Anthony Harvey’s star-studded inheritance drama about the Angevin Empire of Henry II (Peter O’Toole) and the three unsuitable sons who crave it is the original Succession.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 21, 2025

There’s lots of double-dealing, a bit of back-stabbing, and a whole lot of familial dirty laundry strewn out on the table for all to see. All-in-all, it’s gloriously entertaining.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 14, 2024

The scripting is superb – a masterfully caustic examination of medieval politics and familial rebellion.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 31, 2023

I think all concerned in The Lion in Winter deserve Academy Awards for strangeness. They achieve a measure of believability in the face of it.

| Mar 2, 2022

Plenty of swords and knives make appearances in The Lion in Winter, but none can possibly cut as deep as the caustic dialogue.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 30, 2021

O'Toole's bluster echoes off the walls, leaving no space for anything else.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 18, 2021

Mr. Goldman's script cannot resist undercutting the subject by trivializing it.

| Aug 11, 2020

Flawed and a little too impressed with Its own accomplishments, The Lion in Winter is, nevertheless, something to see.

| Dec 4, 2019

One of Hollywood's great epics, a film often overlooked in favor of some of the era's flashier spectacles.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 3, 2019

The film's best asset is its relentless and even exasperating unwillingness to pin itself down to one thing becoming a film that's working on all levels.

| May 21, 2019

A very confident dive by a young English film- maker into the deep water of big international production.

| Jul 5, 2018

All that's ever mattered about The Lion in Winter are Hepburn and O'Toole, and the pleasure we take from watching two masters inspire each other to greatness. Scenery chewing has rarely been so artful.

| Dec 12, 2016

A commanding blend of the high and low, a thoroughly sordid family melodrama designed for over-literate history buffs.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 4, 2016

[A] humdinger of medieval powerplay.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 7, 2016

While the script and the performances are simply dazzling, it is notable, too, for the screen debuts of Timothy Dalton and a combustible Anthony Hopkins.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 14, 2014

O'Toole holds his own with the magnificent Hepburn in a witty, literate, and inventive script.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 14, 2014

A must-see.

| Jul 14, 2014

It's stagey and mannered, but it still feels sleek and modern.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2014

Henry and Eleanor are reduced to a 온라인카지노추천-sized version of the sovereigns next door, their epic struggle shrunk to sitcom squabbles.

| Jul 14, 2014

James Goldman's screenplay, so chic and sophisticated to the ears of suburbanites, is chock-full of the worst kind of sophomoric fiddling with what Goldman takes to be genuine highfalutin lingo.

| Jul 14, 2014