FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Kirpianuscus It seems the perfect film. it has all to be perfect. the story, the director, the magnificent cast. and the need, time by time, to see it. again. because it is the perfect mix of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. because a couple like Hepburn O Toole is fabulous. because it is the convincing story about power, hate and love, appearences, parenthood and compromises. because it is a fresco. huge. large, profound. embroidery of illusions and shadows. a film who seems be more convincing than the historical facts. because all is familiar. and a walk on ice bridge. because it is one of films who, behind masks, gives the real image and verdicts about near reality. a masterpiece ? off course. but, more significant, a gem. who gives brilliant dialogues and the force of acting of unique actors.

sandnair87 The Lion in Winter, based on James Goldman's play about treachery in the family of King Henry II, is an intense, fierce, personal drama, directed with evident pleasure by Anthony Harvey.Cataloging the vicious wrangling for inheritance one Christmas holiday, the action is mostly contained within one day. The all-powerful Henry II (Peter O'Toole), summons his politically ambitious family to a reunion in 1183, when a decision on succession is deemed advisable. This includes his exiled, embittered and imprisoned wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn), and three legitimate male offspring, along with his mistress and her brother, youthful king Philip of France. King Henry II schemes against the mother of his children, Eleanor to try to get his favorite son, a sniveling slack-jaw John (Nigel Terry), appointed as his successor while Eleanor hopes to position her favorite, the soldier genius Richard (Anthony Hopkins), as the heir apparent. Meanwhile, middle child, the reserved and quiet Geoffrey (John Castle) hopes to play them all against one another and come out victorious as the future king. The members of this tempestuous family jockey for position and brutally squabble among each other, rekindling every injury suffered and adding new, Homeric insults to their already bruised reputations.In one day, the seven characters are stripped bare of all inner torments, outward pretensions and governing personality traits. Goldman blends in his absorbing screenplay elements of love, hate, frustration, fulfillment, ambition and greed. The relationships between people, though ambivalent, are ambivalent with a certain satisfying ferocity. Director Anthony Harvey's knowledge of the craft aids him in keeping the tension high and never letting the audience settle for long on an outcome in the constant feud, with twists, turns and plenty of incredible backstabbing.Even though Terry, Castle and especially Hopkins are all at the top of their craft, this film is all about the thorny and turbulent relationship between Henry and Eleanor, whom he's had imprisoned to keep her from meddling with his empire. A marvelously flamboyant Peter O'Toole plays the revolting king to the hilt and holds his own against Katherine Hepburn in a witty, literate, and inventive script. Hepburn is simply magnificent as the scheming and shrewd Eleanor of Aquitaine. There is something about an actress with this degree of presence and a wholly distinct, pleasant and idiosyncratic voice that gets her through even misplaced weepy or extravagant scenes. Her verbal duels with the equally impressive O'Toole are spellbinding. Both play their scenes with great passion, vigor and expertise. Right from the first scene, they both show a wonderful relish for even the most mundane sarcastic line.Despite feeling a bit stage-bound, The Lion in Winter is every bit as engrossing and watchable. It's a nuanced, gorgeous film that keeps you riveted right from the word go.

MisterWhiplash The Lion in Winter is about the games that people high up in power tend to play with each other when they can, but it's also about parents, their children and how a woman has to act in such a society. This movie is rich with a lot of ideas and concepts, and yet it mostly comes down to the acting - people not exactly of the small-time variety like Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn as the King of England and Eleanor of Aquataine (in other words, the Queen, or once was), and featuring supporting roles for the likes of Anthony Hopkins (his first film, really) and Timothy Dalton. Does a lot of this get stagy? Oh, very much so. It can be a drawback, or maybe just the "Showiness" in quotation marks. I use quotes since that's what other people say, and I do too. But is this necessarily a bad thing? No, but the feeling that this was a play and brought to the screen by its author is never left.This is all essentially a familial drama with political implications at a lot of turns: the King has to choose his heir, as he is fifty years old and seemingly won't live that much longer (perhaps for the time, the 12th century, it was quite old, albeit Eleanor is supposed to be 61). Who will he choose: super strong but emotionally wounded Richard, the middle-child with his own scheming Phillip, or the lovable but weak-willed and odd John? If he really could have his way he'd want to choose all of them - and, as one might see, the question could arise that none of them is an option - but a lot of these games are complicated by other factors, such as of course Eleanor, the mother of his children and a prisoner for her own scheming over the years; the King of France (Dalton) who is often referred to as "boy", and the king's sister cum mistress for Henry, and a to-be-betrothed to one of the sons (Jane Merrow, underrated among the cast, she's really good here).In other words, there's some wackiness that ensues, of the sometimes dark, melodramatic and brooding kind. But what I found most interesting were what was behind so much of the drama, what these characters carry with them and continue to do so, some of them as they are facing death sooner someday than others. With Eleanor of Aquataine, this is a character who has had power taken away from her, she really doesn't have anything, and yet she can - or really has to - cut Henry down every chance she can to keep up to his level. She really is a vulnerable character deep down, when she can show it, though when that is exactly is anyone's guess. Like many plays (or the ones that I've seen and heard over the years), the games that people play on each other - think Virginia Woolf, for instance - is what is supposed to make it riveting for the audience. Who is going to plot what next? How will all of this drama (verging on soap opera) unfold? Maybe all of this is soap opera. There were certainly times, like when the sons are hiding not totally comically in Dalton's bedchamber when Henry comes in to have a talk, that the staginess of it can't be helped. But what stuck out for me and what made me like the movie so much is that the director Anthony Harvey and writer Goldman takes this material as seriously as they can, and mostly as this family drama first. Again, one may think of Game of Thrones as well (this could just as easily be the Lannister clan, fans of the show will know what I mean). And yet in order for this stuff to work, the actors do have to sell it and not hold back; if one is to do this sort of high-voltage, highly emotionally charged stuff right, get some people who will commit to it completely.Peter O'Toole gives what could be one of his two or three best performances here. That's a bold statement considering what other work he did in his career, but really when has he been better? Yes, this King has to yell and pontificate in GRAND, BIG ways (in caps) in many scenes. But a lot of this, we are in the know on, is braggadocio, like a much more refined version of Archie Bunker or Ralph Kramden. And yes, a sitcom comparison could be made here, only the laughs had aren't shallow or base: these characters really can't stand one another - that, and, in one of those contradictions people have to keep in their heads one alongside the other, they love each other still. That's what's fascinating about watching O'Toole and Hepburn (in a role far more Oscar-y than 'Dinner' in 67). If you don't buy them as a bitter, wry, deeply wounded married couple, the movie actually doesn't work as well. I bought into them, and many of their scenes carry that electrified air of big, bold dramatic moments, especially in the last act when big claims are made about past familial ties.I don't know if it's all a great film. Some of the dramatic confrontations here get into that realm of such theatricality that it's hard to take a few times, just in that way of 'Oh, for chrissake, just kill each other and get it over with already!' But it has such a strong script and acting, and the themes of being a woman in that period and what a marriage was in such medieval times, or being a father and sons, that I had a great time watching it. By the end one senses not much has *really* changed for these people, but then why should it? Life goes on, until it doesn't, for these people of royalty and obsessive power

Tad Pole Peter O'Toole (England's King Henry II, here) had a great sense of humor, and for 1968 he thought a film version of the American TV Sit-Com MY THREE SONS meets the Edward Albee Broadway play WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF would be just the ticket to get out the Nixon vote. William conquered England for the French in 1066, and for generations Afterwards his army's descendants adulterated our pure Anglo Saxon vernacular with thousands of Frenchisms. Recently, French politicians have had the Gaul to hypocritically ban the very words with which they raped and pillaged King Arthur's English! THE LION IN WINTER director Anthony Harvey wisely dispenses with the traditional paragraphs of expository print-on-screen at the start (that is, "Who ARE these people?) and finish ("And then what became of them?") of this flick. He cut this background crap NOT because he thought most viewers already would know who's who, but on account of the fact that all of the characters here ARE REALLY FRENCH!! Therefore, no one CARES who lives or dies, as long as they do it quickly. Just as people trek to Indy every May yearning to see a spectacular car wreck, THE LION IN WINTER crowd hopes against hope for a HAMLET-style climax: EVERYONE DIES. Alas, no such luck.