Rating: 
Summary: A Sad Awareness
Review: Watching this movie is a reminder of how we set up our old age in our youth. Henry ll of England his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine schemed and manipulated in their youth and middle years to have/maintain power and control of the kingdom and each other. However, the price is enormous. The play is based on historical characters, but the struggle is timeless. A mother and father, so consumed with power and material desires forget the love they had, the children they have and the life they could have had. Two people who could now recapture their love and build up and support one another to be more than what they are, waste these few days together in bitter reproaches for the past. They can not get past their bitter pasts and their fear of aging and death to see the love that they still bear each other. They are both intelligent and attractive people with so much energy that they could have created a wonderful place of so much wonder and amazement. Instead they spend the three hours tearing each other down and apart and then work on destroying their own children and his concubine, a child she helped raise.I found this to be an amazingly involved piece of work that shows us what we can be at our worst. It offers us a chance to learn how we can be better than we are. It holds up a mirror to to many people's realities and reminds each one of us that we must make our decisions for today as if it is our last day. It reminds us to be true to our hearts. It may happen at Christmas, but certainly is an interesting Valentine's Day reminder of what love should be. At the end you do realize that these two fools, intellingent and amazing, do love each other. However, their inability to be vulnerable and caring with each other leaves them both isolated and lonely at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Jibber-jabber.
Review: *The Lion In Winter*, based on James Goldman's play, hasn't aged very well . . . of course, I'm being nice by assuming it was all that fresh to begin with back in the Sixties. It has all the earmarks of "serious" Sixties Broadway drama: black humor a la Albee; Freudian undercurrents; the broaching of homosexuality; yelling; talking; poorly written monologues (Hepburn's "mirror" soliloquy is ghastly, not to mention self-exploitative); the knocking-kneed exploration of the new Sexual Freedom; shouting; expounding; and . . . talking. Talk talk talk. There is so much talk that the plot gets buried under it -- you have to see this one a couple times before you fully grasp all the Byzantine schemes hatched by Henry, Eleanor, and their fractious sons. One gets the feeling that *The Lion In Winter* should be staged as a comedy, but here it's played deadly serious. I already mentioned Hepburn's egregious "mirror" scene. No one else fares much better. Peter O'Toole has the best of it, but still can't quite escape the cheesy dialogue: "What shall we hang? the holly, or each other?", not to mention "The sky is pocked with stars." A pox on the script! Perhaps the best reason to see this movie is to check out Anthony Hopkins' screen debut -- he acquits himself quite well.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie that hopefully will overcome the obstacle of MGM
Review: This is a fantastic film, possessing a fascinating story and great performances by Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins and Peter O'Toole. Sadly, it is being released by MGM, who except for their Bond DVDs, generally does a terrible job on less popular releases. Their release this summer of F/X was a prime example. Let's hope there will be a good presentation behind the rather unattractive cover art they are using here. (Odd because the video of a few years ago had a great cover. Guess MGM can't afford to hire an artistic staff.)
Rating: 
Summary: The Wait is Over !!
Review: It the ultimate Christmas in 1186, when nobody gets what they want. Henry II, King of England, wants a successor; Eleanor of Aquitane, his wife, wants a permanent release from her imprisonment; Richard the Lionheart, his son, wants the crown; but so do the other sons, Prince Geoffrey and Prince John. The scheming, plotting and conniving never stops. Superb acting (Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole); gritty, muddy, dank settings; a brilliant John Barry score and dialog to (almost literally) die for. "When the Fall is all there is... it matters"
Rating:
Summary: Superb film about the Middle Ages
Review: Casting Miss Hepburn as Eleanor was an act of genius! It took a powerful actress to convey the strength and passion of the most remarkable woman of the Middle Ages. Peter O'Toole was wonderful as Henry II, a sort of medieval Renaisance man (if that isn't an oxymoron!). God knows these immensely gifted people were flawed, but they built and destroyed, hated and loved and lived with a fiery passion that would consume most of us. A superb film built on a superb script and beautifully made, it reminds us that history is the work not of impersonal forces, but of men and women playing out the full range of love and hate, good and evil.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lion in Winter
Review: Stay away from this sleeper. Boring plot, very wierd and incestial character situation. Our English IV teacher showed us this movie and we couldn't stay awake. Chris
Rating:
Summary: Eloquent Poniards
Review: This sharply portrayed and picturesque film is no less than a stunning masterpiece! Finely capturing the gusting momentum of a kingdom and its contending rule, all the while bootying the intricacies of family passion & strife, this movie grasps all by masterfully portraying it within the frame of a Christmas holiday spent at the beauteous castle of Chinon. The year is 1183, and Henry II, insatiate King of the British Empire summons forth his family: his wife - Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their surviving sons Richard, Geoffery, and John. They meet at Chinon - and like every gathering of this family must always have been, this meeting is momentous ~ James Goldman wholeheartedly deserved the Oscar he won for this screenplay -- for, not only is it in tune to every orchestral note of this history, but it is also precise as a dagger in its eloquence ~~ I've rarely heard a more masterful script portrayed on film! Such a prodigious screenplay must needs have a brilliant cast and musical score to give it flesh and blood -- and herein you'll find it most heartily delivered! Katharine Hepburn is absolutely stellar in her portrayal of perhaps one of the most fascinating women in history: the much-acknowledged "Queen of Love" throughout Europe before she became Queen of France, fighting in the Crusades alongside her husband Louis VII of France - and then Queen of England, wife of Henry II, who had imprisoned her for many years for joining her sons in plots against him. Henry would free her at times for such holiday family gatherings as this. Hepburn's scenes with Peter O'Toole, as Henry, are pure electrically-charged art! As King and Queen, parents to the three aspired heirs to the throne, they lay blame and conspire against each other, and their sons will stop at nothing to acquire what they each feel that they deserve: succession to the throne. To add to this tangled web of deceit are the young King Phillip of France and his sister, Alice, who had been raised in the household of King Henry, betrothed to Richard since her infancy. While Eleanor and her sons each plot with the French King, Henry openly exhibits his ongoing love affair with Alice~~ The chemistry of this well-casted drama is flawless - every line spoken a masterpiece of wit and daring. This movie is a rare find, indeed!
Rating:
Summary: 'Every family has its ups and downs . . .'
Review: . . . especially when that family belongs to the first Plantagenet king, the most powerful in Europe. Peter O'Toole's portrayal of Henry II is clearly his finest role. Beset by a conniving wife [don't be fooled by her quietly stitching away at Salisbury; she used every method of communication available hatching plots to destroy her husband!], three sons who spent as much time raising rebellions as residing at court, and the overweening power of the Papacy, he ruled the greatest empire in Europe. O'Toole shows incredible talent in expressing resistance to these astonishing pressures, secure only in faith that his abilities would overcome them all. His weakness, as with so many men of power, was in dealing with women. He married the finest catch in Europe, but succumbed to a succession of women, of whom only Alais provided a devoted innocence. 'Whatever shall we do with Mummy?' grants Eleanor the role of Henry's foil over his three sons. The femiNazies rightfully rejoice in Katherine Hepburn's office of the conspiratorial wife. Her Duchy of Aquitaine was one of Europe's richest and Hepburn is wonderful in using that inheritance in striving for dominance over the English king. The scope of her machinations is missing in the story, but Hepburn's strength in dialog with Henry and among her sons is classic. The criticisms of Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton on these pages is astonishing. While Richard's homosexuality has been in no way proven, the pair provide stunning performances of two men caught up in the complex plotting of Medieval kings. They ably demonstrate the depths to which such people stooped in gaining power. Philip, heir to a truncated France surrounded by the Plantagenet empire, strives to restore his nation. To debase himself so deeply to degrade Richard's position, and hence, Henry's, is superbly drawn. Dalton is to be congratulated. Hopkins shows here why he's become one of film's leading lights, having been lured away from the English stage for this role. Put this film between 'A Man for All Seasons' and 'Becket'. Then ask yourself why your neighbours turn out in such mobs to honour hereditary monarchs.
Rating:
Summary: Thumbs Up
Review: This is a wonderfully done film of diverse members of a royal family at cross-purposes. James Goldman wrote the script and won an Oscar for it. His brother is William Goldman, who won Oscars for writing BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN. That two such fantastic Oscar-winning writers should come from the same family is amazing! The performances are all around first-rate. Anthony Hopkins said years after making this film that, "Peter O'Toole is the greatest actor I've ever worked with." And Peter O'Toole is certainly great in this. It's a great film.
Rating:
Summary: Lion of a film -- a classic
Review: The finest actors of their era; the greatest screenplay ever written. If you love O'Toole, Hepburn and Hopkins you will want to keep this movie handy whenever another rerun of "Friends" just won't see you through the evening. This is a true classic.
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