Ian McKellen – Spinning Platters

The 58th San Francisco International Film Festival has just about reached the halfway point, and there are still so many films to discuss. Be sure to take a look at the program and ticket info here. Here are a few more titles (some that have unfortunately already had their final festival screening) to put on your radar:

Mr. Holmes
(UK, 2015, 105 min, Marquee Presentations)

In director Bill Condon’s new drama, Mr. Holmes, Sir Ian McKellen plays an old, retired Sherlock Holmes, who is trying to battle memory loss while attempting to add some facts and closure to his otherwise inventive, fantastical legacy curated by the writings of Dr. Watson, in particular the unsolved details of the former’s final case. McKellen is extraordinary, displaying the weathered wit and fragility of a dying icon who has been locked into a secluded lifestyle as a result of his investigatory prowess. Even a fire alarm at the Kabuki resulting in the evacuation of the theater 20 minutes in couldn’t steal away the emotional impact of Mr. Holmes’ rumination on fact vs. fiction.

Screenings:

May 5 – 2:00pm at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas

Tickets for Mr. Holmes available here.

Continue reading “SFIFF58 Spotlights #4: Mr. Holmes/Luna/The Editor/The Taking of Tiger Mountain”

H-O-B-B-I-T! Fight! Fight! Fight!…and joke…and Fight! Fight! Fight!…and joke…

Thorin (Richard Armitage) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman) size each other up.

Let’s get this out of the way — The Hobbit should’ve been 1-2 movies, not 3. Most of us came to terms with this years ago. That’s a conversation for a another time, however. For now, let’s concentrate on the third and final installment of The Hobbit trilogy, and the final chapter (without debate) of Peter Jackson’s exploration of Middle Earth. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (HTBotFA) is not the best of the trilogy – it trails HTDoS (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug) but is a bit ahead of HAUJ (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey). While the middle chapter had some interesting character transitions, HTBotFA has very little substance outside the constant fighting taking place. We’ve seen better battles before, so the ones featured here seem tired and stale, and therefore overwrought with unique creature designs to help grasp for freshness. And once again, it’s an exciting but sometimes silly feast of CGI, the kind that makes you miss the hillside skirmish in Fellowship of the Ring or even the large battle at the end of The Return of the King, which featured a lot of actual actors in costumes. Here, it’s commonly 1-2 actors versus scores of CGI creatures. It’s just not as thrilling. And so the newest Hobbit film is a tired, ultra climactic end to a superfluously extended journey which was generally fun to watch, yet constantly played second fiddle to the far superior LotR trilogy.

Continue reading “Film Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”