Tolkien

The story and the excellent cinematography alone make for agood film. For some reason they forced in elements that had the effect of pandering to the weak minded. The film would have been much improved if these elements were left out.

It's enough to see a fellowship develop in the prep school and the visual scenes of WWI without CG of dragon silhouettes and ghosts in gas clouds. We audience members can make connections on our own and guess at what inspired him. I doubt he was thinking about dragons while seeing an actual flamethrower used in warfare.

The real story was in the details and they were good.

...because it represents more than a biopic. Because it gives a bitter - poetic portrait of familiar things. From friendship to bitter choices, from love to discover of vocation, from war to the most significant small things defining you. Because it is real well acted and has inspired script and propose a version of Tolkien ' s life more touching and precise than I expect. A film about war and passion and friendship and love , seductive for the game of nuances and for a sort of...magic. And, sure, Nicholas Hould seems the most wise option for the roles of real, real special writers.

"A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds." J.R.R. Tolkien

Although the name Tolkien conjures up thoughts of fantastical tales about hobbits, rings, and magic of the highest order, there's little magic and much reality in the new biography, Tolkien. Yet there is much romance, in fact a genial part of an otherwise difficult life.

In reality this story of J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult), up until he becomes well-known for his fantasies while he is bringing up four children and loving his "elfin" princess, Edith (Lily Collins), has a magic of its own. At the same time, it acknowledges the serious shortcomings of an impecunious genius struggling to be heard in the din of class restrictions and WWI.

Besides the delightful early courtship of Tolkien and Edith, the best romance in a long time as far as I am concerned, is the romance of his boy's club. It started before the four culturally gifted young men enter Oxford and Cambridge and goes through the war, which decimated their little intellectual "fellowship." The support they gave each other, the companionable joy, has rarely been so lovingly captured on film. Lamentably, the boys never develop fully as characters, perhaps because of time restrictions.

Satisfying is his discovery by rhetoric professor Wright (Derek Jacobi), who eventually acknowledges Tolkien's genius with language. For those skeptical about the importance of education, watch Tolkien come alive in Wright's hands.

Although these early years seem accurately reported, the joy of this film is in seeing the slow but inexorable growth from a small boy raptly listening to his mother's fantastical readings to a young man doodling heroic figures on horses and scratching out inchoate stories that will give birth to some of the most influential literature in the Western world.

"If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth." Tolkien

Tolkien: Not quite the romantic warrior professor but certainly all three of the preceding in part. Tolkien had a tough early life, falling into impecunity, his mother had to move with J.R.R. (Harry Gilby as the young Tolkien) and his brother from a rural idyll to the satanic mills and factories of Birmingham, an early model for Mordor no doubt. Then getting excessively MisLit, his mother (Laura Donnelly) dies and he is fostered by an elderly rich lady and along with his brother gets scholarships to an exclusive school. His family's benefactor, always working behind the scenes, is Father Morgan (Colm Meaney), benevelovent but steely in his determination when Tolkien's romance with Edith threatens his chances of getting an Oxford scholarship. Morgan may have been the inspiration for Gandalf.

At school Tolkien founds a Fellowship with other artistically minded students bur the Great War will wreak havoc on that brotherhood. The film cuts between Tolkien's earlier life and the trenches of the Somme. This is literally Hell, a real Mordor. The adult J.R.R .(Nicholas Hoult) is on a (perhaps allegorical) quest to the Front to find one of the Fellowship who is missing in action. He passes through mud holes full of bodies and fever stricken imagines that a german with a flamethrower is a dragon. The film suggests many inspirations for his books, Edith (Lily Collins) as an Elven Princess, his mother's reading tales of dragons when he was a boy, the War, his schooldays. A great influence on him was the philologist Professor Wright (Derek Jacobi) who won him over to the study of Old English and Gothic languages. Directed by Dome Karukoski from a screenplay by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford, Tolkien is an engaging account of the earlier life of the scholar and author. 8/10

I am a huge Tolkien fan and after reading some of the critics reviews I was a bit wary of seeing this film. I do not know which film the "critics" have seen but from their conclusions I do not recognise this film. I have literally just left the cinema, I found it so moving that I found myself in floods of tears. Beautifully acted, and set against the backdrop of WW1 the sense of loss and the harrowing reality of what war is came across in such depth. I loved the focus on language and the weight it can carry, It made me feel that words are in their own right living creatures. This is one of the few films that has not just entered my brain but is also in my heart. Please go and see this film whether you are a Tolkien fan or not, it is truly captivating.