The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies (2014)

Just to get up to speed, here is my review of the first and second movies in The Hobbit trilogy.

I was hesitant about this, the final, instalment of The Hobbit trilogy. It was, after all, stretching out the finale into something that I never really wanted to see onscreen. The big battle sequences in both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings books were always the dullest passages for me, and the movies have so far proven to be almost equally dull when depicting those scenes. Oh, they have the spectacle and grandiosity that makes them entertaining, but it all becomes hard to care about when you're just watching one army swarming around another.

Carrying on from where the previous movie left off, this cinematic adventure focuses on the trouble caused by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) when he gets to take his rightful place in the heart of the mountain that was previously home to a fierce dragon named Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch). It's not long until Thorin is afflicted with a sickness that lets greed and paranoia overrule his good nature, in turn losing him the loyalty of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his fellow dwarves, who could be named Prancer, Dancer, Blitzen, etc. for all the time they get on screen. All of this leads, inevitably, to the battle that makes up the main title. And that's about it.

There are many little moments to enjoy here. The attention to detail is wonderful, as it has been in every Tolkien-related movie that director Peter Jackson has had a hand in (first The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and now this lot). But details don't always add up to great cinema. Neither does spectacle and scale. They can stave off boredom, but aren't really anything without a decent script and characters that you care about. This is where the final Hobbit movie gets things sorely wrong.

It's easy to like Bilbo Baggins, and a relationship sketched out between elf Thauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) is quite sweet, but nobody else stands out. Thorin is busy being warped by greed, Bard (Luke Evans) is heroic enough but a bit bland, Thranduil (Lee Pace) is as cold as ever in his singular mission to keep his people safe, and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has been bordering on self-parody for years. Billy Connolly adds some life to proceedings when he appears, as a dwarf named Dain, but it's too little too late at that point.

All of the performers do well enough with what they're given. They're just not given much, thanks to the weak script by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyen and Guillermo del Toro. The emphasis is clearly on action for this war-filled final chapter, but that is no excuse when the previous movies have always managed (or almost managed) to surround big action set-pieces with humour, warmth and characters that you don't mind hanging around with for so long. This feels like the longest movie in the series yet, despite being the shortest (until the inevitable wealth of deleted scenes are added back in, at any rate).

I'm not saying that this is a waste of your time. It's the end of an era, in some ways, and worth a trip to the cinema if, like me, you've seen all of the others on the big screen. I'm not saying that there aren't some great one-on-one fights that show some of the individual lives at stake. The final 30-40 minutes is full of solid action and great moments. It just comes along after 100 minutes of material that constantly verges on being mind-numbingly boring.

5/10

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Braindead AKA Dead Alive (1992)

Despite the fact that he already had a number of films under his belt at this time, it's hard to argue against the fact that Braindead put Peter Jackson firmly on the road to great success (though few could envision just HOW great that success would be). Other films from him would have more importance (Bad Taste being his debut feature and The Frighteners being the film that led to the creation of WETA and that work that would help make The Lord Of The Rings movies) but Braindead will always have the blood and guts. And more blood. And more guts. And LOTS more blood.

The story is a simple one, set in New Zealand in the 1950s. Lionel (Timothy Balme) lives at home with his domineering mother (Elizabeth Moody) and doesn't really get to enjoy life as he should. This looks set to change when he somehow ends up taking the lovely Paquita (Diana Penalver) on a date to the zoo. Unfortunately, Lionel's mother is following them and she ends up being bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey. It's not long until she gets very sick and then dies. Then comes back to life. Poor Lionel can't bring himself to kill his zombie mother so he tries to control the situation, even when the bodies start to pile up and things get more and more dangerous. And bloody. It's important to mention that because Braindead actually held the record for the most fake blood used in a movie for many years.

Anyway, the above description might help you know what the core of the movie is about, but it doesn't even begin to describe the various, gory pleasures available throughout. From the opening sequence showing the Sumatran rat-monkey being collected by a New Zealand zoo official to a nauseating and memorable dinner scene to a priest who can do more than just pray for help when faced with trouble to another nauseating and memorable dinner scene to every bit of physical trauma and bloodshed in the second half of the movie, this is just one spoonful of gory goofiness after the next. And I've STILL not mentioned the best bits.

There is actually a bit more to it than just the zombie carnage, including some sneaky behaviour by Lionel's lecherous Uncle Les (Ian Watkin), but only a bit. The film is most concerned with getting from one pile of gore to the next and the singular focus is somewhat impressive. Having said that, Balme, Penalver and everyone else onscreen do great work, even when acting alongside some of the more outrageous practical effects or under heavy make-up.

Jackson also helped to co-write the screenplay with Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair and it's wonderfully economical in places while leaving plenty of room for the scenes that don't really focus on the dialogue (aka about 3/4 of the film). It's just a shame that, as is often the case with Peter Jackson movies, the rest of the film isn't as neat and concise. Of course I don't begrudge the man his scenes of bloody excess, but it's a shame that so many moments tend to overstay their welcome by a minute or two, leaving the whole thing feeling just a bit too much like overkill. It's hard to argue the point, however, when so many moments during the blood-drenched finale leave a big smile on my face, but there's just a slight imbalance somewhere that stops the movie from being as perfect as the younger version of me used to think it was (before I'd exposed myself to a fuller range of crazy horror movies out there).

I can't imagine any horror fan who likes to see a bit of the red stuff thrown around onscreen disliking Braindead. If you like your horror movies to be more restrained and/or psychological then don't rush to see this one, but if you like zombies, inventive practical gore gags and more fake blood than you'll see in almost any other film . . . . . . ever, then this is for you.
9/10

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Bad Taste (1987)

There are many fans who seem ungrateful nowadays because they moan about the fact that Peter Jackson has found such great success with The Lord Of The Rings movies that it's taken him away from his splatterific, horror roots. While I love almost everything that the man has ever done, it's hard not to look back on his early movies and wish that, even just once, he would go back to doing something as energetic, manic and blood-soaked as he used to.

Bad Taste was the first feature film that Peter Jackson ever made. It took about four years from start to finish but you couldn't tell that from the end product. It may be rough around the edges but there was already plenty here to mark Jackson out as a considerable talent.

The plot is simple - a bunch of aliens have landed in a small New Zealand town and they've taken all of the locals and turned them into fast food (humans being the latest taste sensation with this set of extraterrestrials). The only people who become aware of, and could fix, the situation include The Boys AKA Derek (played by Jackson), Ozzy (Terry Potter), Barry (Pete O'Herne) and Frank (Mike Minett). They have weapons, they have the courage and, in the form of Derek, they have at least one deranged individual who also seems to be pretty indestructible.

I'm not going to harp on about this movie and make it out to be some perfect gem that every horror fan should immediately seek out because it's not a movie that most people are guaranteed to enjoy. However, I like to think that people who share my sense of humour will most definitely like this as much as I did. It's full of some great splatstick (to use the phrase that Jackson likes to use) moments, has a couple of memorable characters and plenty of fun lines throughout the script, which was written by Jackson with additional material from Ken Hammon and Tony Hiles.

The plot may be a standard mix of sci-fi and action but the gore effects (some superb and others amusingly crude) really push this into horror territory. Well, there aren't many non-horror viewers who will be entertained by aliens sharing a bowl of green chuck, a man who keeps placing bits of his damaged brain matter into his broken skull and some demented fun with a chainsaw. Mind you, everyone laughs at the unfortunate sheep (just watch and learn).

I will be in line to see The Hobbit movies when they are released over the next couple of years and I will also be looking forward to seeing what Jackson does with the second Tintin movie. I don't mind at all that such a talented and passionate man has been given plenty of money and a much bigger playground in which to film his visions. Having said that, I'd also rush to the cinema and gladly hand over my money for a follow up to Bad Taste.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Taste-DVD-Terry-Potter/dp/B00006JI16/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352935735&sr=8-1