Back from the Cinema: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Okay, dragons are cool. Cool. Like super cool. Except they are hot, because of fire. Cool was a bad choice of words.

First, let's discuss the first Hobbit movie a bit. I liked it, but it had problems. It had problems with tone, it could shift from being a very serious movie to a very childish one and vice versa, which made you unsure of what kind of movie you were watching. This movie has less problems, some childish things do exist, but they are brief and don't change the tone of the whole movie. In a way the second part is in many ways more coherent.

I liked this movie. And thus I will start to list things I thought good:
1) Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel. She is great in her role as a female warrior elf. She carries the role well, and make her character seem less "inserted in the story (not from the source materials) and gives the movie a necessary female touch in a affair that otherwise would be a sausage fest (as the book is).
2) The special effects. Marvellous. And the first time I saw any practical use of 3-D with that darn bee, it only lasted a second though and then 3-D was as useless as ever.
3) Freeman and the Dwarves becoming more comfortable in their roles. Many things seemed more natural than in the First Hobbit Movie. They were never bad in the first one, but they felt like they now really had found their inner dwarves. This made it more easier to relate to the characters.
4) Smaug: the dragon was friggin awesome! It looked great and menacing. The design, how it breathed fire and the whole scenes with it fighting. And of course it's voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch!! And it's great.

Okay, now for the stuff that wasn't that good. This movie is not perfect. There are certainly things to critisize.
1) Gandalf's quest. It wasn't interesting. Gandalf vs. Sauron sounds awesome, but really, all the time we shifted to Gandalf's side adventure I just wanted it to end and go back to the main quest with Freeman and the Dwarves. It wasn't good.
2) Legolas. Orlando Bloom was not showing his a game. Unlike Tauriel his role felt force, probably because Bloom wasn't giving his all to make it work. Legolas felt boring and lifeless.
3) Smaug not dead yet: it really felt that this movie was not complete. Smaug was still alive and the battle still in the middle when the movie ended. I really felt this was bad. They built up this climatic battle, and while we got parts of it, we didn't get the finish. You can't end it in the middle like this!! Damnit, I won't remember everything they built up during the battle next year when we see the conclusion. A bad move.

I still liked the movie alot. Especially the Dragon Cumberbatch! More movies need Dragon Cumberbatch! But all in all, I feel now more and more that the Lords of the Rings movie were way better. Last year I still couldn't make up my mind and decided I needed to see more Hobbit to decide which series is better. Now I'm sure, LotR is much better than the Hobbit. Probably because in LotR we have three movies based on three long books. In the Hobbit we have three movies based on one relatively short book. It's still a fun watch though. I look forward to the third Hobbit movie.

DC go home

DC, you're drunk, go home.

B-Movie Review: Shatter (1974)

It's Hammer Time! And it's Kung Fu Assassin Secret Agent thingy Time!! Hooray!!

So we start the movie with the President of Africa going to a fancy hotel. I call bullshit on this. Africans are poor people, not even their President would afford a fancy room. Anyway, the President of Africa is about to get it on with his rich blonde girlfriend when some dude with a CAMERA GUN shoot him. CAMERA GUN. Great! I have no idea why he didn't just use a normal gun, but I already like it.

Next stop Hong Kong, we meet Shatter, the man who assassinated the President of Africa who is the main hero of this movie. He's played by Stuart Whitman. His acting is hillarious. He overact everything. It's great. We also soon realize that since the movie is set in Hong Kong most of the other roles will be played by Chinese people. This mean this movie is RACIST!!!

Unfortunately we are also introduced to the opening music. It's terrible. Please kill me now. It's like someone is actually shattering glass. Please just stop! Anyway it's followed by that music that's in every secret agent or police movie from the 70s. Thank You. So Shatter sits in a taxi, someone tries to shoot him from the next car, they misses and shoot straight through the car (the windows are shattered, OMFG SYMBOLISM!!!!!) But the best thing is that it hit some dude in the arm on the other side of the car, and that dude is just, "whatever, I was shot in the arm, happens every day". Awesome.

So Shatter goes to meet Le Snob, the man who hired him to shoot the President of Africa. Ooh, that's why he used a CAMERA GUN, so he could have photographic proof that he is the killer. Smart. Though he could of course just have used a normal gun and a normal camera. And of course Le Snob betrays him and refuse to pay him a dime. Typical.

So Shatter next meet up with his CIA contact that confirms he's alone, since the Agency doesn't want anything to do with him anymore. He's then taken by some Kung Fu dudes who uses him as a punching bag for a while until we meet Peter Cushing!!! Cushing, Cushing, Cushing, Cushing!! Yaaayy! Anyway Cushing plays a member of the Hong Kong Security Force named Ratwood (very original there, movie). And Cushing is like: "Leave Hong Kong before tomorrow or you're dead and shit". Anyway, a dude help Shatter into a bar/ massage parlor, where he meet a masseuse named Mei Lin who of course are our female protagonist. She gives him a massage, he feels better and goes to his hotel. Earlier in the movie he did a room switcheroo with another guy. And now that pays of because well, it'd suck to be that other guy. So, now Shatter knows he's a marked man and he retun to the bar/ massage parlor. He ask the bartender who's the guy who helped him before to hide him and offer him $100. So he is hidden in a nice appartment in the slums. He also meet Mei Lin again. It's revealed the bartender is actually a Kung Fu master. So he teams up with the Kung Fu guy, get the girl etc. There's a good scene when he dreams about the people he has killed and all the people who were hurt or were killed because of him, and is very haunted by this dream when he wakes up. It looks for a moment he regret what he has done, but only for a moment. I'm glad they included it, it gave Shatter some more character.

Anyway, Shatter and his Kung Fu partner kill Le Snob, the brother of the President of Africa and some bad Kung Fu dudes, who all belonged to a Evil Crime Syndicate. They meet Cushing again who of course is corrupt (his name is Ratwood in this movie, it's impossible for him to not be corrupt with such a name). And the girl is killed, which usually happen in these kind of movies. All in all a solid cheap film. Not the best quality but did the job. A cheesy male lead whose acting is hillariously bad, some nice Kung Fu and Cushing. You can't really ask for more.