Mini Movie Memos (and then an afterthought...)

Hobbit's come in small sizes for a reason!

The problem with this harks back to the inception of the idea in extracting a trilogy out of what is a thin volume compared to The Lord of the Rings. Monetarily, Warner Bros. will be giddy beneficiaries of The Hobbit Trilogy's Box Office returns, though I do not believe Peter Jackson did this for financial gain. This finale is the shortest in duration of the Middle Earth saga, yet is the most exhausting, due to the elongated epic proportions Jackson is intent on serving us with. The Battle of Erebor is engaging, though sadly it is not durable to losing focus, and quite frankly it is not as audacious as the battles seen in The Two Towers and Return of the King. It was prolonged and arduous, one cannot command 45 minutes of a movie with one melee of dwarves, elves, men and Uruk-Hai. Maybe there was a reason why it occupied only a few lines of Tolkien's story. There is no doubt that Jackson is a creative dynamo of cgi wizardry and a skilled translator of wonderful story-telling (See Heavenly Creatures). The problem is he tries to tell his own story. It's not all doom and gloom though! The best moments in this film come with Richard Armitage as Thorin, who, walling himself and his party in to the Lonely Mountain to ward off unwelcome guests, shows off a burgeoning contamination to his Kingship. This in no way has dented Jackson's Middle Earth Saga, which as a whole is an outstanding achievement. The final page of the Hobbit trilogy though; a spectacle, but not spectacular. 

Never trust a mystic

To a certain extent, I found myself enjoying Magic in the Moonlight. In terms of quality, all of the Woody Allen films in the past fifteen years have either found it or floundered. And here is a film that floats in between. Emma Stone (potentially the director's new muse) is quite delightful as spiritualist and possible swindle, Sophie. Colin Firth provides us with a cynical Englishman, though his place here is jarring rather than charming. The film is a whispering, whimsical and light-hearted caper. It isn't as challenging, or as good as Blue Jasmine or Midnight in Paris, but it isn't necessarily trying to be. The screenplay isn't humourless, yet there is some idle dialogue that Allen probably transcended from some of his earlier work, and tinkered with only slightly. Like I said in my opening musing though, I found myself enjoying the film. I was content with the ridiculousness of it, and the glorious setting of Southern France, along with Emma Stone (a future Oscar winner, surely) meant that Magic in the Moonlight worked for me. Instead of wondering along with a limp, it whizzed by with a couple of blisters, and I for one was fine with that. Just don't take it too seriously.