Joining the show this week is James Vanderbilt, a veteran screenwriter whose directorial debut, Truth, is out in theaters this weekend. The movie stars Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford and revolves around a the controversial report Dan Rather gave on 60 minutes in 2004 about the alleged fraudulence of George W. Bush’s military record, a piece that would lead to Rather (Redford) and his longtime producer, Mary Mapes (Blanchett) losing their jobs. Also on the show Bernard and CJ run their mouths (as always) about the Mill Valley Film Festival and festival fatigue as well as share their Indie Picks of the Week.

Topics

• Indie Picks (1:17)
• MVFF38 (7:18)
• Festival Fatigue (31:27)
• James Vanderbilt Truth Interview (39:57)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

MVFF38 Diaries
I Smile Back TIFF Review
Room TIFF Review
Son of Saul Cannes Review
The Forbidden Room Review

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(Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival)

Day five of the festival was the culmination of a three-day Sir Ian McKellen celebration, both on the larger, festival scale and on a mind-blowing, personal scale for yours truly.

The legendary actor flew into the Bay Area to receive a lifetime achievement award at MVFF, but being the generous soul that he is, he gave much more of himself to festivalgoers and the film critic community than any of us could have expected.

Magneto-level Photobomb

Sir Ian arrived on Saturday to meet up with his good friend, author Armistead Maupin. As luck would have it, Mr. Maupin also invited the San Francisco Film Critics Circle (of which I am an unlikely member) to join in on the fun and celebrate Sir Ian’s career at the beautiful Parallel 37 restaurant at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Needless to say, I was beside myself. Like most of us, I’ve grown up watching Ian McKellen on screen and have marveled at more of his performances than I can count on my fingers and toes. I couldn’t believe I was going to meet him, but my nervousness dissolved just as he walked into the room. Unlike some celebrities, especially ones of his stature and accomplishment, he actually looked thrilled to hang around and chat with our merry little group. There were about 25 of us in a room uncomfortably small for our number, but no one cared a bit—Sir Ian was happy, so we were happy, as you can see below.

He didn’t have to, but Sir Ian took the time to talk to each and every one of us, and he was as lovely as anyone you could hope to meet. I got so excited at one point that I started photobombing for no reason, one example of which you can see below. (He’s talking to excellent film critic Zaki Hasan of ZakisCorner.)

As you can tell, I was having a grand old time. It was an unforgettable experience and just the start of Sir Ian’s Bay Area takeover.

All Class

On Sunday, the celebration moved to the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael (one of the main MVFF sites, just up the road from Mill Valley), where McKellen was to receive a lifetime achievement award. I wasn’t able to watch the ceremony (I was upstairs watching the wild and weird Angelica), but I saw him step out of the car in front of the theater to the excitement of a raucous (but respectful) crowd of superfans. He signed autographs for two little girls (giddy as can be) and made his way through the flashing lights with his good friend Mr. Maupin (see photo below).

This next part I heard second-hand, but apparently when Sir Ian walked into the theater, he didn’t head straight for the green room as scheduled. Instead, he walked up to the young people working the concession counter and shook all of their hands.

I wish I was able to watch the award ceremony, but regret nothing (Angelica was awesome). I would, however, be in attendance for McKellen’s final appearance the next day, which was a big, big treat.

Longtime Ally

To cap off his visit to the Bay, McKellen gave a presentation called “Women I’ve Filmed With,” in which he celebrated some of the greatest women he’s, you know, filmed with. Sitting in front of an adoring, exceptionally knowledgeable crowd (they knew all his deep cuts), he guided us through his expansive career chronologically (via powerpoint, adorably), stopping along the way to talk about wonderful women like Ava Gardner, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Stockard Channing and Rachel Weiss, and spoke in-depth about lesser-known but equally monumental women like Lilian Baylis (who managed the Old Vic and many other famous theaters).

One of my favorite anecdotes was one McKellen shared about filming a movie called Scandal, which he did just as he’d completed his “coming-out journey,” as he put it.

“To show the world that I intended to carry on acting as I always have,” he remembered, “I thought it would be a rather good idea to play this part. He’s called John Profumo, an English politician and a raging heterosexual.” He recalled having to do a sex scene with Joanne Whalley and graciously confessed that he “didn’t know what to do.” He consulted with his friend actor Edward Petherbridge, who drew stick figures in curious positions on a scrap of paper. “I’ve still got (the paper),” McKellen admitted, to waves of laughter from the crowd. “I’m now an expert on the missionary position.”

One of the warmest bits of praise McKellen gave was in the direction of the great Dame Judi Dench. “Everybody Loves Judi Dench,” he said matter-of-factly, the audience nodding their heads in universal agreeance. “She’s loveable. She makes women smile and they want to be as gentle and forthright as she is, and all the men want to give her a hug. It’s alarming when you’re on stage with her because she has a direct link to the audience. If you’re not careful, you can’t get in there—there’s a lovefest going on.”

It was clear that McKellen’s career was shaped in no small part by his female colleagues and counterparts on the stage and screen. This year’s festival is in tribute to women in film, and the fact that McKellen so selflessly dedicated an hour-and-a-half or so to praising female artists was a staggeringly beautiful thing.

]]> http://waytooindie.com/news/mvff38-diary-day-5-mckellen-mania/feed/ 1 http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/mr-holmes/ http://waytooindie.com/review/movie/mr-holmes/#respond Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:09:40 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=33959

Ian McKellen and Bill Condon haven’t worked together in 17 years. In 1998, they made the excellent Gods and Monsters; now, they’re weaving a brand new tale about the world’s greatest detective in the wonderful Mr. Holmes. The craziest thing about this reunion is, McKellen plays an elderly crank confronting mortality in both movies. Talk about gas left in the tank. McKellen’s one of the finest actors working, and his performance as Sherlock Holmes is one of the crowning jewels of his late career.

Sherlock Holmes is as trendy and popular now as he’s ever been, and of the handful of actors who’ve embodied Mr. Holmes over the past several years, I’d dare to say McKellen is the best of the lot (not a knock on Cumberbatch; put down your pitchforks). The film, adapted from Mitch Cullin’s 2005 book A Slight Trick of the Mind, finds Holmes face-to-face with his greatest adversary: the merciless ticking hands of time. Holmes is defined by his intellect, after all, and erosion of the mind is one thing, tragically, that old folk like him simply can’t escape. Given this scenario, is there any choice other than the cerebral, soulful Sir McKellen to fill the 93-year-old detective’s shoes? No; his casting is as close to perfection as one could hope for.

The story is no less complex or enthralling than your classic Arthur Conan Doyle yarn, juggling three unique, parallel stories with vigor and precision. Sherlock may be in a self-reflective, somber state, but the film that frames him moves with energy and brisk forward momentum. The primary plot line takes place in 1947: Holmes is retired, fighting off Alzheimer’s in a countryside home in Sussex to live out his final days. He’s watched over by a widowed maid, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney) and her bright (and nosy) 10-year-old son, Roger (Milo Parker). No longer inundated with deathly mysteries to unravel, Sherlock spends most of his time tending to his beloved bee colony, harvesting their honey and admiring the splendor of their well-oiled hierarchy.

There’s also a more curious connection between Sherlock and the bees, one that leads us to the film’s second narrative thread. They remind him of his final, unsolved case, which rattled him to the bone 30 years prior. In flashbacks to 1919 London, we learn how a troubled woman and a magical music instrument scarred him for life. Of the three tales, this one is vintage Holmes and will feel most familiar to diehards. The third story is the bizarre in the best way, as Holmes travels to Japan (again in flashback) in search of prickly ash, a plant with properties that may be the key to stopping his mind’s degradation. His guide is Mr. Umezaki (the terrific Hiroyuki Sanada), a devout fan of Sherlock’s who’s more than happy to aid him in his quest.

In an interesting deviation from canon, Sherlock is world-famous in very much the same way he is in our reality: his old friend Mr. Watson has written a popular series of mystery books based on their old cases, which have even spurned movie adaptations. A delightful scene sees Holmes watching one said film in a theater, chuckling and cringing at the absurdity of it all.

The central relationship between Sherlock and young Roger is the lifeblood of the film. The three plot lines are well-woven and involving, but these are the real stakes: Sherlock is hanging onto our world by a thread. He’s got no loved ones because he views all around him as pawns in his grand game of chess. With his best days seemingly behind him, a young boy reaches out a hand and offers him a final chance to live life with others, rather than in the presence of them. Sherlock’s always been almost-human, but there may be hope for him yet.

Parker is as key to the film as McKellen. He never panders, he isn’t concerned with being cute, and he’s got such a rage in his eyes that we fully understand why Sherlock is compelled to tame it. Roger’s fascination with the detective and his legacy drives a wedge between he and his mother, who he essentially treats like a peon. His resentment of her, and her consequent resentment of Sherlock creates a tense dynamic between the three leads, who breathe life into every carefully-penned, contemptuous line of dialogue (adapted from Cullin’s book by Jeffrey Hatcher).

Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr.’s more charismatic interpretations of Holmes fit their respective properties appropriately, but McKellen’s more pained, desperate version has almost bottomless depth. Much like Roger, you treasure every moment you’re with the old curmudgeon. Condon and Hatcher were just the men to bring this atypically humanistic vision of Sherlock Holmes from book to screen, and Mr. Holmes is a movie I’ll be itching to revisit for years.

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Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, starring Sir Ian McKellen as an aging iteration of everyone’s favorite detective, is a classic Sherlock page-turner in movie form. And rightfully so: it’s based on Mitch Cullin‘s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind, which follows Holmes in his twilight years in a countryside home, his mind deteriorating, as he’s cared for by a housekeeper (played in the film by Laura Linney) and her son, Roger (Milo Parker). In Roger he finds a companion with whom he can share his memories before they fade away. The film also follows two parallel, flashback stories: Holmes’ trip to see the mysterious Mr. Umezaki (Hiroyuki Sanada) in Japan in search for a cure for his mental condition, and a classic Sherlock mystery involving a troubled woman reeling following two failed pregnancies.

I spoke with screenwriter Jefferey Hatcher about his experience working on Mr. Holmes, which comes out tomorrow, July 17th.

Were you on set during filming?
Yeah, for a little bit. For about two weeks at the end.

What’s it like writing the script, not being on set all that much, and then seeing the final product?
The things you focus on are the things you were on-set for. You remember, “They did this 800 times. They kept knocking that thing over.” You tend to have reference points no audience member would have. I’m always amazed with how actors can work with so much focus on them. Dozens and dozens of people watching you do something terribly intimate. I’ve done a little acting myself, but that kind of intimacy with that audience…[pauses] It’s always amazing to think how they can focus and function.

Would it be more nerve-racking for you to do something on camera as opposed to on stage?
Oh yeah, in front of a camera. It’s the same way we feel when we see ourselves in photographs. Onstage, there’s always some distance. There’s a bit of a haze.

The lights…
Yeah, right. I remember reading something Cary Grant said: “Screen acting is very difficult because I’ve got a double chin.” He’d have to keep his head a certain way or they’d see his double chin. It’s like, really? You’re thinking about this? I wouldn’t want to see myself on the screen.

So it’s the proximity.
I think so. I think actors who don’t care about that stuff, or actors who don’t care about how you perceive them and know exactly how to present themselves, do well. To have to think [like a screen actor] is kind of amazing. But the theater allows you a little more distance, even if it’s a small house.

The lights help because you can’t see faces.
No one quite gets that. I get up onstage and deliver a soliloquy to the house, and it’s like, I can’t see any of you. I can see a couple faces in the first couple of rows.

And you can hear them messing with their peanut bags.
Especially in England. The Brits, more so than us, eat during shows.

It’s more of an English thing?
Yeah. You come back from intermission during Shakespeare, and they’re eating ice cream. [In a British accent] This is the theater of the Elizabethans!

I hadn’t read the book going into the film. I was expecting more of a meditative, slower-paced movie. I was surprised to find the momentum of the film so brisk and thrilling.
The book has those parallel stories, though they’re in different sequence. That was always there. The question was, how do you shuffle it? At one point we had him going to Japan later in the script, giving it its own section of the movie. But it felt like we spent too much time just in Japan that way, so we rearranged it and made it a flashback. That was dangerous at first glance, because we had two flashbacks going on. But I think it makes sense because each story is progressing in its own direction.

The classic Holmes tale is the one with the woman in the past. Then you’ve got the domestic, current tale. Then there’s the sort of oddball tale in Japan. Holmes was going to a place where rational thinking and reason had ended up with the atom bomb going off. It comes off much more strongly in the book, but I hope it comes off in the film as well. In a sense, that’s my favorite section because it’s so controlled and tight and neat. His relationship with Mr. Umezaki is so peculiar. I’m glad the movie feels like it’s moving forward all the time and it’s not a bunch of people sitting around, talking about death.

The cast is really good. The kid, Milo Parker—he’s gotten a lot of praise.
McKellen was attached when Bill said he wanted to do it. We talked about various actresses, but very quickly, Bill said, “What about Laura Linney?” Beyond that I don’t think I had any suggestions about other actors. I adore Roger Allam, who plays the doctor. He’s got a great, soupy kind of voice. He should play Christopher Hitchens in a biopic sometime. We knew the kid had to be someone who wasn’t the classic, adorable kid. There had to be a strangeness and a quiet about him.

There’s rage in him as well.
I’d never say this to him, but he’s got, like, thyroid eyes that really pop out at you.

His glare is killer.
Oh yeah. I like the fact that you kind of have to work to get to him, which is very much like Holmes. He’s not like, “Come! Love me!” When there’s distancing like that, it makes it even better when you do embrace. Laura Linney does things I can’t even imagine. She’s so honest, never less than completely truthful. Her rage is real, her tears are real. She makes what could be an unsympathetic character very sympathetic, just by virtue of being herself. She’s a wonderful actor.

I think the three main actors are incredibly generous to each other. No one tries to steal a scene.
Sometimes there are people who say, “I’m giving you this scene,” and then they go away. None of these actors do. Their presence is so key. It’s almost as if they say, “Even if I’m off-screen, the camera’s on me.” It’s good for the film because Holmes sees people as supporting characters in his life. It’s a world of interns and secretaries and drivers, not people you actually live with. What’s cool about the film is, bit by bit, he brings them into his level, whatever that may be.

What is Holmes’ greatest fear?
He famously says to Watson in one of the stories, “I am an intellect; the rest of me is mere appendage, “which is a line we couldn’t use because it’s cut off in that copyright thing. The idea that your intellect goes away means that everything goes away. Because Holmes is suffering some form of dementia, that kind of fear of not being able to remember things or think through a problem…[pauses] It’s not simply, “I’m having some befogged days.” My essence, my soul, is being eradicated. For a man who depends, thrives, finds sustenance in that kind of intellectual pursuit, you’re really left with only two outs: commit suicide or embrace someone. The embrace is the hardest thing, because it’s not based on intellect. He had Watson and Mrs. Hudson, but they never talked about it. Here’s an example where he actually has to say to someone, “Live with me. Stay with me.”

In the post-internet age, it’s becoming harder and harder to surprise modern audiences with mystery stories. Everyone’s savvy and trying to stay five steps ahead of the plot. How do you surprise them?
It’s wildly tricky. I can’t go see a thriller where I’m not trying to out-guess it. Having the experience of having something just flow over you and be surprised [is great]. I’m probably the last person in America who was surprised by the ending of The Sixth Sense. I’m like, “He’s dead?!” It was great to be surprised. When I do out-guess something, there’s a sort of “meh” quality to it. You’re right about that. You want to play fair with the audience. There’s a bit in the movie where Holmes explains to Ann Kelmot how he knows one thing versus the other. There are quick flashes. You want the audience to say, “Yes, we saw that. The filmmakers played fair with us. But we did not expect to see the things that Holmes picked up on.” It is very tricky. The hardest thing these days is knowing the audience can go back and forth simply by moving the cursor. Have you seen The Conversation?

Yeah.
Remember the beginning? “He’d kill us if he had the chance. He’d kill us if he had the chance.” Then, when he listens to it near the end, he hears, “He’d kill us if he had the chance.” If you were watching that in 1971, you’d say, “Oh, he heard it wrong.” But now, with DVDs, you can turn it back and say, “No, she doesn’t say it that way!” They didn’t expect a world where somebody would be able to do that, technically. Now it’s harder to cheat the audience and say that something happened when they can go back and check it. If you cheat like that, the audience gets really pissed off.

You just really hope to god that, when you do the revelation, the audience goes, “Gasp!” It’s okay, actually, if some of them say, “I knew it!” Audiences sometimes like to think they’re ahead a few minutes. That’s okay. To be ahead 30 minutes is bad. But a couple of minutes isn’t such a terrible thing. Sometimes the audience wants their suspicion confirmed. You always want to present options for the audience to consider. It’s the red herring thing. If they have one option to consider, that’s what they’ll pick. So you have to give them at least two options, stated or unstated. A friend of mine says, “If the answer is either A or B, the answer should be C.”

I think being genuinely surprised is one of the rarest joys at the movies these days.
The big one here that I think we’re all so pleased with is the difference between bees and wasps. We say it right at the beginning of the film. We show you close-ups, something getting plucked out of someone’s neck. And yet, at a certain point, I hope the audience forgets that difference in the same way the characters do. To me, that’s playing fair.

In Chinatown, there’s a part where Nicholson looks into this pool, and there’s this stuff glittering. He turns to this guy, who says, “Bad for glass! Bad for glass!” Of course, it sounds like it’s a joke because he can’t pronounce grass. But he is saying glass, and he’s looking at glasses. All through the film, Nicholson is opening drawers, and there are glasses there. When he fishes out the glasses at the end and realizes they’re John Huston’s, they never say, “Oh, of course. That was a pair of glasses.” But there are these clues everywhere. The audience goes, “Aw, geez. I should have picked up on what he did.”

I think the bees/wasps thing is poetic and artistic as well. It’s not just a juke.
Something Bill put in that I hadn’t realized was how many times McKellen passes between glass. You see him in reflections and in windows. It’s all this glass within glass within glass. Some of these things aren’t things you think about, but it’s almost like you’re exercising some poetic muscle, but not intentionally. I think if you’re doing it intentionally, you can tell.

What makes Sherlock Holmes so enduring as a character? Depending on what’s going on in society in culture at any given time, we view him in a new light.
You can always tell what era Holmes stories are from. For example, Basil Rathbone, during World War II, kind of imagined that you’d need a Holmes who’s not doubting himself much, who’s going to win all the time. Nicol Williamson is a coke freak in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It makes sense that it’s the ’70s. Jeremy Brett is this sort of crazy, near psychopath in the ’80s ones. I tend to think [he endures] because Sherlock is so anchored in the Victorian, Edwardian world. He’s so defined: we know what he looks like, what he sounds like, what he thinks. But there’s also a sadness and emptiness to him. There’s something missing in him. [Arthur] Conan Doyle will refer to it, and sometimes it’s a joke, and sometimes it’s not. But it’s always there. That’s the crack actors, writers and directors get to fill.

Mr. Holmes

Ian McKellen and director Bill Condon collaborate for the first time since 1998’s Gods and Monsters to offer their talents to the long-running Sherlock Holmes franchise with Mr. Holmes. McKellen plays the detective at an advanced age facing his greatest enemy of all: time. Resigned to a countryside cottage where a housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her aspiring sleuth son (Milo Parker), Holmes looks back on his life as his mind—his greatest treasure—begins to fade. He can only remember fragments of an unsolved case involving a mysterious woman, which haunts him every day.

Split into three narrative threads, Mr. Holmes is the cinematic equivalent of a juicy page-turner (it’s based on a 2005 novel by Mitch Cullin). Condon darts from mystery to the another moments before we uncover a tantalizing clue, resulting in a terrific sense of narrative propulsion one wouldn’t expect to find in a movie about such meditative subject matter. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing an elderly Mr. Holmes once you’ve seen McKellen work, which is no big surprise; what it a surprise is how close Linney and Parker come to stealing the show.

Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine

Coming off the controversial success of Going Clear, Alex Gibney and his research and production machine dissect the career of Steve Jobs, a man whose work people fell in love with, but whose temperament was often notoriously nasty. Delving into the private life of the deceased visionary as he built what would become the great tech empire of the century, the film thoroughly outlines Jobs’ accomplishments and influence, mostly to set the stage for its real goal. Jobs’ unsavory, vaguely monstrous approach to both his personal relationships and business dealings have been well documented before, but Gibney and his team explore the disagreeable side of Jobs’ character more comprehensively than any other piece of media to date.

The issue with the film is its scope: It simply tries to cover too many topics and dates and pivotal events and facets of Jobs as a man. Information piles up so quickly that by the end of the film I was struggling to remember what happened in the first half. The more incisive final act of the film, which exposes controversies like Apple’s employee-less foreign operations company in Ireland (where income taxes are more manageable than in the states), is the highlight, and a film more focused on these kind of indictments may have been more intriguing.

Saint Laurent

In Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello (House of Tolerance) casts Gaspard Ulliel as Yves Saint Laurent to explore the French designer’s peak years, from 1967 to 1976. If it were acceptable to issue difficulty levels to movies, I’d give this one a nine: its plot is about as graspable as a puddle of spilt champagne. What we see is essentially a free-form sequence of moments, whose significance is often more than elusive. Cinematically, though, almost everything looks interesting, if not flat-out brilliant. The colors pop, the costumes are breathtaking, and the staging is off-putting, in a way. A notable moment when Ulliel smiles directly into the camera, for instance, sends chills down your spine.

The movie’s length (150 minutes) is, by far, the biggest barrier to entry. Bonello is in super-stylized, artsy mode throughout, and that means some sections are glacial and abstract and only pay dividends after you’ve left the theater; whether or not this is a good thing depends entirely on your taste. As a portrait of a man, Saint Laurent is surprisingly unflattering, and that’s a good thing, an eschewing of the hagiography cliché.

Sherlock Holmes is a character that people (at least filmmakers) can’t seem to get enough of. He’s everywhere these days, on big screen and on television. And while those movies and shows vary widely in their scope and story, one thing they all have in common is that the detective they depict is in his prime. But all that is set to change with this summer’s Mr. Holmes.

Mr. Holmes looks to focus on the super sleuth in his twilight years as he spends his days tending to his bees, alone but for the company of his housekeeper and her young son, Roger. Before long Roger and Holmes team up as they revisit the circumstances of his final unsolved case, all while Holmes grapples one last time with the mysteries of life and love.

The great Ian McKellen takes up the lead role in the Bill Condon directed film (hopefully more Dreamgirls than Twilight), and was written by Jeffrey Hatcher. The film premiered at Berlin 2015 to a hefty heap of praise and the official trailer shows off some incredible cinematography, so it’s safe to safe we’re excited for this one.

Check out Mr. Holmes on July 17th.

Mr. Holmes Official Trailer

It was announced today that the 58th annual San Francisco International Film Festival will play host to the US premiere of Bill Condon‘s Mr. Holmes, a fresh take on Sherlock Holmes that sees Sir Ian McKellen playing the famous detective. The film marks Condon (Kinsey, The Fifth Estate) and McKellen’s first collaboration since 1998’s Gods and Monsters and also stars Laura Linney and newcomer Milo Parker. SFIFF takes place from April 23rd to May 7th, with Mr. Holmes screening as a Marquee Presentation on Saturday, April 25th, 12:30 pm at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

From the press release:

“We’re thrilled to have Bill Condon’s smart, elegant and moving take on the legendary detective as a Marquee Presentation at the Festival, “ said SFFS Director of Programming Rachel Rosen. “I know our audiences will appreciate the film’s stylish direction and stellar performances, led by the incomparable Ian McKellen.”

McKellen reunites with Gods and Monsters (1998) director Bill Condon for Mr. Holmes, a new twist on the world’s most famous detective.   1947, an aging Sherlock Holmes returns from a journey to Japan, where, in search of a rare plant with powerful restorative qualities, he has witnessed the devastation of nuclear warfare.  Now, in his remote seaside farmhouse, Holmes faces the end of his days tending to his bees, with only the company of his housekeeper and her young son, Roger.  Grappling with the diminishing powers of his mind, Holmes comes to rely upon the boy as he revisits the circumstances of the unsolved case that forced him into retirement, and searches for answers to the mysteries of life and love – before it’s too late.

Loosely adapted from Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of the Mind and featuring precise attention to period detail and the visual splendor of the English countryside, Mr. Holmes stands proudly along the other indelible portraits of the unforgettable man who lived at 221B Baker Street.

Britain has its share of heroes and legends and Mr. Holmes sees two of them finally come together: the extraordinary Ian McKellen and super sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

The twist of premise in Mr. Holmes (because there has to be a twist with how many adaptations are currently going on) is that Sherlock (McKellen) has survived into his twilight years and finally retired to a small village to live the life of a beekeeper (we’re asked to ignore how many times Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle actually killed him off). And while most renderings prefer to focus on more action packed stories of the private detective, Bill Condon‘s film sees Sherlock keeps to himself, wrestle with the mythologic status that his name has taken on, and undertake one final adventure.

Sherlock Holmes movies seem to be a genre all their own these days. So the question is, can Mr. Holmes separate itself enough from the pack (Sherlock, Elementary, the RDJ/Guy Richie films) to really shine? Condon’s record of late hasn’t been stellar (The Fifth Estate, and not one, but two Twilight movies), but McKellen always turns in a captivating performance, and the reviews out of Berlin seem startlingly good. Not to mention the cinematography by Tobias A. Schliessler (Lone Surviver) looks absolutely gorgeous.

Mr. Holmes trailer

After two movies worth of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his stubby dwarf friends trudging across Middle Earth to the lair of the fearsome dragon Smaug, Peter Jackson’s distended Hobbit prequels come to an end with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, an action-packed last hurrah that sadly feels too reiterative and scattershot to chalk up the trilogy as anything but unworthy. Those who (understandably) come expecting a massive battle royale between hoards of dwarves, elves, men, and orcs will no doubt be satisfied, but those of us less inclined to settle for mindless decapitation, long battlefield camera swoops, and Orlando Bloom surfing on random objects will feel underwhelmed by the film’s lack of emotional depth.

Five Armies opens on a rousing note, with what could have (or should have) been The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug‘s climax: the vain, malevolent dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, whose voice booms out of the speakers like thunder) torches the village of Lake-town, whose ill-equipped denizens have been dreading his arrival, with fiery vengeance (and breath), threatening to reduce every inch of the seaside locale to ashes and embers. Smaug is a remarkable achievement in digital effects, almost on par with Gollum. After raining hellfire and brimstone on the poor villagers, a heroic family man and archer (Luke Evans) manages to best the beast in a one-on-one showdown. From here the film sadly takes a permanent dip.

The charismatic Smaug’s end is a fitting one (it’s the film’s most exciting sequence by far) but with him out of the picture, it leaves us without a lead villain. Dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) takes up the “Big Bad” throne, as he rescinds his promise to share the dragon’s treasure (whose dark properties seem to have corrupted him) with the survivors of the Lake-town attack, who desperately need the gold to rebuild what’s left of the village. They helped him get to the Lonely Mountain in the first place, after all.

The elven army, led by Thranduil (Lee Pace), shows up to claim a piece of the treasure, too, but Thorin’s having none of it, ordering his handful of loyal dwarf warriors to barricade the doors and calling for reinforcements from back home to fight the men and elf armies off for him. Then, a hoard of Orcs (and later, an army of…bats, or something; it isn’t really clear) shows up to crank the intensity up to eleven. It’s a massive, all-out skirmish for the rest of the film, and if you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, you’ll probably be hit with a big whiff of deja vu at this point.

It’s hard not to get caught up in all the sword clashing, giant military formations, grunting orcs and dwarfs (the elves don’t grunt as much), and other battle scene ridiculousness, especially if the thought of arranging five buckets of army men on your living room floor on Christmas morning and then smashing them all to hell in your pajamas still sounds fun to you. I’m still a kid at heart, so how could I resist a good melee? I can’t deny that I had a good bit of fun. The problem here is, it all feels very much like the open-field battle scene at the end of The Return of the King, and has inherited most of the same problems: it’s frantic, hard to follow (there are too many protagonists to keep track of), and way, way too long. It’s all so overblown that the (halfway decent) character work that builds up to the war almost feels like a means to an end, a 90-minute excuse to show you giant CGI orcs toppling over onto CGI warthogs.

There’s another issue I’ve had with Jackson’s Hobbit movies that’s as rampant as ever in Five Armies. The way Jackson films deaths, specifically when the good guys kill the bad guys, is so over-sensationalized and exploitative that at some points it feels as mind-numbing one of the Saw films. An orc vaults up toward Legolas, who’s standing on a higher platform in Lake-town. He uses his two short swords like scissors to behead the baddy and lets the severed head rest on his blades as the rest of the carcass falls to the water. I can understand how this can come off as pretty cool to some people, but to me, kills like this feel a little…trashy.

The Hobbit movies sure do look and feel like their Lord of the Rings big brothers, but there’s something off about them. It’s the little things: while some the original trilogy’s scenes glow with a majestic golden hue (like the ones in Rivendell), Hobbit‘s golden hues look more piss-yellow. (Gross, I know, but watch the films and tell me I’m wrong. Looks like piss.) But the larger issue here is that Hobbit‘s heroes and their plights aren’t all that compelling. Ian McKellen looks tired as hell in his sixth series outing as Gandalf; Freeman, who’s barely in the movie, can’t touch Elijah Wood’s brilliant turn as Frodo; Evangeline Lilly’s elf-lady has a crush on a dwarf that ends awkwardly; and Bloom’s just thrown in there to look pretty and perform unnecessarily acrobatic mass murder.

Five Armies‘ saving grace is Thorin, whose inner-struggle with his lust for power and gold is delivered incredibly well by Armitage. What bigger villain is there than greed itself? The war at the foot of the Lonely Mountain is nothing compared to the war going on inside Thorin’s mind and soul. It’s a great, intimate story told by a fine actor, but it unfortunately gets drowned out by all the noise.