In the Amazon Prime Video subscription, you will now find two very different fantasy films: the dark medieval adventure “The Last Knight Templar” with, among others, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, and the “X-Men” variation “Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon”.
Fantasy fans will get their money’s worth on April 6, 2023, on Amazon Prime Video, because there are two new fantastic films in the subscription – although in one case the word “fantastic” explicitly only refers to the genre and not to the quality related. “The Last Knight Templar” with Nicolas Cage is not particularly successful and therefore only recommended for genre fans and omnivores. It is different from the insider tip “Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon“.
“The Last Knight Templar”
The Last Knight Templar starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings), and Claire Foy (The Crown). Robert Sheehan (“Umbrella Academy”) and many other stars are prominently cast down to the supporting roles and are staged by “Password: Swordfish” director Dominic Sena in a rock-solid and even somewhat exciting way. But Sena never gets beyond the usual clichés and set pieces of medieval and adventure films.
The seriousness of the film – even overacting grandmaster Nicolas Cage noticeably takes a back seat – ensures that “The Last Knight Templar” is no more than mediocrity. “All of this would have been easier to forgive if Dominic Sena had directed the film for what it is: ultimately harmless, not very original, but in places brute trash without any deeper meaning or great ambitions“, is the conclusion of our Wikitexte review (1.5 out of 5 stars).
“Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon”
“Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon” also has prominent stars such as Kate Hudson (“Glass Onion”), Craig Robinson (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), and Ed Skrein (“Deadpool”) and can be assigned to the fantasy genre, yes that’s where the similarities between the two films end.
Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon on Amazon Prime Video*
The fantasy film by director Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”) is about a young woman named Mona Lisa (Jeon Jong-Seo), who can control other people with her mind and therefore more than a decade locked up in a psychiatric institution. After her curse, she meets a dealer, a stripper, and a cop in New Orleans.
Ana Lily Amirpour tells the story using the means of genre cinema an engaging outsider’s fairy tale with pulsating, droning background music, in which by no means all ideas and approaches are coherent, but which still works overall as a mixture of superhero reckoning and fantasy horror. We give it a good 3.5 out of 5 stars.
