Star Trek Into Darkness, this time with SPOILERS

Let's get into it.

I will admit that I have never seen Wrath of Khan.  I've never been a Star Trek fan, so I never bothered, and thus may be missing something in Abrams' remake.  However, one of the things I loved so much about his first reboot was that it was so accessible - you didn't have to be a Trek fan to know what was going on, and you didn't have to be familiar with the characters to fall in love with them.  So I'm not willing to cut Abrams any slack on this front.

That said, here are my specific complaints about Star Trek: Into Darkness.

- As I said in my first review, I thought Abrams was telling us with his first Trek that he was off the leash, not to be constrained by the previously established Trek canon (however you may feel about that decision).  But what do we get as a follow up? A film that tries to shoe horn as much reference and remake that it possibly can into a story that would have been better served without it.  John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) was more interesting before the "reveal" that we're actually just doing Khan again.  The story of Kirk's disgrace with the Academy, and him getting called to task for his shitty captaining by his mentor Admiral Pike, was way more fascinating than the revenge drama we got.  All of this was washed away in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

- Let's talk about those first twenty minutes.  I was SO excited to see Pike's dressing down of Kirk, because it's a big character moment for him - yes, he's been insanely lucky so far, but the way he runs his ship and his attitude are dangerous and will probably kill someone someday.  To have another character, one that Kirk respects so much, actually call him out for that could have been a great story to follow - except that we forget about that the instant Pike dies.  The Federation takes the Enterprise away from Kirk...and then gives it back to him almost instantly.  His abilities as a captain are never in question for the rest of the film.  Even his bad decisions are mostly the product of him taking pretty solid advice from his crew.  It doesn't end up meaning anything.

- Which brings me to character motive, or lack thereof. As a Federation terrorist, Harrison was on the way to having some kind of motive - perhaps he was wronged by the Federation.  It doesn't matter, it didn't have to be complicated.  But by turning around and making him Khan, he has a tenuous motive for revenge against one specific member of the Federation (Admiral Marcus, who, um, what?  How can I give a shit about a conflict with someone I've never met before, and who's characterization wasn't explored enough to matter) and NOTHING to justify that last scene where he crashed the ship into San Francisco. Khan is only ever angry at one person: Marcus, Kirk, Spock.  But somehow, we're supposed to buy that he's this huge danger to the universe?

I feel like this is where it would have been helpful to have seen Wrath of Khan, because the scene with Old Spock gives some intimations of how dangerous Khan is - but the point is, we never see that in this version. He's some kind of superhuman, and I totally get why he hates Marcus, but the explosive destruction aimed at the Federation is never earned.

- Seriously, the Klingons were in the movie for two minutes and were more interesting than everything else.  Can the next movie be about them?

- The dialogue was brutal. Seriously, I love Karl Urban, he's a great actor, and we've seen that he's great at being Bones - so why why WHY would you reduce him to a series of stereotypical metaphors and one-liners?  All of the characters were distilled down to their TOS stereotypes (except, interestingly, Spock, who continually talks about being unable to feel and then being REALLY BAD at not feeling).

Speaking of, can we talk about how unfair Uhura's part in this whole thing was?  I alluded to it in my other review, but seriously: she's supposed to be capable and professional.  I do not believe at all that she would choose to fight about her relationship with Spock on the shuttle on the way to an extremely dangerous mission.  It was poorly placed, distracting, and damaging to all characters involved.

- For all that the stakes keep being raised, and the probability of death looms ever closer, I never felt like there was any tension.  With the sole exception of Khan and Kirk's flight through space (which would have been even more effective if it had been edited a little tighter), I never once was afraid for these characters.  Hell, Kirk died and I didn't take it seriously, because I knew what story we were in (which is another reason the Khan bait-and-switch doesn't work - yes, it's Spock that dies in the original, but that doesn't stick, either).  There is a way to create tension when your audience knows the ending of the story, this movie just never knows how.

- And at the end...nothing is different.  Khan is back in a cryo tube (which, how? How do you fight an super being back into a freezing tube?) Kirk has the Enterprise back. All the relationships are where they were in the beginning, because nothing was ever a serious threat to them.  The whole film felt like a wasted opportunity.

I'll probably go see more Trek films, if Abrams keeps making them.  But I won't feel the same kind of unreserved excitement I had before STID.  Which makes me really, really sad.

Star Trek: My first summer disappointment

I'm coming out of hibernation because I saw the new Star Trek film last night, and I have a lot of feelings about it. Specifically, I have a lot of BAD feelings about it, which have left me disappointed to the point of anger - which, on the one hand, is kind of ridiculous, because at the end of the day, movies aren't worth getting mad about...but on the other hand, I was SO EXCITED about this one. JJ Abrams' first Star Trek is one of my favorite m movies. I had it on my top ten list for 2009. I thought it was Best Picture material.

Into Darkness is...not. It manages to feel both bloated and hollow, drilling the same parallels into you over and over again with all the subtlety of an anvil, taking what were some of the best things about the 2009 film and tossing them merrily out the airlock.

I'm going to do this review in two parts, a spoiler free one and one where I can more fully enumerate the crimes of Star Trek: Into Darkness, the better to fully explain how I came to leave the theater feeling like I saw a different movie than everyone else I know (believe me, I wish I'd seen the one everyone is raving about. That sounded like a GOOD movie.).

To start, it's too long by about a half hour. The first twenty minutes are great - they move along, reveal some interesting conflicts, and get the action started...which then almost immediately tapers off into endless, pointless fight sequences and way, WAY too many shots of various crew members running down the white hallways of the Enterprise (which, by the way, has anyone ever bothered to map out the ship? Because I had no idea where we were supposed to be in the ship most of the time).

In addition to feeling padded out with unnecessary running, poorly edited action sequences, and revisiting the same plot points over and over, Into Darkness seems to take pleasure in wasting some of its best resources. Karl Urban as Bones is reduced to stupid metaphors and bitter one liners (to the point where another character actually says to him, "Enough with the metaphors!"). Uhura manages to somehow be both more and less interesting, getting to accompany Kirk on a mission but choosing the worst possible moment to bitch about her relationship problems. In fact, most of the crew, such strong presences in the first film, are basically reprising that here - hardly anyone gets anything new to do, or even say.

There's some good stuff here, not enough to assuage my feelings about it as a whole, but just enough to be frustrated by the film. The first two scenes are excellent, as Kirk' s methods and attitudes are called into question by the one person who's opinion he might actually care about. There's enough of the Klingons seen that I wish they'd been the villains of the film. And Benedict Cumberbatch, our actual villain, delivers monologues both traffic and sinister in a way that might have given me chills...If the material he'd been given had had more punch. But it's all so bogged down in senseless, motive-less buckshot that I had trouble keeping the good stuff in mind.

The conflict introduced in the opening sequence is pretty instantly brushed aside for something much less interesting, so that Abrams can pull what I'm sure he thought was an epic level bait and switch...but which ends up pretty much guaranteeing that the rest of the movie has no tension, because you now know exactly how it will end. This might be my biggest criticism and biggest disappointment: I thought that, with his first Trek, Abrams was making a grand statement that we were now playing by his rules. The old timeline was scrapped, he could send the Enterprise and her crew wherever he wished, and it would all be new, and fresh, and exciting. Into Darkness is none of those things. It is a group of people patting themselves on the back for being clever and good looking, while offering nothing in the way of new experience. I know you can do better, Mr. Abrams. I sincerely hope your next effort is more with my time.

Oscar Predictions!

I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the Oscars this year.  We'll see how I do tomorrow!

Best Picture: Lincoln
Ebert is convinced that Argo is taking it home, and after all the reactionary press Ben Affleck has gotten after his snub, he might be right - but tomorrow I think we're looking at a return to traditional Oscar values, and Lincoln simply has more weight on its side.  I think that the combined powers of Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, the historical biopic subject and the epic scope are going to be too much for the Academy to resist.

Best Director: Steven Spielberg
I really don't see any other contenders in this category (not that the other directors don't deserve to be nominated!).  IF Affleck had been nominated, these two categories might be harder to predict - as it is, I think we're looking at a Lincoln-takes-all kind of evening.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
It's the performance of his lifetime.  It's the performance of several lifetimes.  He can't lose.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Her real competition is Jessica Chastain, but I think Zero Dark Thirty is suffering a little on the awards circuit because of how similar it is to The Hurt Locker.  Lawrence has been getting more and better press than Chastain, plus her performance was unforgettable.  Granted, I haven't seen ZD30, and both women are turning into the kind of actresses that change the landscape of film, but I think the scales are tipped just slightly in Lawrence's favor.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
If Lincoln is losing anywhere, it's here - and that's because Django isn't winning any other category (in my opinion).  Tarantino is pushing too hard for the Academy to take him seriously, when his material doesn't stand up to that assertion.  Waltz, however, is becoming a virtuoso that plays in Tarantino's key - if anyone can snag an award for Django, it's him.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
For serious, they should just play the clip of Hathaway singing "I Dreamed A Dream" and let it speak for itself.

Animated Film: Wreck-It Ralph
For the first time in a while I don't think Pixar has a lock on this category.  I waffled hard on this one, because of how much I want ParaNorman to win - unfortunately, too often the Academy plays it conservative with the animated feature, and I think this year Disney's name is going to be too much to resist.  HOWEVER, Wreck-It Ralph was still an excellent movie, and will deserve the award.

Other Awards!

Cinematography: Life of Pi
Costume Design: Mirror Mirror
Film Editing: Argo
Makeup: The Hobbit
Music: Life of Pi
Music/Original Song: Adele, Skyfall
Production Design: Lincoln
Sound Editing: Argo
Sound Mixing: Les Miserables
Visual Effects: Life of Pi
Writing/Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln
Writing/Original Screenplay: Django Unchained

Chuggin' Along

So!  I have been dangerously delinquent on updating this blog.  I don't know if it was resolution fatigue or what, so I'm going to make a couple of preemptive statements regarding the future of this blog:

- Setting myself deadlines, it turns out, makes me not want to update.  SO.  Updates will go back to a "Whenever I feel like I have something to say" schedule.  Hopefully this will lead to an increase of words.

- Going forward, I am still going to try to keep to the "post reviews within 48 hours of seeing a movie" clause, because the fresher a movie is in my brain the better I can tell you all about it.

I'm playing with the idea of combining this blog and my book blog (Alternative Read) into one giant media entity, because then I can also flail all over about the tv shows I'm watching (spoiler alert: I get a lot of feelings about tv) and everything can be in one happy location.  I'm still trying to figure out what platform would best serve that purpose, so I'll keep you updated and, in the meantime, try to keep these things updated, as well.

ENOUGH ABOUT THAT, LET'S TALK ABOUT MOVIES.

Since last I spoke here, I've seen:

Mama.  I know, I KNOW.  Apparently I can't claim that I don't do horror movies anymore, because not only did I pay to see this in a theater, but I didn't actually have any nightmares after!  (I do have to make a studious effort to get it out of my brains if I think of it pre-bedtime, though.)  It was good!  Surprising no one, because Guillermo del Toro, duh.  Jessica Chastain and the little girls are fabulous - the girls especially do a great job of being creepy and endearing and feral and a whole bunch of other stuff.  The ending veers into melodrama territory, and is maybe a touch too overblown and tragic, but it's satisfying and ultimately makes sense.  I do confess to keeping my eyes glued on my knees during many of the scenes where you actually see the ghost, but: baby steps.

Fat Kid Rules The World, which: AWESOME.  This was one of the best YA books I read for my YA literature class in library school, and I was really excited when I found out that it got made into a movie and then successfully Kickstarted a distribution.  I got to see it when I went out to the American Library Association midwinter conference in Seattle, because someone from YALSA (the young adult division of ALA) e-mailed the director and said she wanted to screen it - he sent her a complementary copy and some awesome bumper stickers (proclaiming DON'T F*CK WITH THE FAT KID).  The movie, while obviously a slimmed down version of the story, captures the important stuff - and I felt like the people who made it really got the book.  It's about self confidence, self acceptance, punk rock, dealing with family issues, high school bullshit...all that teenage angst wrapped up in Troy, the titular fat kid, as he navigates what starts off as a pretty shitty life - but improves significantly when he gets involved with a drug addict/punk guitarist, Marcus.

Silver Linings Playbook, which was fabulous - the story itself has the skeleton of a typical rom-com, but the cleverness and sensitivity of the writing as well as the stellar performances elevated the whole thing.  Jennifer Lawrence, who I seriously want to be when I grow up (except that she's YOUNGER than me, which doesn't give me self esteem issues at all, thank you very much), is seriously charming - she's all broken edges and enviable hair and sharply witty remarks.  I like Bradley Cooper more and more, because I think he's very willing to step outside of his comfort zone and push his characters to the max; he does a whole host of things here that I haven't seen from him before, and it makes Pat's manic-depressive fluctuations believable, scary, and ultimately sympathetic.  Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver as Pat's long suffering parents are also pitch perfect, especially Weaver, who plays Pat's mother with a quiet tolerance that speaks volumes even when she doesn't.

Warm Bodies: I don't actually have a whole lot to say about this one, which speaks plenty in and of itself, I think.  It was...ok.  A serviceable zombie movie with an interesting perspective.  I didn't like how many things happened because Reasons (like the big plot hook, shown in the trailer - zombies are coming back to life because of...love?  OK, sure.), and the pacing felt off to me.  The acting is charming, but all in all I could have waited for the DVD release.

My Oscar Predictions go up on Friday.  Are YOU watching?

The New Year!

First, let's get this out of the way:

The 10 Best Movies I Saw In 2012

10. Dredd

Karl Urban's Chin for Best Supporting Actor

I will defend this movie until the end of time.  It was concise, exciting, well-edited, excellently visualized, very well acted, and some of the most fun I had at the movies all year.  It managed yet another post-apocalyptic wasteland story without being boring or tired, by staying focused on the minutia of the story...while ALSO not overburdening the viewer with unnecessary (to the story) details.  Plus, HELLA REWATCH VALUE.  See my full review here.

9. The Words

Bradley Cooper for Best Smarming Author

This movie is a lot of things I don't usually care for - generally unhappy, lacking a satisfying ending, and featuring some really unhappy, unlikable characters.  But I appreciate The Words for daring to be unsatisfying in a world that is too full of pandering, safe choices when it comes to film.  It's compelling and bold in its refusal to play to your expectations.  See my full review here.

8. ParaNorman

Laika Studios for Most Exciting Animation Studio

While I still think the ending could have been composed better, ParaNorman wins major points from me for daring to be different - especially when you stack it next to the stale, rehashed Frankenweenie (same genre, similar subjects, but Frankenweenie reeks of Tim Burton's overused storytelling).  ParaNorman works with a lot of the same material - the undead, an outcast main character, etc.) but does so in a way that feels fresh, vibrant, and, occasionally, legitimately scary.  If Laika Studios could keep making macabre children's stories, that would be fantastic.  See my full review here.

7. Skyfall

Best Use of Assassination Glass.  Also that giant lizard for Best Deus Ex Lizard, but I couldn't find a screencap of that.

Daniel Craig seems to be my Bond of choice - I was never invested in them until he donned the perfectly tailored suit and started kicking faces in.  Skyfall manages to feel like a classic Bond film while still retaining that signature Craig style that I've come to be so fond of, and is dotted with class-act performances by the indomitable Dame Judy Dench, the oily Javier Bardem, and the clever Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris.  It's also extremely beautiful to watch, and very well orchestrated.  See my full review here.

6. Looper

Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Best Healer of Paradoxes

I haven't done a full review of Looper, because I only watched it a couple weeks ago - but I'm including it here because it was a 2012 movie and because it was such a fabulous science fiction film that is ALSO a great example of how to do time travel effectively.  What lacked for me in the performances (Joseph Gordon-Levitt is intentionally detached, which works for the movie but made it hard for me to connect with him and, by extension, Bruce Willis as older-him, but Emily Blunt, and the kid who plays her son, were fantastic) was more than made up for in the vision, scope and cohesiveness of the film.  It is really easy for time travel movies to lose track of what they're doing, or to get lost in their own mechanics, but Looper maintains a consistent set of rules for time travel which, while they aren't my personal views on the subject, were internally consistent and ultimately easy to follow.  I'm hoping the positive reception that Looper had means we're going to get more original science fiction - if it's all as good as this, we'll be in excellent shape.

5. Wreck-It Ralph

Vanellope and Ralph for Cutest BFFs

For the first time I can remember, Disney and Pixar released movies in the same year...and Disney's was better.  Like, by a LOT.  Brave fell so flat for me, and Wreck-It Ralph was emotional, and engaging, and fun, and can I be Vanellope when I grow up?  (Or an Nintendo make Sugar Rush a real game for the Wii?  Because seriously.)  This was also so clearly a labor of love - the attention to the little details, like the way an eight-bit character moves compared to a character from a modern Halo clone, show the respect the filmmakers have for their source material.  The whole film honors the video game medium in a really touching way.  I had a serious case of warm fuzzies when the credits rolled.

Also, Wreck-It Ralph gets major points for making me feel like I knew where the ending was going, but then surprising me with a finale that was both foreshadowed but unexpected. 

4. Cabin in the Woods

Best Use of Zombie Redneck Torture Family

I thought I knew what was coming, and then I REALLY, REALLY DIDN'T.  By now, you know that Cabin in the Woods is not your typical horror movie - how could it be, when it's a Whedon project? - but if you haven't seen it, I'm betting you don't realize how THOROUGHLY not typical it really is.  While I don't make a habit out of watching horror film, I like reading horror lit and reading about horror film, so I'm pretty familiar with most of the common tropes and what's been done to death.  Cabin in the Woods looks those tropes in the eyes, laughs dismissively, and then frolics gaily all over them.  It doesn't just rip them to pieces, it revels in tearing them apart.  The ending is pretty whackjob nuts, but so is the rest of the film; right after viewing, I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but on contemplation I don't think it could have ended any other way and retained that sense of insanity.  Plus, there are so many little details and touches that make this a fun experience to watch, it invites rewatches just so you can see what you may have missed the first time around.

3. The Avengers

Best Smartasses

If The Dark Knight is the platonic ideal of a superhero movie, then The Avengers is the platonic ideal of a superhero ensemble movie (good luck, Justice League.  You're gonna need it).  I've watched this one several times since its release on DVD, and let me tell you, that final battle sequence never feels overly long or stale.  The Hulk beating the shit out of Loki never gets less funny, Mark Ruffalo always breaks my heart, and my need for a Black Widow/Hawkeye prequel grows ever stronger.  See my full review here.

2. Argo

Best Deployment of an Expletive: "Argo Fuck Yourself."

I had a rough time deciding which of these last two movies got to be number one on my list, and honestly, it changes depending on how I feel.  While they're both historicals and period pieces, Argo is tight, exciting, and provides a fascinating look into the machinations of an area of government that gets maligned quite a bit. It's a spy movie about real spies, and Affleck skillfully works tension into the story even though we all knew (sort of) how it ended.  

See my full review here.

1. Lincoln

Best Use of Daniel Day Lewis. Don't lie, you think so too.

Lincoln, on the other hand, is thoughtful, a story with no less importance but minus some of the urgency thanks to Daniel Day Lewis' performance.  Lewis is playing an old, worn down, brilliant man in his twilight days, and it's evident in every line on his face and every angle of his body.  His Lincoln is both a powerful, commanding leader and a compassionate storyteller, and Lewis mediates between them effortlessly.  The film is also refreshing in that it shows a pretty complete portrait of what was going on during Lincoln's attempts to bring the Civil War to a close.  There's a lot of political wheeling and dealing that isn't flattering to the President (or anyone), but it feels honest.

So what's coming up for the blog this year?  My New Year's Resolution for Boycott BluRay is to see at least  two movies a month in the theater, trying for more - I always reach the end of the year wishing I'd gotten to see more movies, so in 2013 I'm going to commit to doing just that.  I'm also resolving to post reviews within 48 hours of seeing a film, to keep things current (to me, anyway).

I'm going to feature more different kinds of articles as well, like more Trailer Talk (which is super fun to write) and more ruminations about things movie-related that are not necessarily about new releases.  So on the first day of the month, in addition to whatever reviews I've posted, I'll be writing to you about...well, something movie adjacent.  Stay tuned!

Movies Coming Out In 2013 That I'm Excited About

Gangster Squad

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Warm Bodies

Now You See Me

Oblivion

Iron Man 3

The Great Gatsby

Star Trek Into Darkness

Man of Steel

Monsters University

Pacific Rim

The Wolverine

Elysium

Carrie

Ender's Game

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

How Les Miserables Hit Me Right In The Feels

I think the best part about Les Miserables is how deeply unforgiving Tom Hooper is towards his actors.  There's no breathing space in the film, not in the tempo and not in the cinematography; he forces the camera into the faces of people playing deeply unhappy, desperate, broken people and forces the audience to take it all, every drop of that bitterness and death.  When Anne Hathaway sings "I Dreamed A Dream," you have to look at her while she breaks down and weeps through the number.  It is haunting, and uncomfortable, and awkward, and the only way I'm going to picture that song from now until I die.

Hooper has harnessed the power of misery in his adaptation, contrasting the narrow vision of the musical when it focuses on the circumstances of individuals with the scope of the historic event it frames.  The solo numbers are framed tightly, as I mentioned above, and the group numbers are big and swelling and stirring.  Almost every actor is perfection (I would have swapped Eddie Redmayne with Aaron Tveit, who plays Enjolras), even the ones I had trepidation about - while I was confident that Russell Crowe would capture the martial nature of Javert, I didn't know if he could sing.  He's not as vocally strong as Hathaway or Hugh Jackman, but his rough tenor works, especially in "The Confrontation" and "Stars."

Hooper's singers are strong, but they're not perfect (well, except Samantha Barks, who plays Eponine and is completely flawless in every way), and this works for the film.  No one is ever clean, and someone is usually crying.  It's gritty and real without losing musicality (something that Tim Burton forgot while filming Sweeney Todd).  While Redmayne wasn't my favorite, he still broke my heart singing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."  It's an extraordinarily well composed film.  Jackman started strong and finished strong, but I was a little disappointed with his midshow performance, especially during "Bring Him Home;" for someone with actual Broadway experience, I wish he would have kept the song in a register he could realistically manage.

It's not all horror, though, and Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are pitch perfect as the Thenardiers.  They are funny without detracting from the seriousness of the material, and absurd without being out of place.  Even their costuming, garish and clownlike, meshes well with the muted color palette.

My biggest issue with the film is that even at 2 hours and 40 minutes, it feels rushed.  Hooper leaves no time in between each song to let the scenes breathe; even within some of the larger numbers, he leaps from person to person in a matter of seconds, often before they've finished singing a measure.  I very, very rarely say this, but here Hooper could have committed to a full three hours - or committed to shaving off a number or two, and improving the ones he kept.

Some of the camerawork was not good.  Crowe in particular got the brunt of this; Hooper seemed obligated to include the same upward sweep of him almost every time Crowe was in the scene.  Hooper also utilizes handheld shaky cam a few times, not enough to make it a Thing for the film but just often enough to be distracting.  The weather also seemed a little out of control; it rains when Hooper needs it to rain, and stops when he needs it to stop (such as "On My Own," a small oasis of rain before the grand "One Day More" begins).

Overall, it's a gut-wrenching film, which it should be.  I felt emotionally wrung out at the end, a little overwhelmed and a little exhausted.  While it has flaws, I feel like they're pretty nitpicky; in general, Hooper has done a solid job of adapting this musical to film, and of making it feel cinematic.

The Hobbit: An Addendum

So, as you might have been able to tell from my first post about The Hobbit, the movie gave me a lot of feels.  Most of which came from the fact that I wanted to like it a lot more than I did - not that I didn't like it, I did quite a bit, but I was still kind of disappointed in the final product.  Which led pretty directly to me writing a "review" which didn't actually say anything useful at all, but whined a lot and threw in some stuff about dwarves.  This addendum is my attempt to say something substantive about the movie itself.

I did not see The Hobbit in 48fps, or even in IMAX.  Because of this I didn't have the hyper-realism issue that many people have been complaining about; however (and I don't know if this is BECAUSE I saw it in standard form, or if everyone had this problem), there were several panoramic scenes that ended up blurry and headache-y for me.  This was especially problematic because they were scenes I wanted to see - the opening scene of Erebor, the dwarven city, for example, and the goblin underground compound.  New Zealand is used to great effect, and Jackson definitely remembers how to use great sweeping panoramas to good effect, but the film is a little heavy on the scenery porn, which matters more because of how padded the movie already feels.

The scale of the movie is pretty grand - Jackson proved he was great at doing epics with LOTR, and he brings that same sense of grandeur to The Hobbit.  It works to mediate some of the tonal dissonance that the film has, since there's not as much of that weighty feeling to the book; The Hobbit adapted scenes are very true to the spirit of the book - lighter, with some levity, while the material from the ROTK appendices (most particularly a meeting between Gandalf, Galadriel, Sarumon and Elrond) is more serious, more ponderous.  While individually, every scene is pretty great, they don't transition very well..  The opening sequence, where we learn the history of the dwarves and their homeland, gives gravity to the story; as I'm thinking about it right now, part of the problem I may be having is that we got the big sweeping epic FIRST and are only now going back to the prequel story, which puts more expectation on The Hobbit to be similar to LOTR in terms of tone and feeling.  Jackson does a good job of incorporating his extra material, showing that the story he's trying to tell is bigger than just The Hobbit text, but staying true to all his sources hurts him in terms of meshing the elements together.

All in all, The Hobbit was an enjoyable, but flawed, experience.  I think we were all expecting something more, which is why it's getting so slammed in reviews right now - it's a pretty good movie, and we were expecting something great.  I hope parts two and three deliver a little bit more.