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From the official MMFF website. Please proofread your material before posting.

We’re going to review every single movie at the Metro Manila Film Festival.

We will try to do justice to the work of the filmmakers, especially if justice is called for. However, we reserve the right to walk out of the screening should the situation prove threatening to our sanity and, consequently, to the lives of our fellow moviegoers.

We have been in the mood for swords and armor. After watching the two seasons of HBO’s Rome, which we still miss (Wasn’t there supposed to be a movie? Could Vorenus still be alive? We never saw his corpse), we put on the Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven.

Kingdom of Heaven, if you will recall, is Ridley Scott’s 2005 epic starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, and Eva Green. It was one of those occasions that unite audience and critics: They hated it. Many found it incoherent (Scott has never been great at exposition). Some found it too pro-Muslim—Saladin was civilized and merciful, the Crusaders, especially Reynald de Chatillon (a cartoonish Brendan Gleeson), Guy de Lusignan (a glowering Marton Csokas) and the patriarch of Jerusalem, were fanatical brutes. Much of the ire was directed at Orlando Bloom, who was deemed too pretty and callow to play Balian, the defender of Jerusalem.

We saw the mess but loved it anyway. We still quote from it. (“I am Jerusalem,” wheezes the leper-king Baldwin IV, played by Edward Norton in a mask.) Granted, show us some catapults and siege towers and we’re happy. But we sensed that there was more to Kingdom of Heaven than spectacular battles and a flimsy love story. This was confirmed by the Director’s Cut, which is almost an hour longer than the theatrical version.

This version makes so much more sense. When Balian is introduced, we learn that he’s not only a blacksmith but an engineer who has created siege weapons for his employers. In the movie version it would seem that he went overnight from being a fashion catalogue model to defending the citadel from 200,000 Saracens. Bloom is actually very good in this one; we forgot he was Legolas. And the story of Sibylla and her son, cut out of the theatrical version, has a terrifying poignancy. (Balian, Sibylla, Baldwin and the other characters are loosely based on historical figures. The real Balian was married to the widow of the former King of Jerusalem, and he supported her daughter’s claim to the throne against Sybilla. However, Balian did lead the defence of Jerusalem.)

Kingdom of Heaven is worth seeing again, but in this more substantial version.

We can still see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey during the Metro Manila Film Festival. As far as we know, Sisterakas and the other MMFF entries are not available in IMAX 3D, so IMAX theatres will continue showing The Hobbit this month.

Last year we reviewed all the MMFF entries—a quest that nearly took our life. We are still deciding whether to repeat the process this year. Vivien, who normally encourages us to watch everything, now fears what may awaken in the darkness of Khazad-dûm. Thus far we have seen the trailers for just three MMFF movies: the much-awarded Thy Womb, the horror movie starring Enchong Dee with a beard, and “Everything ends except…Shake, Rattle and Roll”. Which ones do you intend to see?

P.S. It just occurred to us that Thranduil, the elk-riding Elvenking in the movie, is the father of Legolas. And that one of the Dwarves, Gloin, is the father of Gimli.

Then we remembered the casualty rate. Aaaaaaaaaa

Hilarious: the 13 Dwarves ranked according to hotness. Everyone disagrees.

One does not simply walk into Tolkien. There are geeks there and they do not sleep.

Our review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at InterAksyon.com.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is delightful, precious! Yesss it is too long—there’s a 20-minute history of the dwarves of Erebor, and that’s even before we hear “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” There are many flashbacks. There are musical numbers. There is plenty of eating. There is more facial hair than is present in the entire Rings trilogy.

With The Lord of the Rings the problem was how to compress so much into ten hours of movies, so the songs were dropped and entire scenes and characters removed (We can live without barrow wights). The problem here is how to stretch a fairly short children’s book into three movies, so every sequence is padded with information from Tolkien’s many chronicles, histories and appendices. For instance when Thorin Oakenshield is introduced, we get a flashback battle scene explaining where he got his name. Too much information—not a problem for Tolkien fans.

Bilbo Baggins had gotten too attached to his mother’s doilies.

And yet The Hobbit has not a whiff of the cynicism and marketing tie-in prostitution that corroded the soul of that other fantasy series we once loved. It helps that Peter Jackson and his veteran LOTR team could turn to Professor Tolkien’s vast body of work for everything they needed.

Each scene is crafted with so much care, detail and Tolkien geek love, we forgive its excesses. Martin Freeman is brilliant as Bilbo Baggins, Ian McKellen renders it impossible to imagine anyone else as Gandalf, and Richard Armitage’s Thorin may be the second dwarf sex symbol of our time (Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister is the first, and he was written by a Tolkien devotee). Upon hearing Christopher Lee’s unmistakable voice we cried, “He’s alive! He’s aliiiive!” Once again Andy Serkis makes us wonder why we feel bad for that malign creature Gollum.

Mission leader Thorin Oakenshield

The Hobbit is long, but it is not slow: there is so much to take in, you may not notice the hours go by. (Middle Earth is so gorgeous we want to book passage to New Zealand.) The rollicking dwarf comedy may remind you of Time Bandits, the woodland scenes of Legend (No!), but the battle scenes are pure Peter Jackson. There’s no one we’d rather go on a dangerous adventure with.

Note: We watched The Hobbit in 2D because we hate wearing 3D glasses over our own spectacles. Much has been written about the movie being shot at 48 frames per second. All we can say is: It’s clear.

We lovesss you, Peter Jackson. The only way we could love you more is if you cast the New Zealand All Blacksses as human warriors in the final battle. Ooh there’s an idea.

– Do you have the ticketssses?
– Yes, precious, we gots them yesterday.
– Then let’ss go now.
– Ooh we’re ssso excited to see The Hobbit.
– I don’t know.
– What do you mean, preciousss?
– Why does it have to be a trilogy?
– So we can have more moviesss!
– The Lord of the Ringss is three long bookssses so a trilogy makes senssse. The Hobbit is a short book. It’s one movie at most.
– It’s all right, preciousss. Peter Jackson knowssses his Tolkien.
– What if the precious has changed him? What if this is the start of a prequel trilogy like…The Phantom Menace?
– No! Peter Jackson is our friend. Peter Jackson wouldn’t hurtsss us.
– Like the other one?
– Cruel Smeagol, take that back!
– Mustn’t get our hopes up so high.
– But Watssson is Bilbo and Sssherlock is Smaug.
– We saw the Rankin Bass cartoon movie. It was too long.
– We loved King Kong! Everybody hated it but we still loved it.
– What about…The Lovely Bones?
– Stop! Stop it, precious! I’m not listening!
– We shall see.