“The Lion in Winter” was on TV last night. Holy crackers, is that a movie. Two and half hours of intense concentration later, I was exhausted. The only part more draining than focusing on the highly amped emotional nuance of the dialogue (hereafter referred to as “the shouty bits”) was focusing on the highly amped emotional nuance of the charged silence (hereafter referred to as “there wasn’t any”) in between the shouty bits.

Glengarry Glen Ross is nothing compared to this, those guys didn’t really have their hearts in it, they were just a little stressed about pay day. Imagine if Reservoir Dogs had verbal instead of physical violence and Quentin Tarentino was a human being. That’s kind of what it was like.

It had Katherine Hepburn as the Queen, on a brief field trip from being locked up in a tower for 10 years, and this would have been a show stealing performance except for the other people. It turns out Peter O’Toole is really great to watch acting/shouting if you partially muffle his face with a beard, and Anthony Hopkins in his first film role found 50 different ways to react with stunned stifled anger as the future Richard the Lionheart. There was at least one other good performance but frankly I’m getting tired just thinking about it.

Did I mention this is a Christmas movie?

I recommend you watch this, but don’t watch in on TV. Rent it so you can pause it for a day or two in between shouty bits and do some yoga and aromatherapy.