Tag: review

Let us hope that the Tolkien estate will make Jackson’s final installment of The Hobbit the last on he’ll do. What he did to the Hobbit book is a complete sham. A sham almost too great that it has taken the sheen off of what he did with the Lord of the Rings. This trilogy will be on par with George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels. A mistake that tarnished the entire enterprise.

Now that you know how I feel about the trilogy, this particular installment of the Hobbit wasn’t half bad. It was one which Jackson has to craft from whole himself because in the book the battle of five armies was done offscreen. Bilbo was in it for a few paragraphs until he got knocked out before witnessing the arrival of the Eagles. There was no were-worms or trolls with missile launchers on their back. There was no Scottish Dain from the Iron Hills on a boar nor Legolas riding a giant troll. There was no Bard from Laketown fighting it out in the ruins of Dale nor Thranduil and his elk tramping on orcs. In the book, it was just Bilbo looking for help from the skies before a rock crashed into his head knocking him out of the fight. That wouldn’t do for Jackson. He had to make the rest of it up. Without any of this, the Hobbit would have been done in one film.

When the movie opens, we find ourselves in the middle of Smaug’s rampage on Laketown. We dive right into it giving us the feeling of walking into the middle of a movie. This is what happens when you try to stretch it out. Then it seems the battle of five armies starts immediately afterwards. This installment felt shorter than the others. Finally it ends with Bilbo back at Bag End. Back at whom this story was about. Jackson muffs it because he forgot that this is Bilbo’s tale and not a tale of the waning days of the Third Age. If he only left it as the story of Bilbo, Jackson would’ve made a better movie. No need to know of the White Council or the battle with the Necromancer in Mirkwood. And we wouldn’t need those Orcs.

This one, I actually liked though.

3 of 5 stars.

Did you know that Into The Woods is an acclaimed Broadway musical? I didn’t know that going in. I’m sure it’s a fine one, but it didn’t win me over as a film.

Into The Woods is an amalgamation of a few of the Grimm brothers fairy tales: Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and the one about the childless baker. All played an important role, but Rapunzel was cut short. Not sure why, but it seemed if Rapunzel’s story was half hearted. She was in it, then she wasn’t.

I believe that this film wasn’t targeted to me.

3 of 5 stars

Reese Witherspoon plays a bad girl looking to find salvation on a long hike up the Pacific Crest Trail in the autobiographical film, Wild. Witherspoon plays Cheryl Strayed, the author of the book from which the film was adapted. Cheryl was dealing with a lot of stuff: the death of her mother, the crumbling of her marriage because of her infidelity and sex addiction, a heroin habit. Cheryl just lived too much of a life for herself. She set about being selfish and it destroyed her. She hoped a long hike alone would enable her to find her way once more.

The film is an interesting one as it unfolds unconventionally. There were lots of intercutting of her on the hike with her life as it crumbled. There was voice over work that hinted at the Cheryl’s mindset on the tramp through the trail. There was jumps back in time to her childhood with her mom. This whole lot showed more and left the viewer to infer what her motivation was for any of her mischief.

We could know what she did: the sex, the drugs. We could know what was the most psychologically damaging: the loss of her mother. We knew she took it out on her husband. We knew she was disconnecting with the world. The movie shows what, but can’t explain the why. For that we have to look forward to Cheryl’s explanation.

I’m not sure we got it. She was trying to live up to her mom’s idea, but could not. Why did she have to? Why can’t she be a woman all her own? Why would it take a solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail to resolve that?

Perhaps, two or three viewings of this movie will resolve these questions. Maybe reading the book as well. But for all that, this film does a fine job in showing the trials and tribulations of a woman at the crossroads in her life.

3 of 5 stars.

St. Vincent is standard indy movie fare. All the character beats were there: curmudgeon, beatific child, harried mother, lovable lady of the night. They even threw some thugs in that made no sense to the outcome of the movie.

It was okay. Better to watch Big Hero 6 all over again.

3 of 5 stars.

Big Hero 6 deserves to be as big a phenomenon as the last Disney animated movie, Frozen. Unfortunately, since this one’s for the boys, I doubt it would create as big a splash in the American zeitgeist. The young princesses will dominate whereas the asian hero won’t.

Disney did this one right. So did Marvel. They made a real diverse animated movie and they made a good one. The lead is an Asian. So is his dead brother. There’s a black guy and two women. There’s a white guy stoner. And they all are scientists. Except for the stoner white guy. This diversity hasn’t been called out in the reviews, but it is cool to see more than white people, and in this instance asians, on the big screen.

The opening animated short was also fun too. I liked that it used cell-shading and didn’t look like CG. It’s a welcome relief to see a different style.

4 of 5 stars.

I have a problem with Christopher Nolan. Although I did enjoy Interstellar, I find him taking himself to serious at times. It makes it tough for me to judge his movies on their own merit.

Interstellar was decent, but if you think about it too long, holes start to pop into the story.

3 of 5 stars.

Let me just quote the woman I overheard as I was leaving the early showing of Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. “The movie was good, but too long.”

It was a phenomenal effort from Studio Ghibli’s second in command, Isao Takahata. He doesn’t get the same accolade’s as Miyazaki, but he is just as good an animator. It was an amazing animated film. In this day and age of CG animation, Takahata stuck to traditional hand drawn animation. Not just regular hand drawn — he did the film in a style that can only be called drawing. It looked like a Bill Plimpton animated film. The pencil lines shown through, and the colors all pastel like crayon. It was exhilarating to look at. Here is art. Especially in the sequence where the Princess escapes from her the jail that her home in the city had become. It was a fluid sequence, and very dynamic. It was one of the best sequences I’ve seen in an animated film in a long while. It ranks up there with the breathless ride of the Valkyries on the ocean waves from Ponyo.

This is a film to see. Too bad it will only show in the US in very few cinemas. Catch it if you can.

4 of 5 stars.

Before I Go to Sleep should put you to sleep.

It’s a standard mystery/thriller fare. Woman, Nicole Kidman, has selective amnesia after a horrific accident. She wakes to find a life she does not now, because it has been 10 years since then. She finds a man, her husband, next to her. He gives her instructions to what her life was and is. Now she has to know, if that is really the case.

So the story tries to make you wonder, who should she trust. Her husband? Or a psychiatrist treating her? This psychiatrist makes her video tape her daily life so that she doesn’t forget. As she views the diary she seems to regain memory. Slowly, but surely details start to emerge about the day she lost her memory.

Needless to say, we find out who she is and how she lost her memory. It comes after a reveal that you knew was coming. The movie then ends on a coda that was too long, tacked on minutes did not help it making the movie any better.

I really need to forget I saw this.

2 of 5 stars.

Keanu Reeves takes a page from Liam Neeson’s movie role play book and goes after bad guys who have harmed him in John Wick. The film has been getting decent reviews for a revenge-action movie. The reviews have focused more on the action and the world building than for the story. If you read any further, warning spoilers abound.

Reeves plays a long retired assassin, probably the greatest assassin the underworld of mobsters has ever seen. He retired because he fell in love. Unfortunately, disease took his wife from him leaving him with a broken heart and a puppy his dying wife left for him to love. He crosses paths with the son of his former boss, and in short order finds that he’s lost his dog and his car to the punk. Reeves is out for revenge because the punk killed his puppy.

The world in which this film takes place is sort of like our world except that there is a hotel for assassins to stay at without getting killed.

The action was pretty decent. Hand-to-hand combat, close range fighting, and hand guns going off were clear to understand. The gun play was slightly hilarious as they were used like knives. I wanted to see this action in a samurai or ninja setting. Also, the blood was all computer generated so it looked like fake splatters. The fights were real though.

Not bad for a film in the fall.

3 of 5 stars.

The Judge will surprise you.

I didn’t think it would be any good. Turned out I was wrong. It was good because of the acting. Robert Downey Jr. is always on point. Great to watch and chew up the scenery. Robert Duvall is an old man; ornery. Then there was the others in the cast, Vincent D’Onofrio, Billy Bob Thorton, and Vera Fermiga. They are all renowned actors. Not a bad one in the bunch.

So this movie is a display on acting, but there’s a story there. The standard bad son comes home to resolve issues with his family, father, and hometown. You knew it would get there, and you know how it would end. But the acting makes it all worth while.

3 of 5 stars.