The King Has Noble Intent But Only Intermittently Successful Execution

It's always difficult to suddenly assume a new job but it's especially trying when your the son of a King of England who doesn't want anything to do with the throne and then you're forced to become the King when your pops dies. Don't you hate it when that happens? Those circumstances have just befallen King Henry V (Timothee Chalamet), whose distaste with the throne is even greater than his thirst for alcohol. He didn't want this gig, but Henry V is trying to create a more peaceful kingdom compared to his far more trigger-happy father who was always going to war with everybody who gave him so much as a bad look. But The King is a dark drama and that means Henry V's ambitions for peace will not go according to plan.

WAR (Machine)...HOO! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR??

American pop culture is at an interesting...impasse, I guess you could say, in terms of how it treats the Iraq war. For a good long while during the Iraq war conflict, American war movies were firmly situated in the past, namely in World War II where audiences could have a greater sense of removal from what was transpiring on-screen and some clear-cut villains (Nazi's and Hitler) to root against. In 2009, we got two movies that tackled the brutality offered up by the war and its effects on individual men with the excellent The Hurt Locker and the incredible Brothers, but since then, most of our wartime movies have been mostly empty features, whether they're just "rah-rah" action films like Lone Survivor or American Sniper or supposedly philosophical but mostly just empty movies like Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk.