ANGEL OF MINE (Australia/US - 2019) Directed by Kim Farrant. Written by Luke Davies and David Regal. Cast: Noomi Rapace, Yvonne Strahovski, Luke Evans, Richard Roxburgh, Pip Miller, Tracy Mann, Rob Collins, Rachel Gordon, Finn Little, Annika Whiteley, Indy Serafin, Mirko Grillini. (R, 98 mins) The Australian-made Lionsgate VOD pickup ANGEL OF MINE, a remake of a 2008 French film of the same name, is a throwback of sorts to the "(blank)-from-Hell" thrillers that were so prevalent in the '90s and will sufficiently scratch that itch if you're nostalgic for the days of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE. 25 years ago, this probably would've starred Sharon Stone and Nicole Kidman and been the #1 movie in America for at least a couple of weeks. But in 2019, it skips theaters and stars Noomi Rapace--forever the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO--and THE HANDMAID'S TALE's Yvonne Strahovski. Rapace has very quietly built a solid resume of strong performances in VOD and Netflix streaming fare (WHAT HAPPENED TO MONDAY, CLOSE) and she's at the top of her game here as Lizzie, the divorced mother of ten-year-old Thomas (Finn Little), who spends every other week with her as part of the joint custody she shares with ex-husband Mike (Luke Evans). But Thomas doesn't like being around his mother ("He feels your darkness," Mike admonishes) and Mike has petitioned for full custody. Seven years earlier, their newborn daughter Rosie died in a tragic hospital fire that left significant burn scars on Lizzie's back. She spent a year in a mental institution and hasn't been able to pick up the pieces. Her therapist thinks she's gone off her meds, she can't focus on her job at an upscale cosmetics store, and things start spiraling downward when she takes Thomas to his friend Jeremy's (Indy Serafin) birthday party and sees Jeremy's seven-year-old sister Lola (Annika Whiteley). She instantly senses that Lola is her daughter and becomes obsessed with her, slowly ingratiating herself into the lives of Lola's wealthy parents, Claire (Strahovski) and Bernard (Richard Roxburgh), first by pretending to be interested in buying the house they've just put up for sale, then by tagging along on a trip to an ice skating rink where she inadvertently causes Lola to fall and hit her head. Lizzie also starts lingering outside Claire's and Bernard's house, peering through the privacy fence, hanging out backstage at Lola's ballet recital and distracting her during her performance, and eventually breaking into the house and hiding in a closet.
While Bernard tries to give her the benefit of the doubt ("She lost her baby!"), Claire sees the fixation and doesn't ignore the red flags, warning the clearly unstable Lizzie to stay away from them. Of course, she doesn't, and even with an intervention arranged by Mike, her therapist, and her parents (Pip Miller, Tracy Mann), Lizzie refuses to listen to anyone and insists Lola is her Rosie and will stop at nothing to prove it. Directed by Kim Farrant (2015's little-seen STRANGERLAND), ANGEL OF MINE strains credulity the more it goes on, the pieces don't always add up (Roxburgh's Bernard being particularly clueless), and it ends in a way that's a little more restrained and sympathetic than aficionados of these sorts of thrillers would prefer. But it's carried entirely by the powerhouse performances of Rapace and Strahovski, the former being one of the best actresses around these days, though she still hasn't quite cracked the American A-list market beyond starring in Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS.
Nevertheless, ANGEL OF MINE is an essential for Rapace fans, as she fearlessly dives into this (including the most uncomfortable and cringe-worthy post-blind date hookup in recent memory), and wisely never overplays the hysteria or careens out of control on the crazy train. Lizzie is a profoundly sad and troubled woman who's crossing lines in increasingly unacceptable ways but still manages to elicit sympathy for her unimaginable loss (Rapace is just heartbreaking when she's in the middle of a tearful meltdown and insists to Claire "I used to be funny!"). Farrant and screenwriters Luke Davies (LION) and David Regal (a TV vet who logged time on RUGRATS, THE WILD THORNBERRYS, and ACCORDING TO JIM, among other shows) allow Rapace to create a fully-developed character instead of a stalker caricature in the way she means no harm to Claire's family--she just knows in her heart that Lola is her child and wants her back and she won't be deterred by threats of a restraining order or the police. A cut above the usual Lionsgate/Grindstone VOD fare, ANGEL OF MINE is generally well-done for this sort of thing, despite a weak and improbable wrap-up. The obligatory "big reveal" in the climax won't really surprise any seasoned movie watcher, but Rapace and Strahovski put forth some valiant effort in selling it.
ANNA (France - 2019) Written and directed by Luc Besson. Cast: Sasha Luss, Helen Mirren, Cillian Murphy, Luke Evans, Lera Abova, Eric Godon, Andrew Howard, Jean-Baptiste Puech, Sasha Petrov, Adrian Can, Jan Oliver Schroder, Eric Lampaert. (R, 119 mins) Managing to emerge generally unscathed from sexual assault allegations by a total of nine accusers after Paris prosecutors dropped charges in February 2019 stemming from Dutch writer and comedian Sand Van Roy's claims that he repeatedly raped her, French auteur Luc Besson is back with the throwback espionage thriller ANNA. The allegations against Besson broke just after ANNA finished production, and while watching it, it's hard not to think of the disconnect between the accusations and his recurrent theme of strong, ass-kicking women going back to 1990's highly influential LA FEMME NIKITA. ANNA is largely another retread of the same story, one that seems especially played out considering recent films like ATOMIC BLONDE and RED SPARROW, both inspired to some degree by LA FEMME NIKITA and mining very similar territory in the waning days of the Cold War. The star is Russian supermodel Sasha Luss, who had a small, motion-capturesupporting role in Besson's megabudget 2017 sci-fi epic VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS. Luss' Anna is cut from the same cloth as Besson's first wife Anne Parillaud's title character in LA FEMME NIKITA and the kind of cult favorite badasses that his third wife Milla Jovovich played in the RESIDENT EVIL series and other actioners after achieving stardom in his 1997 film THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Luss has a similar background and career path as Jovovich and even resembles her at times, which only adds to the feeling of familiarity and wheel-spinning with ANNA.
Opening with a prologue where nine CIA operatives are killed in Moscow in 1985 and their decapitated heads sent back home to their boss Leonard Miller (Cillian Murphy), ANNA repeatedly jumps back and forth to various points from 1987 to 1990. In 1990, Anna Poliatova (Luss) is selling Russian dolls at a Moscow marketplace when she's spotted by a French modeling agent (Jean-Baptiste Puech) and whisked away to Paris. Her star soon rises and she gets involved with wealthy Russian Oleg (Andrew Howard), who deals arms to Syria and Libya. Just as they're about to consummate their relationship, she pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head. Cut back to 1987, when an orphaned, junkie Anna was recruited by KGB agent Alex Tchenkov (Luke Evans) and put under the stern tutelage of ruthless, unsympathetic, chain-smoking spymaster Olga (Helen Mirren, looking like Fran Lebowitz's stunt double). Under the guise of an up-and-coming supermodel, Anna is given assignments of escalating importance, rubbing out whoever Olga, Tchenkov, and KGB chief Vassiliev (Eric Godon) say, until the assassination of Oleg puts her on Miller's radar.
The time jumps and the twists and turns grow increasingly absurd and it gets more difficult to keep track of what is taking place when, though Besson does put it to clever use as all the pieces--eventually, finally--start falling into place. At this point, it's hard to take any thriller seriously when it uses chess as a metaphor (cue Anna gravely intoning "Checkmate!" as she blows someone's brains out), and Besson almost seems to be glibly winking at the audience, whether it's a long modeling-and-murder montage set to INXS' "Need You Tonight" or constant anachronisms that have to be intentional, like laptops and wi-fi in Anna's shithole Moscow apartment in 1987, and flash drives and cell phones in 1990. But then he strangely tosses in an era-appropriate pager for Miller near the end of the film, which seems peculiarly antiquated considering all the advanced technology everyone's been shown using to that point. Murphy and Evans are fine as flip sides of the same coin, both in their careers and in their simultaneous hot-and-heavy relationships with Anna, while Mirren is under no illusion that this is John Le Carre material and enjoyably hams it up for an easy paycheck. The statuesque Luss handles herself well in the action scenes, particularly where she takes on an entire restaurant full of goons in pursuit of a target, but she's a terrible actress otherwise, never once convincing you that she's capable of manipulating the KGB and the CIA. In the end, ANNA is nothing you haven't seen before and Besson is more or less ripping himself off. It's utterly insignificant but it's never boring and goes down like harmless junk food from Besson's EuropaCorp action assembly line, the kind of movie you'll stop on and end up watching on a lazy weekend afternoon a year from now when it starts running on cable in perpetuity for the rest of your life.
MA (US - 2019) Directed by Tate Taylor. Written by Scotty Landes. Cast: Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Luke Evans, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis, Allison Janney, Missi Pyle, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Dominic Burgess, Tanyell Waivers, Tate Taylor, Heather Marie Pate, Margaret Eaton, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Matthew Welch, Skyler Joy, Nicole Carpenter. (R, 99 mins) Octavia Spencer won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 2011's THE HELP and she reunites with that film's director Tate Taylor for MA, a wildly entertaining, hard-R horror outing from Blumhouse. It's refreshing that neither lets their prestigious resumes--Spencer has logged two Oscar nods since, and Taylor went on to direct GET ON UP and THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN--keep them from going all-in on this, as MA does a commendable job of emulating the kind of crowd-pleasing, audience-participation genre offering that was commonplace in the '80s. Spencer has a blast here, bringing to mind Isabelle Huppert's performance in this year's earlier "(blank)-from-Hell" '90s throwback GRETA, as well as Kathy Bates' unforgettable turn as Annie Wilkes in MISERY. MA has a shocking and disturbing event at its core, one that has haunted the title character and influenced every decision she's made since, but it never loses sight that its primary function is being a solid summer horror flick. And a surprising one at that, as it gets unexpectedly darker and more deranged as it goes on.
16-year-old Maggie Thompson (BOOKSMART's Diana Silvers, who looks like the Leelee Sobieski to Anne Hathaway's Helen Hunt) has just moved from San Diego to her mom Erica's (Juliette Lewis) podunk hometown in Ohio after her parents' bitter divorce (the specifics are never mentioned, but the fact that they went across the country and Maggie is starting at a new school in February are indicators that they're getting as far away from her father as quickly as possible). Shy Maggie becomes fast friends with an unlikely clique consisting of snarky troublemaker Haley (McKaley Miller), nice guy Andy Hawkins (Corey Fogelmanis), dudebro Chaz (Gianni Paolo), and affable sidekick Darrell (Dante Brown). With nothing to do except get drunk and high at the rock quarry, they hang out in the parking lot of a carryout and manage to convince lonely, middle-aged veterinary assistant Sue Ann Ellington (Spencer) to buy beer and liquor for them. This becomes a regular thing to the point where Sue Ann, nicknamed "Ma" by the crew, offers her basement to them as a safe place to hang out and party. Maggie immediately gets a strange vibe from Ma but goes along to get along and soon, word gets around the school that Ma's is the place to be. But everyone has to follow Ma's rules, the most strict being that the rest of the house is off-limits.
Of course, Ma is a lunatic who's barely hanging on by a thread. She's always dropping the ball at her job, unable to focus, and pissing off her boss (Allison Janney, another Oscar-winner in a strangely minor supporting role). Ma spends her free time stalking Diana and the others on social media and texting them and sending videos at all hours ("Don't make me drink alone!"). She even manipulates them by fabricating a story about having pancreatic cancer when they decide to ditch her following a violent outburst after Maggie and Haley have to use the upstairs bathroom when the basement one is occupied. There's a method to Ma's madness, and it all stems from a traumatic event from her past, when an awkward, teenage Sue Ann (Kyanna Simone Simpson) was the victim of an unspeakably cruel prank pulled off by Andy's dad Ben (Luke Evans in the present, Matthew Welch in flashbacks) and his friends--which included a young Erica (Skyler Joy)--that made her the laughingstock of the high school.
Obligatory De Palma split diopter shot, as required by law
This connection between the adult characters is established fairly early on, and doing it that soon is really the only major flaw of the film. The fate of one of them, Mercedes (Missi Pyle), a bitchy mean girl who grew up into a bitchy mean alcoholic who still blows Ben in a parked truck on his lunch break, seems like something's missing, or that it should have some additional resolution, considering how small the town is and how the local sheriff (director Taylor) already seems to have Ma on his radar. Logic lapses and minor quibbles in the big picture, but by fumbling these sorts of small details, it makes MA seem like a film that could've benefited from being maybe 10-15 minutes longer. It's small enough that it doesn't really detract from the effectiveness of MA, which counters its subject matter with some big laughs, whether it's a hard-partying Ma doing The Robot to Lipps Inc's "Funkytown," or flooring it and mowing someone down with her truck and muttering "Fuckin' cunt" into the rearview mirror while Earth Wind & Fire's "September" blares on her radio, a priceless Octavia Spencer moment that's undoubtedly going viral soon. There probably isn't much room for MA among the summer product rolling off the CGI assembly line, but it's one that will unquestionably enjoy a long life on streaming and cable.
MESSAGE FROM THE KING (UK/France/Belgium - 2017) Directed by Fabrice du Welz. Written by Stephen Cornwell and Oliver Butcher. Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Tom Felton, Jake Weary, Chris Mulkey, Dale Dickey, Tom Wright, Lucan Melkonian, Arthur Darbinyan, Diego Josef, Sibongile Mlambo. (Unrated, 103 mins) Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz made his name with 2004's CALVAIRE, his contribution to the then-popular wave of "extreme" horror coming out of France, which included films like Alexandre Aja's HIGH TENSION, Xavier Gens' FRONTIER(S), Julien Maury and Alexander Bustillo's INSIDE, and Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS. It was several years before du Welz returned with the mostly English-language "trip upriver as metaphor for journey into madness" horror film VINYAN, which bombed internationally and ended up going straight-to-DVD in the US. Du Welz took another extended break, returning with 2014's ALLELUIA, a grim chronicle of the same spree killers whose story was the basis of both the 1969 cult classic THE HONEYMOON KILLERS as well as the little-seen 2006 noir throwback LONELY HEARTS, and the crime thriller COLT 45, the latter of which is still waiting for a US release. With the Netflix Original film MESSAGE FROM THE KING, du Welz is working in America for the first time. A mainstream revenge thriller with echoes of THE LIMEY and TAKEN, MESSAGE focuses on Jacob King (42 and GET ON UP's Chadwick Boseman, soon to headline Marvel's BLACK PANTHER), who's just arrived in L.A. from Cape Town, South Africa looking for his younger sister Bianca (Sibongile Mlambo) after an urgent, garbled message that she's "in trouble" and has "something they want." Grilled by customs and with only $600 on him ("That's not much for a vacation," he's told. "I'll make it last," he replies), King pounds the pavement, first heading to Bianca's address only to be told by her hard-partying neighbor Trish (Natalie Martinez) that she vanished after her husband split, leaving Bianca to care for his 11-year-old son. Looking through some belongings Bianca left with Trish, King pieces together enough information to send him to Zico (Lucan Melkonian), a flunky for Ducmajian (Arthur Darbinyan), an Eastern European crime boss operating in SoCal. Armed with just a bicycle chain, King beats the shit out of Zico and some other goons, eventually learning that Bianca had a serious drug problem and was likely working as a prostitute. He makes contact with--and bicycle-chains--Bianca's drug dealer Frankie (a nothing bit part for former Draco Malfoy Tom Felton), and, from paging through Bianca's appointment book, gets some info from sleazy Beverly Hills dentist Dr. Paul Wentworth (Luke Evans) before finally checking out the morgue and identifying Bianca's body from an identical tattoo they each have on their right arms. He tells the attendant that the body is not his sister's, so needless to say, King is going full vigilante and making the guilty parties pay on his own.
King's trek through the skeezy underbelly of L.A.--captured very effectively by cinematographer Monika Lenczewska--eventually directs him to blockbuster movie producer Mike Preston (Alfred Molina), a pederast with a never-ending supply of young boys, including Bianca's stepson Armand (Diego Josef), sold by a desperate Bianca, who was forced into prostitution in order to pay off her dead husband's debt to Ducmajian before someone had her killed. Things get even more complicated when King finds a flash drive stashed in pack of Bianca's Marlboros that has some very incriminating evidence tying together Bianca, Ducmajian, Preston, and mob-connected mayoral candidate Frank Leary (Chris Mulkey). Shitbag Wentworth decides to use the situation to bilk some extra money out of both Preston and Ducmajian, but King is constantly a step ahead of all of them, resorting to some vintage YOJIMBO tactics to play all the sides against the other, inevitably leading to a final showdown.
MESSAGE FROM THE KING is fairly formulaic stuff with little in the way of surprises, except for one final reveal that's unnecessary. The script by Stephen Cornwell and Oliver Butcher (they also wrote the Liam Neeson thriller UNKNOWN) relies far too much on contrivance and makes things way too easy for King, a guy who's never been to L.A. before but gets around rather effortlessly and has the good fortune to stumble upon just the info he needs at all times (for instance, visiting Wentworth on a mere hunch, of course he spots Zico walking out after having his jaw reset following his run-in with King's bike chain). A few plot strands are left dangling, and Du Welz has no idea what to do with his female characters, with Trish completely vanishing from the movie as King befriends the only-in-the-movies "hooker with a heart of gold" and single mom Kelly (Teresa Palmer), who emphatically states "I never fuck them," drawing the line at blowjobs, a PRETTY WOMAN-esque bit of sugarcoating that just doesn't seem like a plausible caveat that's available to a battered hooker in an unrelentingly ugly environment as harsh and brutal as the one presented in MESSAGE FROM THE KING. Both Trish and Kelly are underdeveloped characters that would've been better served and made stronger if they were combined into one, especially since Trish just disappears. The villains are stock Eastern European scumbags, Evans is appropriately reptilian and Molina is thoroughly repulsive, whether he's ogling his boy toys or being a racist asshole (with a gun pointed at King, he justifies his reasons for shooting him with "Breaking and entering...self-defense...plus you're black").
MESSAGE FROM THE KING drags in the meandering dialogue scenes with King and Kelly, but ultimately, it's Boseman's intense, ferocious performance that drives it along, carrying this thing on his shoulders with an enraged glare and a very convincing South African accent. Even when the by-the-numbers script is making things entirely too easy for King, Boseman keeps you engaged and rooting for him. Though the pace lags in the middle after a furiously fast-moving opening act, MESSAGE FROM THE KING is purely commercial revenge thriller fare that could've easily been a nationwide theatrical release, but Netflix picked it up at last year's Toronto Film Festival, and relatively speaking, it's one of their better recent "Netflix Original" offerings. Du Welz acquits himself well in this sort of mainstream surrounding, but the purists and CALVAIRE fans can also take heart in knowing that he does indulge in his "extreme horror" past with a few moments of some truly startling violence and splatter, thanks to mostly to the flesh-ripping abilities of King's trusty bicycle chain. Netflix is probably the best fit for this, but even with its many shortcomings, Boseman makes it worth seeing as a decent time-killer.
HIGH-RISE (UK/Ireland/Belgium - 2016) Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Amy Jump. Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, Bill Paterson, Peter Ferdinando, Sienna Guillory, Reece Shearsmith, Stacy Martin, Augustus Prew, Tony Way, Enzo Cilenti, Dan Skinner, Louis Suc, Neil Maskell. (R, 119 mins) Producer Jeremy Thomas has tried to put together an adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel High-Rise since it was first published in 1975. Though regarded as unfilmable, it nearly came to be in the late '70s with director Nicolas Roeg and screenwriter Paul Mayersberg intending it to be their next film after 1976's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. That never happened, nor did any other attempt, and the closest anyone got prior to now was when CUBE director Vincenzo Natali nearly got the greenlight in the early 2000s. It took 40 years, but Thomas finally got HIGH-RISE made, with acclaimed British cult filmmaker Ben Wheatley at the helm, working from a script by his wife and writing partner Amy Jump. Wheatley has acquired a cult following with the overrated WICKER MAN knockoff KILL LIST, the dark comedy SIGHTSEERS, and the unnerving A FIELD IN ENGLAND, but HIGH-RISE is his most ambitious project yet, working with his biggest budget and largest, most prestigious ensemble cast yet.
Combining the coldness of David Cronenberg (whose controversial 1996 film CRASH was based on the Ballard novel of the same name) with the absurdist black comedy of Terry Gilliam, HIGH-RISE is ultimately done in by a too-lengthy delay between the publication of its source novel and its eventual big-screen adaptation. Had Roeg and Mayersberg made this in 1977, it likely would've been prophetically visionary and as highly regarded as THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH But now, in 2016, it's exhaustingly heavy-handed, hammering its points over the audience's head again and again, and even ending with a Margaret Thatcher soundbite just in case the themes of class struggle and the haves ruling the have-nots wasn't quite hammered home for the preceding two hours trip into the hellhole of dystopia and capitalism run amok. Med school instructor Robert Laine (Tom Hiddleston, in a role that would've been perfect for David Bowie had Roeg had his shot at this way back when) moves into the 25th floor of a Jenga-esque 40-story high-rise tower block. The swingin' 70s are here in all their glory, as Laine quickly hops into bed with sexually liberated single mom Charlotte (Sienna Miller), and the residents of the high-rise form a very insulated community with every convenience--a gym, pool, 15th floor grocery store--readily available. The not-very-subtly-named Royal (Jeremy Irons), the building's architect, lives in the top floor penthouse, and when problems start arising--priorities for supply deliveries going to the wealthy one-percenters on the top floors and the lower class near the bottom being plagued by frequent power outages--he dismisses it as "teething" and "the building settling in." Disgruntled, philandering TV documentarian Wilder (Luke Evans) lives on one of the lower floors with his very pregnant wife Helen (Elisabeth Moss) and several kids, and eventually leads a revolt against the rich and powerful in the high-rise. Soon, all sense of order disintegrates as the high-rise becomes both the entire world of its occupants and a microcosm (SYMBOLISM!) of societal inequality and injustice: garbage piles up, food molds, and it's kill or be killed as life metamorphoses into a visceral orgy of rage, violence, hate-fucking, and all manner of degradation, debauchery, and destruction.
This feels a lot like SNOWPIERCER in a skyscraper, from the class struggle motif to Wilder's making his way to the top of the building, all the way to one character admonishing Laine to "know your place." Sure, in retrospect, it looks like SNOWPIERCER--and other movies--co-opted a lot of Ballard's ideas, and that's not the fault of the filmmakers here, but it doesn't do this belated adaptation any favors. It's also reminiscent of a somewhat less abrasive BLINDNESS, though Wheatley and Jump do keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, mostly implying it except for a few examples of shock value shots and dialogue (Royal to Laine, during a game of squash: "By the way, I hear you're fucking 374...she has a tight cunt as I recall"). Laine is the relative "everyman" audience surrogate, a successful career man who lives in the middle of the building and is comfortable screwing third-floor Charlotte and hobnobbing with penthouse Royal and other near-the-top residents, like sneering, asshole gynecologist Pangbourne (James Purefoy). Royal, the Trump of the high-rise if you want a present-day analogy, speaks of the building as both a living, breathing entity and as a symbol of society. It's all rather facile and obvious, though again, it could've been the angry FIGHT CLUB of its day had it been made 40 years ago. Whatever ham-fisted conclusions there are to draw from the events in HIGH-RISE have already been made decades ago. Wheatley scores some points for the film's retro-future look that ties in perfectly with Laine's observation that it "looks like a future that had already happened," and trippy, early '70s prog tunes by Amon Duul and Can, and a Portishead cover of ABBA's "S.O.S." provide a lot of atmosphere, but HIGH-RISE is repetitive, dated, and eventually oppressive. The filmmakers swing for the fences and get a few hits, but it goes on forever and you'll be ready for it to end long before it finally does.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (US/New Zealand - 2014) Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, Aidan Turner, Stephen Fry, Billy Connolly, Sylvester McCoy, James Nesbitt, Jed Brophy, Stephen Hunter, Ryan Gage, Manu Bennett, John Tui, Mikael Persbrandt. (PG-13, 143 mins)
"One Last Time" seems to be the resounding theme throughout this final chapter in the HOBBIT trilogy as well as in its advertising. The films in Peter Jackson's original 2001-2003 LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy stand--especially in their extended editions--among the most monumental achievements in all of cinema. But by splitting J.R.R. Tolkien's relatively light and quick-reading Hobbit into another colossal, epic trilogy and insisting on shooting them in the absurd 48 fps "high frame rate," a format that makes everything look like a live TV broadcast, really only works for expansive exterior shots and is preferred by no one with a name other than "Peter Jackson," Jackson seems guided more by hubris and self-indulgence than anything. The Hobbit isn't meant to be as huge as The Lord of the Rings. It's a smaller, more brisk story and by importing elements of Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, bringing Orlando Bloom back to play Legolas, a character not even present in Tolkien's novel, and even going so far as to invent his own entirely new character--the elf Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly--and granting her as much, if not more plot and screen time than the key principals, Jackson is only demonstrating that he doesn't know when or where to stop. It's great that Jackson loves Tolkien so much, but where his LOTR trilogy ranks with the original 1977-1983 STAR WARS trilogy, his bloated, three-part HOBBIT, while well-acted and enjoyable on its own terms, is his STAR WARS: EPISODE I-III, and like George Lucas, he's surrounded by yes-men and basically at the point where he's too rich and powerful for anyone to tell him "no." When Jackson made the original LOTR trilogy, he had an insane ambition and something to prove. Remove that and the HOBBIT trilogy feels like little more than an extended victory lap.
At least the third part of the HOBBIT trilogy, THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES, is the shortest at a mere 143 minutes. Roughly half of the running time is devoted to the epic battle at Erebor, where Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) has reclaimed the Dwarven birthright following the dragon Smaug's (motion captured by Benedict Cumberbatch) rampage on Laketown and its subsequent death courtesy of the black arrow fired by Bard (Luke Evans). Thorin has been driven mad with power and is obsessively hunting for the Arkenstone, which has been stolen by Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who knows that it's dangerous for Thorin to possess. Meanwhile, Bard has led a large band of Laketown refugees to Dale, where he's formed a tentative alliance with elf king Thanduil (Lee Pace), who wants elven jewels being kept in Smaug's former stronghold. Legolas and Tauriel also turn up, with Tauriel still dealing with her forbidden love for the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) as Orcs launch an offensive and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) dispenses sage advice.
With FIVE ARMIES, Jackson attempts to send the trilogy off with multiple extended battle sequences that play like a bunch of Helm's Deeps strung together. There's some occasionally inspired bits of action and some dazzling visuals that look fine in standard, 24 fps 3D (though the waxy sheen and gauzy Barbara Walters soft focus on some of the actors, particularly Bloom, can be distracting), but after a while, it's hard for it not to become an exhausting, eye-glazing CGI blur, quite often looking more like a video game than a movie. FIVE ARMIES works best in its few small-scale and quieter moments, be it a smiling nod from Gandalf (again, McKellen has little to do here aside from "show up and be Ian McKellen," but he owns this role so thoroughly that even watching him phone it in is a pleasure) or Thorin coming to his senses and realizing that he's been treating his friends horribly. There's so many characters and intertwining subplots that Freeman's Bilbo more or less disappears into the ensemble until it's time for him to say goodbye to the dwarves and head back to his home at Bag End. Despite some good performances by Evans and Armitage, there's too little of the sense of emotional connection that worked so brilliantly in the LOTR trilogy, where its many scenes of friendship and camaraderie never fail to get the waterworks going for fans. It's not like the magic is gone, but the freshness definitely is, even with brief, shoehorned-in appearances by other LOTR alumni like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Christopher Lee as Saruman, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond (their bits were intended for THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG but cut from it and edited into this film instead), and in using more CGI than ever in this closing installment (the shot of Legolas running along a bridge as it collapses is dreadful), there's a very diminished sense of humanity compared to before.
In his LOTR trilogy, Jackson paid loving tribute to Tolkien and captured the writer's voice and spirit with nothing less than absolute perfection. But by stretching THE HOBBIT from a 300-page breeze of a read to three films totaling around eight hours--even longer once you factor in the DVD/Blu-ray extended editions--Jackson is only paying tribute to Peter Jackson, capturing the voice and spirit of a gifted visionary who can no longer do anything without completely overdoing it, like a three-hour-plus KING KONG. I probably sound like I hate the three HOBBIT films, but I don't. They're entertaining and demonstrate flashes of past LOTR greatness (Cumberbatch's Smaug in the second film is probably the highlight), but the overall feeling is one of shrugging ambivalence. The LOTR trilogy is one that vividly entertains and still richly rewards. The nice-enough-while-you're-watching-it but forgettable HOBBIT trilogy is just there. People still talk about LOTR in reverent tones, but do you know anyone who really loves the HOBBIT movies and speaks of them as highly as the LOTR films? Everybody's gone to see the HOBBIT movies but it seems like we've approached this new trilogy more out of a feeling of obligation than out of the feverish excitement we collectively had a decade ago. I'm actually sort-of glad that it's done.
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (US/New Zealand - 2013)
Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Benedict Cumberbatch, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Cate Blanchett, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Ken Stott, James Nesbitt, Aidan Turner, Sylvester McCoy, Graham McTavish, Jed Brophy, Mikael Persbrandt, Ryan Gage, Manu Bennett, Lawrence Makoare. (PG-13, 161 mins)
The second installment of Peter Jackson's HOBBIT trilogy is a no-expense-spared visual stunner, but again suffers from the bloat of Jackson and his writing team padding a 300-page book into what will amount to somewhere around nine hours of cinema. I'm not saying there's an etched-in-stone rule for film adaptations of books, but if you can read the book in less time than it takes to watch the movie, you might be overdoing it. Jackson was able to convey the entire epic LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy in three films, but the recurring--and justified--criticism of this latest venture is that The Hobbit is a comparatively smaller-scale, less grandiose novel, but it's still taking him three overlong films to tell the story thanks to the addition of material from Tolkien's The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. There's simply no reason other than the greed of getting fans to pay for three movies that this couldn't have been one three-hour film. This frequently becomes a problem when a visionary filmmaker unveils a game-changer and is then granted carte blanche to do whatever they want. He may not be the insufferable asshole that James Cameron is, but that doesn't make Jackson's self-indulgence any less problematic and off-putting.
Harsh words, perhaps, but I didn't dislike THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG. It looks terrific (I saw this in regular 3-D instead of the stagy-looking High Frame Rate 3-D, which is Jackson's preferred vision), the performances are excellent, and there's some inspired set pieces, most notably the barrel escape from the castle of Elvenking Thranduil (Lee Pace). That's just one stop on the journey of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), who's accompanying a group of dwarves led by the heroic Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to obtain the Arkenstone from the dragon Smaug, who long ago took control of Lonely Mountain from Oakenshied's ancestors. SMAUG really consists of a handful of set pieces stretched out to extreme lengths. Whatever spectacle is achieved--the giant spiders, the barrel escape, and eventually, the showdown with Smaug (wonderfully voiced and the face motion-captured by Benedict Cumberbatch)--each goes on forever. Before the heroes end up imprisoned in Thranduil's castle, they cross paths with elves Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly). Legolas, a fan favorite of the LOTR books and films, is the son of Thranduil but was not in Tolkien's The Hobbit, and is only here to make Bloom part of this trilogy as well (he's also been given that distracting, waxy CGI sheen that the original trilogy's returning actors got in AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY to make him look younger, though considering Legolas is already several hundred years old, it hardly seems necessary). Tauriel is a character completely invented by Jackson, and much time is devoted to her mutual crush on dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner), a subplot that the audience will find almost as irritating as Legolas does. So, it's not enough that he's bloating the novel into three films by incorporating material from other Tolkien works, but now he's creating additional characters and plotlines? Just adapt the book, Mr. Jackson. I'm no Tolkien purist and it's been years since I've read it, but you're fixing something that isn't broken.
Amidst the endless and eventually exhausting action sequences--yes, Jackson resorts to that zoomy, circling video-game look with characters pinballing around the frame--there's a lot to appreciate in the performances. Freeman is spot-on as Bilbo and Armitage is again a strong Oakenshield. The camaraderie among the dwarves is nicely-handled, Luke Evans does some good work as Bard, a widowed, down-on-his-luck boatman who helps smuggle the crew into Esgaroth, and Stephen Fry is amusingly hammy as the callous Master of Lake-town, a sort-of Middle-Earth one-percenter prone to bitching that the commoners want food, shelter, and work. Jackson made some late-in-the-game editing decisions and bumped some scenes to next year's THERE AND BACK AGAIN, resulting in Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Andy Serkis (Gollum), and Christopher Lee (Saruman) getting cut from SMAUG, and Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) reduced to one shot. Presumably, these changes affected Ian McKellen's Gandalf as well. McKellen gets top-billing here but only has a few scenes. After leaving Bilbo and the dwarves to attend to other business, he runs into Radagast (Sylvester McCoy) and has a confrontation with the Necromancer (also Cumberbatch), and...that's it. Absent for long stretches of time, McKellen's got maybe 10-12 minutes of screen time here, and it's one of the film's major letdowns. He owns this character and it's an absolute joy watching him relish playing it. But hey, at least we've got a budding romance between Kili and Tauriel to look forward to in the next film.
