Film Reviews: January 2004 Archives

Nowadays the fear in any filmmaker’s heart is if they produce a series of movies on the same topic, they will be seen as sequels, and unless they improve or at least stay the same in quality the accusation of “cashing in” will be leveled at them. So here Peter Jackson does not disappoint with his third installment from the famous J.R.R. Tolkien story.

Once again the audiences attention is stretched to its limit with this stunning 3hr 20min conclusion to the epic tale. Most people will know the story but to summarise:

The evil Sauron’s armies are marching on Minas Tirith the stronghold of the realm of Gondor. Aragon (the returning King), Gandalf (the Wizard newly promoted to Gandalf the White after the demise of Saruman), Legolas (the elf), and Gimli (the Dwarf) seek to do battle with the approaching armies the old fashioned way. In the meantime Golum (aka Smeagol) is leading the two main Hobbits, Frodo (the ring bearer) and Sam, up a hidden stairs to get past Cirith Ungol. Cirith Ungol protects the entrance to Mordor wherein the lava of Orodruin (aka Mount Doom) can destroy the ring and put an end to Sauron’s power.

So we have two main areas of tension, and within each separate story to defeat Sauron there are many individual battles and excitements. One of the things which I have heard people say is that the film is slow. I would qualify this however and say there are slow moments within the film, but they are merely there to provide a rest between the fairly frenetic battle sequences. To my mind there is an awful lot to pack in to this film, and there have been serious cuts for the theatrical release to make it of manageable size. Overall the film is magnificent, all the performances are good, if slightly sentimental towards the end. The technical aspects of the film are certainly amazing, and the huge battle for Minas Tirith is excellent, something that you could probably watch many times to try and get all the detail of the action. However, there were a couple of shots which did not seem to match the rest of the quality of the film, these were the (relatively) simple shots of Frodo running into the entrance of Mount Doom and their exit later when the volcano starts to erupt. The tracking of the live shot versus the tracking of the CG scene did not quite match up. I suspect that Mr Jackson and company were well aware of this but were pushed for time.

If you’ve not seen the films then it is certainly well worth watching them, and I cannot see anyone trying to remake this tale for many years yet. I’m holding out for the full box set of DVDs with the full footage of all three movies…

***** (out of 5)

One of the reasons I try to avoid seeing trailers (previews) and reviews for films is that having too much of an idea of what the film might be like can spoil the experience. With the trailer for “Wilbur” the problem for me was it appeared to be a happy offbeat comedy with some dysfunctional characters. Having seen the trailer, and desiring an amusing film that evening I ended up seeing a depressing film with a few amusing moments in it.

So where was the problem? Neither the actors, direction, or other skill-based aspects of the film production were at fault. For me the film plot and script just wasn’t interesting enough and the characters were depressingly dull.

The story is about Wilbur (obviously), and – yawn – guess what? He wants to commit suicide; of course if he were really serious he would have done it in scene one and the film would end there. Sadly there followed nearly two hours of largely harrowing scenes where the other characters rush around trying to cheer up Wilbur, and prevent him topping himself. This would be great if we cared at all for Wilbur, but I didn’t, his brother (Harbour – played by Adrian Rawlins) and Alice (Shirley Henderson) were much more interesting characters.

The main downfall of this film is its inability to follow the most interesting part, that of Alice and daughter, into any more detail. To summarise, Wilbur is depressed mainly due to the unfortunate demise of his mother, he attends regular sessions at a “survivors of suicide club” hosted by a vacuous nurse and deep and thoughtful doctor. Harbour runs a bookshop, into which Alice appears – preventing an early end to the film by stopping Wilbur from hanging himself. Then the plot thickens as we discover the glum paradox of the mismatch of fate and desire. The plot can be explained with one word, tragic. Most of the audience headed to the bar afterwards to cheer themselves up!

Jamie Sives plays the unsympathetic lead well enough, in a setting that inspires doom (probably Glasgow). Films don’t have to be happy to win my vote, but this film was not happy and did not intrigue me in the slightest.

*1/2 (out of 5)