The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Movie Review

For the third and final installment in Peter Jackson’s bloated trilogy, The Hobbit, I couldn’t bear to sit through An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug to refresh my memory before trudging through the morass of The Battle of the Five Armies. The predictable result is that I had completely forgotten who some secondary characters were, what they had done previously, and why I should care about them at all.

Black Hawk Down Movie Review

As I rewatched Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down for the first time I more than a decade, two other war Berchtesgaden more than a year later. The similarities are numerous. Both are based on books that attempted to recount, in as much factual detail as possible, the events surrounding are large contingent of American soldiers in conflict. Both were released toward the end of 2001, coinciding with post-9/11 American jingoism. Both focus heavily on the responsibility soldiers in combat feel toward each other more than to the ideology or politics behind the war. And both unflinchingly portray some of the horrors and carnage of war. The other is the more recent Lone Survivor, whose primary focus is on the fact of soldiers in harm’s way pulling for each other. The latter film has faced criticism for being a form of war porn, which you could also say to some extent about Scott’s film. But I think the positives to take away from all three far outweigh any negative observations regarding the depiction of blood and guts in battle scenarios.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Movie Review

Each of these dwarfs is just like the others...

As if the first chapter weren’t already interminable enough, the second part of The Hobbit has arrived. This one, subtitled The Desolation of Smaug, is the insufferable middle section of a trilogy that had no business being, at most, a single three hour movie. Like The Two Towers a decade ago, it’s a movie without beginning or conclusion and so it just feels like you’re awash in stuff that happens to characters. Only it’s far worse than The Two Towers because that was at least based on a book of its own whereas this is from part of a single book with lots of additional crap thrown in.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Movie Review

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy must pack so much into those novels that it’s a minor miracle they were ever made into successful films. I’ve never read the books, of course, but you get a sense by the third installment of director Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy of adaptations that the final book is replete with an abundance of minor and secondary characters all requiring a closing to their arcs. The effect is a film that is bloated and overblown, but at the same time a visual wallop and a great piece of entertainment filmmaking.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Movie Review

Eowyn tests Aragorn's fealty to his beloved in The Two Towers.

As much as I loved The Fellowship of the Ring is as disappointed as I was in The Two Towers. Except in its magnificent closing epic battle, it failed to inspire a sense of awe. Everything I admired about the first film was largely absent in the second. This includes the focused storytelling that had as its centerpiece a group of men on a quest. Now the fellowship was fractured, it felt like three different stories. And the toggling back and forth left me feeling impatient and restless. I don't know that there was any way for screenwriters Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh to get around that. It's a style of 'cutting' that works fine in the format of a novel, but for a three hour plus film it grows tedious.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Movie Review

More than anything, I want movies to surprise me. I want to see something that I haven’t seen before, or see an old story presented in a unique way. I want my expectations to be exceeded. I never read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I wasn’t interested as a child. To this day, the genre of fantasy fiction doesn’t particularly appeal to me. In December 2001 I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring because it was expected to be one of the biggest movies of the year. It was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles about the 15 month shooting schedule in New Zealand with Peter Jackson painstakingly creating a world on film that was already known to millions of loyal fans of the novels. I walked out of the theater both exceedingly surprised and deeply moved by both the story and the unbelievable craftsmanship involved in the making of the film.

Troy Movie Review: An Ancient Classic for the MTV Generation

This review was first written and published in May 2004 for a website that no longer exists. The unusual structure is a remnant of that site's requirements.

Synopsis: Paris (Orlando Bloom), a Trojan prince and son of Priam (Peter O’Toole), robs Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) of his beautiful bride, Helen (Diane Kruger), while on a peace envoy. Menelaus demands vengeance. With the aid of his brother, Agamemnon (Brian Cox), they mobilize 50,000 Greek soldiers to set sail for Troy. For Menelaus it is a war of pride in defending his manhood. For Agamemnon it is a war of conquest and the fulfillment of his desire to rule over all the kingdoms within his grasp.

The story is based loosely on Homer’s The Iliad. The two major players in the Trojan War are Hector (Eric Bana), brother to Paris and fiercest soldier in the Trojan army, and Achilles (Brad Pitt), the seemingly invincible Achaen warrior who leads the Myrmidons into battle. Of course, Achilles and Agamemnon are at odds with each other the whole time which presents a problem for the domineering king, who needs Achilles’ army to win the war.

Scoop: Troy is a film that bears little resemblance to anything classic, least of all The Iliad. Even less than the resemblance of O Brother, Where Art Thou to The Odyssey. Sure, all the major players are in attendance: Achilles and Hector; Menelaus and Paris; Priam and Agamemnon; Ajax and Odysseus. But the film plays out like someone in Hollywood summarized the Cliffs Notes of Homer’s epic poem. All the important plot points are touched on, the one-on-one battles between Hector and Ajax, Hector and Achilles, Paris and Menelaus are highlighted, but there the similarities end.