The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Hobbit: Worst of Six Movies has pacing problems of a battle where everyone has different length legs.  Overly simple de-Smaugging followed by over-complex and under-featured impromptu battle over nothing.  Jackson forgets most series characters (and G-rated tone) and executes the others.  Meanwhile a bearatrooper drops in while Legolas gets stoned/high.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Peter Jacksoff with this gigantically extended 90-page novel excerpt.  Struggles to trudge through nearly three hours (and 486,720 frames) while trapped in the mountains between LotR grandeur and source material childishness.  Freeman’s baby Bilbo feels a bit BBC and previous cast appearances are far less seamless than countless prosthetic noses.

Dark Shadows

Burton’s fifth remake of the century is seventy percent Blast from the Past, thirty percent True Blood, and 100 percent underwhelming.  Standard white faced Sweeney Wonka returns in his least impressive Burton turn to date.  Green’s catwoman is great till she starts exorcising and Pfeiffer’s stardom is dusty and unimpressive. 

Season of the Witch

Nicholas escorts caged girl through mountains in this confused horror-fantasy, Kingdom of Constantine, should have been straight to DVD, movie-thing. A crusade of genre regulars like Thomsen and Perlman can’t carry this heavy load across the bridge of poor writing. Ultimately a foolish but fun looks at Cage’s career’s afterlife.

Hugo

Scorsese casts an actor even more baby-faced than Dicaprio in first family film. Child stars play Potter cast perfectly as Kingsley mopes his way through a quasi-historical depression. Flashbacks can’t seem to break Law free of his A.I. days, as Borat slapsticks a weird taste on an otherwise quaint film.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

‘Alice in Narnia’ marks Disney’s third failure to shoot a compelling epic and proves that digital effects haven’t evolved far enough to fix bad writing. Depp’s schizophrenic performance oscillates from Pee Wee to Braveheart while Burton’s creepiness drowns in a shallow effects orgy. Highlights are big-headed Bellatrix and floating Puss-in-Boots.