Category: Film

The new Hobbit was…

…a giant battle nearly from start to finish.   I’d like to coin this as the John Woo Hobbit film. I’m not sure if I liked the movie, but it did not suck goblin schwang like the second film did.   Stretching a small book into three films (though including a bunch of stuff from the Silmarillion) was a tough job but in this one the writers had no choice but to grease up and get fucking.

blackarrow

Stuff I liked:

  • Huge battle with lots of crap going on everywhere.  There were scenes where dwarves, men, elves and orcs were all fighting like crazy.  For a fan of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and all that stuff since I was a little kid, it was sort of a fantasy battle orgasm, and it should have been.  Despite the original author’s rather denuded account of the battle in the book, it was a big show down in Middle Earth, one that had far reaching consequences for the LOTR wars.  This was much better than the cartoon movie…
  • While the tiny parts with Dol Guldor and the Necromancer were really well done, this should have been a MUCH larger part of the second film and had a massive battle going on to finish up– THEN deal with the dragon.  Really since it was three films, the Necromancer parts could have been the justification for the vast length– and really it didn’t amount to all that much in the third film.  Seeing Saurman and the two elder elf characters destroying the ring wraiths was pretty awesome though, but did they just come alone? Pretty odd that.
  • I liked the 1 on 1 battles that evolved during the fighting.  Since EVERY character had the power and skill of Legolas, it was neat to see the superheroic battles between the main characters. By this film, I knew going in that every goddamn thing was going to be way over the top wuxia so what the hell…

black_orcs_front

Stuff I didn’t like:

  • Not enough about Beorn and the bear– that guy should have had more screen time kicking ass. Just one tiny scene? That’s it??
  • Everyone was Legolas– this was pretty ridiculous throughout the three films that all the dwarves were as spritely and had the combat prowess of legolas… but they decided to go with the superheroic version of the Hobbit, and there we have it. If they hadn’t would we have been bored? I don’t know. This is all part of the ‘if everything is fantastic, nothing is’ issue with many fantasy films.
  • The armored orks.  gone are the rabble-like hordes of orcs from LOTR that looked great, in the hobbit you basically had a generic but FULLY armored ork “bred for war” going on. They had little to no character compared to the LOTR versions, and it was unbelievable that human RABBLE and completely unarmored Dwarves should be able to cut a swath through them.
  • The dwarf/elf love story.  This is was preposterous to me.  Despite the fact that Evangeline Lilly is pretty and could just hog all the screen time between fight scenes for all I care, this was stretching the source material too far.  A human? Yes, or another elf that dies in the battle (like NOT have Legolas there, but another male elf).
  • No cool Gandalf spells.  He did few spells in the movies overall, I would have liked to see something other than him whipping his sword and staff around.  It’s not like the film of the Hobbit fits into the low-magic Sword and Sorcery genre with all the running up falling bricks and Aerial lycanthrope transformations…
  • No thrush–where was the bird?
  • This is really on the second film– the meeting of Bilbo and the Dragon was BETTER in the old cartoon movie than the new one!  How did that happen?

What this has inspired me to do is eventually have a marathon and watch the LOTR films back to back.  However I may skip over the last 40 minutes of the last film– if there is any point where people look to where the seed of these Hobbit films inevitably going to shit it was the last 40 minutes of LOTR.

Hateful Eight

Tarantino is doing another film, servicing what is still an under-served American genre (at least at the moment): the Western!  Django Unchained was excellent and many of Tarantino’s films have felt like Westerns at their core so this is….

…uh well that got fucked hard.  

Godzilla was Godlike!

Growing up with the monster movies of the 70’s, there have been a lot of modern versions that have not done Godzilla or big monster movies justice in the recent past, including Cloverfield (an OK movie) and especially the Matthew Broderick fronted american version of Godzilla (1998). Meanwhile in Japan, Toho has been cranking out descent Godzilla movies, while certainly B movies, scratched the same itch the 70’s movies did.

Now, given that there hasn’t been an attempt in Japan since 2004 to put another entry into the franchise, and with the moderate success of Pacific Rim (wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either), there’s been room for another run at a series. And I say franchise because that’s what Godzilla is– it’s never a single movie, it’s always a series of movies that are judged individually and as a whole so this one is the start, and it was awesome. Godzilla movies are made up of three things: some ecological message telling people that the path we are on of consuming the earth and meddling with atomic forces is extremely dangerous, second, some human drama that ties into the monster part of the film and last, Godzilla fucking everything up everywhere and destroying stuff in awesome fashion for usually half the film. This movie does all of those things in spades. I was a bit worried about the last one, but it was ALL there, just not quite as early in the film as the typical formula.

Godzilla destroying the original American reboot Godzilla from Godzilla: Final Wars

What the new Godzilla did is combine the seriousness of some sort of horror and disaster movies (both the reactor meltdown in Japan and the tidal wave in India are represented in this film, so this hits close to home) with the fun of Kaiju monster battle and mass destruction. It does not pull punches, there is mass chaos, death and destruction in the film including many of the characters–yet it’s also very fun to watch and has some great battle scenes with Godzilla. When you see buildings collapse into rubble, you know there are people inside–unlike some of the Japanese movies, the director makes that clear, but also makes clear that if the main issue of the plot is not dealt with properly MILLIONS will die.

Secondly, nothing is more important than the physical design of Godzilla himself. This could be the one thing that tanked the 98 American movie: that wasn’t fucking Godzilla. I think every single fan of the big guy will say this fucking version in 2014 is undoubtedly Godzilla himself. He has the dog face, he has the girth to his body and the way he fights is spot on. Godzilla has to be awesomely powerful looking and…I hate to say this as a man, lovable at the same time. They nailed it.

All in all, an amazing film, highly entertaining and I cannot wait for the fucking next one– and since the movie will well clear half it’s cost the first WEEKEND of it’s release, this is likely forgone conclusion.

The insane fuck sequences of Eva Green

Last weekend I had a bender in Miami.  Part of this bender was being passed out on a couch with the TV on.  Dark Shadows was playing over and over on one of the various cable channels and I was awake during one of the showings to watch the crazy furniture shattering fuck scene between Johnny Depp and Eva Green, a vampire and a witch respectively.  That same evening I stumbled with Matt into a dark theater playing 300: Rise of an Empire. During the movie Eva Green is again involved in an insane fuck sequence with the main Athenian Character.  Given that it was Alpha Male fucking Alpha Female for the win, this wasn’t actually too disturbing, but to have seen this same actress in two different films having furniture destroying fuck sequences was a fairly comedic coincidence to me.

Now, I guess I’m not a fan of 300 Rise of an Empire and will be even less so of the next film that doesn’t have Eva Green in it since her character gets eviscerated, but there are two notable things about it: the above mentioned sex scene and the multiple scenes of Eva Green’s character staring from a bow of her ship with her right eye twitching in anger–that’s one for the meme pile. The rest of the film, while visually stunning in parts is just plagued by… well, everything. They paint the main Athenian as some sort of physical badass, where he could have played the part not like Leonidas (since we already had the sacrificial alpha male in the first movie) but instead a scheming little rat who plays all these tricks on the Persians for the win. He did play tricks in the movie over and over and over so this would have fit (and also made a better contrast between Athens and Sparta) as they also characterize him as someone totally awesome at everything– sword fighting, archery, etc. He literally is a character characterized by his complete lack of any weaknesses in character or prowess–sort of like Superman. Also, the Athenians made the Spartans look sort of pussy, which just ain’t right. In 300, the Spartans work together as a UNIT to defeat the Persians, but the Athenians are seen fighting in Rise of an Empire like the Germanic and Celt tribes would– mano y mano in a full on melee. What’s more, the Athenian leader gives I believe FOUR pre-battle speeches, with all the heartfelt music playing and all that. That was ridiculous. Overall, the film just could have been so much better. I’m glad I saw it, if nothing more to make fun ever more of the gouts of blood that issued forth whenever someone was so much as touched by a sword, but Hotel Budapest was playing in a packed theatre next door, and I would have much rather seen that in retrospect. Anyway, back to the fucking. Below are two vids from the movies in question. You can see watching them the same day would create a comic juxtaposition.

Here is the comedy scene from Dark Shadows:

And the non-comedy scene from 300: Rise of an Empire (has boobs)

Derek and Clive- full on

Derek and Clive-  I’ve seen clips of this but this is the entire thing shot with the interim stuff that’s not on the record. I know there are some bits that they’ve done before here but a ton of this is off the cuff which is simply amazing.  Can you get tax relief on an unemployed knob?

 

The Raid: Redemption worth a look

I don’t see very many movies but I was down in Miami for a bit and got to see the new Star Trek (which was entertaining but the pace was a bit silly) and the Raid: Redemption.   Raid is very similar to last year’s Dredd wherein a bunch of cops try to take down a gang boss in a very large building.   I was trying to run this type of plot in my Apocalypse Palau campaign for a modified Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but the characters were just to powerful (they could have just punched the building down for the most part).

However, like Dredd, the Raid is a MUST SEE if you like action films of the John Woo genre.  With the Raid, you get a bunch of awesome kung fu to boot!  The knife fighting bits are especially mind blowing. Check below for a nice fight scene of note.