The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Man, I'd last seen a Hobbit movie before I started this blog more than a decade ago. The threequel was reputed to be the weakest link in a pale imitation of The Lord of the Rings, hence my lack of hurry to see it. Nonetheless, it looked like the most promising DVD I hadn't watched in my local library, having better ratings from general audiences than from critics.

The Desolation of Smaug ends with halfling Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) accidentally inspiring the titular event. Not long into TBotFA, human archer Bard (Luke Evans) slays the rampaging Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), but that's not the end of the dragon's evil influence. One of Bilbo's dwarven companions, King Thorin (Richard Armitage), finds Smaug's trove almost as corruptive as the One Ring and refuses to share any of it with the humans of newly burned Lake-town, despite his prior oath and their obvious need. When elven King Thranduil (Lee Pace) comes with an army to claim a family treasure, Thorin is undaunted, and the other dwarves obediently prepare to fight. Perhaps fortunately, before the first casualty, the arrival of two armies of darkness induces the other three to team up.

Mary, Queen of Scots (1971)

As I've said, movies about real-life British royalty have a good track record with me. This one is by the same director (Charles Jarrott) as Anne of the Thousand Days, so it was apt to feel even more like a sequel thereto than The Private Life of Henry VIII.

The tale begins in 1560, when teenage Mary (34-year-old Vanessa Redgrave) is about to lose her first husband, King Francis of France (Richard Denning). Having no claim to his throne, she decides to return to Scotland, but Queen Elizabeth (Glenda Jackson) will not grant her safe passage through England to get there. Even when Mary arrives home by ship, she finds her reception rather lacking, thanks to the rise of Protestantism and attendant hostility to Catholics such as herself. Indeed, her next 27 years will be riddled with people seeking to undermine her, whether by making her a figurehead in practice, persuading her to renounce all authority, imprisoning her, or assassinating her.