Tornadoes rip through 'Into the Storm'

Great tornadoes. Everything else? Like I said, great tornadoes.

If you're steadfast in your belief that all movies should involve fascinating character development, intriguing plots, scintillating dialogue, memorable acting and a smidgeon or two of nuance, there's no reason for you to see Into the Storm, a disaster movie in which tornadoes have more presence than any cast member.

If, on the other hand, you're looking (apologies in advance for the upcoming pun) to be blown away by weather effects that come raging out of Hollywood's increasingly sophisticated bag of tricks, Into the Storm may be just your cup of destruction.

A confession: I've always been partial to disaster movies, and, no, I don't care what that says about my twisted psyche. I'm probably dating myself, but I developed my love of big-screen mayhem with such '70s disaster classics as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). More recently, I enjoyed 1996's Twister. I even gave the benefit of a very large doubt to director Roland Emerich's much-derided The Day After Tomorrow(2004).

I could name more, but those films give you an idea about the kind of movies that tempt me to set critical standards aside and enjoy massive bouts of big-screen destruction.

That returns us to Into the Storm, a movie that uses the worn-out concept of footage shot by amateurs (I hate that) and a no-name cast to support an intense special effects show that culminates with the largest tornado ever.

We're talking an ominous black mass that descends on a small Oklahoma community, filling the screen and moving toward us with unforgiving fury.

Into the Storm gets off to a rocky start, but I'd be lying if a I said I didn't feel the movie's visceral impact as it chronicles a single day in the life of a tornado-besieged Oklahoma community.

Still, a few less-than-favorable observations are necessary:
This late-summer weather orgy would have been better had the filmmakers avoided a stupid late-picture joke, refused to dispense hopeful -- but thoroughly unconvincing -- end-of-picture bromides and taken enough time to give the characters a few hints of real complexity.

Among the characters who share screen time with the tornadoes: a widowed high school principal (Richard Armitage) with two video-shooting sons (Max Deacon and Nathan Kress), a storm-chasing meteorologist (Sarah Wayne Callies), and a maniacal storm-chaser (Matt Walsh) who'll risk anything to capture tornado footage. Alycia Debnam Carey) plays a high school student who becomes stranded in a paper mill with one of the aforementioned brothers.

Two gleefully moronic characters (Kyle Davis and Jon Reep) have been added, presumably as someone's idea of comic relief.

John Swetnam's screenplay makes a stab at providing background and conflict, but these efforts seem like perfunctory acknowledgements of screenwriting duties in a movie that's really trying to be a seat-rattling stormfest.

High points from director Steven Quale include a ruined high school graduation, subsequent destruction of the entire school, cars that are tossed into the air as easily as volley balls, fallen electrical wires, eerie funnel clouds and vast expanses of flattened tract homes.

The movie's contribution to the world of big-screen vehicles is a tank-like gas guzzler called Titus, which features extensions that spring from the vehicle's sides and bore into the ground to make it tornado resistant -- at least that's the plan.

It's difficult not to think that the movie's string of tornadoes blew away the script along with most of the small fictional town of Silverton, but this is a case of forewarned is forearmed.

Need I say more? Probablyk not. My advice: Know what you're getting into, and if you like this sort of thing, go get hammered.

This 'Hobbit' hits -- and misses, too

It's by no means a disaster, but Peter Jackson's return trip to Middle Earth mixes thrills and disappointment.

I wish I had seen director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at the normal 24-frames-per-second rather than the hyper-vivid 48-frames-per-second at which the movie is being shown at certain locations, apparently to give it the kick of extra clarity. When combined with 3-D, The Hobbit's high-def look proved so distracting that I had difficulty finding a way into J.R.R. Tolkien's story about Bilbo Baggins's quest to help a group of dwarves reclaim their homeland.

After the Hobbit screening, I checked with a couple of fellow critics. Averaging our responses, it probably took us somewhere between 30 to 40 minutes to settle into Jackson's film, which is nearly three hours long.

Watching The Hobbit, you may feel roughly the same sense of forced wonder you might experience while observing the latest super-dooper, high-def TV in the showroom of some big-box store. It seems plenty spiffy until you remember that you neither have the need nor the desire to see every bit of stubble on some anchorman's face.

And if you're a cineaste, the nuanced richness of film probably does a lot more for you than the shocking acuity of the images you'll find in The Hobbit. Put another way, instead of liberating the material in The Hobbit, technology seems to imprison it.

If you can get past Jackson's visual approach, you may find (at least I did) a story that doesn't fully engage until its final hour. Encumbered by lots of expositional foot-dragging, The Hobbit works in bits and pieces, some spectacular, some dull.

In this predecessor to Tolkien's more elaborate Lord of the Ring novels -- already made into three blockbuster entertainments by Jackson -- Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is recruited by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan) to help a troupe of dwarves regain the mountain kingdom they lose in the movie's action-oriented prologue.

Attracted to gold, a dragon -- Smaug by name -- expels the dwarf population from Lonely Mountain. Having become too gold-hungry for their own good, the dwarves are driven from their mountain Eden.

There's no faulting the performances which include brief appearances from Cate Blanchett (as Galadriel), Christopher Lee (as Saruman) and Hugo Weaving (as Elrond), but the burden of breaking the novel into three separate movies can't help but take its toll. Many scenes are extended well-beyond necessity, and the movie includes stretches that are talky enough to make you wish these damned dwarves would pick up the pace.

Early on, Bilbo's peaceful home is invaded by dwarves who disturb his much-valued tranquility and eat everything in his well-stocked larder. Sagacious as always, Gandalf seems to know that the reluctant Bilbo eventually will answer duty's call.

When this dwarf crew -- led by Thorin (a majestic Richard Armitage) -- takes to the road, the movie falls into a pattern in which talk alternates with action.

Jackson and the four writers who receive screenplay credit for The Hobbit would have done well to look up the word "adaptation;" it doesn't mean the same thing as "expansion." I know the legion of Tolkien fans demand careful detailing, but I could have used with some concision, particularly in a screening that required wearing 3-D glasses.

In Jackson's telling of the tale, the quest to reclaim a homeland sometimes feels like a forced march.

The well-cast Freeman tends to look less like a Hobbit than an aging Beatle, but for all its distractions, the force of Tolkien's story ultimately prevails.

If you hang in long enough, you will be rewarded by a final battle that takes place on footbridges in a goblin cave that's home to the Great Goblin, a blubbery creature with a beard-like growth on his face, a sagging sack of skin that has a tendency to sway. You'll also get an amusing sequence in which Andy Serkis -- sounding like a cross between Peter Lorre and Daffy Duck -- reprises his role as Gollum, this time playing a game of dueling riddles with Bilbo.

Look, I ultimately got involved with The Hobbit, but I hope that in the next two outings, Jackson pays less attention to technological wizardry and more to expeditious storytelling. I say this because it's already too late to wish that he had made one compact and totally involving film instead of committing to three.