The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the dwarves prepare to battle the goblins and their king.

*** out of ****

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first part in an epic trilogy adapted from J.R.R.Tolkien’s short children’s novel. The 1937 book would introduce young readers to a mystical land known as Middle-earth and would be revisited in his epically complex and mature Lord of the Rings trilogy, which as we all know, has already been brought to the big screen in the form of three huge award-winning live-action movies. Those films -and this one, were made by New Zealand’s ambitiously talented director Peter Jackson.

Unlike the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit is not a dark journey for the fate of the world. It is an adventure story about Frodo’s uncle Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman of The BBC’s The Office and Sherlock) and a long adventure for which he would embark, to help a group of ragtag dwarves reclaim their long lost city and its treasure from a dangerous dragon.  Along the way Bilbo will acquire a seemingly innocent magic ring, which allows him to vanish when in danger. We all know that there will be terrible consequences as a result of this find but that’s another story.

While Jackson and Co. condensed the hell out of the Lord of the Rings books for the screen (and still wound up with three very long movies) they’ve taken the short Hobbit book and expanded through fleshed-out events and characters simply referred to in Tolkien’s literature and created entirely original material that doesn’t seem too out of place.  By the end of this movie, they’ve appropriately covered about a third of the book and found a good stopping place.

I’m a big fan of these movies and the work of Peter Jackson, so I cannot claim to be without bias. I’ve seen the movie twice now and will definitely see it again before it leaves theaters. This is a movie filled with effective fan service and tells a back story that feels way more natural and connected than another prequel trilogy you many know of.

The visuals are a feast of rich escapist eye candy, even when they don’t look perfectly real. I love Martin Freeman as young Bilbo Baggins. He creates a humorously reluctant and nervous rendition that seems worthy of Ian Holm’s approach to the character as an old man.

The return of Gollum in this movie is maybe the best part, with Andy Serkis giving a motion-capture performance that may outdo his scenes in the other films (The animation on the character has also advanced incredibly). The Dwarves are a fun bunch of characters with potential for development that may be reserved for the next two films. Most of the creatures look great. The Trolls and the Great Goblin thrive in their comic nastiness.

While the addition of Radagast the Brown Wizard (Sylvester McCoy), is delightfully quirky, I found his sled pulled by rabbits and the action scene that surrounded it to be the biggest eye-sore in the movie. It’s an original scene that I could do without. The other unwanted element is a new antagonist for this trilogy, a pale warrior Orc seeking to destroy the dwarves and find his way back to the videogame he came from.  

If you hated the Lord of the Rings movies, there’s no way you’ll like this one. It’s sillier, more fantastical, and has way more computer animation. If you loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy but never read The Hobbit you should be prepared for a heavy dose of Disney-esque whimsy. If you’re like me, and can excuse Peter Jackson of his hunger for excess (because you know you want it), prepare for a lot of fun.

Now… How to see it? Well this brings me to a unique subject this movie offers. There are multiple ways to see this film ranging from standard-motion 2D (which will resemble the experience of watching the previous trilogy) to seeing it in the new controversial High Frame Rate 3D (which will not look the way you normally see movies in the theater). The latter of those two is an experiment, which calls to question the small amount of motion information we’ve been accustomed to seeing throughout the history of cinema. I will dismiss claims that it is an overwhelming experience, which will give you a headache. If anything, I thought it made the motion seem more life-like and the 3D more comfortable. That doesn’t mean that it felt normal to see characters in a fantasy movie move around with the fluidity one would expect from a live sports broadcast. This is a process I would recommend for the most open-minded of moviegoers, tech-heads, and unbiased people who don’t see movies often. I would not suggest it to your average movie fan. Thankfully for them, it down-converts to the standard frame rate seamlessly. And there’s nothing wrong with seeing a bright and colorful two-dimensional image on the big screen.

Hitchcock

Scarlett Johansson is Janet Leigh, Anthony Hopkins is Hitchcock, and Helen Mirren is his wife.

** out of ****

Hitchcock is a new biopic on the famous director revolved around the making of Psycho which would become his most notorious and successful film. I suppose the notion here, is that the famous horror movie and everything that surrounded its production defines the title character.

It winds up being an incredibly plain and shallow experience of a movie with a People Magazine perspective on his personal life while the theme of his ingenious craft takes the back seat. I felt like I was viewing a TV movie on the big screen -Though it did have a high caliber cast -So let’s say, an HBO–made movie.

Anthony Hopkins plays the bloated well-spoken British caricature famous for his deranged yet dry sense of humor. It’s a performance that captures his public image but attempts to integrate that persona into his private life -which I didn’t buy.

While this movie is about the man, it is also about the woman behind the man. His wife, Alma Reville, is played by Helen Mirren as a woman with cutting determination to support her husband’s projects. This movie makes the case that she was his strongest collaborator and tolerated a lot from him as he lusted after his leading ladies while simultaneously jealous of her time. While she lives a life devoted to managing her husband without much credit, she strives for artistic fulfillment and takes on a writing project with screenwriter Whitfield Cook. Hitch recognizes the potential for an affair between the two, which results in irate outbursts while on the set of his film.

He begins to have violent fantasies and the movie regularly creates pointless fantasy sequences of Hitch conversing with serial killer Ed Gein. Why? Because Psycho was loosely based on the man? Because Hitch sees his inner darkness as being similar to Gein’s? It just comes off as silly superficial filmmaking.

The imposition of the marriage drama and Hitchcock’s dark psychology feel like nothing more than conjecture on the part of this film’s makers and doesn’t prove to be interesting. Screenwriter John J. McLaughlin (Black Swan) may have delivered a screenplay with potential, but the direction of Sacha Gervasi seems to be distracted with making everything feel lush, colorful, and nostalgic rather than real.

I do admire how this is about the making of a movie and the restraint to show any authentic or reenacted footage of that movie. When Psycho is finally premiered, all you see are audience reactions while Hitch hangs out in the lobby amused by the sound of their screams.

Hitch’s personal assistant, Peggy Robertson (Toni Collette) and his agent, destined for Hollywood greatness, Lew Wasserman (Michael Stuhlbarg), are given good screen time. What about his artistic collaborators? Where’s the eccentric costume designer Edith Head? Where’s the angry composer Bernard Herrmann? The legendary title designer Saul Bass is nowhere in this movie nor does his work have an influence on the film’s aesthetics.

This film rightly takes time to demonstrate how Psycho was a risk for the director who was banking on his success to stretch the boundaries of the horror genre and was still met with resistance from Paramount Pictures and the ratings board. Unfortunately the Hollywood politics are laid out in condescending layman’s terms for the benefit of the audience. Don’t expect Aaron Sorkin dialogue here.

Hitch was forced to shoot the movie on a small budget but they don’t seem to display the results of this except for choosing lesser-known stars. A pleasant surprise in this film was how the new stars hired to play stars of the past didn’t look their parts but they seemed to pull it off. Okay, I saw no connection between Jessica Biel and Vera Miles, but Scarlett Johansson actually made a decent Janet Leigh and James D’Arcy made an incredible Anthony Perkins.

I think one of the most remarkable facts that this movie failed to mention was how the forced low-budget led them to shoot Psycho in black and white which had the artistic benefit of filtering the gory imagery the film would display.

The real dissatisfaction I felt was the movie’s preoccupation with celebrity icons, money, desire and scandal. Maybe the great filmmaker himself loved all of those things but if they intended to make a Hitchcock movie about Hitchcock, they should have left the job to Brian De Palma. 

Half way through the film, I realized that despite my love for Vertigo, North by Northwest, Rope, Rear Window and my appreciation for many others (Psycho included), I’m only interested in the professional artist behind them. The man? I was never very interested and I walked away from this film even less interested.

Here's the best review I've read on the film.

Life of Pi

Suraj Sharma in Ang Lee's Life of Pi

**** out of ****

I was moved by Ang Lee’s new movie, Life of Pi which achieves it’s beauty from all the state-of-the-art digital utilities imaginable. It is a mysterious spiritual journey, which invites the audience to experience something interpretive.

I found the computer-generated imagery in Life of Pi to be the kind that is so immersive, that my concept of its artificiality faded away. It’s the kind of visuals that are tailored to evoke emotions and make the achievement of photo-realism a second priority.

Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain) has made a variety of different films and most of them are sad stories. This is the most hopeful and life affirming of them all. Based on Yan Martel’s 2001 fantasy novel, it follows the adventures of a shipwrecked Indian boy stuck in a lifeboat with a hungry tiger. His struggle to co-exist with the tiger in a survival situation is filled with symbolism in a way that makes me understand why many readers thought this to be an un-filmable story. It is almost abstract in concept.

I’d be interested to know what fans of the book found to be lost in translation because I got a lot out of this story. It had the kind of euphoric effect I crave from cinema and rarely find in a 3D movie like one should expect.

Anna Karenina

Keira Knightley in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina

**1/2 out of ****

Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley, is the first version in a long legacy of cinematic incarnations that I have seen. I have not read Tolstoy's novel nor am I versed in Russian literature. Let's call my perspective on the matter fresh -to put it lightly. This version is directed by the very talented Joe Wright -whose work has a rich quality which is reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick films. This is his third period costume drama (as well as his third film to star Knightley). His work with the genre is very good at avoiding the clichés you would normally come to expect and seems to be guided with genuine imagination and creativity that has potential to give a movie life. His 2007 film, Atonement is a remarkable accomplishment to say the least and I think it remains his best film.

Wright has taken a very unconventional approach to this material by staging most of it like one would a theatrical production. He wants the audience to imagine the environments more than see them. Most of the film is shot on old dilapidated theater stages. There’s even a scene when a character makes a trip through a poor part of town passing by peasants in what is supposed to be the streets but is set in the loft above the stage surrounded by ropes and sandbags.

The idea of making a film about infidelity in nineteenth century Russian aristocracy on a theater stage implies a lot about how everyone is participating in the theater of life and must play their part. The film occasionally parts from the theater atmosphere suggesting liberation from the artifice of high society.

As much as I love what Wright is attempting to do, I don’t think it really works. I felt an absolute detachment from the emotion of this story. I think it is possible to shoot a film this way and get the audience involved but Wright’s pacing is too rapid for that to work very well. The great screenwriter, Tom Stoppard (Brazil), cannot be faulted for his work here. This is the issue of ambitious experimental direction, which dishes out narrative in a dizzying stylized fashion that makes a film an unquestionable aesthetic masterpiece but unintentionally buries the story.

I think that this film has a future for argument and speculation. It has a bold artistic drive and is very worth seeing if you are intrigued by the daring ideas of visionary filmmakers. I still admire Wright for making the movie he wanted to make.

Roger Ebert rightly says at the end of his review:

This is a sumptuous film — extravagantly staged and photographed, perhaps too much so for its own good. There are times when it is not quite clear if we are looking at characters in a story or players on a stage. Productions can sometimes upstage a story, but when the story is as considerable as Anna Karenina, that can be a miscalculation.  

Silver Linings Playbook

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook

**** out of ****

Writer-Director David O. Russell’s adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel, The Silver Linings Playbook is a classic screwball romantic comedy by design but much more with its great one-liners, a perfect ensemble cast and manic direction. It has everything required for the kind of film it is with the welcome addition of biting dialogue and fierce confrontations.

In films like Flirting with Disaster, I Heart Huckabees and The Fighter, Russell has displayed a knack for creating frantic atmospheres where characters engage in banter which may go in the direction of viciousness and sometimes violent passionate outbursts. A romantic comedy about a man with bipolar disorder is right up his alley.

The brilliant Bradley Cooper plays Pat, a former teacher just released from a mental institution who is now without a job and who’s ex-wife has issued a restraining order. Forced to move back in with his parents, played by the excellent Australian actress Jacki Weaver and the great Robert De Niro, he visits old friends with the ulterior motive of reconciling with his ex-wife. A police officer (Dash Mihock), a psychiatrist (Anupam Kher) and Pat’s parents are all on his back, trying to keep him under control. Cooper plays Pat with absurdly hilarious mood-swings, a desperation for enthusiasm, and a talent for locking eye contact when making conversation. It is a superb job.

Here is an interview with Cooper.

He meets Tiffany, played by the “Louisville is so damn proud of you” - Jennifer Lawrence who came to this movie to save all manic pixie dream girls from their sins. Her winning screen-presence seems to prove more range with every film in which she appears. Lawrence plays a young widow who has been sexually reckless since her husband’s death and is prone to fits of rage when she feels judged. Pat and Tiffany’s inappropriate frankness about everything creates beautiful chemistry and ugly explosions. It’s all funny. Pat is forward with Tiffany that he needs her because she has connections with his ex to whom she may be willing to deliver a letter. In exchange for this service, Tiffany wants Pat to participate in a dance competition for which she requires a partner.

Meanwhile Pat’s father, an obsessive-compulsive Philadelphia Eagles fan demands the presence of his son when watching games for superstitious reasons. He has financial troubles and is now desperately dependent on making bets with a friend. De Niro is a great actor who recently seems to be in a semi-retired mode. He tends to take roles for which little effort is required and one could imagine another actor playing. Playing Pat Sr., he breaks this trend beautifully as a father who unconsciously shares neurotic tendencies with his son.

Also in the cast, is John Ortiz as a friend troubled by a marriage which Pat is keen to judge in front of groups of people. Chris Tucker plays Danny, a friend Pat made at the institution, who enjoys visiting Pat and regularly escapes the ward to do so.

As with many cherished romantic comedies of the quirky variety, everything comes together too conveniently during the final act and somehow, I’m not bothered by this. This movie, unlike many others in its genre, defeated my cynicism. I wanted to see a little magic happen to these people.

Silver Linings Playbook is one of the best movies of 2012 making great comedy out of characters who perceive each other's problems but not their own. I laughed constantly throughout this movie not so much out of mockery but more from empathy. Everyone has his or her own history of emotionally driven inappropriate behavior and what really works about this film is that I could see myself in it. 

Listen to David Edelstein's review here.