Black Death (2011)

A masterpiece. Dark, gritty af, great characters, great action, freaky, gripping, every scene is well done. Ignore the simple minds who have given low ratings, what insults their opinions are.

Medieval movie around the plague, which means mud beneath our feet, oppressive atmosphere of gloom, rampant superstition in the name of an austere god who may be punishing mankind.But we don't have a cinematician who will thread deeply around images, merely a director who films plot scenes and strings them into a story, here about mercenaries venturing into the forest in search of a necromancer. It's all sloppily filmed without abstraction that will permeate beneath the words and gestures to uncover fundamentals.It has some mystery I guess, a few reversals about the nature of evil as belief in a story, but it's without anything to recommend it. Stagy and announcing every bit of conflict through actors. Looking back it will be swallowed up in a murk of samey b-movies about medieval darkness.

(56%) A worthy for most cinema fans smallish produced period drama/horror that's perfectly well made, nicely shot, with a cast of quite big name stars. The plot is pretty basic stuff focused mainly around Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne playing a young monk in training, escorted by the perfectly cast Sean Bean to uncover the a mysterious village lead by the great Tim McInnerny. The plot heats up very nicely once the Christian and Pagan worlds collide, as this switches gear from action adventure into horror. Above all else this is an interesting sit that offers more than just plain and simple 14th century set blood and gore.

Really really wanted to like this movie, and assumed I would. It has all the elements to make it an awesome movie to my taste - Sean Bean in medieval garb, looking and being a bad-ass (though he at no point says the word 'Bastard - a real let-down!); a little bit of the mysteries and God vs. Pagan religion argument as seen from the Middle Ages' experience; and a nice healthy dollop of blood, gore and excruciatingly painful death.However, the story itself plunged so quickly in at the deep end, and the characters we were swiftly introduced to were given so little time for real depth, that I found it very hard to find my empathy for them. Eddie Redmayne's character came across as whiny, where I'm sure I should be feeling greatly sorry for him. Sean Bean's Ulric was a little too ruthless, and the other soldiers in their troupe weren't that knowable, so by the time we get to the village, I really don't feel I have a side. In fact, to see Lord Percy - sorry - Tim McInnerny turn up, I almost felt like I should be on his.Overall, it was a nice watch. I liked the story, but it all took place so fast, I wanted more time to get to know the knights under Ulric, and the person I felt most sorry for was Averill.I wasn't sure I quite liked the ruthlessness of the pagans either - sure, it's a Kill or Be Killed situation overall, but still, the amount of times I've seen bloodthirsty, bedevilled, brainwashed pagans (speaking as a modern pagan myself) is beginning to wear more than a little thin.I'm also pretty sure that Carice Van Houten got cast as Melisandre on these merits.The story arc is good, just too short. The script has a nice, authentic flavour to it, with some nice little twists, and the acting is consistent and engaging throughout - but without a real feeling for who to root for and exactly why, I'm not this film's biggest fan, I regret to say.