Holiday Movie Marathon: Hobbit 3

The Staples Family is trying to catch up on their movie watching during the usually lazy second week of Winter Break.  These aren't holiday movies.  They are just movies that came out during the holiday season.  Today's Offering is Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies.  Only three of the Staples were able to attend this PG-13 flick.  

I know I risk losing my geek card with the following comment: I have never read any of The Lord of the Rings books.  I have tried.  Believe me.  I own them all.  I've sat down multiple times to try to read them.  But, for some reason, I have not been been able to accomplish that mission.  So I have the unique ability to judge the LOTR franchise of movies as a sci-fi/fantasy movie fan bue without the (sometimes) annoying habit of holding the movies up to the impossible-to-reach standards of the books.  I knew next-to-nothing about the series when I went to see the first movie.  I just knew that people who like the same things I like really liked the books and couldn't wait for the movies.  I still remember when I went to see the first LOTR movie with my father-in-law.  I believe we both had worked all day and were already tired.  We decided to go watch a three-hour movie.  Not a great game plan.  When we walked out, we were silent through most of the parking lot.  Finally I looked at him and asked, "What the heck did we just see?"  "I'm not quite sure."

That is the feeling a lot of people would have about this franchise.  There are bizarre names and places.  There are different kinds of creatures that all look vaguely human.  And there are a lot of crazy plot elements that are essential to grasp, but hard to do so.  For a good stretch of time I thought Saruman and Sauron were the same person because I didn't catch that their names were different.  I was confused by a lot of stuff, especially late at night after a full day of selling furniture.

Fortunately, I didn't give up on the series.  I rewatched the first movie before the second one came out.  I absolutely loved The Two Towers.  I still feel it is the movie of the entire franchise.  The Return of the King won a covered wagon full of Oscars, mostly as a reward for the entire series.  And it had two hundred endings.  I kept thinking it was over and then here came another piece of closure for some third tier character.  I did really enjoy the movies, once I got a handle on everything.  I've seen them on television since then and they hold up well.  They are not my favorite franchise or in my top five - probably not in my top ten, depending on if your count all the Avengers character movies as one franchise or separate ones.

When The Hobbit trilogy came out, my oldest son was really excited to go.  He had started reading the book and his uncles all were big fans of the series.  So the crew of us went and caught the first installment.  I was a little disappointed by much of the movie.  It was a lot of "been there, done that" to the movie.  The landscape and massive scope were not as exciting.  They weren't things we had never experienced before.  And the movie itself took a long time to get going.  There seemed to be a lot of narrative and not a lot of action.  My son, on the other hand, loved it.  He couldn't wait until the second movie came out.  But we, for some reason or another, didn't get to see it.  We bought it on BluRay, but didn't watch it right away.  With PG-13 movies, we have to find times where the younger two kids aren't around.  By the time we finally sat down to watch it, we got a third of the way through and got interrupted.  And then my daughter asked if she could see it.  So we went back and watched the first movie (much better the second time through) and the second movie.  Many people had told me that Desolation of Smaug was better than the first movie.  They were right.  It was more action packed and exciting.  The characters seemed richer.  Although it didn't carry some of the emotional weight of the first movie (I still love the scenes with Bilbo and Thorin at the end of the movie), it was a good quality entry.  None of the Hobbit films come close to the LOTR trilogy, but they are good in their own right.

Now it is time to close the franchise.  The three of us traipsed off to the theater to take in the epic conclusion.  There were some interesting takeaways from the film.  Naturally, be warned about spoilers.  This is not just a generic review as much as a more detailed examination.

1. I think Martin Freeman is brilliant.  I love him in Sherlock.  I think he is an inspired Dr. Watson and a brilliant counterpart to Cumberbatch's Holmes.  I also think was an incredible Bilbo Baggins.  He could communicate more in a frown of his mouth than many actors could with a soliloquy.  I thought Elijah Wood was good as Frodo in the LOTR trilogy, but I much preferred Freeman as Bilbo.  There were so many characters in this third movie that it felt like Bilbo got pushed out of the center too much.  I missed him.  
2. My biggest gripe was that there was a lack of closure in this film.  I know, that sounds ridiculous when Return of the King was blasted for TOO MUCH closure.  But no one left that movie and asked, "What happened to...?"  But when I was talking to a friend yesterday about the movie, my first question was "What happened to the Arkenstone?"  It never showed what happened to this majorly important element! The last person holding it was Bard the Bowman, head of the people from Laketown.  But we never really saw what happened to them either.  They were kind of winning their battle against the Orcs, but we didn't see where they went from there.  We also never really found out what happened to the dwarves.  Did they take over the city in the mountain?  Who is their ruler, since Thorin and his cousins got offed?  Strange.
3. Speaking of Thorin and his bloodline getting sacked, I really liked this outcome.  No, I wasn't rooting for those characters to get whacked.  But we have seen so many movies where the heroes get killed, only to have them reappear in a different form or to come back to life (every Disney movie, X-Men, Avengers).  It was actually a relief to see a movie where the good guys didn't come back.  There was pain in losing those characters, but it didn't feel like a cheap manipulative tactic.  Kudos to Peter Jackson for sticking with that outcome.
4. My favorite scene in the whole franchise had to be when the gigantic eagles came flying in and started wrecking havoc on the Orc armies.  One eagle came in carrying the Skinchanger and launched him into the fray.  He transformed into a gigantic bear and starting going crazy, destroying Orcs.  I could have walked out right there happy.  Let me again explain in all caps.  A FREAKING GIGANTIC EAGLE TOSSED A MASSIVE BEAR INTO A BATTLE WHERE THE BEAR STARTED GOING CRAZY!!!  If that is not the most awesome scene ever put on film, I don't know what is.  I still get chills thinking about it.
5. Did anyone out-turd-blossom Lee Pace this year?  First, he was Ronin the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, complete with his weird black oozy mouth and his refusal to participate in dance-offs.  Then he was the arrogant punk woodland elf king Thrandruil in The Hobbit.  He does a great job being a jerk.  Don't know if that is what he is going for, but he is quite successful at it.
6. I know that Tauriel, played by Lost's Evangeline Lilly, was not in the book.  But I honestly thought her character was one of the best things about the trilogy.  I really liked just about every scene she was in.  Remember, I didn't read the book so I was okay with creative license.  
7. Who exactly were the five armies?  We were trying to figure this out last night.  There were the woodland elves, the dwarves, the humans, the orcs.  Was the fifth army the other orc army?  Or was it the eagles?  I never was completely sure who it was supposed to be.
8. For six movies we were tantalized with how awesome Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is.  She is this massively powerful elf thingee.  But, unless I'm missing something, the movies never really showed that.  Well we finally saw her unleash her fury.  It reminded me of some sort of 1970s drug induced movie scene.  But there was little doubt she was an extreme bad butt.

Overall, I liked the third Hobbit.  It brought things full circle to the start of LOTR.  There were some very exciting scenes and a lot of emotional heft.  There was a lot of violence, even for a LOTR movie.  As usual, the blood was kept to a minimum, which is how they retained their PG-13 rating.  That and the fact there is so little offensive content in the other categories (language, adult situations, sexual situations).  I actually look forward to having the kids watch the original trilogy now that they have seen this trilogy.  I will say this for Peter Jackson - he managed to do what few people have been able to do.  He crafted a six-part movie franchise and didn't have as stinker in the bunch.  If you ranked the entire series, whatever you had as the worst movie would still be a really good movie.  Star Wars couldn't pull that off (Episode II).  James Bond couldn't do it.  I would even argue that a consistent series like Harry Potter didn't pull this off.  Its worst movie (Half Blood Prince, for me) was a bigger drop from its best movie than the LOTR series.  And it never reached the heights of Jackson's series.  Remember, all three of the first movies were nominated for best picture, with the third one winning.  Even though The Hobbit didn't get nominated like that, it still was a very good series.  That is truly an amazing feat for the creative team.  

It is always hard to say goodbye to a really good movie series.  I have felt that pain when Harry Potter ended, when Christopher Nolan said goodbye to Gotham, when Oceans Eleven quit robbing people.  And there is a loss knowing there will not be another entry in this franchise.  It can kind of be summed up in a conversation between the elves Tauriel and Thrandruil in The Five Armies.  For most of the movie, he sees her as a problem.  But here she is desperately hurting after losing someone she loves and he stands there watching her.  "If this is love, I don't want it.  Why does it hurt so bad?"  In a rare moment of civility, he responds, "It's because it was real."  Real love leads to real pain when it ends.  And there are millions of people who loved the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit franchises.  Seeing them end is going to be hard for them.  I count myself as one of those people.  Well done, one and all.

Holiday Movie Marathon: Annie

Winter Break can be fun.  The kids are out long enough for travel.  There are some BIG events to celebrate - for us the includes two birthdays, Christmas, and New Year's Eve/Day.  But it also can be trying for parents as they deal with the roller coaster of emotions from their kids.  There is the massive high of Christmas, followed by the doldrums of the week after Christmas, followed by the excitement of staying up late on New Year's Eve, followed by the crabbiness from staying up late.  That all culminates with the depressing realization that school is about to start.  I find it humorous that this actually worked its way into a traditional Christmas song.  "And mom and dad can't hardly wait for school to start again," snuck into It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. 

To combat that second week complaining and boredom, I decided to take the kids to catch up on all the movies we have not been able to go to this Fall.  There was a glut of family-friendly films that were released in November and December.  We just haven't found the time or resources to attend.  So this week is our Holiday Movie Marathon.  It doesn't have to be a "holiday movie."  It just needs to be a movie that came out over the holiday season.  The tentative lineup is as follows: Annie, Hobbit 3, Big Hero 6, Penguins of Madagascar, and Night at the Museum 3.  If I can find a way for Heather and I to see Mockingjay, that would be great.  Since I have been a horrible slacker at my writing, I figured I could use this marathon to force myself to post.  So we'll kick things off with Annie.

I used to say I hated musicals.  But that isn't really true.  I don't mind good musicals.  I know some people gripe about the unrealistic elements of this genre: people busting out in song everywhere, everyone knowing the dance moves, stuff like that.  Basically all of the stuff Patrick Dempsey's character said in Enchanted.  The way I figure, my favorite movies are usually superhero or sci-fi films.  Am I really someone to complain about realism?  My shelf of movies include talking raccoons, guys in iron suits, a billionaire dressed like a bat, and multiple science-ignoring spacecrafts.  I think I waved bye bye to realistic a long time ago.  I love Les Mis and Phantom of the Opera.  I have enjoyed Frozen, Chicago, Enchanted, The Muppets.  So we will get that out of the way.  I think some older musicals are just stupid.  It isn't because they are musicals, per se.  It is because they try to find ways to shoehorn weird musical pieces into films where they don't belong.  Take the entire NYC scene from Singin' In The Rain - one of the weirdest scenes in all of moviedom.  Another example would be from White Christmas, where they are rehearsing in Vermont and they do the double shot of the Minstrel Show and the weird dance number.  It was like they said, "Hey there is this cool song, but it doesn't make any sense.  Any way we can come up with a dream sequence or a hallucination scene?"  (Kind of like Glee, when they had Mr Schu with a high fever.)

I have seen the "original" Annie, with Albert Finney and Carol Burnett.  It was good.  I'm not super attached to it or to the story itself.  There are some very recognizable songs that are pretty cool.  And It's a Hard Knock Life made it possible for both the Jay-Z rap AND the Dr Evil/Mini Me version of that rap. So you've got that going for the movie.  My kids like the older version, which they saw after they saw the previews of this new version.  But I wasn't going to be offended that this new movie came out.  It was a movie that could be remade without too much discomfort.

I really liked the new Annie.  It was a fun movie.  You know how some movies are exciting and some are intense and some are thought-provoking?  This movie was fun.  I felt good watching it.  I like movies like that once in a while.  Sure, I also like the darker middle child of trilogies, where hope is lost and the movie ends with great gravitas.  But I appreciate a good fun movie.  This is probably why I am such a big fan of the Oceans Eleven series.  They are enjoyable to experience.  Annie was similar.  I know that some people have jumped onto the portrayal of foster families and how we see orphans in today's society.  But I will let people better versed in those topics debate.  For me, I know that not all foster kids go through the pain that Annie experienced.  But I'm sure there are also some who have it much worse.  However, the movie was not a dramatic examination of the foster system.  Annie's situation was bad enough to make her move to the upper crust sufficiently inspiring.  But it wasn't traumatic.

The two things I most appreciated about the movie were the cleverness and the music.  I really like a clever movie - one that rewards the viewer for paying attention to little details.  This can be through running gags or hidden visual gems or throwaway lines.  Annie was well stocked with these elements.  There were references to the older movie, to the silliness of musicals in general, to our society's infatuation with technology and social media, and even to the behind the scenes people (Will Smith and Jay-Z produced the movie - remember that when Jamie Foxx's Will Stacks is giving a speech early on in the film).  And there was a running gag about how Cameron Diaz's foster parent used to be in C+C Music Factory - you have to keep your eyes peeled for just how many nods to that concept were made.  The kids didn't pick up on all of these things, but Heather and I did.  It is kind of like how Pixar and Dreamworks will sneak in adult jokes for the parents.  They were significant enough that it amplified the enjoyment factor.

The music was the other main attraction.  They kept the original songs, but revised them to a modern audience.  I really like the new adaptations.  But there also were several new songs that really fit into the culture of the movie.  I actually had a hard time remembering which songs were pre-existing and which were new.  I'm sure Jay-Z being involved in the film didn't hurt.  But the biggest star of the film had to be Sia Furler.  She goes by Sia as a musician and her song Chandelier was one of the biggest pop hits of 2014.  One thing I can say with confidence is that she is a very talented musician.  Her voice is fantastic and powerful, and she does contribute it to several pieces.  But her ability to modernize the music, but also to bring the nostalgia to the newer songs impressed me.

Great music wouldn't be anything without great performances.  I wasn't that impressed with Rose Byrne's voice.  And Cameron Diaz was comically over-the-top most of time (I hope that was intentional).  For the first hour of the movie, I was afraid that Annie would make the same mistake with Jamie Foxx that Enchanted did with Idina Menzel.  (I am still bitter that Idina never sang in that film.  Why?  WHY!?!)  But then Foxx got his chance.  It really isn't surprising that he did a stellar job.  I mean, he played Ray Charles and has had a very respectable music career.  I was impressed by the emotion he conveyed as well.  Every time he sang was a treat.  But the overwhelming star of the movie was Quvenzhane Wallis as Annie.  This little girl is someone to keep your eyes on.  She already has an Oscar nomination under her belt for Beast of the Southern Wild - a movie I am now ten times more likely to watch on Netflix thanks to Annie.  Wallis is such a mature actress for someone so young.  She brings such amazing emotion to her performance.  And she is a dang good singer.  For a movie like this to work, the child actor has to be something truly special.  Wallis certainly fits that bill.  I really hope she is able to translate this to a successful career and is able to avoid the trap so many child actors fall into.

As far as appropriateness for kids, I was very pleased at how Annie was able to pull off its PG rating. There was one character that drank a lot.  The cursing was very minimal.  There was not a lot of sexual content.  There was hardly anything remotely violent.  And one thing I really appreciated was that Annie herself was not snotty and disrespectful to adults.  There was some of that behavior, but it was so mild compared to television shows like Jessie.  Annie's attitude towards life was so positive that it was enough to convey any "superiority" to adults without an overdose of snark and sarcasm.  Overall, I felt Annie was a real success.  It was a good remake and a positive, enjoyable movie.  I have no problem recommending it, purchasing it, or buying the soundtrack.  And I look forward to seeing where its star goes in her career.