Set in Oaxaca on the eve of WWII, Under the Volcano follows the depressed and dissolute British consul Geoffrey Firmin as he drifts through the demimonde steeped in equal parts self-loathing and mezcal the book is so overgrown and humid with atmosphere and mood one almost feels hungover while reading it. John Huston’s misguided adaptation of Under the Volcano is doubly frustrating because Huston is also responsible for one of the very best (and most unlikely) literary adaptations of all time: James Joyce’s near-perfect short story, “The Dead.” But where Huston is able to go measure for measure with the uncanny music of Joyce’s emotional ebb and flow, he makes a total mess of Malcolm Lowry’s elliptically structured novel. It’s not always that critics and audiences agree, but they agree on this: Hitchcock’s 1940 film adaptation of Rebecca-starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine-slaps (at a whopping 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), while the 2020 version-starring Armie Hammer and Lily James-splats (its 39 percent Rotten Tomatoes score feels… generous).

Screenplay by Jane Goldman, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse Why did I give up eight hours of my one precious life to sit, fuming, in the dark, willing these movies to hurry up and end? Why did this average-length children’s fantasy novel need to be three films? Why did each film have to be two-and-a-half hours long? Why did I subject myself to bout after bout of plodding, bloated anti-entertainment every Christmas week for three straight years? Why did I not just save my money and reread the book? Great questions, all.īased on: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) Now, if you were to ask me what I remember from the adaptation(s), I would say… the dwarves throwing things around Bilbo’s house at the beginning, the guy who plays Thorin Oakenshield glowering, the return of some of my elf pals from the LOTR films, Benedict Cumberbatch voicing the dragon for some reason and… that’s it. Then the fussy little guy goes home, allowing us all to get on with the more important business of The Lord of the Rings. Some elves pop up, Gandalf wanders in and out of proceedings, there’s a dragon who really loves gold for some reason. Fussy little guy finds a ring and tricks Gollum with a riddle that isn’t really a riddle. Fussy little guy almost gets eaten by trolls.

Dwarves wreck some fussy little guy’s house. It’s been 20+ years since I read The Hobbit, but I recall it being a delightful, bouncy, reasonably propulsive affair. Peter Jackson’s three, three, Hobbit films will take you 474 minutes to watch in their (I’m sorry) torturous entirety (532 minutes if you watch the extended edition, which nobody has ever done).

The Reunion by Dan Walsh