King Arthur

In their prologue, writer David Franzoni and director Antoine Fuqua pay lip service to the fifth-century “archaeological” record of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, but their revisionist take is a bit of a mishmash: an Arthur (Clive Owen) who rattles on about free men and liberty like a 17th-century humanist; Roman officials with thick Italian accents who dress and behave like priests of the Spanish Inquisition; a Guinevere (Keira Knightley) stripped down to leather thongs and green war paint, as if she were posing for the swimsuit issue of Celtic Warrior Princess; and “knights” who carry on like drunken yobbos at a Manchester rugby match. Ah well, the Arthurian Legend has survived Jerry Zucker (First Knight) and Martin Lawrence (Black Knight); it’ll probably survive this, too.