Month: December 2013

Patton Oswalt isn’t given a lot of movie roles, and really, that makes sense. He is a weird guy. A decent stand up comedian, but just in general a weird guy.

So when I see that he is actually the star of a movie, and not just a best friend/side character, I jumped at the opportunity to see what the heck Big Fan would be about.

Sports! I like sports!

I also like camaraderie! Yay sports and people! Yay!

Paul Aufiero (Oswalt) is a big fan (title drop) of the New York Giants. Like, really big fan. He goes to all of their home games. Never goes into the stadium, tickets cost too much, but he watches the game in a tv in his car with his bud Sal (Kevin Corrigan). He can’t afford tickets because he has a job as a parking attendant, just sitting in a booth, taking money. He listens to a New York radio sports show, and calls in every night to give his opinion, and trash talk another caller Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport). He just spends most of his shift writing down what he is going to say, so he can impress his friends.

His favorite player is the QB, Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) (Not an actual existing player), and basically he worships him as a hero that will get them to The Super Bowl. So when he and Sal see Quantrell hanging with his crew, they get all giddy and decide to follow him so they can meet him. And they follow him for awhile, accidentally. Like, many miles. And go to a club. And then a strip club. But finally they introduce themselves! Yay, they are drunk and happy, so they don’t care how white and awkward these fans are.

Until they mention where they first saw him. Then it got weird. Then Quantrell, on a drugged up outburst, knocks out Paul and beats him up pretty hardcore.

Huh. Three days later in the hospital, Paul wakes up, his hero betrayed him, and very much so injured. His favorite and best player also suspended indefinitely for the actions he helped cause.

But maybe there is a chance? Maybe he doesn’t have to press charges, and Paul can save the season still for the Giants…

Marcia Jean Kurtz plays his mom, who he lives with, and Gino Cafarelli plays his ambulance chasing brother.

Patton picked the shirt that would offend some people, but gain him the most respect.

Big Fan was listed as a comedy, but was definitely far far far more heavy on the drama, and should be considered a dark comedy, more than anything. While watching it, part of me was getting pissed off at the plot, watching it unfold, trying to figure out why the character would be that dumb. Why he would make those decisions. Why he would be so blindsinding by fan loyalty to do the actions he did.

Then it hit me. All of the feelings I was feeling were exactly the feelings the movie wanted me to feel. Repetition in that sentence yo.

When I thought even more about it, I was almost a bit excited at what the movie was hinting at, ever so slightly the entire time, and it made sense. The actions that followed the beat up made perfect sense. I was in the wrong, not the movie.

But it was done in a subtle, yet crazy way for it all to work.

The ending was a bit shocking at first too, as the conditions kind of built up to the final show down, and once that too was revealed, I found myself laughing at the absurdity and darkness of it all. The movie accomplished everything it wanted, with its small budget and mostly unknown actors. Well done, Big Fan. Well done.

Do I want to see a movie with Casey Affleck in it? Hell yes I want to see a movie with Casey Affleck in it.

Sure, I am one of the biggest Ben fanboys there are. But his brother has some acting chops. Did you see him in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford? If you didn’t, you are missing out on a long, but really well damn acted movie.

Either way, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is apparently a modern western of sorts. Set in the 1970s and Texas. So I will go in, expecting the best.

The best being, I dunno, a lot of gun shooting I guess. And crying.

Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) is a trouble makin’, no good, so-and-so. He’s an outlaw, quick on the draw. But his lady, too, is outlawish. Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara). But she is pregnant, and wants them to get out of the job. Alright fine.

BUT NOT BEFORE A SHOOTOUT. In a house, bullets flying, and Ruth ends up killing a police officer. That is no good. So Bob claims the entire responsibility for the crime. Killing a cop isn’t an easy fix, so Bob is given a strict and long sentence, so he could protect his lady and soon to be child.

Well, many years later, Bob is sick of prison. He has tried to escape at least five times before, but at least the sixth time is finally successful. The rest of the people involved in the escape get caught quickly, but not Bob. He is on a mission. He wants to see his child for the first time, a girl, still a child, but has grown a lot over the last few years.

But he can’t just go straight home. No, that is where the cops expect him to be. Not to mention he made a lot of enemies in his outlawin’, so others are surely out to kill him. The only reason he escaped was to see his woman and child, so really, nothing is going to stand in his way. Also starring Ben Foster and Keith Carradine.

At this point, I think it is illegal for me to not mention/show great mustaches in reviews.

Well, if I came for just acting, this film didn’t disappoint. I was more amazed how much I liked Rooney Mara in this role, more than anything. I haven’t seen her ever try to play such a passive, wait around, old timey role before. Just a loving mother trying to survive. So that was cool.

Casey Affleck, like always, felt really genuine.

But man. The story. A nice idea. But seemed filled with a lot of silly nonsense after he escaped from jail. Just go to the house already! Develop some sort of ruse! Just do it!

That’s what I was yelling at the screen. I don’t dislike it for the character choices, I dislike it for the director making those characters make those choices.

It could not keep my interest after the first 30 minutes or so, and didn’t really seem worth it when I got to the end. Sad times on this end, oh well.

Very Wrong.

How Wrong?

This much Wrong.

Wrong is a film brought to us by Quentin Dupieux, who is famous for the movie Rubber. Rubber is famous for being completely absurd, and a strange movie, but I ended up liking it. Knowing that, you should know that he is going for a very similar style to Rubber. So if you hated Rubber, just don’t even try this one.

Same thing happens to me when I listen to Michael Bolton at work.

Poor old Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick). Sure, he has a bitchin’ mustache. But he woke up to a very not good day. His dog ran away! Or was kidnapped. Either way, his dog is no longer there, and the world he lives in appears to be quite bizarre. Like his neighbor, Mike (Regan Burns), who goes on daily morning jogs, now refusing to admit to it. He hates running, why would he ever do that?

That isn’t the only thing. Police officers are unnecessarily rude, which might be a normal real world thing. His work office has a downpour going on in the inside, but that is apparently normal too. He might not even work there.

But his dog is missing. That is what is important. Not his conversations with a lady working a new pizza place (Alexis Dziena), or his gardener (Eric Judor). It turns out that the dog may have been taken by a group who randomly steal peoples pets, to make them truly love them. Strange. Yes. But Master Chang (William Fichtner) insists that it makes peoples lives better in the end. Unfortunately, mid kidnapping, the driver got into an accident, and died, and the dog escaped. So the stolen dog is lost.

They hire a private detective (Steve Little, aka Stevie Janowski) to get on the case, and Dolph just has to keep on living.

The hardest thing to believe in this movie is that he would write a novel, on a type writer, by water.

At this point, I am not sure if absurdity is really a film genre, or if I like it. Anyone could come up with an “absurd” movie, and call it art, even if it makes no sense, with weak plot or acting, and just bizarre antics. I am not saying that is a good description of Wrong, but close. I would say Napoleon Dynamite was an absurd movie, and one I dislike for its lack of real plot.

I definitely think I got less out of this movie than with Rubber. Rubber draws you in with the strange sounded plot, and I believe, delivers an even stranger movie. The plot description for Wrong just sounds pointless, and probably the only thing drawing people to this movie is knowing he made Rubber. It definitely has its extreme moments of weirdness, but not enough for me to love the movie. There were some great scenes. I loved the scenes with the Private Investigator. The gardener had an interesting arc, but the ending of it felt a bit weak to me too.

For all I know, the entire movie was just made to troll people. It might be a test to see what people can draw from it, calling it a highly intelligent movie, so that Mr. Dupieux can come out in two years and go “hah, just kidding.” That would be fun.

The boys are back in town.

The legend of Ron Burgundy continues, with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy came out in 2004, and from what I can tell, the first draft was horrible. So horrible that they had to rewrite and shoot the entire movie. The leftover original footage and other B rolls created another movie, Wake Up Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, but people wanted a real sequel, because it quickly became a cult success after its initial success.

The sequel came quite easily! Just kidding, it took a lot of work, and lots of convincing. But eventually the money numbers worked, so they did it because people like money.

Money can literally elevate any person.

At the beginning of the film, Ron (Will Ferrell) and Veronica (Christina Applegate) are married and cohosting a news program in New York. Living the life! That is, until Ron gets fired and Veronica gets upgraded to hosting the prime time show on her own, a first of her kind in New York! This upsets Ron a lot, so they separate, and he starts living a shitty life again.

That is until he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Someone wants to invent a 24 hour news network channel, and they want Ron to fill in a time slot. What? How ridiculous. However, it pays well, so sure. He just has to reassemble the news team (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) and he is good to go. And win back his woman from the psychologist (Greg Kinnear). And get excellent ratings at the 2am spot to make Jack Lime (James Marsden) look bad. And survive his incredibly aggressive boss (Meagan Good).

And in the search for ratings, will he accidentally change the face of national new forever, for the worse?

Dylan Baker and Kristen Wiig and Josh Lawson are also in this movie. BUT SO ARE SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE. Oh my goodness, the cameos! I didn’t tag the cameos, but if you want to not know who to expect, skip the next part.

We have cameos from: John C. Reilly, Marion Cotillard, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sacha Baron Cohen, Harrison Ford, Kanye West, Kirsten Dunst, Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey, and Will fucking Smith.

And lets not forget this Shark based cameo.

I am a big fan of ridiculous comedies, and this one had me laughing a lot from start to finish. There was a part after the halfway point where I did find it a bit dull, one joke going to the extremes and lasting a lot longer than I would have liked. But overall, many jokes, much laughs, and a good continuation of the characters.

So here is my one real complaint. I am worried that this movie won’t be as hilarious for a long tim after watching, like the first movie. I was worried the sequel would be nothing more than a carbon copy of the first film, rehashing the same jokes but in different ways, playing off that nostalgia humor. I hate nostalgia/reference humor. To a certain extent, as expected, there was a lot of that. The film ended very similarly to the first one. There was a gang news fight. There was a singing scene. A sex panther joke. And there are more examples. Although I laughed during the watch, I would have preferred probably less references, and more original material.

But outside of that, this movie will make all of its production back and then some. Will hasn’t had the best movies lately, so hopefully this puts him back on the right track.

I don’t accept this as an end to the Mediocre Man Trilogy. Anchorman and Talladega Nights were the first two, with the third one rumored to be about a guy who works on porn, named Rusty Butte or something. The title themes should give it away, and the RB characters. I want that movie, damn it. Get to work, Will.

Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas is only my second ever Tyler Perry movie, the first one being Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection.

Well, second if you don’t include movies he has acted in (Alex Cross), movies he made without Madea (Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor), or movies he just presented (Peeples).

I do know that most of his Madea movies are released as a stage play version first and this play version came out a few years ago. At the time I worked at a Blockbuster and I was surprised to find it constantly checked out by customers. “Unfortunately” I missed out on the opportunity to see the play version first, so I will just have to go into this one blind.

Clearly I was missing out.

For the general Madea (Tyler Perry) movie plot, I think it is assumed she has a lot of relatives and close friends, so every new movie will be a story about one of her friends/family. The only constant between them is Madea’s existence, and allows for a fresh new cast each and every time.

This time, it is Madea’s friend Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) who requests her help. She is worried about her daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter), who has moved to a small area in Georgia and isn’t coming home for Christmas! Oh the horror. Lacey is a teacher at the elementary school. The small town is undergoing a crisis, because they have lost a lot of their water supply to a dam upstream, and they don’t have enough money to have their Christmas Jubilee party. Oh no! Even more horror!

Lacey also ended up marrying her college sweet heart, Conner (Eric Lively), a seed scientist, which is why they moved back to his old home in Georgia. He is a white man. That is the real kicker here. And that she never told her mother about Conner’s existence. Apparently she hates white people. Conner’s parents (Larry the Cable Guy, Kathy Najimy) already knew about the marriage and are fine with it.

So the main plot deals with Marie battling her very strange case of racism. Strange in that it is all based on one tiny event a long time ago. There are other side plots, like Lacey potentially losing her job, love interests, and adult and kid bullies. It also stars JR Lemon, Alicia Witt, Chad Michael Murray, and Noah Urrea.

Larry and Perry? Maybe a match made in heaven.

This Madea movie definitely went a different direction than I was expecting. It is about a very racist black woman, who was also one of the rudest characters I’ve seen in film. She was deplorable, nothing she did seemed to make any sense. I am almost certain that she never got over her racism by the end, either. The ending also came out of no where. It included a car explosion and then the Christmas Jubilee. At the Jubilee, a small speech happened, that doesn’t change anything in the film, but they use it as a conclusion nonetheless.

The more enjoyable parts of the movie come from Madea rambling, but Larry the Cable Guy held his own against her, with their conversations being the highlight of the film. Shout out to Kathy Najimy, who has lost a lot of weight and almost looks like a completely different person.

If I had to split it up, the comedy parts of the film are decent, but the drama parts are horrible. Unfortunately, all of the conflict comes from the dramatic parts, so the main plot lines just feel boring. The movie tried to argue the true meaning of the holidays, but did such a poor job that it felt like a convoluted mess.

Oh well, maybe next year the next Madea movie will be better.

Where will you be, when the zombie apocalypse hits?

That is the question Stalled decides to ask. How I found out about it was basically just dicking around on Netflix though. It’s good to know there are still movies with toilet humor in them, on the internet.

I’ve definitely had poops like this before.

There are many bad places I can think I wouldn’t want to be during the apocalypse. Like, wherever ground zero is. I probably wouldn’t want to be in a super big city population wise. Just means more zombies. I definitely wouldn’t want to be on an island, unless there was a way to block the virus.

Basically, there are a whole lot of places worse than a woman’s restaurant, but not a whole lot weirder. Especially if you are W.C. (Dan Palmer), a janitor for a company, who happens to be in the restroom cleaning/working during the breakout. In a strange twist of fate, while hiding in the stalls because two women came in, one bites the other and it is extremely bloody and awkward for W.C.

What is even more unfortunate is that his tool box that he brought in doesn’t have any of his tools in it, just fat stacks of euros. This totally takes place in the UK, by the way. Strange. Money is good. But super useless now.

So now W.C. has to figure out how he is going to escape from this building, which has a holiday office party going on. At least he has company. It turns out a girl Eve (Tamaryn Payne) was also in a stall the entire time, hiding from when W.C. walked in. At least he has someone to talk to as the zombies prattle on outside of his toilet area. Also starring Mark Holden, as Jeff from IT.

Jeff from IT is pretty much a baller.

Shit. The idea behind this movie was brilliant.

Zombie movies keep trying to find new ways to spice things up. Sometimes they involve never done before locations, but a lot of them now are just changing either the fundamentals of the zombie, making it not really a zombie movie, or changing the genre into something else. Obviously comedy/zombie movies have been around for awhile, but Stalled ends up picking a location and idea never really thought of before. The number of potential sequels is astronomical.

This entire movie is like a Bottle Episode. But on purpose.

Dan Palmer also serves as the writer of this film, so it makes sense why he got the main lead. Overall, the character isn’t really likable. He seems somewhat scummy early on, lying to Eve and doing some pretty deplorable things in that bathroom out of selfishness.

But the movie itself is not only entertaining, but unique and different. And weird. Really, some of the only things I care about in movies. A random watch turned into a very interesting 90 minutes.

Who would have thought that the little girl from The Nanny would become the most famous person on a movie cover?

Of course, Madeline Zima is no longer famous for that reason. It is for her bare all performance on the incredibly slow Californication. Regardless of why she is famous, she is now the reason I picked up Breaking The Girls to review today.

Also, the term “breaking” in the title has my imagination running wild.

Poor little old Sara (Agnes Brucker). She is a nice girl, she is. But because she pissed off the wrong classmate, Brooke (Shanna Collins), she is potentially getting expelled from class for doing something she didn’t do. But she has met Alex (Zima), and although she never fancied herself a lesbian, she apparently fell for her charm.

Next thing you know, they are living together. That sure did move fast. Alex is mad at her dad (John Stockwell), who is totally rich, but not letting her live her life the way she wants to. So drunkenly they decide to kill each other’s nemesis! They will both have alibis, and there is no way people could put them working together, if they live together! (Dumb).

Next thing you know, Alex actually goes through with the plan, much to the surprise of Sara. Alex also made it possible to blame Sara with the deed if she didn’t end up keeping her half of the bargain. Yep, you done messed with the wrong lady.

Also starring Shawn Ashmore…somehow, and Davenia McFadden as the main police person.

Oh, he is in the movie as guy who helps drunk ladies! That’s nice.

I was actually excited to watch this movie, and accept it as a thriller. I was ready for the twists and the turns. But the twists near the end didn’t make a whole lot of sense (When you compare them to actions earlier in the film), and the ending was pretty lame because of it.

The acting through out it was pretty poor, and really, I don’t why I keep talking. This part of the review is basically filler, because I have jack shit to say that’s really good about this movie. I guess it sort of had a Wild Things vibe going with it, so I am surprised it just isn’t another of its many bad sequels.

But by the time the movie is about to finish, they throw another twist your way. Unfortunately by that time, I stopped caring.

A movie called Flatline can honestly only go a few different ways. One is a horror route, pretty obvious, some sort of deranged killer.

The only other way is some sort of medical drama. This goes the latter way, thankfully, because medical dramas can really have some powerful stories and usually a great crying scene or two.

Not that I like watching people cry or anything like that.

Get it? Get it? It is a flat line.

Marc (Drew Russell Robinson) really likes his dad, William (Mark Nutter). So after they leave dinner for the dad’s birthday, and they get into a car accident, Marc is very very upset.

So when they get to the hospital (finally) he really can’t believe that his dad has flatlined and died. He gets so upset, that he steals the security guard’s gun (Ryan Hayden) and threatens the doctors on duty (Howard Flaherty, Farah White) to save his dad or else. At first, the description seems like some sort of a reverse John Q, where the son is trying to save the father. But there is one big difference in there.

In John Q, the son is only dying. In Flatline, the dad is already dead.

Yeah, Marc gets really crazy, starts yelling a lot, and threatening to shoot people, and that is most of the movie. I can tell you for sure, the movie does not end in his favor.

But that is also because the end of the movie doesn’t really make much sense. Out of no where, it turns into this very messy and somewhat vague trick, about what was going on the entire time. I think I understood it, but I really really don’t accept it.

None of these names are really big in the acting field, and Drew Russell Robinson is a rookie at movies. He wasn’t terrible, to be fair. Just the overall movie was terrible. The twist, the plot, the flashbacks, and the point.

I derived no entertainment out of this at all. This movie came out in 2010, but it has one of the barest IMDB pages I have ever seen. I could only find one picture from the actual movie, but its quality was too shitty to actually use, so that is why I am stuck with just the heart monitor picture. I could have added another picture in here, to make the review look better, but in all honesty, the film didn’t even deserve that much.

Much waste.

Snow Queen? A CGI film? If you got to see the film cover, it had a tagline at the bottom that states “A Magical Adventure in a FROZEN Land!”

It also states that it is “From the Legendary Hans Christian Andersen, Author of The Little Mermaid.”

I haven’t reviewed a cheap knock off Disney movie yet, unless you count Chop Kick Panda, but Dreamworks isn’t Disney. But this one clearly has to be right? It capitalizes the word Frozen in its ad, and also makes a true but misleading claim about where the story comes from.

I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

Eh. Maybe I can wait a bit.

For those of you who actually know the original Snow Queen story, this one basically seems to follow that exact same plot. Down to a letter. Nothing new about this one, just an animated tale of a famous story. So I guess, its like any book to film adaption. Since I don’t know the Snow Queen story, it is basically a new plot for me.

Basically, mirrors be crazy. This woman got so mad, she became a Snow Queen (Cindy Robinson) and tried to put the world into an endless winter. She also wants to destroy all art, for some reason. She really hates this glass maker dude, who has mirrors that reflect the soul. So she kills them. Whoa.

Well, he had children too, so the threat to her rule isn’t gone. Boy, Kai (Marianne Miller) and girl, Gerda (Jessica Straus) become orphans and don’t even remember each other. Eventually, the Snow Queen realizes that they are a threat, and sends a troll named Orm (Doug Erholtz) who has the power to turn into a black weasel only, to kidnap the boy so she can presumably kill him too.

Gerda, just realizing she has a brother, gets rightly pissed off, and journeys across the land, with the troll and her own weasel, to try and save him.

On the way they run into land pirates, crazy plant ladies, and just bitter harsh cold.

I am now going to imagine that as the face of every troll on the internet.

Alright, turns out I was wrong. This movie is NOT a cheap Disney knock off. Besides the fact that it is a movie of the actual story, it also was made by Wizart Animation. Who are they? A new CGI film company out of Russia (making this film foreign), and this is their first release. It came out last year and was in development for awhile, so the Frozen thing is basically a coincidence. Obviously not their advertising of it, they are still trying to latch on to its fame, but the idea wasn’t a copy cat. Heck, they also are already working on a sequel.

Unfortunately, the animation was the worst part of the movie. Something seemed off about it the whole time, it is pretty obvious it isn’t using state of the art / new technology to bring us this movie. Probably pretty old technology, graphics wise. Reminded me of a video game.

I actually enjoyed the story line and some of the visuals in the film though. By the end, I was getting a bit tired of it, sure, but the early parts of the movie kept interest for awhile. The crazy plant lady came out of no where, but looked really cool as it went down.

Nothing I will say will convince you to watch this film, and honestly, there is probably no reason to. But if you are forced to watch a newish animated film, there are a lot worse you could pick.

Last time, when I reviewed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I didn’t get to see it in the 48 FPS 3D version until about a week later. But this time, times are a changing, and I can talk a bit about that too. I ended up liking the super detailed high frame rate for the first film, so I am of course excited to see right away this time.

But I am also stoked for a second reason. Now I don’t have to watch The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug twice within a week in theaters. I don’t care how good it is. Ain’t got time or money for that now. I don’t like to watch these LOTR movies a lot anyways. Once in theaters, and once eventually an extended version.

This picture does not do justice to how BAMF he actually looked on screen, 3D, 48 fps.

Plot outlines for this seems dumb. I assume everyone knows the story?

This movie starts out with Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), and the Dwarven friends (Ricahrd Armitage, Ken Stott, and more) on the run, orcs still chasing them. Some stuff happens, and Gandalf has to leave again to go figure out some necromancer stuff.

This causes the gang to get in lots of trouble. Trouble with spiders, and then the wood elves (Where we meet Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), who totally gets the hots for a Dwarf. Odd!). Some escapes happen, they eventually get to Laketown, meet Bard (Luke Evans), sort of help an uprising, and get their way to the mountain! After all, they only have so much time to get there, before the secret entrance is no longer revealed.

Then we finally meet a dragon, Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), who just wants to get his sleep on, but bitches be burglin’, so he has to get his rage on.

“Damn it Bilbo, I will not draw you like a french girl. Stop asking!” – Smaug

The term desolation might not mean what it used to mean. With a title like that, and if you already know The Hobbit story, you then know when this movie is going to stop at.

But you’d be wrong.

After seeing this movie in theaters, I left with an overall bad taste in my mouth, definitely something I didn’t see coming, and rather unfortunate, due to the size and nature of this movie.

I should reiterate, I don’t care what the the book story is, and the sideplots they added from other source material to make these movies. More interesting plot lines never hurt anyone. But this movie is called The Hobbit and subtitled The Desolation of Smaug. A better, more descriptive title would have been Legolas Kicks Ass, and then they meet Smaug. Which is all this movie felt like to me.

Sure, there was a cool spider scene. The barrel escape was nifty. But plot line wise with this film, you would find a hard time figuring out what actually gets accomplished. Once they introduce Legolas, they almost forget about the other characters, and focus on how amazing he and Tauriel the other elf are at fighting. It becomes just a Legolas show when he is literally running around Laketown and taking out a whole Orc invasion pretty much on his own.

Smaug was very badass. That is very clear. He was a well made CGI creation, probably one of the better dragons I have ever seen in a CGI movie. The best scene in the movie for me was the initial encounter between Smaug and Bilbo, when Smaug toyed with Bilbo as he ran through the treasure piles. But eventually he felt like nothing more than a cheap cartoon villain, or something, once the Dwarves got involved and start to mess with him.

I understand that this movie is part of a series, but I felt like this one has done the worst job at still telling a complete and actual story. Each of the LOTR stories felt complete. Yes they had more to do, but they ended at appropriate points once the current biggest baddest climactic point was finished, the ones they were building up to for each film. An Unexpected Journey ends after a series of skirmishes, a close encounter with death, and the dwarves finally learning to accept Bilbo.

This movie LITERALLY ends right in the middle of a fight. What in the fuck. Is this Lost? Is this some show that needs cliffhangers? So instead of getting a complete story, I get part of a story. A 160 minute part of a story.

Here is a third picture, to give you a better scope of this movie.

So what is the main complaint? I guess, somehow, it is their change from 2 to 3 movies. A problem I didn’t have with the first one, but I believe in this one becomes very very apparent. This entire movie, save for a few scenes, felt like filler, working towards the third, probably more exciting and conclusive story.

I will reiterate, Smaug was great. The barrel scene was way better than I could have imagined. The spiders were interesting. But everything else just fell flat or felt repetitive. I felt no fear from the Orcs the entire movie. The appeared, they died, they kept appearing, they kept dying.

Peter Jackson might thing he is infallible now, given the original success, and other successes of stuff like The Adventures of TinTin, but for this film I think he reached too far.