Warlord

A mini fantasy drama like a draft and sketch of 'Lord of the Moose'. It is entertaining and enthralling if you have nothing else to watch. The set design, costumes and visual effects were good to decent, while the storyline, script and flow were subpar.

If you would like to watch fantasy revolt movie, LOTR and The Hobbit are much better choices.

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 4
• Production value/impact: 5
• Development: 6
• Realism: 3.5
• Entertainment: 4
• Acting: 5
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 6.5
• VFX: 6.5
• Music/score/sound: 6.5
• Depth: 4.5
• Logic: 3.5
• Flow: 4
• Psychological/fantasy/action/drama: 4
• Ending: 2.

The Good News: The cinematography and acting are decent. Too bad you don't see a fantasy movie for the acting.

The plot is boringly xenophobic and the usual anti-authority: The elves and humans don't get along, with the humans holding all of the cards and the elves being exiled to the woods. The sheriff is right from the Stock Evil collection: He's running roughshod over the local population while forcefully taking control of the bakeries and forcing others into the mines.

In other words, nothing you really haven't seen before. Adding to the fun is the usual over-the-top violence.

Then there's the ending, which isn't exactly your feel-good ending, which comes from nowhere. It's nice that the bad guys get punished, but only by making the chasm between elves and humans even deeper. It's the sole surprise in the movie.

All told, there is a surprise ending to the movie, but it's unlikely most people would last past the first twenty minutes. There's a lot of scenery chewing, but it doesn't really add to the movie and most of it has no payoff. You can miss this movie with little worry of missing anything important.

Absolutely loved this movie, so so good. Acting was great, storyline was complex but paid off so well at the end. That final climax was brilliant. Costumes are cool and the world building is great. Also, the music is epic. Worth a watch.

Would liked to have seen more of the elves, but that's kind of the point of the film in some ways. Billy Boyd is great and I really liked Axle. All the elf stuff is really good. Their weapons are cool, could definitely have done more with that. But this is an indie fantasy movie, huge kudos for tackling it and delivering. We need more films like this. My take away is if you like fantasy, this is for you.

My favorite actor is Bruce Campbell. While I enjoy blockbusters, I do enjoy B movies. First, the opening "Star Wars" scroll was not only too small to read quickly, but written so poorly I almost didn't watch the movie. There are some good actors, but not the elf leader. Speaking of Elfs.. my geek past of D&D and LotR.. Elfs are blonde, very thin, agile and great with a bow. Not in this movie. It was an ok movie and some mid and less characters were good actors. Writers and parts of the costumes were as bad as the poor, chunky elf leader.

Warlord is one of those movies that really pulls you in and doesn't let go. The story feels fresh but familiar in the best way, and the world-building is seriously impressive. I especially liked the use of magic, not too much, but just enough.

The performances are strong across the board, and the visuals have this gritty, lived-in feel that makes everything more real.

The pacing is tight too - it always feels like something important is about to happen, and you're just glued to it. You can tell a lot of care went into every part of it, from the costumes to the music. Definitely worth checking out if you like smart, grounded fantasy.

If you're expecting some Spiderman action, this is obviously an indie and you can see they worked with what they had. Which they did really well.