The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Ballarat in January, 2014.

(M) ★★★★

Director: Peter Jackson.

Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan, Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Lee Pace, Luke Evans.

Bilbo had found more chocolate coins than you could poke an Easter bunny at.

WE'RE five films into Peter Jackson's journey through Middle Earth and it's bleedingly obvious he could lead the way with his eyes closed.

The Kiwi director deftly navigates a path between the dark perils of JRR Tolkien's fantasy world and the necessary jokey lighter moments. He knows the landscape, the history and the races probably better than his native New Zealand, and he understands the stories of Middle Earth on both the small scale and the large. Because of this, The Hobbit Part II is a walk in the park for him, albeit a park filled with shapeshifting bear-men, large spiders and an even larger dragon.

The flaws of it are the same as those of the first film, but the peaks and strengths are the same as we have seen throughout the rest of the acclaimed Middle Earth movies - in fact, these are things we've come to take for granted.

So as hobbit "burglar" Bilbo Baggins (Freeman), venerable wizard Gandalf (McKellan) and the 13 dwarves continue their journey towards the Lonely Mountain to reclaim the dwarves' home and wealth, we are again treated to a film that looks amazing, is well performed, and is immensely enjoyable.

The biggest issue coming into each instalment of Jackson's Middle Earth films is managing our own expectations - we've been so spoilt with the previous works, plus so many people are so familiar with the source material, all of which works to set the bar pretty high. With The Desolation Of Smaug, Jackson clears the bar with ease.

Two of the key components of this section of the story - a wild barrel ride down an Elvish river and the introduction of the toothsome firebreather Smaug himself - are triumphs of the film, with the former turned into an epic and impressive running battle, and the latter a wonder of CG animation and given voice through Benedict Cumberbatch and some impressive audio trickery.

The liberties taken with the original text, such as the introduction of new character Tauriel (Lilly) and the expansion of Gandalf's side adventure, serve to make the tone of story sit closer to The Lord Of The Rings, rather than the kiddishness of Tolkien's book, and drawing more out of the simplistic tale.

The flipside of this is the biggest flaw of the two Hobbit films so far - trying to stretch such a slight book into a trilogy means that there is a bit of excess padding. There are no songs this time around, but Jackson takes his sweet time with every character and every plot point, which is not totally a bad thing and the padding is less obvious in part two, but the pacing does slow to a crawl every so often.

It's a minor quibble and let's face it - Jackson's Middle Earth is a pretty cool cinematic universe to hang out in and kill some time, largely because of the director's insane attention to detail, particularly evident in the art design and set creation involved in bringing Lake Town to life.

Amid all the epic fantasy, it's easy to overlook the performances, but again they are solid. Freeman continues to prove an inspired piece of casting, McKellan's Gandalf is once again outstanding, Armitage leads the dwarves admirably, while the additions of Lilly as Tauriel and Luke Evans as Bard are welcome. Strangely, it's only Orlando Bloom - a veteran of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy - who doesn't quite seem at home, as if he's wondering what he's doing back in Middle Earth.

There are other issues, such as the fact radiant heat seems to be non-existent in Middle Earth (particularly evident in the final showdown with Smaug) but it feels silly arguing about physics in a movie with a huge dragon and a man who can turn into a bear.

If you've been enjoying Jackson's ride through Middle Earth, you won't be disappointed with The Desolation Of Smaug.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

(M)  ★★★

Director: Adam McKay.

Cast: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Kristen Wiig, Meagan Good, Christina Applegate, James Marsden, Dylan Baker.

Godzilla didn't look that scary.

It may come as a surprise, but the first Anchorman movie was not an immediate box-office smash.

It wasn't until the DVD audience latched on to it that the adventures of Ron Burgundy and co became one of the most quoted movies of all time, resulting in lines such as "I love lamp", "Boy, that escalated quickly", and "60 per cent of the time, it works every time" regularly invading conversations and the internet.

Maybe that's why it has taken nine years for a sequel to emerge - the first film was still building momentum for a lot of that time.

For Anchorman 2, the plot - and I use the word 'plot' very, very loosely - focuses on Ferrell's moustachioed newsreader Burgundy hitting rock bottom and attempting to claw his way back to the top courtesy of fledgling TV network GNN.

GNN, led by fiery award-winning producer Linda Jackson (Good), is the first 24-hour news network, and Burgundy and his team - daft weatherman Brick Tamland (Carell), insane sports reporter Champ Kind (Koechner) and lothario journalist Brian Fantana (Rudd) - are along for the ride.

There are also some subplots about Burgundy attempting to repair relationships with his wife Veronica (Applegate) and his son Walter (Judah Nelson), a rivalry between Burgundy and handsome fellow anchorman Jack Lime (Marsden), Brick's office romance with equally odd receptionist Chani (Wiig), and some mostly pointless waffle about Aussie network owner and media tycoon Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson).

But Anchorman 2's success doesn't hinge on its storyline, which is fortunate because it ranges from the bizarre to the bland, such as Burgundy and his son raising a shark called Doby (bizarre), and anything involving Lawson's Allenby (bland).

This film is about the laughs and the antics. There are certain things fans are probably expecting in the sequel - a bit of jazz flute, Brick's nutty non-sequiturs, a large-scale news team battle royale - and they're all here, plus the laughs come in sporadic but frequent-enough waves.

In this sense, the sequel is a success. The dialogue is quotable, the gags hit more than they miss, Brick's idiocy is a highlight (particularly his encounters with green screen and a funeral), and the cameo-heavy fight at the end is worth the ticket price alone.

Is it as good as the first one? The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that while much of the humour and situations feel interchangeable, the first film moved at a steadier pace and with a better winning-joke ratio, whereas Anchorman 2 suddenly grinds to a halt in the latter half and features a lot more jokes that miss their mark. A particularly wasted opportunity is Lawson's Allenby, who looks like Richard Branson but acts like Rupert Murdoch and had the potential to be an interesting character but who just becomes part of the film's applaudable moral about the importance of the news and what the media should be doing in our society. Surely "our Josh" deserves better.

The cast are at ease returning to their roles, and Carell gets more screen time, his star having risen in the period between films. The reliance on improvisation is unfortunately more obvious this time, evident in the far-from-seamless editing within scenes.

But no one who goes to see this film cares about that stuff, do they? They just want to laugh at Burgundy's ego-driven idiocy and Brick's endless stream of 'what the?' moments.

With that in mind, it's perhaps easiest to simply say this - if you love Anchorman, you'll love Anchorman 2.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2

(G) ★★

Director: Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn.

Cast: (voices of) Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Will Forte, Terry Crews, Kristen Schaal.

Animals you can eat? What will they think of next?

THE first Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was zany with more than a chance of becoming a favourite for fans of quality CG animation.

It was a feast for the eyes, with its wacky food-gone-crazy antics mashed onto a disaster-movie base to create a tasty new treat that was very different to the offerings served up by Pixar, Blue Sky, Dreamworks or any other major animation house.

Naturally, Sony Animation had to go back for seconds, but the latest helping of this story is a bit like eating chocolate cake - sure the first piece is good, but the more you eat, the less enjoyable it becomes.

Cloudy 2 picks up where the first film left off, with Flint Lockwood (Hader) and his friends saving the day from his invention that turns water into food, which ran amok and turned their island of Swallow Falls into something that resembles the floor under the kids table after Christmas dinner.

Just as they're celebrating shutting down Flint's FLDSMDFR (yes, that's what the invention is called), famed inventor Chester V arrives at Swallow Falls to lead the clean-up operation, ushering residents off the island and recruiting Flint to work at his company.

But all is not as it seems, and soon Flint and his friends are heading back to Swallow Falls, which has become a menagerie of "foodimals" that could threaten to takeover the world.

These "foodimals" are both the best and worst thing about Cloudy 2. While they are visually impressive and make for an interesting plot device at times, they ultimately become a tiresome parade of bad puns - their portmanteau names like "shrimpanzees", "watermelephants" and "flamangoes" are increasingly groan-inducing, yet it seems this is the bulk of the film's humour.

They're a good example of the kids-only gags that have replaced the all-ages laughs of the first film, with only the background antics of Flint's monkey Steve saving the day.

As a children-only adventure, Cloudy 2 works reasonably well. It's a frenetic barrage of colour and action, with plenty of bizarre set-pieces to keep the attention of a young audience. It revels in its "mysterious island" setting, the plot isn't too bad, and it does a good job of maintaining momentum, mostly by ditching things such as character development, any deeper themes, or any kind of emotional investment.

On the other hand, the teens and adults will be left hungry for something more substantial. The inventiveness of the first installment seems reduced to a one-ingredient dish, the themes are so subtle as to be almost non-existent, and its difficult to find much of a care-factor for Flint and his friends because they're not meaty characters.

This is where the difference between these two servings of Meatballs lies. The original was a well-cooked smorgasbord for the whole family, while the sequel is like a kids' dessert menu - all sweets, no substance.

If you think the food metaphors and similes I've whipped up in this review became increasingly tiresome and childish, then that perhaps is the best analogy of all for describing Cloudy 2.

Thor: The Dark World

(M) ★★★

Director: Alan Taylor.

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgård.

When shooting boy band publicity shots, never look at the camera.

WITH its sequel to Thor, the eighth movie in Marvel's Cinematic Universe, the comic book company's film arm is proving to be not unlike Thor himself - pretty much bomb-proof and unstoppable.

Even Iron Man 2, the runt of the MCU litter, made a mint, but if you're looking at Thor 2 and expecting a turkey or a flop, keep looking.

It's far from perfect - The Dark World has got some serious script issues - but even these can't detract from the fun and spectacle on display.

But be warned - the MCU is becoming an increasingly tangled web of stories and newcomers are less welcome with each new film. References to past events from the series fly by faster than Thor's hammer so prior reading is expected. If you haven't seen the first Thor or even The Avengers, this sequel is not the place to dive into these tales of superheroes, gods, and their growing mythology.

The big baddies this time around are the Dark Elves, a scary bunch of hi-tech ancient ones led by the dead-eyed Malekith (Eccleston), who looks like a pointy-eared shark with a ponytail.

He's seeking vengeance for a past defeat, which he hopes to pull off with a universe-destroying MacGuffin known as the Aether. Naturally, Thor and his hammer are out to stop him.

There are some surprising plot holes in the early stage of the film that don't feel like mistakes, but more like the film has been slightly trimmed to cut down the running time, leaving the audience to fill in some mildly annoying gaps along the way.

Despite this - or maybe as a result of this - the plot moves along at a good pace, dotted with impressive fight sequences, good gags, and a few jaw-dropping CG sequences.

Amid the carnage are good characters and some great performances. Hemsworth seems more at home than ever as Thor, more confident than cocky this time around, while Hiddleston's Loki is again a highlight. Their relationship is central, as it was in the previous Thor film, but has evolved into something new and intriguing this time around.

It's these returning characters - and the development and relationships given to them by the writers and actors - that are a highlight of the film, bringing depth amid the bombast and explosions. The connections between Loki and Thor, Loki and his parents Frigga (Rene Russo) and Odin (Hopkins), Odin and Thor, and Thor and love interest Jane (Portman) that make this a healthy melodrama somewhere between Shakespeare and soap opera. The return of Skarsgård's Erik Selvig is also hilariously welcome.

The humour really is a highlight - it could be argued this is the funniest Marvel movie to date, even outpacing the typically Whedon repartee of The Avengers. Some bit players are there only for gags, such as Kat Dennings' Darcy, Chris O'Dowd's Richard and the otherwise unneccessary Ian the intern, but it is Loki who is again a scene-stealer, delivering moodbreakers and withering putdowns with humourous ease.

The humour does ride on a knife-edge though. It's a necessary foil to the po-faced business of Norse gods flying between realms and saving the universe, but it almost goes too far into self-ridicule (and some fans might find the hilarity hard to stomach).

Take for instance the ending, which is great - it's wildly inventive and hilarious. But it teeters on the edge of wackiness, balancing precariously over a chasm of plot-holes that are filled in with technobabble so as to be less obvious. If you can laugh along and still be gripped, it's a spectacular finale.

Thor was seen as being a risk for Marvel first time round, but they pulled it off with casual ease. It seems to be a trickier world to manage on a second outing, but fans will still be pleased.

Prisoners

This is a version of a review that aired on ABC Ballarat and South West Vic radio in October, 2013.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Denis Villeneuve.

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Melissa Leo, Paul Dano.

"What do you mean you don't 'do drive thru'?"

WHEN we think of horror movies, we tend to think of haunted houses, exorcisms, and knife-wielding psychos in the night.

But what really horrifies us in our everyday lives is the possibility our loved ones could be taken away from us, and that we would be powerless to do anything about it.

It's fitting then that Denis Villeneuve's first English-language feature feels like a horror film. As it tells its tale of two missing girls abducted in broad suburban daylight, the sense of dread and foreboding, the intense uncomfortableness of what follows, and the perpetual sleet and mist that hangs in the air are straight out of a scary movie.

The two missing girls belong to Keller and Grace Dover (Jackman and Bello) and Franklin and Nancy Birch (Howard and Davis), whose lives are torn apart one foggy Thanksgiving when their young daughters Anna and Joy are abducted.

Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) is on the case, but progress is slow and frustrating for the two families, particularly Keller, who is angered when lead suspect Alex Jones (Dano) is released from custody.

Convinced the mentally challenged Alex knows the location of the kids, Keller kidnaps and imprisons him, starting down a dark road that will test Keller's Christian values and blur the lines between good and evil.

The title is an apt one - not only are people imprisoned literally but everyone is held captive and controlled beyond their will by something, whether it be their grief, anger, faith, mental capacity, past or even their job, with the latter being the case of Gyllenhaal's detective.

Loki is an intriguing character, mainly because we get so little information about him compared to everyone else in the movie. His tattoos and a nervous blink hint at a past we're never told about, and aside from his introduction where he dines alone, we never see him outside of work.

He may be seen as a token cop or a frustratingly underwritten character by some, but he is a refreshingly cliché-free lawman so driven and determined that he lives entirely for his job.

Far more colourful is Jackman's Keller - a survivalist, a Christian, and a committed father who provides the film's grey-area morality. It's a stunning performance, filled with coiled anger and relentless desperation, and certainly worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Jackman and Gyllenhaal do the heavy lifting but it's a top-notch cast all round, boasting one Oscar winner, four Oscar nominees and a Golden Globe nominee. Davis' limited screentime is memorable, Bello is convincing, while Dano is excellent in a thankless role.

Veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins perfectly captures the bleakness of the situation and the mist-shrouded suburbs, while Johan Johannsson's score (aided by a dash of Radiohead) is suitably ominous.

Prisoners is haunting and will stick with you. It messes with your sympathies and your moral compass. It keeps you guessing and wondering how it can possibly come together, and even demands a second viewing if you can handle its at-times confronting nature again. There are puzzles at play here, so pay attention.

The only criticisms might be the ending, Loki's lack of development, and whether the film maintains its two and half hours fully, but those possible gripes aside, this is one of the best films of the year.

Pacific Rim

(M) ★★

Director: Guillermo Del Toro.

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba, Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini.

"What have I told you about getting your Transformers wet?"

Guillermo Del Toro's Godzilla Vs Transformers - sorry, Pacific Rim - is both as dumb and as awesome as you'd expect.

It's dumb because it's about giant monsters fighting giant robots. But it's awesome because, well, it's about giant monsters fighting giant robots.

The set-up is done with applaudable efficiency in the first five minutes. Enormous creatures called kaiju have come to Earth via a portal deep under the Pacific Ocean and have been wreaking Mothra-style havoc on cities for a number of years.

In order to defeat the beasts, world leaders decided to build jaegers - ie. giant robots - to fight back. They are piloted by two humans who are mentally linked by something called "the drift" and control the machine like two synced-up puppeteers sitting inside the robot's head.

All seemed to be going well in the battle to save humanity until the attacks became more prevalent, the kaiju got bigger, the jaeger program became too expensive, and now we look doomed.

Admirably, Pacific Rim is not about the arrival of the monsters and the need to build these giant robots. It drops us into the thick of it - we get our first kaiju/jaeger fight in a matter of minutes, so Del Toro at least knows what people going to this movie want to see.

There is no tedious build-up, and very little in the way of a Jaws-like approach to the monsters or the mecha. Just a barrage of Cloverfield-type beasties punching on with Optimus Prime's big brothers.

But what happens between rounds in this hyper-heavyweight fight? Well, that's where Pacific Rim suffers and, as a result, so does the audience.

Surprisingly, the biggest problem is the cast. While admittedly most of the dialogue is exposition, the script isn't total rubbish, but some actors handle it much better than others.

Rinko Kikuchi is the best and acquits herself well as the jaeger pilot-wannabe, desperate for revenge but traumatised by her past. Idris Elba is okay despite getting the hammiest lines possible as the jaeger program commander, and ditto for Del Toro regular Ron Perlman as a blackmarket crimelord, but from there it really drops off.

Charlie Hunnam, who is the star of the show despite being so terrible as the lead in Frankie Go Boom and The Ledge, is stilted and utterly uncharismatic, while the "comedy" pairing of Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as the constantly sparring kaiju researchers seems to be a moronic competition to see who can go the furthest over the top without getting a laugh.

And then there's Robert Kazinsky and Max Martini as Chuck and Herc Hanson, the two Australian jaeger pilots. Not only are their performances rubbish, but they use two of the most hideous Australian accents since The Simpsons came down under.

With all this dire dialogue and bad acting, it's a relief when the monsters and robots start thumping the radioactive snot out of each other.

The special effects are nothing short of astounding, by the way. I know we take these kind of things for granted these days, but there is some seriously impressive CG work here.

Sure, most of the battles take place at night, in the rain or underwater in order to hide the seams, and occasionally Del Toro's camerawork has the same problem as Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen in that it gets too close to the action so you can't actually tell what the hell is going on, but when it pulls back and shows these two leviathans duking it out, it's glorious to behold.

But that is about all Pacific Rim has going for it. Even Del Toro's usually visual stylings, so distinctive and sumptuous in Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies, is almost totally absent. Only a small section of the film revolving around Perlman's character Chau bears the signature glow and style of Del Toro.

If you expect nothing more than monsters fighting giant robots, you'll love Pacific Rim. If you were hoping for something more from Del Toro, at least there are monsters fighting giant robots.

Man Of Steel

(M) ★★

Director: Zack Snyder.

Cast: Henry Cavill, Michael Shannon, Amy Adams, Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne.

"What a beautiful day. Be a shame if someone were to destroy it in a blizzard of CGI."

FOR DC Comics, there is a lot on the line with this reboot of the Superman saga.

If Man Of Steel flies like a bird or a plane, it will open the door for DC's own shared universe, which they hope will rival Marvel's ongoing Avengers' adventures.

Bad luck, DC. Man Of Steel sinks like a massive chunk of kryptonite.

It's ambitious, yes, grandiose, yes, and sure to be a hit at the box office, but in almost all other aspects, it is a $225 million turkey.

This rebirth of Superman, which literally begins with the birth of Superman, retells the story many of us know and love - the alien child, sent to Earth just before the destruction of his homeworld Krypton, raised by the kindly Kents of Kansas, and growing into a near-invulnerable superhero.

The twist in this version, as compared to Richard Donner's 1978 groundbreaker, is an attempt to imbue with the story of Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent with deeper themes and a more realistic look at the implications his arrival would have. It also ramps up the Christ allegory and picks at the relationship Superman has with humanity.

It's all part of the "Nolanisation" of Krypton's favourite son. Having turned DC's other heavy-hitter - Batman - into a real world concern with a dark edge, Christopher Nolan was attached to this project in the hopes he would help do the same with Superman.

It doesn't work. Man Of Steel comes off as utterly humourless, pompous, melodramatic, dumbed-down, repetitive, and even sporadically boring.

The film makes similar mistakes to that other DC bomb Green Lantern - it tells us everything we need to know in the first act, only to tell us everything again when the main character needs to find out. More editing is badly needed.

And while they were undertaking some more judicious editing of the first half, the filmmakers could have done away with the frustrating non-linear storytelling. Not only is it annoying to have the story jump back and forth between Clark's childhood, his teenage years and his nomadic adulthood, but it continually breaks the emotional flow of the film. Much of that heart comes from a nice turn by Costner as Clark's dad Jonathan, but the fractured storyline gets in the way of the audience connection with him.

Worse than this is the dialogue, which almost entirely falls into one of three categories - "Now I must explain my actions", "This is what just happened" or "This is what's about to happen". There is no subtlety, nobody talks like a real person, and the characters don't develop naturally, if at all.

This dumbing-down goes for the grandiose themes of the film as well, which are boiled down to infuriating obviousness, giving the audience no credit what-so-ever.

And I never thought I'd get sick of explosions and destruction in a movie, but I finally found my limit. It came with about 20 minutes left to go in the film - I actually sighed with relief when the final confrontation was over. And I've seen Roland Emmerich's 2012.

It's all a shame because the cast is great. Cavill makes for a great Superman/Kal-El/Clark, capturing that mix of nobility and humility that Christopher Reeve nailed. Shannon is menacing as Zod, Crowe brings gravitas as Jor-El, and Costner and Lane work well. Only Adams, as Lois Lane, feels out of place, but poor writing hampers her more than anyone.

Are there highlights aside from the cast? Some of the fight sequences are quite good before they become numbing, and the flashbacks, despite being jarringly scattered throughout the film, are nicely done. Snyder makes the film look good, particularly in the flashbacks.

These are slight redemptions. And maybe with really low expectations this will have a brainless charm to it. Maybe this is exactly the Superman movie some of the comic book fans have been waiting for.

But for all its ambition, this Man Of Steel fails to soar, instead crashlanding in a humourless, melodramatic mess of explosions.