The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Now, it's been a might long time since I read The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 years, but I don't remember it being quite so, um, yeah, what's the word I'm looking for? Prequelly. You read The Hobbit and it's all cool because it's this small adventure where spiders and trolls are the nastiest things you meet before coming to Smaug. And they were plenty nasty. In my mind's eye, I can see the dwarves and poor Bilbo spending the first half of the book being held prisoner by one baddie or another. They were just a bunch of blokes with more misplaced bravery than common sense. The movie has a bunch of freakin' action heroes banded together against insurmountable odds which they somehow manage to, er, surmount.
Look, I decided to love Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies from the moment I first laid eyes on them. I drank the kool aid and I ain't afraid to admit it. There are the books, which are great, really the standard still by which all fantasy novels are measured. But the movies aren't the books. They leave things out, they add things in. Was I unhappy that some things were left out? You bet I was. But, I also understand that to put in everything from the books would have made the already incredibly long movies incrediblier longer. And they still would have missed some things and changed others. Look at the Game of Thrones adaptation - 10 hours long and still missed what I think are some important things from the book. As an aside, when I started reading Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin kept making references to the "small folk". I thought since he was using 'maester' instead of 'master' and 'ser' instead of 'sir' that he must just be calling his hobbits, 'small folk'. I was terribly disappointed when I found out that it was a term the gentry used for commoners and peasants. Where was I? Oh that's right, the movies are not the same as the books, yet they are brilliant in their own way. I love them as equals to the books, just the story told by a different master storyteller. And in case you're wondering, dear reader, I feel the same about the Harry Potter books and movies. There is no way that any movie could do complete justice to Jo Rowling's books, which in my opinion are some of the best books I have ever read, so they spun the tale their own way. A way which made sense to be told as a movie.
The Hobbit part 1, is almost the opposite of most adaptations. Jackson et al have all of these dropped or neglected things from the Lord of the Rings movies that they want to stick in somewhere. With the addition of the extra stuff, I think they might have forgotten how humble The Hobbit actually was. On the other hand, there are these cool (to me) back stories and foreshadowing that they're filling in for me, some of which may be based on the other books by Tolkien, but some which Jackson has added to make a movie more on par with the Lord of the Rings films, which is my nice way of saying that Jackson is trying to get a big scope movie from a small scope book.
Oh and where are the spiders? I know that they trolls come before the spiders in the book, but I don't know exactly where we are in the book so I can't tell if the spiders are yet to come or if Jackson left them out, deciding to only mention them instead of showing them. I guess I'll have to wait and see. Oh internets...I have a job for you...
The actors are just spectacular. I will watch Sir Ian, anywhere, anytime in any roll. Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett, reprising their roles as Elrond and Galladriel, respectively, are two of my favorite actors in two of my favorite roles for them. And Martin Freeman! I've been a fan of his since the Office, and loved him in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Sherlock. Everyone is just fantastic. The only comment I have is that Christopher Lee is giving off the same vibe as Saruman in this film as he did as Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, that being that he is a frail old man. This doesn't mean that I don't like him or his job here, quite the opposite. It makes me a little melancholy to think about him getting older is all.
Do I need to even mention the special effects and the scenery? I would watch a three hour film of just the scenery for this movie or the Lord of the Rings movies. It's that good.
Bottom line on this film is that I get to have it both ways as a fanboy. I get my Peter Jackson directed Hobbit movie (part 1), but I also get the only good Dungeons and Dragons movie ever made with the Lord of the Rings movies not far behind on representing AD&D. During the battle scenes, I wondered a couple of times if Gary Gygax was going to get mentioned in the credits. I also thought about AD&D when the elves keep referring to Bilbo as a halfling, which is the AD&D term (as opposed ot hobbits which is the Tolkien term.

The Hobbit on IMDb

Hanna (2011)

If this movie had been made even three years earlier, it would have starred Liam Neeson in place of Eric Bana, and probably Scarlett Johannsen in place of Saoirse Ronan. Hanna would have been a lesser movie for it - more like the Bourne Identity with a girl, er, woman in place of Matt Damon (I say girl or woman because Hanna is a girl and Miss Johannsen is a woman). Don't get me wrong - I love the Bourne movies, but I don't need to see cheap knock-offs, and it would have been in that other-world version of the movie. But Bana and Ronan take it to a whole different level, and adding Cate Blanchett into the mix makes it a different kind of thing entirely.
Bana, whom I've most recently seen in Troy and the Hulk, seemed younger than in those movies and slimmer, almost like he was his own younger brother. His own younger, very talented brother at that. I've always liked Bana and usually feel that he is being underused, or like in Troy where his acting is so much above the other actors that he is in scenes with that you wonder if he's embarrassed at the role. Don't tell me that he isn't at least seven times the actor that Orlando Bloom is.
Ronan was such a treat in The Lovely Bones, and I'm glad to see her in another role. She owns every scene that shes in and is on par with Bana and Blanchett. Her scenes with the British family on vacation really illustrate her skill and I feel sorry for the actor playing the father, as he seems a bit out of his depth, as does perhaps the daughter, but it's hard to tell as the character is a bit shallow. The fight scenes are amazing, and yet seem very realistic. This isn't a movie with the high flying martial arts of earlier films in this genre, but instead uses the nitty-gritty, highly effective style popularized in the Bourne movies and Daniel Craig's James Bond movies. I like forward to a day when I can see Ronan in an action film fighting alongside Milla Jovovich, hopefully fighting zombies, vampires or ninjas, or even better yet all of the above.
Blanchett is the weak link of the three stars. That's right. That's how good this movie is, when you can say that Cate Blanchett is the weak link. Blanchett is reminiscent of a younger Helen Mirren and this type of role bodes of many great films to come. The only problem I had with her character was the accent. I understand why a CIA handler might need and American accent, and I understand why that might even be a Sourthern accent, but I'm not sure why they had her do one. The first part of the movie I felt like her accent was not nearly as pronounced as in the last part of the film.
This film leaves a lot of things open at the end in almost exactly the same way that the Bourne Identity did, so I will not be surprised to see a sequel or two based upon it and will galdly watch them.

Hanna on IMDB