The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies REVIEW

The 6th and final film of the Middle Earth saga and the finale of The Hobbit series is finally here and holy shit is it action packed! The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies or TBotFA starts immediately where Desolation of Smaug left off. A really pissed off and undiagnosed mentally ill dragon heads towards Lake Town to do one thing and one thing only. FUCK. SHIT. UP. But a giant fire breathing dragon isn't the only thing that the thirteen dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo Baggins have to deal with. Five armies consisting of Dwarves, Elves, Men, Orks, and a special mystery guest group are about to descend upon the Lonely Mountain to take it's vast amounts of treasure and secure its strategic position within Middle Earth.






TBotFA had a lot of hype going into the theaters, and it lived up to quite a bit of it. Smaug silently stalking Lake Town before setting it ablaze was absolutely bone chilling, intense, and probably one of my favorite scenes. The different armies showing up all at once at the base of the mountain and clashing together throughout the film was epic! From the Orks taking first place on making an entrance, to endless amounts of battle trolls, to Orlando Bloom and Evangeline Lilly doing crazy elfish fight scenes, the battle really was one of the best from the entire series.

(OH, SHIT!)

That being said, the final Hobbit isn't without some fault. One being that Bilbo is kind of sidelined for parts of the movie. A character as greatly portrayed by Martin Freeman could have used a little more screen time.

Another fault was the consequences of expanding one book into three different films finally catching up with us. In the book, Smaug going ape shit and the entire battle is probably the last quarter of the story, so there wasn't much to really stretch out into an epic large film. It's 2 hours and 20 minutes long so I didn't feel like the movie flew by too fast, but the ending felt a little sudden to me. Seeing as it was the last film in the entire saga (For now) I was expecting an emotional gut punch that we had experienced with Return of the King, Instead the battle ended, goodbyes were had and a quick journey back to the Shire occurred, all in the span of a little over 10 minutes. Though I will say the ending song did help with the closure.

Overall The finale to The Hobbit delivered exactly what it was titled. Five armies epically duking it out for the fate of Middle Earth and in the middle of it all, one small brave hobbit. It might not have been my favorite film in the series that I really love, but it was exceptionally great experience. To quote my Dad after the movie ended "That was fucking awesome!" I give it 4 orks getting beheaded at once out of 5.

December Movie List

December 12th:

Exodus: Gods and Kings DANA'S TOP PICK




Exodus is the biblical tale of Moses, Christian Bale (The Dark Knight), leading an uprising against the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses, Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby), by setting hundreds of thousands of slaves free. Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Robin Hood) looks to add his own epic CGI vision to film combined with great actors while also not having it be as long as the five hour Charleston Heston event that seems to take over the entire Easter weekend on ABC. Though it still is 2 and a half hours long so time your piss breaks wisely. We've already got the reviews in for it which you can check out HERE and HERE.

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Top Five





Written, directed, and staring Chris Rock as a high profile comedian who wants to become a serious actor because he doesn't feel funny anymore. After that Saturday Night Live performance from last month, we can agree with that.

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December 17th:

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies  MANCHILD TOP PICK



The finale of The Hobbit trilogy and probably the last movie in a long while to deal with Middle Earth is here! Bilbo, Martin Freeman (Sherlock), and the dwarves have successfully entered the mountain and found the Arkenstone they set out on their quest for. There's just one problem, Smaug, the giant scary possibly schizophrenic dragon is loose and about to put a beating on the river city of Dale. Oh, and there's 7 armies all headed their way for a big ass battle royale for the fate of Middle Earth. It's going to be an awesome and epic conclusion to series for any LotR fan. If you haven't seen the previous two movies yet, you really should watch those first before this so you're not asking the person next to you "Who's that?" every five minutes.

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December 19th:

Annie






A foster child is taken in by a business tycoon and Mayoral candidate, Jamie Foxx, for NYC.
This is pretty much the same Annie movie as all the other ones, just with some hip-hop, and that really crazy Italian(NSFW) from Boardwalk Empire.

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Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb





In this final film from the Night at the Museum series, Ben Stiller has to travel the globe uniting different museum characters before the magic is gone forever. Sadly fitting since this is one of Robin Williams' final movies.

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The Gambler




Marky Mark is in some real deep shit in this remake about a college literature professor who's high stakes gambling gets him in debt with two different loan sharks. They pretty much had me at John Goodman shaving his head menacingly.

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Mr. Turner (Limited)


Wormtail is looking very harumph as the great British painter J.M.W. Turner going through the last quarter of his life. For any indie lovers out there, this is a rare time where watching paint dry might actually be enjoyable.

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December 26th:

Into the Woods



This isn't your average fairy tale musical. Sure it's got Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack and a beanstalk, Johnny Depp being all Johnny Depp as the wolf. and Meryl Streep as a boss ass witch, But it's also got adultery, backstabbing, Anna Kendrick, and MURDER all in a PGish cinematic cocktail.

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Unbroken



Here's the true story of Louis Zamperini, a man who became an Olympic runner, who then joined the armed forces during World War II, who's plane was then shot down in the pacific, who then had to survive adrift for like two weeks, who was then rescued... by the Japanese and placed in a POW camp. Here's the even crazier thing, he only just passed away this summer at the age of 97. Needless to say, this guy's life is more powerful than most Hollywood scripts. Add that with this being Maleficent's second directorial job and you have a lot of potential going into theaters this Christmas.

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The Interview



You know those guys from Pineapple Express? Well they're going to assassinate the leader of North Korea. Seth Rogen and James Franco play a producer and host of a huge world wide talk show. Turns out that Kim Jong-un is a big fan and wants to be interviewed by them. That's when the C.I.A steps in and asks if they could you know... Kill him for them. Combine those to trying to do a covert assassination black ops with the fact that the Sony hacking is most likely happening because of this and we are intrigued.

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Big Eyes



So this is a Tim Burton movie, but it's not a zany bonkers Johnny Depp acid trip that you would usually expect. It's actually a drama based on painter Margaret Keane who had an extremely successful career in the 50's and then had to fight her husband in court for credit for her own work. Amy Adams does incredible work on her films nowadays, so more interesting in seeing this for her and not Burton.