favorite medieval film?

[gollum]

Favorite yes, but serious?

I reckognise that Braveheart had tremendous impact and even that it has charm for the historical epic fan, but truth be told it did so for all the wrong reasons.

The story, characters and cinematography are so pretentious and calculated for the intended effect, that its hard watching the movie without feeling appaled occasionally. The good bad duality is so very strong and punctuated, as other dualities as well: the male/female (that in film terms denotes the braveness of braveheart and the chickenness of Longshack's effeminate son), the "fairness" of battle valor (as if such a thing ever existed) that contrasts between Longshacks that is willing to sacrifice his own men (by pouring arrows in the melee), while Braveheart (implicitly) frowns upon such "unfair" tactics. Also the ahistoricaleness of the movie, especially the battle depictions is legendary - basically this is little more than historically inspired fiction.

By the way, it was Braveheart (among other things) that inspired (as a blueprnint and model) CA to do RTW and M2TW what they were - ie excercises in visual entertainment which is what Braveheart itself is.

As for the Kingdom of Heaven, although not without its virtues, it is imo a little more than a car commercial with a medieval theme. The fact that Orlando bloom can't act in a lead role by any means and so is terribly miscasted doesn't help matters either. Gladiator, which is the same thing as KoH, was much better simply because it was correctly casted.

All in all, you have many more to be afraid of than just ladyfrog.