The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Scale.

Anyway, this starts off right after the first one, but it’s more… ponderous? I mean, the first one didn’t exactly zip, but I was on board from the start, and this one asks a lot of the viewer (to stay interested).

So evil! Sort of!

This fight/chase scene had me laughing out loud. It’s amazing!

Somebody called the Hobbit movies “Peter Jackson fan fiction”, and it’s accurate in more ways than one: There’s so much fan service here, what with the whirling Dwarf dervish, and Legolas getting to be even smugger while killing orcs. It’s perfect!

Bollocks.

This Hobbit episode too a strange turn.

This is the highest-tomatometered of the Hobbit movies, and that’s just… that’s just… that’s just typical, because it’s a lot worse than the first one.

Oh, yeah — the second episode ended on a cliffhanger.

Man, this was so much worse then the first movie. Basically nothing happened. But there were some fun fight scenes.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Peter Jackson. 2013. ⚂

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Frodo is looking distinctly older here than in Lord of the Rings. How long time passed between the two trilogies, anyway?

Slightly confusing start, even if I knew that that that’s that (is that enough?) what’s happening.

This is most amusing.

But I’m bewildered by some of Jackson’s choices when it comes to cinematography and make-up. Not only does he cake the actors so heavily in powder that you can’t see the skin at all (well, on the bits that aren’t covered by rubber), but he also blows the lighting out, so everybody looks like they’ve been lit by… the 70s? It’s got that 70s TV look?

Does that have something to do with filming in 50Hz? It needs more light?

Man, those are big feet!

Imagine the hydropower they could have built!

The Gollum animation is pretty awesome.

Some people on the interwebs are way too enthusiastic about this movie… but I think it’s pretty spiffy? Not quite that spiffy, but it’s really entertaining, and the three hours whizz past.

This is still on a fantasy scale:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Peter Jackson. 2012. ⚄

Total Recall

Ooohs! There’s a logo I haven’t seen in a few decades…

I’ve seen this before, of course, but not since … oh! 1990? I thought this happened in the 80s…

I love that decor!

I remember nothing of the plot, but watching this, I’m automatically assuming that everything that’s happening is part of the Rekall trip, and I’m guessing I’m not supposed to assume that? I watched eXistenZ (again) a couple years back, and that was really subtle about what’s part of the game and what’s not… it’s like… a refinement of what’s happening here? Was this the first of these movies where we’re not supposed to know what’s … the trip inside the film?

Of course, I could be wrong, and this is all real!

If this is all in his head, I think they’re kinda cheating by showing us scenes that he couldn’t possibly be seeing? With people he’s not supposed to know anything about?

Stereo vision!

Sorry! Sorry! This isn’t that kind of movie. This is super fun — it’s a total Verhoeven gauche, silly lark. Every scene is weird and awkward and flabbergastingly entertaining.