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    ‘Medieval’ Review: Flaying Alive

    Living up to its title, this ultraviolent ode to a Czech national hero bludgeons you into submission.A cohort of notable actors — including Michael Caine, Ben Foster and Matthew Goode — tromp through “Medieval,” Petr Jakl’s lumbering epic about the storied Czech warrior Jan Zizka. The movie’s real stars, though, are its gaping wounds and mangled limbs, the singing of scythe and ax more eloquent than any dialogue.On land and underwater, the verisimilitude of the violence is numbing. Horses are elbowed over cliffs; a man’s brain is leisurely puréed by means of a saw through the ears. By the end, scarcely an orifice remains inviolate, the camera’s blood lust seemingly insatiable. Yet beneath the clanging of chain mail and the gurgles of the dying, a story peeks out: The throne of the Holy Roman Empire is up for grabs and coveted by two feuding brothers. To prevent the corrupt sibling (Goode, lazily scheming) and his wealthy wing man from prevailing, a powerful lord (Caine) arranges to have the wing man’s fiancée, Lady Katherine (a wan Sophie Lowe), kidnapped. As operatic choirs muster on the soundtrack, a morose mercenary named Zizka (Foster), gets the assignment; a small empire’s worth of knights and peasants gets kaput.Glum and bludgeoning, “Medieval” serves up a melancholic hero — see how it pains Zizka to take all these lives! — and a limp love interest-cum-bargaining chip. Hauled from one battle to the next, Katherine can do little but gaze, mouth agape, at the carnage, rallying now and then to declaim on the era’s social inequities and to pack maggots into Zizka’s newly vacated eye socket.“Are you all right?” Zizka tenderly inquires at one point, though, if you ask me, the movie’s addition of that hungry lion was maybe a barbarism too far.MedievalRated R. Fans of slicing, smashing, gouging and impaling will be in heaven. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Silent Night’ Review: Waiting for the End of the World

    In this feature from Camille Griffin, a group of friends facing global disaster have one last Christmas dinner.Production of “Silent Night,” a survival horror film directed by Camille Griffin, started before the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s hard not to watch and interpret it within that context.The film follows a group of friends who spend Christmas at an idyllic countryside cottage in rural England with Nell (Keira Knightley), Simon (Matthew Goode) and their three children. Behind the Christmas cheer, it’s clear that the world outside the cottage is in peril, and the friends have made a pact to make a drastic escape.The danger is never fully explained, but there appears to be a noxious cloud of toxins engulfing the Earth that painfully kills those exposed to it. Throughout, the children often serve as proxies for adults, engaging in political conversations while their parents reminisce or talk about who slept with whom in high school. Art (Roman Griffin Davis), one of Nell’s children, watches videos online that seem to contradict his parents’ messaging, and he starts to question their choices.The timing of “Silent Night” makes it destined to be viewed as a Covid-19 film, but it’s actually about climate change and the government’s inaction in the crisis. It’s an eerie movie that emphasizes the ways in which children are vulnerable to adults’ decisions, and how the wealthy skirt responsibility and protect their own. Most of the adult characters seem to be living inside a conspiracy theory, blinded by their own fear and resigned to their impending doom. But the characters, despite their histrionic representation of the wealthy class, are not compelling enough to carry the movie, nor are the horrors of the outside world fleshed out enough to frighten. Ultimately, the movie seems to ask: In the face of a dying world, should we give up or stay and fight?Silent NightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and on AMC+. More