The following are movie reviews from "King Arthur" and "De-Lovely."

'King Arthur'
In the 1967 film version of "Camelot," Richard Harris' melancholy monarch tries to sell Guinevere on his idyllic realm by informing her, "The rain may never fall 'til after sundown. By 8, the morning fog must disappear." Boy, what a difference 37 years makes!

In the muscular but murky "King Arthur" (Touchstone), it seems like the rain never stops and the fog refuses to disappear. Gone is the Lerner and Loewe floridness and storybook romance; in its place is gritty, mud-soaked realism.

Director Antoine Fuqua has stripped Arthurian legend of its mythic mantle and courtly conventions, re-envisioning the once and future king (Clive Owen) as a half-Roman, half-British commander of an elite cavalry unit during the closing days of the Empire.

Succinct opening narration explains that Arthur's inner circle is composed of conscripts from distant conquered nations pressed into military service. But don't expect any shining armor here; Fuqua's brave but brutish knights are a far cry from the cultivated courtiers of medieval romances.

The film is set in 452 A.D., as the Romans are calling it quits after four centuries in Britain. Wearied by war, Arthur and his men are eager to return to their respective homelands. But before they get their walking papers, a papal legate charges them with one last mission: They must rescue an aristocratic Roman family from hostile territory crawling with savage invading Saxons, led by braided chieftain Cerdic (Stellan Skarsgard).

The noble Arthur accomplishes the assignment but not before witnessing injustices committed in the name of church and state, prompting him to cast his lot with the indigenous tribes and take up their cause against the Saxon onslaught. To do so he must forge an alliance with Guinevere (Keira Knightly), reimagined here as a feisty protofeminist warrior, and the druid Merlin (Stephen Dillane).

Owen fills Arthur's armor with ample virility and virtue, and invests the title character with emotional texturing generally not found among action heroes.

Rounding out the Round Table are Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd), Galahad (Hugh Dancy), Tristan (Mads Mikkelsen) and the burly Bors (Ray Winstone).

The dank and dismal atmospherics lend the film an appropriate Dark-Age dreariness. But by divesting the tale of its fairy tale trappings, Fuqua has also emptied it of its romance -- and, ultimately, its timeless allure. The film retains only the slightest hint of the tragic love triangle immortalized in Western literature, compressing the entire affair to one lustful gaze.

Full of chest-thumping soliloquies about freedom, the "Gladiator"-like battle sequences -- including a centerpiece sequence on a frozen lake -- are impressive, but are much too intense for children and push the boundaries of the picture's PG-13 rating.

More troubling however is the film's paganizing of what has traditionally been a quintessentially Christian myth. Arthur has always been held up as the ideal Christian king; his chivalrous brothers-in-arms aspired to be paragons of Christian virtue, epitomized by their quest for the Holy Grail.

In Fuqua's version, the knights are unabashedly pagan and Arthur is nominally Christian at best, aligning himself theologically with Pelagius, a fifth-century monk whose writings were condemned as heresy for denying original sin and the necessity of grace in attaining salvation. Throughout, church authority figures are depicted as conniving and cruel, while the egalitarian pagans are cast in far more flattering hues.

Due to intense battlefield violence, a shadowy sexual encounter, negative representation of church figures and some crude humor, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

De-Lovely
Hollywood still hasn't done right by Cole Porter. The last biography of the Broadway songwriter -- 1946's "Night and Day" with Cary Grant and Alexis Smith as the urbane composer and his wealthy (in real life, older) wife, Linda -- was devoid of drama and completely eschewed the couple's unusual "marriage of convenience." (The real Porter had dalliances with men.)

This time around, it's Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd in the leads of "De-Lovely" (MGM), and these being franker times, Porter's meanderings can now be more forthrightly presented. Yet the new film is scarcely more dramatic than the first.

The handsomely designed film begins with an elderly Porter made up (thanks to prosthetics) rather like John ("The Paper Chase") Houseman, looking back on his life, with the aid of a heavenly personage named "Gabe" (Jonathan Pryce). As they sit in an empty theater, Porter's life unfolds.

Porter meets the wealthy Linda in Paris, and confesses his general lack of interest in women, but Linda -- recovering from an abusive marriage -- is only too happy to accept him on his own terms. They form a close, loving relationship, and Linda looks the other way when Porter strays.

None of Porter's affairs are terribly explicit. At one point, he gives a peck to a male dancer he's apparently spent the night with, and later in Hollywood he goes to a nightclub where tuxedoed men dance with each other, and a (male) date is procured for Porter. Still, this is all very tame, and little more "daring" than a Lifetime cable movie.

Their story turns tragic, as Linda suffers a miscarriage, her lungs become gravely infected, the son of their close friends -- Gerald and Sara Murphy -- dies of tuberculosis, and Porter's legs are crushed in a riding accident. At this point, the film turns quite somber, and the pace drags.

Porter's philandering is presented as little different from the conventional sort, and is shown to bring the couple considerable pain and regret. Ultimately, the film extols the loving over-the-years relationship, which survives Porter's transgressions.

The producers have chosen to cast contemporary singers of dubious marquee value from the worlds of pop and jazz to sing in a mostly nonperiod style. Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Robbie Williams, Alanis Morisette, Diana Krall and others turn up incongruously, most of their interpretations dead wrong in this context. How much more satisfying if they had used real Broadway performers! Director Irving Winkler, it seems, was influenced by "Moulin Rouge" and tried to emulate that frenetic musical hodgepodge.

The film plays havoc with musical chronology, so curiously we have later songs annoyingly showing up early in Porter's career.

"De-Lovely" is the first musical to come along since the success of "Chicago," and the MGM logo that opens the film promises a return to the glory days of that studio's musicals. It's a pity the film isn't better.

Because of an unconventional marital relationship, implied promiscuity and discreetly presented sexual content, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Harry Forbes is director and David DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.