The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
dir. Peter Jackson (2001)
Epic in ambition but not outcome. The titular fellowship is remarkably dim, questing through a geo/chronographically elastic Middle Earth. Peter Jackson isn’t quite sure whether he’s making a big emotions music video or a drinking game predicated on wide-eyed closeups of Frodo.
Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth
by John Garth (HarperCollins, 2003)
Garth’s knowledge of Tolkien’s writings leads at times to an overwhelming focus on the minutiae of his invented languages and mythology. The strictly biographical aspects are more accessible, giving a good sense of (educated) life pre- and during the First World War.
The Silmarillion
by J. R. R. Tolkien (Allen & Unwin, 1977); audiobook read by Martin Shaw (HarperCollins, 2015)
A posthumously compiled addendum to Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, demonstrating the epic imagination that underpinned these works but none of their narrative pull. In essence: a vast and proclamatory, untethered bore, which not even Martin Shaw’s sonorous narration can make worth persisting with.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
dir. Peter Jackson (2014)
Alternatively: There, a Feature-Length Fight Melange, and Back Again. Peter Jackson’s Gollum-esque craving to don the ring and turn New Zealand once again into Middle-earth gives Howard Shore’s impassioned score first billing while short-changing Martin Freeman. Too many armies, not enough hobbit.