'The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug', 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', and 'American Hustle': review round-up

'The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug' - Dir. Peter Jackson (12A)

This second part of Peter Jackson's 9-hour adaptation of what's quite a slender children's book, 'The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug' has the same problems as its predecessor bar the songs. It's long, baggy, a bit twee, overloaded with un-engaging CGI chase sequences and full of pointless fan service for Jackson's original 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, with lots of business teasing the origins of things that ultimately happen in those other films. I didn't like the original trilogy - which feels like the sort of derivative, high fantasy trash Tolkien inspired rather than Tolkien itself - and I couldn't stand 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' either, so I won't spend long writing about this one. You're either a fan or not as this point, I would imagine. What I will say is that this second chapter is a marginal improvement on the first, mostly because there's a really terrific CGI dragon involved. True, you have to wait almost two hours (and sit through a lot of Orlando Bloom) to get to that dragon, but it is pretty spectacular when you do eventually get there.

On the subject of the derided high frame rate version (which plays at 48 frames per second as opposed to the usual 24), I was actually pretty impressed by the technology - even if it made this particular film look over-lit and cheap looking, like something you'd see on an HD TV channel rather than a major Hollywood movie. Perhaps the main benefit of watching the film in HFR was that I didn't get any sort of headache or eye-strain from nearly three hours of 3D movie. The other immediately noticeable boon was the fact that HFR seems to completely eradicate the motion blur which you usually get during sequences that involve fast panning shots with lots of action in 3D films. So basically, as it stands, it's a technology primarily aimed at improving the experience of 3D. I think it's also fair to say that the current cheap looking examples of the technology are far from representative of what it could potentially do if a film is lit specifically with the format in mind, as I'm guessing Jackson's films weren't (due to the fact the vast majority will be experiencing them in plain, old 24fps). I'm betting James Cameron will shoot 'Avatar 2' in this format and that's when we'll see it take off, just like 3D did back in 2009.

'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' - Dir. Ben Stiller (PG)

The longest, glossiest advert I've ever seen. Ben Stiller's adaptation of 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' treats its audience with contempt, presenting itself as a completely sincere and resolutely anti-cynical movie, about living life to the full and self-improvement (in the most trite and superficial of ways), whilst bombarding the viewer with the most blatant, in your face product placement I've ever witnessed. Live life: Fly Air Greenland! Live life: order a Papa John's! Live life: eat a delicious Cinnabon! Live life: sign up for eHarmony! All movies feature product placement, of course, but 'Mitty' goes the extra mile of dedicating close-up after close-up to prominently branded drink cartons and suspiciously perfect looking airline food and by having the words "Papa John's" be perhaps the most often repeated in the entire movie with the possible exception of the character's name and (urgh) "the quintessence of life".

Most movies feature, say, a Heineken logo in the background (which this does, of course), but leave it at that. However 'Mitty' - which presumably made a high percentage of its money back from the off, entirely from these deals - folds product placement into the narrative directly and at every turn. It features two entire conversations about Papa John's (more specifically about how there's a Papa John's in Iceland, which is depicted as the only place in an otherwise barren land where people come together), a half-dozen phone conversations with an overly-friendly customer service guy from eHarmony (played by Patton Oswalt) which even features a line about how great service they provide is, a trip to Cinnabon (featuring lines like - and I'm paraphrasing - "you need a Cinnabon!" and "that's a plate of delicious, sugary goodness right there, my friend!") and many, many, many others. It's all just shots of Stiller Living Life(TM) (skateboarding, travelling, fighting a shark, looking at a rare species of leopard, playing football with tribesman etc) which marry the aforementioned products to a broadly appealing lifestyle. "Look at Mitty go", the film seems to cry, "be fun like him! Life is far too short! Travel abroad! Meet people! Buy a Papa Johns!"

These aren't the only problems with Mitty. It's not funny (an example of a 'funny line' Mitty wishes he'd said, to his boss with a stupid beard: "do you know who looks good in a beard? Dumbledore." Zing!) and all the character's imagined fantasy sequences are so over the top ridiculous that there's no investment in them when they occur. The romance plot, between Mitty and Kristen Wiig's character, is perfunctory and unearned, and in many ways a little creepy - barely knowing her when he buys her a young son a gift and then dropping contact with her entirely because a man answered her door one time. Wiig, who I generally like, has the thankless task having to perform an acoustic guitar version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, with a pained expression on her face as if it's the most profound song of all time and she's just written it. Most symbolic of the film's dramatic deficiencies is the "nasty boss" stock character who shows up to downsize Mitty's workplace (played by Adam Scott) seemingly fresh from the set of a pantomime. He's so over the top mean to his employees - and Mitty in particular - that it doesn't relate to the world outside of the film at all. It's all bombast and sentiment devoid of real feeling or anything meaningful to actually say about the world outside of its relentless barrage of well-worn platitudes.

'American Hustle' - Dir. David O. Russell (15)

It's been trailed like a derivative, Scorsese-influenced crime film, but David O. Russell's 70s-set 'American Hustle' is best viewed as a black comedy. Every brilliant performance, every hackneyed line, every haircut, every sequence is a little warped, a little odd - from Jennifer Lawrence doing the housework whilst miming along to Live and Let Die to Christian Bale's pot-bellied, comb-over sporting conman seducing Amy Adams in the lost property room of his dry cleaning establishment. That doesn't mean to say it isn't a decent and occasionally tense crime film, with its share interesting twists and turns in the plot, but it reminded me more of the Coen Brothers than 'Goodfellas', being about a group of variously flawed, morality bereft shysters who are often as pathetic and incompetent as they are resolutely unlikable. It's saying something that Jeremy Renner's charismatic local mayor is the only one of the bunch with any integrity and he's the victim at the centre of the big con.

Horrible people screwing each other over for the most part, but the film's refreshingly kind to the political class, who it depicts with uncommon humanity - with the mayor, as flawed and corruptible as he is, doing everything he can to help his constituents, who he earnestly strives to serve. It's careerist cops and conniving criminals who are shown to be the baddies here (even as protagonists), when we're usually sold the idea that organised criminals represent some sort of fraternity of direct, honest, old fashioned men with a strict code, as opposed to the lying, scheming cads that run the country. Instead when Bale's middle-rung financial criminal and Cooper's upwardly mobile, increasingly unhinged cop clash, there's no code of conduct or pretense of cool - nobody is in control or charismatically playing all the angles and holding all the cards. There's only a kind of ruthless, self-interested, survival of the fittest capitalism in play - and it's conscientious, civic-spirited people who get hurt in the crossfire.

'Silver Linings Playbook', 'Jack Reacher', 'Life of Pi' and 'Fear and Desire': review round-up

'Silver Linings Playbook' - Dir. David O. Russell (15)

Really strong lead performances from Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence combine with a smart script to make David O. Russell's relatively unsung follow-up to 'The Fighter' a real charmer. This story of friendship and, later, love between two mentally ill misfits is handled with sensitively without being patronising or sanitised, giving a non-judgemental glimpse at the personal lives of its troubled, bipolar disorder suffering protagonists. The duo's lack of social graces and peculiar home-lives gives rise to some amusing scenes, though overall the emphasis here is on drama - in a gritty, socially real style and following working class characters, making it feel similar to the director's previous in terms of tone.

Even the populist dance contest plotline that sees the two leads come together feels somehow grounded rather than whimsical, though the first half is definitely strongest - dealing more with mental health issues, whereas as it goes on it becomes more about the redemptive power of love and the peculiarities of fate. That's not a bad thing or a worthless theme, by any stretch of the imagination, but the film gets less compelling as it stops being an intense character study - as it is for the first (Cooper dominated) half-hour - and becomes more bogged down in its own plot. All the stuff involving Robert De Niro as a superstitious bookmaker feels particularly unnecessary, and the final scenes - hinging on an unlikely/nonsensical final wager - resort to contriving tension from an odd situation rather than the actions of characters.

'Jack Reacher' - Dir. Christopher McQuarrie (12A)

One of the most relentlessly right-wing action movies of 2012, 'Jack Reacher' stars Tom Cruise as the eponymous "hero" - an extra-judicial champion who deals with The Scumbags The Law Can't Put Away, dispensing justice at the barrel of a gun and at the heel of his boot. Here the enemy - as embodied by a brilliant but under-utilised Werner Herzog - invests in public works: making bridges and roads "that no one needs". Here politicians and policemen are corrupt and can't be trusted to get the job done, and in fact come between our hero and True Justice more than once. Here a defence attorney (Rosamund Pike) is made to speak with the families of her client's victims as a condition for getting Reacher's help. It's a film where American prisons are derided as holiday camps and where the rights of gun owners are frequently and fervently championed - with one of the good guys the owner of a gun store/practice range, as played by Robert Duvall. It's the only film I've seen where the hero can casually call a young woman a "slut" and still be considered the hero. I could go on but by now you either get the idea or you don't care.

Reacher is a typical Cruise character to a self-parodic and often hilarious degree: he's the best there is at everything, top of every class at military school, but he's also a bit of a maverick. During one particularly intense phone conversation with a wrong'un, he describes himself as "a drifter with nothing to lose". The ladies universally love him, turning to gawk at him in every crowd scene. He's good at running and driving fast cars, and you rarely see him fail or come off worse in any situation. But there's something different and, I think, quite sad about this particular Cruise role also - in that Jack Reacher is a bit nasty. In playing a character more ruthless and self-consciously "bad-ass" than his usual Cruise has never seemed older or less relevant, even as he struggles to stay hip.

'Life of Pi' - Dir. Ang Lee (PG)

The opening credits sequence to Ang Lee's 'Life of Pi' is the single tweest thing I have ever seen outside of a parody and, I suppose to its credit, the film starts as it means to go on: bombarding the audience with cuteness and whimsy and trite armchair theology from then until the sloppy ending moments. There's just enough bland and vague bollocks about faith and spirituality here to flatter the audience into thinking they're being given something that fits their intelligence, without actually challenging them and spoiling their evening out - but 'Life of Pi' is every bit as vapid as Vernon Kay or people who use the word "detox".

Based on a beloved novel, this is the story of a young man stranded at sea in a lifeboat with only an angry tiger for company. Whilst stranded at sea following a shipwreck - as his family attempted to move their zoo from French-India to French-Canada - Pi (Suraj Sharma) contends with the tiger Richard Parker - an impressive piece of CGI - whilst coming to terms with his own faith: a mix of Islam, Hinduism and Catholicism. The latter part, which could be interesting, is neglected largely in favour of adorable meerkats and flying fish that make nifty (and distracting, aspect ratio altering) use of the 3D.

Lee's film looks amazing - or at least, it looks different to anything else you've seen - but beyond that its empty calories and outstays its welcome well before it stumbles over the two-hour mark. Apparently the original book was once deemed "unfilmable" but on this evidence, to misquote 'Jurassic Park', Ang Lee was so preoccupied with whether or not he could that he didn't stop to think if he should.

'Fear and Desire' - Dir. Stanley Kubrick (12A)

Playing UK cinemas for the first time since 1953, Stanley Kubrick's rare and disowned debut feature can now be appreciated in all its flawed-but-sort-of-interesting glory. This is definitely one for die-hard fans of the director or those with a broader interest in film history rather than casual cinema-goers, a fact re-enforced by the decision to screen this short feature preceded by three short documentary films made by the young photographer as his motion picture career gathered pace. This means Kubrick aficionados can now also see 'Day of the Fight' and 'The Flying Padre' on the big screen, as well as a colour recruitment film made for the International Seafarers Union in 1953, the year after 'Fear and Desire'. The end result is a two-hour programme that's occasionally fascinating and sometimes a bit dull.

As far as existentialist war B-movie 'Fear and Desire' is concerned, it's understandable why Kubrick would block its distribution for so long during his lifetime. It's not a complete car crash, with some really nice photography (as you'd expect) and some eye-catching shots, but its overwritten and amateurish compared to his subsequent work, and pretty abysmally acted. Some recognisably Kubrickian themes can be found here, such as madness and the dehumanising horror of war, but its difficult to know how much of this could be down to the director given that this is the one film he took no part in writing - with Howard Sackler the sole credited author. Visually there are aspects of it that reminded me strongly of early Kurosawa - particularly 'Rashomon', which was such a big deal in the years directly preceding the making of 'Fear and Desire' - mainly in its use of the jungle setting and enigmatic female lead, Virginia Leith as "the girl".

There are some really appealing aspects to the story too, in that it focusses on four soldiers stranded behind enemy lines and their internal combustion under the pressure of what to do next. There is little conflict with the delightfully non-specific enemy - though the conflict we do see is powerfully and viscerally depicted - but instead we spend time with these increasingly mad men who, as far as we can tell, may as well be the villains of the piece.

'Retreat' set visit + David O Russell's 'Uncharted' movie

Yesterday, courteously of some jolly nice people at Sony Home Entertainment, I visited sunny and beautiful North Wales to go on the set of the upcoming British thriller film 'Retreat'. The film is being shot in a remote cottage near Porthmadog which is doubling up as the Scottish highlands and stars Cillian Murphy, Jamie Bell and Thandie Newton.

I don't know all the details as I only saw one rehearsal and one short (aborted) take involving an action sequence near the film's conclusion, but what I do know is that the story sees Murphy and Newton play a couple who visit an isolated retreat to fix their relationship which is going through a bad time. Jamie Bell apparently enters as the antagonist and tells them that they are the only people left alive due to an airborne virus.



I was lucky enough to have a chance to meet the film's director and writer Carl Tibbetts, who is directing his first movie, as well as the producer Gary Sinyor (himself director of 'The Bachelor' and 'Leon the Pig Farmer') and all three cast members. All were friendly and accommodating despite the fact that they were all exhausted - being at the final stages of an intense four week shooting schedule. Everybody got round to talking to us between takes and re-sets and it was a great opportunity to see the making of what looks to be an interesting film.

It was a bizarre experience: interviewing Cillian Murphy in a temporary mess hall with fake blood on his lip; watching Jamie Bell play guitar and bound onto the set impersonating Stephen Fry - full of energy - and then chatting to him near a lake and some sheep; sitting on the grass with Thandie Newton as her kids ran around the countryside. The interviews themselves will be up on Obsessed With Film sometime next year to coincide with the home entertainment release of the film, which Sony are distributing.



Also, this morning I wrote a small news piece for OWF about 'I Heart Huckabees' director David O Russell being selected to direct an adaptation of another Sony property: the PlayStation 3 video game 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune'. Is this a good thing? Well, that's basically what I discuss in the article.