TheRetroCritic

Just when you thought the Lord Of The Rings movies couldn't possibly get any more epic, Return Of The King comes along and blows its predecessors completely out of the water. Which is not to say that the other two films weren't great but in terms of sheer cinematic grandeur, this really raised the bar for the swords and sorcery genre big time. All those plot threads and countless subplots which didn't always feel like they were going anywhere come together and we finally get the epic resolution we deserve. Between those crazy battles involving giant elephants, a Witchking, dragon-type things and about a gazillion people and the more quietly distressing ring-bearer quest, which looks pretty doomed to failure throughout, there's hardly a moment to breathe! It's even a bit hard to list everything that even goes on in this movie. Let's just say that the highlights include John Noble being awesome as crazy old Denethor, Legolas taking down an elephant all by hi

Alright, let's get the annoying technical stuff out of the way first. Unknowingly, I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey  in "high frame rate", which means that my eyes not only had to take in 3 hours of crazy fantasy visuals but in 3D and at 48 frames per second. Forgive me if I sound a bit bitter about that, I'll make sure not to let that taint my review of the movie itself. I will say, however, that if you want to see The Hobbit: check it out in 2D or 3D, don't high frame rate that shit. The CGI stuff just doesn't gel with the real stuff and you just end up watching what feels like dudes with big fake noses and big-ass plastic feet wearing silly costumes. Which, in essence it is, but you're taken out of the movie SO quickly and so much that you're just left squinting your way through what looks like a low-budget 90's BBC fantasy TV series. Anything slightly fake-looking make-up/costume/background-wise is emphasized to the max and that rea

A new power is rising... The Fellowship is scattered: Boromir's gone, Gandalf is seemingly dead, Merry and Pippin have been captured, Sam and Frodo are on their own. Nothing seems to be going right. The Two Towers essentially follows these three plot threads (plus several subplots) as everyone goes on their own individual missions. Aragorn, Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are on track to go and save Merry and Pippin, the latter, however, have escaped on their own and are hanging out with tree people (Ents). The trio's mission then changes and they're finally off to a big battle. We also get some terrific new characters, this includes Brad Dourif's Wormtongue, a guy who somehow, by looking like Tim Burton's Jim Carrey and being called "Wormtongue" managed to become the king's main advisor. You've got Dredd himself, Karl Urban, as Eomer, David Wenham as Boromir's bro Faramir and warrior princess Eowyn (Miranda Otto)

Happy Hobbit Day!  

Reviewing each film in Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings Trilogy individually or picking a favourite out of the three is actually not an easy task. They're pretty indispensable to each other but let's try and single this one out for now regardless. This is where it all began:  The Fellowship Of The Ring . You know the plot, bearded dude shows up on some old Hobbit's doorstep, sends his nephew on some huge, crazy suicide mission involving a ring of power that could potentially destroy everything good on Middle Earth through some big orange angry vagina eye on top of a scary tower. Preposterous? Yes. But in J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's hands: magic. No fantasy epic has even come close before or since to reaching the scale and sheer grandeur of this trilogy and doing it this well (sorry Narnia), these are big far-out stories involving elves, dwarves and goblins and yet it feels important: you're invested. Not an easy thing to achieve. Back in the 80&