13/12/2013 The Film Review

Sunday's sports personality of the year show. That is all at 6:30pm.

Now, it is time for the film review. Welcome. To take us through this

week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode. He has already corrected my

prime station of the first film. We have to get it right, 161 minutes of

it. We also have a classic reissue from 1961, the innocence. A proper

chiller, the turn of the screw. We have Bill Boyd, a extraordinary love

story told from Tel Aviv. The first half of the film, everyone has to

realise it is smoke. They are now officially on their way. The kingdom

is over yonder and to get there, they will have to go through loads

of different places that, to some extent, are different levels on a

great big screen computer game, but crucially, while this is all

happening, the hobbit, who now has the ring with him, is changing. Here

is a clip. You have changed. You are not the

same hobbit is the one who left. I was going to tell you. I found

something in the goblin tunnels. Found what? What did you find? My

carriage. Good, that is good. You will need it. -- courage. I love all

that stuff. I am hooked. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was long as

well. The three movies together will add up to nine hours in total. It is

not really just the Hobbit. There is loads of other material being

brought in. There is so much else being thrown in as well. On the

upside this moves on a pace. You remember the first movie. There was

half an hour of sitting around, drinking tea and singing songs. With

this movie they are off. They are into battles and chases. There are

spectacular sights. We have elves and dwarfs and massive dragons. The

problem with it, to some extent, I still can't help but think that

reigning everything in would have made it tighter, more compact and

more digestible. If you are a fan of the Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings you

know what you will get. This requires you going in at the

beginning and saying, we will be here for a long time and at the end

there will be -- we will be nowhere near the end. Some of this looks to

CGI. Every now and then you get them going over a natural landscape in

New Zealand. You are so relieved to have the physical landscape, as

opposed to yet another digitally created mountain. It does lack

physicality. It suggests that by the time you get to the third instalment

it might have all finally come into place. It is not in Lord Of The

Rings territory yet. I do think the first Hobbit movie was

disappointing. This is an improvement but there is some way to

go in every sense of that. That is the problem with that. What about

the innocence? It is shot in CinemaScope, black and white. A

fantastic performance by Deborah Kerr. It is a film that does that

brilliant thing of suggesting. There is always the suggestion something

is happening in the end. There is a governess of two young children. She

is convinced they are demonic or possessed. What the film does is

constantly suggests all of this is in her mind to use the apparitions

and ghosts. The natural sound in the film is terrific. It does what

really great ghost story does. It gives you the sensation of a cold

hand on the back of the neck. It is not about shouting blue and quiet

followed by a loud bang. It is to do with a genuine sense of the uncanny

you must have seen it. Some modern movies have followed the same

scene. It is someone who is mentally ill and imagining all of this. What

is horror? The crucial thing is it is about the uncanny. The eerie

feeling of the uncanny and something being wrong. The sound of children

laughing being terrifying. The innocent will make you anxious but

it does not set out to shout do at you. It is about drawing you into

its atmosphere. I really like the film. -- I really like the film,

Fill The Void. Then what happens is tragedy strikes

the family. The future she thought she would have is up in the air.

There is a suggestion the only way she can heal the wounds of the

family is to do something they wanted to do. To change marriage

plans and put her own needs side. The really interesting thing about

this is it is set in a very insular communities. The director compares

it to the sort of society defined by Jane Austin. The women characters

are living a very restrictive life but it is their stories. They drive

the narrative. They are the focus of the drama. What is so interesting

about this is, it is not a film about the breaking out of the

community. Quite the opposite. It is about within the community. There is

a traditional and ordered way of life. It shows within it a quite

extraordinary degree of self well, self-determination. Each one of the

women characters has a very powerful - quietly powerful - voice. It is

filmed beautifully. The use of the music in the film is interesting.

She plays the accordion. There is an underlying narrative which is played

out all the way through the film. Some people may look at it and think

it is too insular a view of the world. I thought it was fully

sympathetic with its characters. You really care about them and believe

in the situation. Very small gestures and nuances mean such a

lot. Compare it to the raging dragons of the Hobbit. This is all

to do with the smallest tilt of a head and a glance. I thought it was

really enchanting. I thought it was very enriching, intelligent and

smart. I would encourage people to see it. We are not going to do the

best of the week, which is Nebraska or the DVD. Back in October, Mark

commode and may have film review launched a short film competition

asking for amateurs to produce a two-minute film. Here is a taster of

what the finalist came up with. This is my garden! I will fight you

for it. What an inventive lot! We had to say

it had to be two minutes long and suitable for everyone. What was

wonderful was how diverse you were. You had animation. You had live

action, comedy. Some involved very young kids. It was really terrific.

We had hundreds of entries. We have got it down to a short list. It was

really impressive. Two minutes and it must be used certificate. It is

astonishing what people came up with. It was really encouraging.

What a great idea! You can watch all seven films in full on the website.

The winner, as we mentioned, will be announced next week. Thank you for

watching and goodbye. Good evening. A much quieter night

tonight across the British Isles than last night. Gone is the cloud

and rain. Also gone, some of that exceptional warmth. Last night, lows

of seven degrees. Tonight, a few patches of fog. Still rain around