I found the parts of the main characters, Gregory, Tom, Alice, Mam Ward, and Mother Malkin, all well delivered and with more depth than they were given credit for. Could there have been more character development? Certainly, if you wanted a 3 or 4 hour movie. Movies by their very nature have to pack a lot into a limited amount of time.There were a number of twists in the story I liked, and some details it took multiple viewings to notice, e.g. Alice wandering at the edge of the crowd when Gregory and Tom first arrive at the walled city, and the guy with shaved head and heavy earrings outside the tavern as Gregory enters shortly after their arrival, then he cropped up later to confirm seeing the Spook (Gregory) enter the tavern when Tom announced he was Master Gregory's apprentice as he rescued Alice from the mob. Some scenes just flit by quickly and without enough emphasis to make an impression, then they are subtly referenced later. Watching the "making of" features, I realized a great deal of thought went into this by the creative and production staff. I was truly sorry it was not received better or more of a financial success.Special effects and cinematography were very good, as was costuming and attention to technical details in clothing, weapons, and even buildings. My only gripe in these details might be that a number of time periods and cultural intersections seem to have been conflated to create crowds and city populations, even technologies, that I seriously doubt ever coexisted. However, as this was a fantasy, these peripheral characters added some interesting complexity to the crowd scenes.Reading some of the backstory on Wikipedia, I agree with others here that I am amazed (and delighted) this movie made it to the screen in as good a form as it did. With changes in cast, support, and having to work through the special effects house bankruptcy, I would say they did a heroic job turning out a very good movie. I was not even aware of the cinematic release, and I stumbled across a poor copy on YouTube. This prompted me to go buy the DVD, and I am glad I did. Not only was it much better quality and not cropped at the edges like the YT version, but it had some nice bonus features I also enjoyed watching, e.g. the "making of" in several facets was best, giving some insight into the creative process, the Legend and Lore of the Seventh Son (not great but passable), and a few entries in the Visual Effects Gallery. If there is a BluRay with even more features, I might pick it up, too. I know I would have paid twice the modest price the DVD cost, which was less than half the price of a movie theater ticket these days.Whenever I read critics picking apart this or other good or just plain enjoyable movies, I am reminded of a definition of "critic" I once read: "A critic is a person who, having no talent of their own, feels eminently qualified to pass judgment on the talent of others." Take that as you may.

As a fan of the books, I was disappointed to see that the director had clearly never read them himself or, indeed, ever been to England, where the story was supposed to have been set. (I say this as the film bears very little resemblance to the book and the scenery is nothing like the English landscape either). This is a perfect example of what happens when the author has no clout in Hollywood and allows a director to simply do whatever they like. Obviously Sergei Budrov thought he understood the book better than the author, so happily stuck two fingers up at the fans and made it up as he went.

This film has had allot of negative reviews but I gave it a shot and yes its pretty bad. The premise of the film sees a witch hunter get a new apprentice in order to stop an army of withes. Jeff bridges character was quite fun in this film but he had a lack of depth to his character and at Times it was a bit hard to understand him. Julianne moore was also pretty good in this film as the villain witch even though her character also lacked depth. Ben barnes plays the apprentice in this film and he is just so dull and we are never given a reason to even start liking this character. Also even though Alicia vikander is a good actress there is just no chemistry between the two and it really hurts the film. The story is really basic and lacks any depth to it or its characters. The script is poor as well with no drama or humour added to make the film fun. The style has some pretty fun action scenes but also has an over reliance on cgi that come across poorly. Overall this is a poor film that doesn't hit the levels it should.