The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

“So began a battle that none had expected,” wrote JRR Tolkien in the third-from-last chapter of The Hobbit. “And it was called The Battle of the Five Armies, and it was very terrible.” Peter Jackson’s expansion of this epochal but barely-described fracas, in his third and final film from this slim book, is neither very terrible nor remotely unexpected. It’s a series of stomping footnotes in search of a climax.

In terms of story so far, it ends virtually when it starts – with super-peeved dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) raining down fiery destruction on the pitiful residents of Laketown, and facing the last-ditch heroism of an archer called Bard (Luke Evans).

Everything else is scraps, in both senses. Jackson’s one recourse is to ape the here-we-go-again war mania of The Return of the King. Humans, dwarves and elves duke it out with orcs and wild wolves. It's a whopping great grudge match, a squabble over the contents of Smaug’s mountain lair, and goodness knows what else.

The trouble is that Jackson can’t make it mean very much: when every life on Middle Earth is seemingly at stake, few individually grab our attention. There’s more aftermath than plot left, and very little of it has to do with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), who feels increasingly like a forlorn bystander in his own franchise.

The further and more competently the movie trundles on, the more it begs not to exist, really: hindsight favours a two-part adaptation at most. This isn’t to say there aren’t bright spots. However it was fudged, 92-year-old Christopher Lee doing Shaolin kung fu with his magic staff is great value. And the last third is rescued by one meaty, entertaining set piece – crumbling citadel, frozen lake, one-on-one duels between orcs and the principal cast. Freeman, and Evangeline Lilly as the not-in-Tolkien elf maiden Tauriel, inject some unforced pathos which puts many of their dewy-eyed co-stars to shame.

The bloom has come off Orlando, though, whose main achievement as Legolas – other than some ridiculous mid-air running up collapsing masonry – is to illustrate perfectly what Joey Tribbiani from Friends called “smell the fart acting”.

When the dwarf leader Thorin (Richard Armitage) imagines himself drowning in a pool of molten gold, Jackson’s pet message that Greed Is Bad rings out again – but you have to wonder if a triple-your-money release strategy is quite the seemliest context to preach it in. At 6ft 2", Armitage must be the tallest actor ever to play a dwarf. The film is the opposite: a paragraph on steroids.
source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11260252/The-Hobbit-The-Battle-of-the-Five-Armies-first-look-review-begs-not-to-exist.html

Movie Info

From Academy Award (R)-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson comes "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies," the third in a trilogy of films adapting the enduringly popular masterpiece The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" brings to an epic conclusion the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield and the Company of Dwarves. 

Having reclaimed their homeland from the Dragon Smaug, the Company has unwittingly unleashed a deadly force into the world. Enraged, Smaug rains his fiery wrath down upon the defenseless men, women and children of Lake-town. Obsessed above all else with his reclaimed treasure, Thorin sacrifices friendship and honor tohoard it as Bilbo's frantic attempts to make him see reason drive the Hobbit towards a desperate and dangerous choice.

But there are even greater dangers ahead. Unseen by any but the Wizard Gandalf, the great enemy Sauron has sent forth legions of Orcs in a stealth attack upon the Lonely Mountain. As darkness converges on their escalating conflict, the races of Dwarves, Elves and Men must decide - unite or be destroyed. Bilbo finds himself fighting for his life and the lives of his friends in the epic Battle of the Five Armies, as the future of Middle-earth hangs in the balance.
(c) Warner Bros

Rating: PG-13 (for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images)
Genre: Action & Adventure , Science Fiction & Fantasy
Directed By: Peter Jackson
Written By: Philippa Boyens , Guillermo del Toro , Fran Walsh , J.R.R. Tolkien , Peter Jackson
In Theaters: Dec 17, 2014 Wide
On DVD: Mar 24, 2015
US Box Office: $255.1M
Runtime: 2 hr. 24 min.
Warner Bros. - Official Site

source:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hobbit_the_battle_of_the_five_armies/

- Movies for you Android -

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

The biggest problem with the new Hunger Games movie is right there in the title: Part 1. Mockingjay, the final installment in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling YA trilogy, wasn’t conceived in two parts. That was a decision made in Hollywood by a studio looking to double down and milk every last dime out of its blockbuster franchise. The suits probably thought, ”Hey, it worked for Harry Potter and Twilight, so why not us?” You can’t blame them for wanting to keep the good times rolling. But it’s a pretty cynical business plan, and it’s led to a film that feels needlessly padded. Mockingjay—Part 1 is like a term paper with the margins enlarged and the font size jacked up to reach the assigned number of pages.

This is especially disappointing because the previous chapter, 2013’s Catching Fire, was such a pleasant surprise. While the 2012 original laid out Collins’ dystopian death-sport milieu with flair and faithfulness, it was also a bit flat. Catching Fire, on the other hand, gave the heroine, Katniss Everdeen, an adrenalized urgency. As played by Jennifer Lawrence, Katniss developed into a character who was both brainy and badass. Now, in Mockingjay—Part 1, she’s become passive. The movie picks up after the incendiary conclusion of Catching Fire’s Quarter Quell, when Katniss was rescued and brought to the rebels’ underground fortress in District 13. Here, the anti-Capitol leaders plot their next strike against President Snow (Donald Sutherland), hatching a plan to turn Katniss into the fiery symbol of the resistance and spur the powerless citizens of Panem to rise up against the Capitol. It’s a propaganda war, and she’s the secret weapon—a Che Guevara T-shirt made flesh. The rebel brain trust includes President Coin (Julianne Moore, sporting silver Cruella De Vil locks), spin-savvy strategist Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman, to whom the film is dedicated), hacker Beetee (Jeffrey Wright), the newly clean and sober Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), and Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks, channeling a drag queen). They send Katniss and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) to the front lines with a guerrilla film crew that records her battlefield heroics and beams it all back to the huddled masses.

But Snow has a secret weapon of his own. Kidnapped by the nefarious president’s forces at the end of the last movie, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) reappears in the Capitol, and in a series of interviews with the sensationalist journalist Caesar (Stanley Tucci), he denounces Katniss and urges a cease-fire. The betrayal devastates her, forcing her to realize that her feelings for him weren’t a charade after all. With its Wag the Dog subplot and fist-in-the-air proletarianism, Mockingjay may be the most harmlessly Marxist movie to come out of Hollywood since Reds. 

I suppose director Francis Lawrence and writers Peter Craig and Danny Strong deserve some credit for daring to sneak any political cheekiness into a movie that’s as big and corporate as this. But overall their hands are tied too tightly. While the series’ first two films captured the grandeur of the outdoors during the kill-or-be-killed competitions, Mockingjay is mostly bound to the bleak and claustrophobic bowels of a bunker. It suffocates the film. And when the story finally does manage to get interesting toward the end, it just screeches to a halt and cuts off, leaving fans wriggling on the hook for a finale they won’t get to see for another 12 months. That’s not a cliff-hanger, that’s just a tease.

source:http://www.ew.com/article/2014/12/05/hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1

Movie Info

The worldwide phenomenon of The Hunger Games continues to set the world on fire with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, which finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in District 13 after she literally shatters the games forever. Under the leadership of President Coin (Julianne Moore) and the advice of her trusted friends, Katniss spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a nation moved by her courage. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 is directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Danny Strong and Peter Craig and produced by Nina Jacobson's Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. The novel on which the film is based is the third in a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins that has over 65 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.

(c) Lionsgate

Rating:	PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material)
Genre:	Drama , Action & Adventure , Science Fiction & Fantasy
Directed By:	Francis Lawrence (II) , Francis Lawrence
Written By:	Danny Strong , Peter Craig
In Theaters:	Nov 21, 2014 Wide
On DVD:	Mar 6, 2015
US Box Office:	$337.1M
Runtime:	2 hr. 5 min.

Lionsgate Films - Official Site

source:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hunger_games_mockingjay_part_1/ 

- Movies for your Android -