The Daily Grindhouse: The Horror of Party Beach (dir by Del Tenney)

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Horror of Party Beach is a personal favorite of mine but it’s not an easy film to review. Technically, this is a terrible film but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s the type of film that makes the traditional definitions of good and bad irrelevant. In short, this 1964 “horror” film simply has to be seen to be believed.

Party Beach is perhaps the most depressing stretch of sand and surf to ever appear in a 1960s beach film. During the day, the beach is full of amazingly skinny dancers and leather-clad motorcyclists who spend all of their time dancing to music of the Del-Aires. Occasionally, a fight breaks out between the motorcyclists and the dancers but, for the most part, everyone seems to spend their time engaging in witty banter that I imagine was probably dated even in 1964. The skies are permanently overcast and the whole beach just reeks of a combination of societal decline and general ennui.

Even worse, the film opens with a toxic waste spill that somehow causes an underwater skeleton to mutate into a creature that’s apparently half-man and half-fish and which also has an insatiable lust for blood and a mouth that appears to be full of hot dogs. Soon, every night, the creatures are wandering around the town, killing people, and dragging the bodies off to the quarry.

One of the first victims is Tina, the wild girlfriend of Hank. Hank is a scientist who has the young Aryan look that most B-movie heroes seemed to have in the early 60s. Seriously, Hank manages to get through the entire film without once getting a single hair out-of-place. You would think that Hank would be upset over Tina’s death but he’s not because, as he told Tina before she died, he’s “no longer the campus bigshot who will do anything for kicks!” It also probably helps that Hank has fallen in love with Elaine, who appears to be about 40 years old but who, in a typically dramatic moment, turns down an invitation to go to a slumber party with all of her teenage friends.

Elaine’s father is Dr. Gavin. Dr. Gavin is also Hank’s boss and we can tell that Dr. Gavin is a genius because he not only wears glasses but he’s also bald and smokes a pipe. Together, Dr. Gavin and Hank try to figure out if there’s any way that the monsters can be stopped.

Dr. Gavin also has a maid named Eulabelle, who appears to have come to Horror of Party Beach straight from an awkwardly racist 1930s comedy. At one point, Eulabelle explains that she’s not only locked the front door but that she’s “double-locked and triple-locked it. Ain’t no monsters gettin’ in here…”

Perhaps if everyone on Party Beach had taken Eulabelle’s advice, many lives could have been saved. But oddly, even after everyone knows that there are monsters among them, the party continues on Party Beach. Not even the fear of death can silence the Del-Aires…

I make no apologies for loving The Horror of Party Beach. Everything about it — from the ludicrous monsters to the expressionless performances of the cast to the thoroughly nonsensical plot — make The Horror of Party Beach a one-of-a-kind experience. I’ve come across quite a few critics who have claimed that The Horror of Party Beach is one of the worst movies ever made but, seriously, it’s way too silly to be truly bad. It may not be a good film but it’s definitely a fun viewing experience.

Film Review: The Racket (dir. by Lewis Milestone)

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Originally released in 1928 and produced by Howard Hughes, The Racket was one of the first films to ever be nominated for an Oscar. It was also one of the first films to miss out on its chance to claim Oscar glory as the first statuette for Best Picture was given to the producers of Wings.

Like many films that were made in during the silent era, The Racket subsequently sunk into obscurity and, for several decades, it was considered to be a lost film. After the death of Howard Hughes, the last remaining copy of The Racket was discovered hidden away in his vast film collection. This print has been preserved at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After several years of restoration, the film made its first appearance on TCM in 2004 and it has since been frequently broadcast on that network. That’s how I first saw it way back in 2012.

Based on a play by Bartlett Cormack, The Racket is a gangster film. Nick Scarsi (played by Louis Wolheim) is a powerful and politcally-connected bootlegger. He’s pursued by one of the few honest cops in town, Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan). When McQuigg proves to be incorruptible, Scarsi uses his political influence to get McQuigg transferred to a precinct in the suburbs. However, when Scarsi’s younger brother is arrested for a hit-and-run in McQuigg’s new precinct, the captain uses the incident to launch a complex plan to bring down both Scarsi and the corrupt public officials that allow him to run the city.

Seen today, The Racket is an almost quaintly traditional gangster film. According to the film’s title cards, everyone in the film speaks in hard-boiled slang and the characters — from the honest cop to the cynical reporters to the nightclub singer played by Marie Prevost — will all seem very familiar to anyone who has ever seen a classic Warner Bros. crime film. That said, The Racket is still a lot of fun to watch and director Lewis Milestone keeps the story moving at a good pace. At the very least, it’s interesting to see a gangster film that was actually made during the gangster era. Nick Scarsi was based on Al Capone and, perhaps not surprisingly, the film was banned in Chicago when it was originally released.

The film shows up frequently on TCM and it’s also available on YouTube. And it can be watched below!

The Daily Grindhouse: Shoot (dir. by Harvey Hart)

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I explained yesterday in my review of the 1935 film version of Les Miserables, one of my resolutions for 2013 is to review a film a day, alternating between films that were nominated for an Oscar and film’s that most certainly were not. Today’s film stars two Oscar winners (Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine) but it was not nominated for any awards itself. Along with being ignored by the Academy, this film is unfairly obscure and has an oddly bad reputation among cult movie fans. The movie is a Canadian exploitation film from 1976 and it’s probably even more relevant today than when it was first made. The name of the film? Shoot.

Rex (played by Cliff Robertson) is a veteran of the National Guard, a respected community leader in his small town, and a man who loves his guns. His house is full of guns of all shapes and sizes and he’s so proud of his military background that the living room even appears to have camouflage style wallpaper. From the film’s opening shots, it quickly establishes that Rex is not comfortable being civilized. The few attempts that he makes to speak to his wife are painfully awkward. Rex only feels truly alive during the weekends that he spends out in the wilderness, hunting with his buddies, played by Ernest Borgnine and Henry Silva. His friends look up to Rex as their leader, to the extent that one of them refers to Rex as being the “senior officer in charge.”

During one hunting trip, Rex and his heavily armed friends pause to rest next to a river. Suddenly, on the other side of the river, another group of heavily armed strangers show up. They stare at each other for a few minutes before suddenly, a shot rings out. The two groups start shooting at each other. One man is wounded and another is killed before Robertson and his group retreat to the security of Borgnine’s cabin.

Instead of going to the police, Robertson convinces his group to keep the incident a secret. They return to town, swearing not to tell anyone about what’s happened. However, Robertson’s paranoia gets the better of him. Before long, he’s convinced himself that the other group is going to seek revenge and that the only way to survive is to kill them first. Along with the hot-headed Silva, Robertson recruits a small army of townsfolk to return with him to the wilderness. Only Borgnine questions the wisdom of Robertson’s plan. The whole thing eventually leads to a genuinely shocking and disturbing climax.

Robertson and his friends are obviously meant to be representatives of American gun culture and to call Shoot heavy-handed would be a bit of an understatement. That said, Shoot is still an undeniably effective piece of propaganda. Robertson, Silva, and Borgnine all give excellent performances and director Harvey Hart manages to generate and maintain a good deal of suspense concerning just what (if anything) Robertson is going to find waiting for him in the wilderness. Though the film has its slow spots, the emphasis on characterization and suspense makes the surprise ending all the more effective.

Shoot is not an easy film to see. It has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray and I only happened to learn of it because I was bored one day and I was flipping through one of my film reference books. However, the film has recently been uploaded to YouTube and here it is:

Film Review: Les Miserables (dir. by Richard Boleslawski)

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Every year, I set a few goals for myself. In 2012, for instance, my goal was to stop worrying so much about achieving unrealistic goals. For 2013, my goal is to post a film review a day, alternating between reviews of films that have been nominated for Academy Awards and films that most assuredly were not.

With that in mind, I’d like to get things started by taking a look at Les Miserables. Now, I’m not talking about the Tom Hooper-directed musical extravaganza that’s currently playing at a theater near you. Instead, I’m talking about the Les Miserables that was directed by Richard Boleslawski and which was nominated for best picture of 1935. (It lost to another literary adaptation that featured Charles Laughton as a classic villain, Mutiny On The Bounty.) As opposed to Hooper’s film, this version of Les Miserables is not based on a Broadway musical. Instead, it’s a condensed version of Victor Hugo’s original novel.

As opposed to the novel, Les Miserables takes a straight-forward chronological approach to telling the story of Jean Valjean. We start with Valjean (played here by Fredric March) being sentenced to prison and then follow him through his experiences in prison. We watch as the embittered Valjean first meets the kindly bishop (played here by Cedric Hardwicke) who turns his life around. Valjean becomes both a mayor and the protector of the young Cosette, who eventually ends up falling in love with the young revolutionary Marius. Thoughout all of this, Valjean is pursued by the obsessive Inspector Javert (Charles Laughton).

As a film, Les Miserables is more faithful to the spirit of Hugo’s original novel than to the exact details. For instance, in this film, Javert first encounters Valjean while the latter is in prison. While this is clearly different from the novel, it works perfectly from a cinematic point of view. As well, the film jettisons many of the book’s longer digressions and instead, it focuses on the characters of Valjean and Javert. As such, characters like Cosette and Marius are only important (and considered) in how they relate to the two main characters. Fortunately, Valjean and Javert are played by two of the best actors to ever appear on screen.

While Charles Laughton, in the role of Javert, gets to the give the showier performance, the film is rightfully dominated by Fredric March’s quietly determined performance as Jean Valjean. Valjean is a truly complex character who, over the course of the film, goes from being bitter and angry to kindly and strong and March perfectly captures each side of Valjean’s personality. As an actor, Fredric March is not as well-remembered as some of his contemporaries (like Charles Laughton, for instance). However, in this film, Fredric March proves himself to be the perfect Jean Valjean. He is the Jean Valjean that all other Valjeans must be judged against.

While director Richard Boleslaswki is hardly a household name (I have to admit that I had never heard of him before I saw this film), his work on Les Miserables is impressive. Interestingly, he directs the film almost as if it was a combination of a Warner Bros. gangster film and a Universal monster film. (It’s easy to imagine some alternative universe where his version of Les Miserables starred Edward G. Robinson as Valjean and Boris Karloff as Javert.) He’s at his strongest is the dream-like sequence where Valjean carries the wounded Marius through the sewers of Paris.

While Les Miserables may not be a perfect film, it is the perfect introduction to Hugo’s novel. Incidentally, the most faithful cinematic adaptation of Les Miserables actually came out a year before the Boleslawski version. It was a French film that had a running time of five hours. It occasionally turns up on TCM and, like the 1935 version, it’s well-worth watching.

Lisa Marie Picks The 16 Worst Films Of 2012

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s be honest: 2012 sucked. In fact, and I can say this because I’m secretly a history nerd, 2012 was the worst year since 1934. Who needs a zombie apocalypse when you’ve got 2012?

At the same time, it was also a strangely bland year for the movies. Just as there weren’t any massively brilliant films, there weren’t that many huge disasters. Instead, it was a year that celebrated blandness. Fortunately, for me and my love of making lists, there were still just enough remarkably bad films for me to make out my annual worst of the year list. Yay!

Listed in descending order, here are my picks for the worst of 2012.*

16) The Paperboy

15) Seeking a Friend For The End Of The World

14) Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

13) The Raven

12) The Trouble With Bliss

11) Savages

10) A Thousand Words

9) 96 Minutes

8) Haywire

7) Dead Season

6) This Means War

5) Rock of Ages

4) Project X

3) The Devil Inside

2) The Wicker Tree

And my pick for both the worst film of 2012 and perhaps one of the worst films ever made…

1) Branded

Tomorrow, I’ll be continuing my look back at 2012 with my picks for the 10 best songs of the year.

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* Needless to say, these picks reflect my opinion and my opinion alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the other writers here at the Shattered Lens. Hopefully, some of them will post their own lists.

Lisa Marie’s Favorite Film of 2012: Anna Karenina (dir by Joe Wright)

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the most part, 2012 was a bland year as far as cinema is concerned. The most acclaimed films of the year (Argo and Lincoln being two obvious examples) were well-made and often entertaining but they were hardly revolutionary. 2012 was the year that the establishment told us what we should enjoy and, for the most part, film critics slavishly hopped on the bandwagon. As you can probably guess, 2012 was not my favorite year as far as the movies are concerned. That said, there were a few films that gave me hope. As the year ends, despite being underwhelmed by most of the films that were released, there are a few that I truly did love.

My favorite film of 2011 was a criminally underappreciated film from director Joe Wright. That name of that film was Hanna. My favorite film of 2012 is another criminally underappreciated film from director Joe Wright. The name of this film? Anna Karenina.*

History has a way of repeating itself.

Anna Karenina is, of course, based on the classic novel by Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (played, quite brilliantly, by Kiera Knightley) is the wife of the noble (but somewhat boring and judgmental) Russian statesman Alex Karenin (Jude Law, who is also quite brilliant and rather tragic in a role that, in lesser hands, could have become a stock villain). When Anna’s good-for-nothing brother (played in a wonderfully comedic performance by Matthew MacFayden) is caught cheating on his wife, Anna leaves her safe home in St. Petersburg and travels to Moscow where she helps to save her brother’s marriage and meets Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

Among the members of the Russian high society, it is well-known that Vronsky is pursuing the hand of the young and beautiful Kitty (Alicia Vikander, who generates a lot of sympathy for a character who, at the start of the film, could easily have been portrayed as just a spoiled brat). However, at the ball where it is widely expected that Vronsky will ask Kitty to marry him, Vronsky creates a scandal by dancing with Anna instead.

Vronsky loses interest in Kitty and instead, he now obsessively pursues the married Anna. Though Anna is resistant at first, she finally gives in and embarks on an adulterous affair with Vronsky, resulting in scandal and tragedy.

Again, history repeats itself. The story of Anna Karenina is a familiar one that has been told repeatedly over the ages. That’s one reason why Tolstoy’s novel has remained one of the greatest novels ever written and why it has been adapted into so many other mediums. Director Joe Wright begins Anna Karenina with the assumption that the majority of the people in his audience already know the story of Anna’s ill-fated love affair with Vronsky. As such, he puts less emphasis on the story itself and more on how the story is told.

Anna Karenina is a masterpiece of style. When the film opens, Wright has his actors literally performing on a stage. When Anna travels to Moscow, a miniature train is seen rolling across the stage. When the scene changes from a factory to a high society ball, the factory workers walk backstage, change costumes, and then step back onstage, suddenly transformed into noblemen. At one point, we even see a janitor nonchalantly cleaning up the now-empty theater while the story continues to play out on the stage in front of him. When Anna and Vronsky dance for the first time, the other actors freeze in place and a spotlight shines down on the dancing couple. It’s an amazingly romantic moment, one to which anyone who has ever been infatuated will be able to relate. Finally, a door opens onstage and the characters (and the viewing audience) are able to step out into the “real” world but, throughout the film, we occasionally return to that stage. While several critics have criticized this aspect of the film, I thought it was brilliant. By literally putting his actors on stage, Wright both acknowledges that this is a story that may be familiar but can be interpreted in many different ways and he also drives home the point that, ultimately, we are all just actors on a stage, being observed and judged by a society that is often hostile to any sign of individual desire or unpredictable emotion.

Needless to say, the film’s extreme stylization is not for everyone. That’s actually one of the reasons that I love this version of Anna Karenina so much. In a year that was almost excessively safe, Joe Wright took a risk and, as a result, encouraged us to look at a familiar story in a different way. For that reason, Anna Karenina is my favorite film of 2012.

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* For the record, my second favorite film of 2012 was The Cabin In The Woods.

A Blast From The Past: Dating (1970)

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I may have mentioned a few times in the past, I am secretly a huge history nerd. I am fascinated by the past and I’ve discovered that one of the best ways to learn about the past is to watch movies that were specifically made to be shown to the children and teenagers of the past. I’m talking, of course, about educational films.

Take, for instance, this oddly dark little gem from 1970: Dating.

Dating may, on the surface, appear to just be an educational film about teen dating but I think it’s actually a portrait of generational ennui, envy, and repression. It also features some vintage 70s fashion, dancing, and perhaps the most dreary party in the history of dreary parties. If nothing else, this film shows that while the customs may change, the drama remains the same.

Before there was Degrassi, there was Dating!

Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (dir. by Peter Jackson)

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Arleigh

It’s hard to believe that’s it’s been 11 years since Peter Jackson released The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on the masses in 2001. There were much trepidation from Tolkien fans that Jackson (who had been known mostly for low-budget splatter horror-comedies) wouldn’t be able to handle the monumental task of adapting what many consider the greatest novel ever written in the 20th century. Tolkien’s epic fantasy became the standard by which fnatasy epics would be compared to for decades to come and still do. To say that Jackson succeeded in this epic task would be an understatement. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would hoard awards from 2001 to 2003 and also box-office receipts to make any dwarf-lord green with envy.

It’s now 2012 and we finally have the release of Jackson’s next trip into Middle-Earth as he adapts another of Tolkien’s beloved novels. This time he tackles The Hobbit which for some Tolkien fans remains their favorite of the author’s works. It’s a novel that might not have the epic scope and breadth of The Lord of the Rings, but what it lacks in that department it more than makes up in being a fun, adventure tale of a curious hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, a wizard named Gandalf the Grey and a fellowship of twelve dwarfs led by one Thorin Oakenshield of Erebor.

The Hobbit was originally written as a children’s book, but in later years Tolkien would retcon some parts of the novel to better fit with his magnum opus in The Lord of the Rings.It’s this revised version of that children’s story that Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo Del Toro would adapt for the big-screen. Initially a two-film set that would tell the story of Bilbo and his merry band of adventurers, but it has since been expanded to become a trilogy as Jackson and his writers take a page out of Tolkien’s bag of tricks and try to tie-in this latest trilogy to the Lord of the Rings which precedes it by a over a decade.

The first film in this new trilogy is called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and we begin by returning to sometime before the beginning of the first trilogy’s first film. We see the aged Bilbo reminiscing of his adventures 60 years hence and deciding to put it to pen and paper as a sort of memoir of that adventure to reclaim the lost dwarf-hold of Erebor. It’s in this opening that we get to see Frodo once more (played once again by Elijah Wood who doesn’t seem to have aged) prior to him taking up the One Ring.

Bilbo recounts to Frodo the realm of Erebor deep inside the Lonely Mountain east of the Shire to Frodo and how it’s wealth in silver, mithril, gold and precious gems became well-known throughout Middle-Earth. Yet, as Bilbo warns, it’s the very sickness of avarice by Erebor’s Thror the King which seals the dwarf-hold’s doom. We learn that hoards of wealth does more than light up the dwarf king’s eyes with greed but also brings the attention of one of the very last dragon’s in Middle-Earth. The arrival of Smaug to Erebor signals the death of not just that dwarf realm, but the surrounding human town of Dale. The surviving dwarfs of Erebor flee in a massive diaspora towards any safe haven willing to take them in. What was once a proud and powerful realm has now been sundered and it’s afterwards that we get to the meat of the film’s story.

Martin Freeman as a younger Bilbo Baggins was more than just great casting but one which the film needed if one was to believe that this young Bilbo would grow old to be the Ian Holm one fans of the first trilogy have come to know well. His performance as Bilbo Baggins of Bag End becomes the anchor from which the rest of the company would revolve around. When we first meet Freeman as Bilbo he’s not the adventurer that he would become, but a hobbit that’s respectable and one not for doing anything foolish like going on adventures. Yet, his lot in life changes as Gandalf maneuvers the situation so that he becomes embroiled in the quest by Thorin Oakenshield (played by Richard Armitage) to retake his ancestral lands of Erebor and it’s massive wealth from Smaug who has taken it for his lair.

While many would think that a film called The Hobbit would focus on Bilbo I thought the way the film unfolded that this story was all about the dwarfs with extra focus on the single-minded Thorin who comes off initially as both condescending, superior and dismissive of poor old Bilbo. The film never fails to show how much Thorin thinks so less of Bilbo yet throughout the film’s two and a half and more running time we see cracks in Thorin’s ice-cold demeanor towards the young hobbit. By film’s end we see just how wrong Thorin has been of Bilbo’s worth and it makes for one of the film’s more emotional scenes when Thorin realizes this as well.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not just about a brooding dwarf prince and his motley band of dwarfs getting into one trouble after the next once they’ve left the Shire with Bilbo. The film also brings on a parallel storyline which tries to lay down the foundation that would tie this new trilogy with the first one. It’s the storyline of the Great Necromancer that Gandalf and a fellow wizard, Radagast the Brown, suspect might be the Great Enemy returned. We learn soon enough during the White Council in Rivendell (attended by Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond and Saruman the White) that this so-called Necromancer might be Sauron looking to regain his former strength and gather an army to him.

It’s this second storyline that get’s sandwiched within the Thorin Oakenshield Fellowship quest that comes off a bit awkward in the film’s overall narrative flow. Where the film is all about fun adventuring and camaraderie when the dwarfs and Bilbo are on the screen, when they’re not and the film tries to tell us about Sauron’s eventual return the film slows down. These scenes are not uninteresting. On it’s own these sequences bring back the epic tone of the original trilogy and brings it into this film, but it’s that very grandiose theme that seems out of place in what is simply a “men on a mission” story.

Fortunately, we don’t spend too much time dwelling on this side-story. The final third of the film is all about Thorin and company needing to escape from one goblin lair and orc ambush to another. The last 45 minutes or so flies back swiftly after a very uneven first two hours that would make more than a few theater-goers look at their watch. The wait is worth it as we see that Jackson hasn’t forgotten how to choreograph and stage fantasy action scenes. While the use of CGI might be more evident this time around than the previous three films they’re still small compared to other blockbuster films of it’s type. It’s still all about WETA practical effects, make-up and costumes that combine to create a world that’s become familiar yet still have a sense of newness to them as we see new areas of Middle-Earth only mentioned in brief passing in the original trilogy.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a wonderful return to the world of Middle-Earth. It is not without it’s missteps and flaws, but it also gets saved by some great performances from the ensemble cast which makes up the dwarfs. The aerial shots of the New Zealand’s eclectic geography shows just how much cinematographer Andrew Lesnie has become such a major component of making Middle-Earth come alive. Even the return of Howard Shore as the film’s composer was a welcome that brought more than a few smiles.

There’s no way of talking about The Hobbit without bringing up the stylistic gamble Peter Jackson has taken in filming this film and the rest of the trilogy in 48fps instead of the traditional 24fps (frames per second) that filmmakers have been using for almost a hundred years now. It’s an aesthetic choice that gives the film a overly realistic look akin to watching a stage production live. Everything looks too perfect and the High-Frame Rate (HFR) takes away some of the cinematic look which many have grown up seeing every time they watch a film. This new filming style works in certain areas like wide shots of the outdoor scenes. Whether it’s the emerald green rolling hills of the Shire to the snowcapped Alpine peaks of the Misty Mountains, these scenes in HFR came out beautiful. It’s when the film switches over to a much more enclosed and personal space within rooms and halls that we get the unusual “soap opera” look some have complained about. It takes a bit of getting used to, but some make the adjustment quickly enough while others may never make the adjustment.

Yet, it is when the film shows a CGI-created sequence that the HFR fails. While the doubling of the frame rate during filming has made the 3D in the film come off smoothly it did make some of the CG-effects come off as too video game-like. A sequence earlier in the film where we see a flashback of Thorin and the dwarfs of Erebor trying to retake another fallen dwarf hold in Moria (Khazadum in dwarfish) looks like a cinematic cutscene as a dwarf army charges and battles it out with an orc and goblin force which had taken Moria as it’s own.

All the scenes where HFR fails to come off as believable turn out better when The Hobbit was seen in traditional 24fps. I actually think that downscaling the film from it’s original HFR to a more traditional film frame speed of 24fps gave the film an even more magical look than the original trilogy. Jackson and his team of filmmakers have two more films to release and hopefully take some of the criticism this first film has received about HFR that they tweak and work on making the new style much more believable instead of taking the audience out of the film’s narrative.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey doesn’t come off as grandiose as the original trilogy and for some that might come as a disappointment. Yet, as an adventure film it more than does it’s job to fully entertain it’s audience while, at the same, time reminding it’s audience how much this film and this trilogy will lead into The Lord of the Rings. I recommend that people just see the film and decide on their own whether it’s a worthy addition to the Middle-Earth saga as seen through the eyes of Peter Jackson. I, for one, think it is and with two more films left we shall see whether Jackson’s return to Middle-Earth has been a triumphant one or not.

I Saw The Hobbit

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Semtex Skittle

Full disclosure (this paragraph is something of an insane rant and has nothing to do with the Hobbit, so feel free to skip it): I am in the incredibly tiny minority who was not overly impressed with the Lord of the Rings films. While I thought that they did an exemplary job of capturing the setting, sights and sounds of Middle Earth, and even the grand scope of Tolkien’s masterwork, I found some of the inexplicable changes to the core story that started appearing in The Two Towers (why is Faramir a dick? The whole point of his character is that he is unlike Boromir in aspect. He is something greater. Like Aragorn. He’s a reason to hope. Why does Faramir take Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath? So we can see it under siege? Probably. Sam then somehow fends off a Nazgul on winged steed by tackling Frodo and crying out. Hmmmmm…swiss cheese. If Aragorn’s army of ghosts can simply sweep across the field and massacre Sauron’s entire army without apparent effort or effect… and Aragorn knows Sauron has another, bigger army… why doesn’t he just go ahead and spend the ten minutes to kill that army too? I’m sure the spirits of the dead would be willing to stay off their eternal rest for ten minutes. Especially because they’re under you control, Aragorn. King of the Dummies.) In addition, Return of the King in particular is much too long. Since the Hobbit has now been split into a stunning three films (!) … in retrospect it seems like Return of the King could definitely have occupied two. Particularly since some of the action elements from The Two Towers were woven into it and… okay.

Moving on.

I saw The Hobbit! Against my wishes, and against my better judgment, I went on a double date sort of affair in the bitter cold to take in this pre-coronated motion picture just days after its release. Fearing the worst, I brought along a large flask filled to the brim with Kraken spiced rum and decided I wouldn’t be shy about pulling off of it. I didn’t really end up needing to, much to my surprise… because here’s the thing about The Hobbit: I liked it. Sort of. Mostly. Oh, more full disclosure: I saw the film in two dimensions at the standard twenty-four frames per second. We didn’t feel like driving to a fancy theater.

As I’d come to expect from Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, the production here is outstanding. From the very instant The Hobbit begins, we’re drawn back into the realm of Middle Earth. Dwarves, Elves, and now… a dragon. Of course, one of the major reveals that Jackson is keeping for his second film is Smaug, so we don’t see more than the ophoid slit of his eye in what really amounts to an extended intro that describes the history of Erebor, its fall, and the escape of a few dwarves, including Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). Once we’re all caught up, we return to Hobbiton, and meet Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). Freeman is excellent as the earnest, earthy Bilbo, who is friendly and considerate, but really doesn’t feel like he wants to be involved in an adventure at all … at first. It’s in this first section at Bilbo’s hobbit hole that, in my estimation, the film shines most. The dwarves of Thorin’s company arrive in a steady stream, along with the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and treat Bilbo to a night of drinking and feasting… and reminiscing about their lost home, the twilight of the dwarven people, and their enmity with the goblins of the mountains. The music, the mood, the performances, are superb, and by morning… I was as ready as Bilbo was to follow Thorin on his damn fool idealistic crusdade.

The film’s tone throughout mostly remains what I feel to be appropriate to the story being told. The Hobbit is a much more lighthearted affair than the ponderous material of The Lord of the Rings. Instead of twisted Uruks made by the unholy marriage of man and goblin, we have goblins that do a lot of singing and arguing among themselves, and who ultimately don’t seem particularly organized or threatening. Perhaps without the all-possessing will of Sauron behind them, goblins are an essentially pathetic people. There are stupid trolls, dumb goblins, and running axe and sword fights to spare, including some invented and extended action sequences which are a necessity in any three hour long fantasy film epic. The problems that the Hobbit suffers, and they are relatively few but fairly damning, universally occur when it drifts away from this lighthearted tone and fast pacing.

Without going into too much detail, let me just say that Jackson crams the final meeting of the White Council (if you don’t know what that is, believe me, there is not time for a lengthy explanation, but check the footnote at the bottom for the cliff notes version) as a scene in the middle of the film that, frankly, goes on forever. Christopher Lee and Cate Blanchette reprise their roles (Saruman and Lady Galadriel, respectively) from the Lord of the Rings films and join Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Gandalf in some lengthy pontificating about the threat posed by The Necromancer, the evil force which is corrupting Mirkwood from within. Because this film doesn’t ever reach Mirkwood, we haven’t seen enough of Mirkwood yet to really understand its corruption, and while the White Council’s final meeting does happen concurrently with the events of the Hobbit, it has essentially nothing to do with that story, this scene is dead weight. It absolutely kills the momentum of the film. Worse yet? It’s book-ended by two long sequences where Bilbo Baggins has, essentially, no lines at all and spends huge periods of time off the screen. Now, I may not be a famous movie director, but I have watched a lot of movies in my life… and I can tell you that there’s a problem if your character driven fantasy story about a single unlikely hero and his friends excludes that unlikely hero from a third of its run time. It’s triply aggravating because Freeman is so magnetic as Bilbo when he’s on-screen.

Because of this real problem in the mid-point of the film, the Hobbit very much loses its way for a while, even if you happen to have read the novel and already know how the story is going to play out. This was a real disappointment for me, as I actually thought one of the few genuinely great bits of the script and directing in the Lords of the Rings trilogies was editing action and plot points smartly to keep the films moving. That doesn’t happen here. The setting and music eventually drug me back in (also, the riddle-telling sequence with Gollum (a returning Andy Serkis) is delightful. It has a lot to do with Martin Freeman. I might have a little man crush.) and I was with the movie again by the finale, but I really did feel disappointed when I walked out of the theater, and that sucked after such a promising start.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a recommendation, see The Hobbit! I can’t speak as to the technology additives I’m afraid, but the film itself is enjoyable enough. Just don’t expect a masterpiece, because this film, while good… falls well short of great.

Tolkien Nerd Footnote: The White Council – This is a group comprised of the wizards (Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast the Brown, and two Blue Wizards who are MIA) and the leaders of the Elves (Elrond, Galadriel, and Ciridan), though as Gandalf bears Ciridan’s ring and he spends all his time building escape ships, he doesn’t show up for this dance. Basically, the White Council was the body of good powers in the world that kept things peaceful and friendly during Sauron’s long slumber. They’re mentioned only in passing except during The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf tells the story that is recounted for us live in this film. Their last act was to put the Necromancer out of Mirkwood, after Gandalf discovered that the Necromancer was, in all likelihood, Sauron garbed in a lesser form to pull the proverbial wool over the council’s eyes.

Film Review: Hitchcock (dir by Sacha Gervasi)

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Alfred Hitchcock is one of those iconic cultural figures who will never go out of style. Though he’s been dead longer than I’ve been alive, he’s still one of my favorite directors. If I see a Hitchcock film listed in the TV schedule, I can guarantee that I will find the time to watch it. Whether its The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Strangers On A Train, Topaz, or Frenzy, if it’s Hitchcock, I’m there. And I’m not alone as far as this is concerned. If Hitchcock hadn’t made The Birds, James Nguyen would never have made Birdemic. If Hitchcock hadn’t made Psycho, hundreds of low-budget horror films would never have had a chance to be distributed on DVD by Anchor Bay.

While it may have been Vertigo that was recently named the best film of all time by the Sight and Sound Poll, Psycho remains Hitchcock’s best known and most popular film. Psycho is certainly my favorite Hitchcock film, which is why I was certainly curious when I first heard about Hitchcock, a new movie that claims to tell the true story behind the making of Psycho.

Hitchcock opens with 60 year-old Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) trying to figure out how to follow up the success of North By Northwest. Hitchcock settles on adapting a little-regarded pulp novel that’s based on the true life crimes of serial killer Ed Gein. Over the objections of the censors, the studio, and all of his associates, Hitchcock makes Psycho his next film. At the same time, his wife Alma (Helen Mirren) deals with living in the shadow of her famous husband. While Hitchcock devotes all of his time to his film and obsessing over his leading actresses, Alma find herself tempted by a slick screenwriter named Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston).

(Has anyone good ever been named Whitfield Cook?)

As a film, Hitchcock is likable but shallow. Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren have great chemistry and they’re a lot of fun to watch but you never truly believe that you’re watching the true story of the making of a movie that changed cinematic history. Whenever Hitchcock threatens to become truly insightful about the artistic process, the story abruptly cuts away to another scene of Alma writing on the beach with Whitfield Cook. It doesn’t help that Danny Huston plays Cook as such an obvious cad that it actually diminishes Alma as character when she doesn’t immediately see through him.

Similarly, in the role of Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins gives a performance that is very likable and quite watchable but, in the end, still feels rather shallow. His performance feels like a good and entertaining impersonation but it never quite feels real. The closest that the film (and Hopkins) comes to suggesting any of Hitchcock’s inner demons is when he imagines having a conversation with Ed Gein (played by Michael Wincott). These scenes feel terribly out-of-place when compared to the rest of the film.

The actresses playing the women in Hitchcock’s life fare a little bit better. Jessica Biel and Scarlett Johansson are well-cast as Vera Miles and Janet Leigh, respectively. Helen Mirren is widely expected to earn an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Alma and she does have several strong scenes in Hitchcock. As I watched the film, I certainly could relate to Alma’s desire to be taken seriously as an individual and her frustration with being defined solely by the vows of marriage. It’s a feeling that Mirren captures perfectly.

In the end, Mirren aside, Hitchcock is entertaining but forgettable.