The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

(seen 28 December 2014)

Note - this review contains spoilers

This is the third part of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J R R Tolkien's 1937 book 'The Hobbit'. It covers the last six chapters of the book, fleshed out with some information gleaned from appendices in 'The Lord of the Rings' and some plot points devised by the screen writers which have no basis in the original novel.

The film begins 'in medias res' with the sack of Laketown by Smaug the dragon (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), a very splendid affair with plenty of fire and ruin; it is only after this episode that the subtitle of the film appears. The importance of this destruction, and the identity of the major characters, is entirely dependent on knowledge attained in the previous film, as without this it would be impossible to understand the significance of Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) and his weaponry, or of the two featured groups of refugees, the cowardly and venal Master (Stephen Fry) and his henchman Alfrid (Ryan Gage) in one boat, and Tauriel the elf princess (Evangeline Lilly) leading Bard's children and three dwarves in another.

There is a new review of 'Paddington' on the 'general release' page.

There is a fascinating article in The Guardian about Pawel Pawlikowski, the director of 'Ida', in which he dicusses his aims in making the film, and the consequent difficulties in raising the finance and actually completing the project. See

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/21/pawel-pawlikowski-making-of-ida-polish-film

There is a new review of 'Interstellar' on the 'general release' page.