Skip to main content

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug


A rainy morning/afternoon meant I had the chance to slip away to the cinema to catch the second part of the Hobbit trilogy in Kobe. Now that I've seen two of these films, I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm a bit dwarfist. Not in reality, of course. Some of my best friends are dwarves. And Tyrion Lannister is the business. But in these films I have found myself wanting that lot off screen. Martin Freeman as Bilbo - great, more please. Sir Ian as Gandalf - say no more. Even Orlando "Legoman" Bloom as Legolas was fine.

But I'm terribly underwhelmed by the dwarves. I hope this is due to the rather one-dimensionality of the characters and not a deeply hidden mistrust of the wee folk. Time will tell, I suppose. I still think this film had too much dwarf action and not enough Hobbit (or Gandalf. Or Smaug. Or even Galadriel. And don't get me started on the dearly absent Gollum). Thirteen dwarves is about ten too many I reckon. Of course it's faithful to the book but they have fiddled in other ways, the introduction of Tauriel (hot elf played by 'er out of Lost) being the prime example in this chapter.

The entrance fee-justifying showpieces were great fun, most notably the 'dwarves in barrels' river chase sequence. I'll gladly own up to giggling like a school kid at some of the Buster Keaton-style shenanigans during this frenetic theme park ride.


The confrontation with the whiny dragon Smaug is fun and Benedict Cumberbatch provides a suitably slighted voice performance. There is a slight narrative issue here and the book is just as guilty. Let's get this straight. A group dwarves with as much poise as the Ant Hill Mob and a Hobbit with no military experience prepare to take on a fucking huge, vindictive, gold-crazy DRAGON!

Without a plan.


"OK Bilbo, pop down there and grab the white jewel, you'll know it when you see it."

"And the dragon?"

"Well, he's probably not there any more, it's been such a long time."

"Hmmm...."

Or words to that effect. No surprise when things go pear-shaped, as they may or may not - it all ends somewhat up in the air. 'Middle film syndrome' and all. So in summary, a nice way to spend a few hours. Could have been shorter though. Same could be said for many of Jackson's films. Not by the nerds, mind. Not by the nerds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best of 2025 - End of Year Report

Hi folks. 2025, eh? Bit of a prick, all things considered, but I reckon it was a pretty good year for films. My list was down from last year, I actually went 6 weeks without seeing a single film! Still time to see some great ones though, and here they are, from 10 down to 1. [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Hard Truths (2024) Mike Leigh is still punching them out, and this scathing drama reunites him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste (from Secrets and Lies ). She stars as a miserable, lonely wife and mother, constantly verballing those around her. Her sister is the only one who can put up with her. A tough watch but utterly engaging and though-provoking. 9. Of Caravan and the Dogs (2024) This was one of a few gems from the Revelation Film Festival in July. It's a documentary about Vladimir Putin's attacks on press freedom in Russia and how media groups tried to handle the situation. It's depressing but also filled with hope that there are still folks fighting...
Post a Comment
Read more

It Was Just an Accident

The latest from Iranian director Jafar Panahi is a simple, yet brilliant story of a chance encounter with a bastard from the past that oscillates between revenge and forgiveness. We start on an almost uncomfortably close mid-shot of a man and a woman driving at night. They run over a stray dog and the mother explains to her daughter that it was just an accident, setting the stage for other events that may or may not have been accidental. Panahi fills the frame with his protagonists, faces, mostly in states of distress, to the extent that when the screen opens up to show a man digging a makeshift grave in a long shot with vast, lumpy hills in the distance, it's a massive relief of tension. This man is Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who thinks he has stumbled upon Eghbal, (A.K.A. Peg Leg or the Gimp) (Ebrahim Azizi), an Iranian intelligence agent who tortured him years ago. Doubt forces Vahid to enlist other victims to help identify Peg Leg, before any retribution is taken. The film is rid...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hamnet

Hamnet sounds like something you might take pig fishing but it's actually a fine new film from Chloé Zhao. It looks at how a seismic event in the life of William Shakespeare and, crucially, his wife Agnes, may have contributed to the creation of one of the Bard's most famous plays. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Maggie O'Farrell, and begins with the introduction of Agnes (A.K.A. Anne) Hathaway, played by Jessie Buckley. She's a strong-willed, earthy falconer and more than a match for besotted Will (Paul Mescal), who spies her returning from the woods one day. Will is employed to tutor Agnes's younger brothers and initially takes her for a servant girl, such is her lack of guile and conceit. They eventually get together and are forced into a shotgun wedding, thanks to the beast with two backs. Agnes is a great support for her husband (who, incidentally, is rarely referred to in the film as Shakespeare) and makes a lot of sacrifices to enable him ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Secret Agent

Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers one of the films of the year with this political thriller that hoovered up awards at Cannes. It stars Wagner Moura as Armando, an ex-academic who lands in Recife during Carnival time in 1977. Once there, he's welcomed into a kind of apartment block commune, filled with other 'refugees' from some tyranny or other. The opening of the film teases the situation, slowly unpicking the threads as we cruise through the northern Brazilian setting. It's extremely confident of keeping details held back, no need to rush the exposition. We're introduced to quite a few characters, on both sides of humanity - helpful matriarchs, corrupt cops, selfless in-laws, scuzzy hitmen, crusading journos, and one Jewish German Holocaust survivor. Yep, there's a lot going on here. Around the end of the first act, we flash-forward to the present to find a couple of researchers going through old cassette tapes of interviews between Arm...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...
2 comments
Read more

Hesitation Wound

This film was shown at the Revelation Film Festival programme launch for 2024. It's a Turkish legal drama that leaves a lot unsaid, unexplained, with plenty of scope for interpretation. Tülin Özen plays Canan, a lawyer tasked with defending a guy on a murder charge, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). At the same time, she is dealing with the slow demise of her old mother, hospitalised in a coma.  The minutiae of life in this small Turkish town is fascinating. There's one simple, prosaic scene where Canan stops by a chemist to buy a razor so Musa can shave for the hearing. The shopkeeper asks what kind, she tells him she doesn't know, he selects for her, then explains that she can't use her debit card for that amount, so she buys some pretzel sticks. Completely normal, yet for some reason, I've remembered this scene weeks later. Maybe it's the unusualness of seeing a Turkish store on screen, but I think the on-point pacing of the film has a lot to do with it. Another odd...
Post a Comment
Read more

David Fincher Top Ten

With Fincher's first feature in 6 years, Mank , due soon, I figured I'd do a top ten of his other films. Conveniently, he's only made ten features, on top of dozens of music 'videos', as well as some TV and a few shorts. But let's focus on the films. 10. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) Where to start? Well, let me say that  Benjy is the only Fincher film I hated. Full of heart-felt whimsy attempting depth, it misses just about every mark. This is trite bollocks with very little to raise it, save from the unimpeachable Cate Blanchett. Take her out of it and you're left with a certified steamer. 9. The Game (1997) Not a bad film, and made with some late 90s panache, but it just didn't elevate for me. Not much wrong with the cast, Douglas and Penn are usually watchable at worst. There are the requisite reversals and rug-pulls but maybe that's part of the problem - too much of this malarkey? 8. Alien³ (1992) I don...
Post a Comment
Read more

Final Cut

Around 15 minutes into this French remake of a Japanese zombie comedy I found myself wondering if this might be the worst film of the year, and even a bit guilty for suggesting Merv see it with me. Imagine my surprise, dear Viz readers, to be happily proven wrong. This is a great lark. The original, One Cut of the Dead , from 2017, seems to be a virtual template, aside from a few clever story angles that connect the two. In a gory nutshell, it concerns a film crew attempting to make a low-budget zombie film in an abandoned events hall, when a bunch of real zombies begin to queer the pitch. Directed (and adapted) by Michel Hazanavicius, of The Artist fame, this opened the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022. It stars one of my favourite actors, Roman Duris as Remi, the director, and Bérénice Bejo as Nadia, who has a fantastic reason for giving up acting. Their daughter, Romy, is played by the actual director's daughter, Simone Hazanavicius (also step-daughter of Bejo, it's all get...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Translators

Got along to an advance screening of  The Translators  at the Luna in Leederville a few nights ago. It's a mystery set in the world of literary publishing and the story takes a little getting the old bonce around. Broadly, a group of nine translators are seconded to a high security bunker to translate the third book in a massively popular series, Daedalus, written by the reclusive Oscar Brach (strangely subtitled as 'Bach'). Pretty soon, it's found that 10 pages have somehow been smuggled out to the Internet, setting off a series of events that land the publisher Eric Angstrom, among others, in shtuck.  Angstrom is played by the hawk-nosed yet serpentine, Lambert Wilson, who has a swathe of shite films to his credit ( Babylon A.D. , anyone?). This is the best film I've seen him in, but I'm certainly not a Wilson completist, so there must be other passable works. Some of the translators are reasonably well known, especially in their home 'markets'. Olga K...
Post a Comment
Read more

Best of 2024 - End of Year Report

Ho ho, yo yos. Here's my rundown of films in 2024. By my best count I saw 124 films last year, 115 of them new watches (though not necessarily made or released in 2024), and 61 of them at the cinema. Of those cinema trips, 28 were at Luna Leederville , 14 at Palace Raine Square and 10 at the Backlot Perth , with 6 other cinemas making up the numbers. So here are my 10 favourite films from 2024, with a top 5 pod down the bottom... [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) George Miller's follow-up to Fury Road tells us the story of how Furiosa got to where that film started. I reckon this was the best blockbuster of the year, certainly the most entertaining, with one epic action sequence and a couple of fine performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Great fun. 9. The Taste of Things (2023) Don't go in hungry! This is a foodie's shan-grill-ah, the high culinary masterwork of the last decade or more. Juliette Binoch...
Post a Comment
Read more