The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - 1 1/2 stars

The third movie in the Hobbit trilogy is like watching someone else play a video game.  It’s maybe 20 minutes of story stretched into a two and a half hour movie.  Most of the running time consists of a giant battle between dwarves, elves, humans, and orcs.  The entire time, I just kept wishing Bilbo Baggins would just quietly sneak away and go home. 

When we left Bilbo and company in the last movie, The Desolation of Smaug, they had found their way into the mountain and awakened the dragon Smaug.  Now Smaug is attacking nearby Laketown and killing everyone he can.  Bard the Boatman is the only one who can stop Smaug, and he’ll have to break out of prison first. 

The fight with Smaug is the most exciting part of this movie.  Unfortunately, Smaug is dealt with in the first 10 minutes.  After that, the survivors of the town need a place to stay.  Bard decides that the Lonely Mountain is the best place for them.  Also, Thorin promised them he would split the treasure with them so they want some of that.  But Thorin is starting to develop dragon sickness, which basically means he’s paranoid and thinks everyone else wants to steal the treasure for themselves.  So he refuses to let the humans in.  Then the elves show up, and they want some of the treasure too.  Just as the humans and elves are about to attack the dwarves, an army of orcs show up.  They fight for a couple of hours and then the movie mercifully ends.

Remember how cool the Battle of Helm’s Deep was in The Two Towers?  That was something we’d never seen before.  The scale of it was incredible, and the special effects were amazing.  But it didn’t go on for too long, and we cared about what happened to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli.  Then Peter Jackson thought he had to top that battle in Return of the King.  So we got the battle for Minas Tirith which went on way too long  But once again, we knew and cared about the characters involved.  And the movie was about more than just that battle.  We had Sam and Frodo’s journey to get back to.

In this third Hobbit movie, there’s nothing else going on.  The battle is it.  And Bilbo was just in the background most of the time.  It’s hard to care about the outcome of a battle when you barely know the characters involved.  I’m not even sure who the five armies are.  There are humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs. 

I’m sure Peter Jackson wants us to care about the love triangle between the dwarf, the female elf, and Legolas.  And I’m sure he wants us to care about Thorin Oakenshield and whether he’ll come to his senses.  But I didn’t.  I just wanted the movie to end.

As with the first two Hobbit movies, the laws of physics don’t apply.  Characters jump and swing 30 feet in the air and land safely.  If something big is about to fall on our heroes, it misses them by a few inches.  At one point, Legolas is on a collapsing bridge.  As he runs, blocks are falling out underneath his feet, but he is still able to run and jump to safety.  The blocks are suspended in the air just long enough for him to step on them.  You’ll know it when you see it.  The movie has turned into Super Mario Bros.

I remember an interview where Peter Jackson was talking about the challenges of writing The Lord of the Rings.  He said whenever they were unsure how to structure the movies, they just focused on Frodo.  His quest to destroy the ring was the central focus of the movies.  Bilbo Baggins should have been the focus of these Hobbit movies.  But it seems like he was just a supporting character, which is a shame because Martin Freeman was a great choice for Bilbo.  I would love to see all three of these movies edited down to a 100 minute movie with Bilbo as the focus.  I’m sure someone will create a fan edit on youtube that will be way better than this trilogy.

The more I think about this movie, the more annoyed I get.  The first two were overly long, but at least the characters were on a journey.  There was a story there, and I wanted to find out what was coming next.  This time, the story feels wrapped up when Smaug is killed.  Then we have to sit there for two hours and watch these armies fight.  I’m not anxious to watch the first two movies again, but I could never sit through this one again.

Annie - 2 stars

Instead of the 1930s, this Annie is set in Harlem in 2014.  Annie (Quevanzhane Wallis) is a tough kid living in a foster home with several other girls.  The foster home is run by Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), who doesn’t do much but drink all day and yell at the kids.  Instead of Daddy Warbucks, Annie is taken in by cell phone tycoon Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx), who’s also running for mayor.  His staff thinks that taking in a foster kid will help his image.

One of the things that bugged me in this movie was the music.  First of all, they didn’t include very many of the songs from the original.  A few are there, but they’ve been remixed and given more of a hip hop beat.  Most of the songs were written for this version, and they aren’t very memorable.  And none of these actors should be doing a musical.  Wallis is cute and sounds ok, and Jamie Foxx has a good voice, but the rest are embarrassing. 

The story isn’t bad, and the scenes between Annie and Will Stacks are sweet.  Of course he starts off as kind of a jerk, and by the end he loves Annie.  Their scenes together have heart and there are some genuine laughs.  But aside from that, the movie doesn’t have anything else going for it.  Stacks’ assistant (Rose Byrne) has a crush on him for some reason, and his campaign manager (Bobby Cannavale) is a boring jerk.  When a couple pretends to be Annie’s parents show up and take her away, it takes like five minutes before she’s rescued.

But the worst thing about this movie is the casting of Cameron Diaz as Miss Hannigan.  Diaz is a good actor when she’s given the right material, but she’s all wrong here.  Anyone they cast would have had a hard time comparing to Carol Burnett, but Cameron Diaz?  Really?

Wild - 3 1/2 stars

Based on the bestselling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, this is about how Cheryl Strayed hiked 1,100 miles by herself as a way to overcome her demons.  After losing her mother to cancer, she became a heroin addict and ruined her marriage.  So the hike was like a form of therapy or a spiritual cleanse for her.

Reese Witherspoon gives her best performance in years as Cheryl.  As the movie opens, she’s sitting on a mountain and taking her boots off.  Her boots are too tight, and one of her toenails is almost completely ripped off.  She accidentally loses a boot, and after yelling a very appropriate obscenity, she hurls the other boot down the mountain.

As she hikes along the Pacific Coast Trail, we learn about her past through flashbacks.  We see her relationship with her mother, and we see how devastating a loss that was for her.  We see her starting to hook up with random guys and getting into drug use, and the effect that has on her husband. 

She wasn’t an experienced hiker when she began the journey, and she does things like bringing the wrong kind of fuel for her camp stove or running out of water.  But the most dangerous encounters are with other hikers.  Some are friendly and happy to help, others not so much.  As a man, I don’t normally give much thought to what it must be like to be a woman and on your own.  But watching this movie, I felt her fear whenever she encountered a man and had to figure out his intentions.  The encounter that sticks with me the most is when she ran into two hikers right after running out of water.  A couple of simple jokes about her being by herself and very attractive make her nervous and uncomfortable, and she can’t relax until she’s sure they have left her alone.

The movie did a good job of showing Cheryl’s transformation without hitting you over the head with it.  There’s no big emotional moment where the soundtrack swells and she has some profound realization, like in Eat, Pray, Love.  Although to be honest, I don’t remember Eat, Pray, Love that well but I’m pretty sure there was some sappy over the top stuff like that. 

In this movie, I don’t even remember much of a soundtrack.  Sometimes less is more, and this movie has a stripped down quality, that makes it even more profound and life-affirming.  This is a really good movie.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 - 3 1/2 stars

This is the third movie in the Hunger Games series.  Based on the first half of the third book – the second half, and fourth movie, will be released in a year – this is the best Hunger Games movie so far.  The games are over and now the rebellion is preparing to go to war against the capital.

I wasn’t a big fan of the first movie.  I thought the story idea was good and I enjoyed the buildup to the games, but once they got to the actual games, I started to lose interest.  The games just weren’t exciting enough to live up to all the buildup.  The second movie was ok, but once again, the second half of the movie was just more games. 

In this movie, things start to get really interesting.  Katniss has been saved by the rebels after she destroyed the arena in the last movie.  She’s taken to District 13 where the rebels have been living and hiding under the direction of President Coin (Julianne Moore).  The rebels are trying to mobilize the districts to unite and fight against the capital, and they want Katniss to be the Mockingjay, the symbol that will unite and inspire everyone to fight.

At first, it doesn’t go well.  Katniss realizes they want to use her the same way President Snow used her, as propaganda.  She hates President Snow, but she’s more concerned about the safety of her friends and family than she is with the upcoming war.  More than anything, she wants to rescue Peeta, who was captured after the events of the last movie. 

After giving President Coin some terms, she finally agrees.  One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is trying to direct Katniss for a propaganda video.  She’s supposed to be holding a flag and giving a speech after being in a battle, and it just doesn’t feel authentic.  Katniss may have been through hell, but she can’t really act.  Heavensbee soon realizes that they’re going to have to film her in actual dangerous situations in order to get what they want out of her.  As the message gets out, the districts start fighting back. 

I really enjoyed this movie, and I wasn’t expecting to.  Once again, Jennifer Lawrence does a great job of carrying the movie.  Katniss is an interesting character and it’s easy to empathize with her situation.  And even though this is only the first half of the last book, it has a beginning, middle, and end.  It doesn’t feel like they stretched it into two movies just to make more money off the franchise.

For the first time, I am looking forward to the next Hunger Games movie.  I just hope MockingJay – Part 2 can live up to expectations.

Dumb and Dumber To - 2 1/2 stars

It’s hard to review a movie like Dumb and Dumber To.  I like the first movie, but partly that’s because I’ve seen it so many times over the years.  The characters and their lines are familiar to me.  I don’t know if I would like it as much if I hadn’t watched it over and over with friends.  It’s one of those movies that my friends and I can quote to each other.  It’s kind of like The Big Lebowski in that respect.

Supposedly the studio wanted to make a sequel in the early 2000s, but Jim Carrey wasn’t willing.  So instead we got Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd.  Remember that movie?  Me neither.  So now we finally get to see Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey reprise their roles as Harry Dunn and Lloyd Christmas.   

Harry needs a new kidney, and at first he turns to his parents to see if they’re a match.  To his surprise, they tell him that he’s adopted.  They’re Asian, you see.  Then he finds out that he has a daughter he never knew about.  So he goes to find his daughter to reconnect, but also to ask for a kidney.  So we have another road trip, and Harry and Lloyd get mixed up with a scientist whose wife is trying to kill him. 

But the plot doesn’t really matter.  Did you ever care about whether Mary Swanson’s husband was alright?  No, we just want to see Harry and Lloyd do and say funny things.  There is a lot of that in this movie, but not as much as there should have been. 

I thought Carrey and Daniels did a good job.  They still look like these characters, although Jeff Daniels looks like he’s aged more than Jim Carrey does.  They throw themselves into these parts and it’s nice seeing these characters again.  But there were too many scenes where I was waiting to laugh and the jokes just didn’t land.

I guess I can’t quite recommend this movie.  If you love the first movie, you’ll probably like this one.  It isn’t as good, but there’s fun to be had here.  Just lower your expectations a little.  But if you don’t like the first movie, I don’t think you’ll like this one much either.

Force Majeure - 2 stars

A Swedish family is on a skiing vacation in the French Alps.  One day during lunch, they’re caught in an avalanche.  The mother grabs the two kids while the father grabs his cell phone and sunglasses and runs for it.  It turns out it was a controlled avalanche, and they weren’t in any danger.  What they thought was a mountain of snow coming towards them was mostly snow dust which dissipates within a minute.  But the damage is done. 

After the event, the family is quiet.  No one says anything, but they all know something big just happened.  It’s not until the parents are having drinks with another couple that the wife says what’s been on her mind.  She can’t believe that her husband’s first instinct was to save himself rather than his children. 

For the rest of the movie, they continue to discuss what happened.  There are long stretches of beautiful scenery – this movie really makes me want to visit the French Alps – but nothing much happens.  Sometimes there’s a good five minutes with no dialogue.  At some point, I started to get really bored with this movie.  It seemed like I was watching them have the same conversation over and over without really getting anywhere.

The performances were good.  It’s really interesting to watch these characters change.  At the start of the movie, they looked like the perfect family.  By the end, both parents are a mess.  At one point, the mother wants to go spend the day skiing by herself so she can get away from her husband and think. 

I feel like this would have made for a good short film.  There’s maybe enough here to sustain 10 or 15 minutes.  But the movie is two hours long, and it was really a chore to get through.  

Interstellar - 3 stars

In the near future, Earth is slowly becoming inhabitable.  Dust storms seem to happen all the time, and it’s getting harder and harder to grow crops.  Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) used to be a NASA test pilot but now he’s a farmer.  His wife died some years before, and now his father in law (John Lithgow) helps him raise his kids. 

One day Cooper and his daughter Murph discover the secret location of NASA.  It seems in this future society, all resources are devoted to growing crops, so the public isn’t interested in funding for NASA.  They also aren’t interested in electronics anymore, so Apple is probably no longer a going concern.  Anyway, NASA asks Cooper to join their mission of going into space and looking for a new planet.  They know it won’t be long before all life on Earth is dead, so if the human race is to survive, it needs a new planet to inhabit.

First off, I’ll mention what I didn’t like about this movie.  The first half hour felt really clunky to me.  It would have been nice to learn more about what life is like for these people.  Cooper lives in what looks like a small farming town in the Midwest.  But what is life like in big cities?  What was the transition like from the early 2000s to life in this movie?  How far in the future is it?  It seems like it’s only 20 years or so, since Cooper can remember a time when people were interested in things like electronics and looking up to the stars. 

Also, the people don’t look like they are living in any kind of a dystopian future.  Their clothes are clean and look brand new, and their teeth are white and straight.  Besides discussing what crops won’t grow, it seems the only problem they have to deal with is wiping dust off the table now and then.

The dialogue was bad and the first part of the story was very rushed.  The way they discover NASA and their plan seemed way too simple.  NASA already has a plan for the mission, and when Cooper shows up, they say “Oh, you were the best pilot we ever had.  Now that you know what’s going on, you need to lead the mission.”  If it was so important to have him on board, wouldn’t NASA have tried to find him and ask him to join? 

Once they leave Earth, the movie gets much better.  They plan to use a wormhole to get to another galaxy, and they already have potential planets in mind that they’re supposed to visit.  They don’t really know where the wormhole came from, but they know where it’s going to take them.  In order to get to the wormhole, which is located near Saturn, they’ll have to travel for two years.  I won’t spoil anything that happens after that. 

The effects in this movie are incredible.  The scene where they pass through the wormhole is just cool.  It made me think of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In fact, there were a lot of things in this movie that made me think of 2001.  I’m sure that was a big inspiration to Christopher Nolan, and while this movie isn’t up to that level, it’s still pretty well done.  It’s a very intelligent science fiction movie. 

I have my reservations, but I’m still recommending the movie.  It really demands to be seen on the big screen.  I’m reminded of the way I felt the first time I saw Avatar.  It’s an incredible achievement, but the story could have used a little work.  It’s long and exhausting, but I’m glad I saw it.