Tag Archives: Robin Hood

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of February 18

This week’s home viewing options run the gamut from Oscar hopefuls to Razzie shoe-ins, plus some bare knuckle brawlers and Nazi zombies. That’s what we call variety!

Click the film title for the full review:

A Star is Born

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Overlord

Green Book

Donnybrook

Robin Hood

Bingeable: Robin Hood

Robin Hood (the 2006 BBC One Series)

Seasons: 3

Status: Ended

Watch it on: Hulu

Well first of all Richard Armitage is in this Robin Hood rendition as the baddie, which should be reason enough to suffer through three seasons. But despite having headlined the Hobbit Travesty Trilogy as Thorin Oakenshield, and recently played the douchebag arm candy of Ocean’s 8, he has not gained the recognition he deserves. So I’m here to tell you that I saw Richard Armitage play John Proctor in an incredible production of The Crucible at The Old Vic in London, summer 2014, and he was fucking incredible. So catch up.

But this isn’t about Richard Armitage (yes it is). This is about the wonderfully horrible Robin Hood of BBC One. The first episode features Robin Hood making out with a buxom babe (with incredibly modern blue eyeshadow up to her eyebrows) and then backflipping off of a barn for…some reason.

If you get through the first season, you have absolutely no excuse not to get through the next two. You won’t want to miss when the gang makes it to the Holy Land or when they lose the one female main character, so they replace her with a new, singular female character.

Featuring: Coked Out Thorin Oakenshield and The Pit of Snakes from Raiders of the Lost Ark

Watch it because: Every time Robin makes a good shot, they show the arrow shooting from five different angles JUST LIKE when two characters accidentally kiss in an anime.

Screening Room: Good Gravy, One Turkey

We talk through the first official week of the holiday movie onslaught: Creed 2, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Green Book, The Front Runner, Robin Hood and The Dark. We also give a look at what’s new in home entertainment.

Listen to the full podcast HERE.

Merry, Indeed

Robin Hood

by Hope Madden

Hey, do you guys remember Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur? I mean, of course you don’t. It made like $9.

Had it been anything other than a global box office disaster, a likeminded retooling of the British legend of Robin Hood might have made sense. And yet, here we have it: a poor man’s Guy Ritchie (Otto Bathurst) trying to anachronism his way through the old bandit’s tale.

Taron Egerton stars as the Hood, billed by imdb as “a war-hardened Crusader” but coming off more as a precocious 12-year-old. He’s joined by battlefield adversary and post-war comrade John (Jamie Foxx), who insists on calling him English regardless of the fact that they are in England and, you know, every single person is English. (Let’s not even talk about his accent.)

Eve Hewson and Tim Minchin round out the merry band as the politically liberal/inappropriately dressed Marian and the only actor who doesn’t embarrass himself, respectively.

Ben Mendelsohn shoulders the evil Sheriff of Nottingham duties this go-round. If you only know Mendelsohn from Ready Player One, Rogue One or Dark Knight Rises, please believe me when I say that he needs to stop playing scenery-chewing baddies. He is one of the most versatile and talented character actors in film today. Please go watch literally anything else he’s ever made. (Give yourself the gift of the Aussie film Animal Kingdom.)

Writers Ben Chandler and David James Kelly blandly reimagine Robin of Loxley’s origin story, casting aside any historical authenticity in favor of hip fun. Tragically, the result is never hip and rarely fun.

The film details some ludicrously debauched ties with the church and a global plot to bilk a few hundred peasants of more money than the whole of England would possess. Where do all those golden bowls and goblets come from? How many peasants are dining so flamboyantly?

They also reach to give the sheriff some Trumpian moments, though that backfires as well. As fine an actor as Mendelsohn is, it is tough for him to come off as a dumb ass.

The score feels cribbed, the action is video-game superficial and the costuming came directly from Forever 21.

Why did they make this movie again?