Tags: Peter Jackson's Middle Earth
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 60 seconds: my “Reel Faith” review.
Read more >
B- |
**½ |
+1|
Teens & Up
There is an early moment in
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that captures the evocative poetry of Tolkien’s songs — something that
The Lord of the Rings films, for all their achievements, never did. By the time the credits roll, that moment feels like it belonged in a very different film.
Read more >
I usually stay far away from trailers. I like to experience movies as cold as possible. But this is Peter Jackson’s
The Hobbit, and my fine principles have failed me. The film itself is still a year off … and I can’t wait that long to satisfy my curiosity.
Read more >
A+ |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up
It’s hard to overstate the soaring achievement
of Peter Jackson and company in
The Return of the King,
the third and final chapter of their historic adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings. To call it the grandest spectacle
ever filmed is no exaggeration; it may also be the most
satisfying third act of any film trilogy, completing what can now
be regarded as possibly the best realized cinematic trilogy of
all time.
Read more >
As Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis was the first
great science fiction film and Ford’s
Stagecoach was
perhaps the first great Western,
The Lord of the Rings is
the first great cinematic achievement of its kind - a genre that
might be described as epic Western mythopoeia, but is often
popularly (if imprecisely) called "fantasy" or "swords and
sorcery."
Read more >
C+ |
**½ |
+0|
Kids & Up
Character design is a mixed bag: Gandalf looks very much
himself, but Bilbo is rather cherubic, and the dwarves are
uninspired. Worse is Gollum, disappointingly bloated and stiff
rather than agile and emaciated, and the dreadfully goblin-like
Wood-Elf King. (On the other hand, the Elf-lord Elrond, with his
distinguished features and strange crown-halo, is far preferable
to Bakshi’s dismally graceless version of the same
character.)
Read more >
“I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged,” said
Rhys-Davies, “and if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.”
Read more >
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
From the very first sequence of Peter Jackson’s
The Two Towers — a bravura opening that stunningly recalls and continues a central sequence from
The Fellowship of the Ring — we feel that we’re in good hands. It’s a promise the subsequent three hours deliver on imperfectly.
Read more >
J. R. R. Tolkien once described his epic
masterpiece
The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally
religious and Catholic work." Yet nowhere in its pages is there
any mention of religion, let alone of the Catholic Church,
Christ, or even God. Tolkien’s hobbits have no religious
practices or cult; of prayer, sacrifice, or corporate worship
there is no sign.
Read more >
Yet neither Baum nor even Mitchell ever quite generated the
level of intensely passionate fan devotion inspired by J. R. R.
Tolkien’s epic masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. This is
a fact not lost on New Zealand director Peter Jackson, whose
ambitious, unprecedented back-to-back three-film adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings launches this December with The
Fellowship of the Ring.
Read more >
A+ |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up
There can be no more fitting tribute to Peter Jackson’s
The Fellowship of the Ring than to apply to it the words with which C. S. Lewis acclaimed the original book when Tolkien first wrote it: “Here are beauties that pierce like swords or burn like cold iron; here is a [film] that will break your heart.”
Read more >