Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

My favorite quote from a critic that I've found about Kingdom of Heaven is by David Edelstein from Slate: "An epic about Christian crusaders who happen to be liberal humanists willing to die for the sake of religious tolerance. That's just ... weird." Making a popcorn movie about The Crusades for modern, liberal western audiences, especially less then five years after the events of 9/11, seems a bit of a tough sale. Ridley Scott was up for the challenge however, giving it a variant on The Gladiator treatment,  I was surprised at the extent to which the movie grew on me during viewing. It's not a great movie, its somehow both odd and derivative, and I have a very hard time caring about Orlando Bloom in anything he does. Be that as it may, it was fun, has a great siege sequence near the end, and manages to keep things consistently just barley on the respectable side from being out right campy. Strong supporting cast, including Eva Green in her "Hollywood" debut, the always welcome Jeremy Iron and Brendan Gleeson, as well as Edward Norton hidden behind a mask the whole time. My late brother gave me this movie for Christmas 10 years ago and I put off watching it because I didn't think I'd like it, but the movie won me over. ***