The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I don’t know where to start. I didn’t take notes and I haven’t written an outline—both things I used to do when I wrote these more often. A few general notes, then, before I get into nit picking. I love The Lord of the Rings. I loved the movies and though it took some coming around I also really love the books. When I read The Hobbit in 6^th grade I liked it a lot, in fact for years I preferred that book to the later trilogy because it was less about world building and tangents, more about a clear story and brisk pace. It stood to reason that Jackson, who gave The Lord of the Rings a clarity and briskness in their cinematic versions, would easily work another miracle with The Hobbit, after all the work of streamlining the story was already done. Instead Jackson did the exact and total opposite of this, stretching simple material into a repetitive empty mess that just goes and goes and goes nowhere, and—we can hear Hollywood laughing all the way to the bank—will do so for two more movies. We may not get to see Smaug in this movie, but believe me, the presence of a lazy moneygrubber is manifest from start to end.

I might as well talk about the High Frame Rate format, since that’s the version Jackson wants audiences to see. HFR may be the next 3D—I pray to God that it won’t be—but if that’s the case this movie is its Clash of the Titans, not its Avatar. You can’t blame the awfulness of the format on a bad post conversion, though; they made it look as good as it could and it still looks terrible. Try this for me, I have a point: think of the colors in Life of Pi, every conversation in Casablanca, A New Hope’s opening shot, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’s flying sword fights, the first half hour of WALL-E, bullet time in the first Matrix, Atonement’s five minute shot on the beach in Dunkirk. Think about these things. Movies have a way of reminding you you’re watching a movie by pulling you deeper in. It’s intoxicating and wonderful. HFR reminds you you’re watching a movie like a slap in the face. Supporters promise that after fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour, however long, you get used to it and you’ll never want to go back. No. It’s that occasionally the camera is stationary, and the actors, sets, and props are still enough that you don’t notice the jarring effect. As soon as things move again, your teeth will be back on edge.

I’d love to talk about this movie on its own merits—free from comparisons to the original trilogy, I mean—but that’s impossible because at every turn this movie reminds you what came before: Here comes Gandalf entering with another not-particularly-funny-or-wise first line to the poor unsuspecting hobbit whose life he’s about to decimate. And there he goes hitting his head on that darn chandelier again—silly hobbit holes! And look! Bilbo tripped and accidentally slipped the ring on! Like uncle like nephew I guess. LOL! You probably didn’t realize this guys, but that party Bilbo’s planning in the first ten minutes of completely unnecessary story framing,  that’s the party from The Fellowship of the Ring! I’m serious. It totally is. Go watch it again, it’s it!

Ugh.

It’s like PJ’s winking at you the whole time, but instead of being charming it’s creepy and annoying. We get that these stories are connected. That’s not an excuse to just cut and paste from your older better work.

The tone of the movie is all over the place. The first hour is all knee slapping Dwarf shenanigans and PG tomfoolery, followed by the introduction of some potentially interesting villains—I did like Super Orc and his White Wolf—and then closed off with a series of shockingly casual violent encounters completely at odds with the preceding and permeating childishness of the movie.

Have a goblin king villain who’s played completely for laughs, or have a goblin king villain who gets his gut and throat cut open by Gandalf. You can’t have both, Pete, you just end up making a movie without an audience: too childish for adults and too adult for children.

This isn’t a very good review, or anyway it’s not a very complete one. But it’s not a very good or complete movie, so maybe that fits? On its own terms, completely apart from the three pretty much unqualified masterpieces we got a decade ago, this movie is an annoying, loud, overly long, meandering, repetitive debacle, in which a dozen or so mind-numbingly uninteresting characters wander around getting into yawn-worthy trouble only to be saved by a wizard whose greatest powers appear to be breaking rocks in half, setting pine cones on fire, and convincing his huge eagle friends to save his ass. There’s no dramatic tension, there never once seems to be real risk that a good guy might die, and every unnecessary tangent seems more interesting than the central plot of the movie. If I were going into this movie cold that’s exactly how I’d leave it.

On the terms it can’t escape—living in the shadow of The Lord of the Rings—this isn’t just annoying and aimless, it’s insulting and offensive. We know everyone involved can do better. We’ve seen a Middle Earth adventure with high stakes, where evil and innocence mean something and their conflict has weight, with distinct characters whose motivations we know and understand, where—for crying out loud—the storyteller respects the audience’s time and money.

This movie is finding out your best friend quit med school to sit home, smoke pot, and play video games all day. This movie is your girlfriend telling you she thinks you should go back to just holding hands. This movie is a classmate giving a fifteen-minute speech from a single 3x5 card. This movie is watching As The World Turns with your grandma. This movie is Star Wars Episode I. This movie is your aunt giving you a copy of The Secret for Christmas. This movie is lukewarm water. This movie is twice as many frames as necessary, and only a third of the one story it ought to be telling.

I’m sure this isn’t the worst movie that’s come out this year, but it’s the least I’ve enjoyed watching a movie in a good long while.

Avatar

I'm not giving it high marks for plot. The plot isn't very original and more than half of the time you can finish the characters' lines (except the ones in the alien language) before they do because James Cameron cannot write dialogue to save his life. The plot, however, isn't terrible, and if we can just stop trying to pick it apart for all it's not-very-deep meanings we can enjoy this for what it is; an unparalleled movie going experience. I hate empty spectacle, and this isn't it. It's not an intellectually complex spectacle or anything, but it can pull its own weight.

Because Cameron's last movie was the reigning box office champion Titanic, comparisons are inevitable. This is a love story within an epic crisis, but instead of a car we've got a phosphorescent orchard, instead of the unsinkable ship floundering we've got the tree of life getting blown to sawdust, and when the lovers in this movie go flying it's not on the bow of a ship and that's for damn sure. In terms of technical mastery, shock and awe factor, and limits on excessively cheesy content, Avatar bests Titanic on all fronts, and I'm a guy who is unashamed to say he really digs Titanic.

Enough about the plot, generic or otherwise, let's talk about how this movie is beyond anything any of us has ever seen. Just look at any shot on Pandora and remind yourself that this is one man's vision. I tried to imagine, both during and after the movie, just how much work he must have put into this movie. He's been working on it for fourteen years, they say, and I believe it. I sure as hell couldn't come up with all this, in fourteen years or forty.

What's more important than the fact that he came up with those whole world, is that he invented the means for realizing it. I have never seen as immersive a 3D movie and while movies to come will match and exceed (I presume) this will always be the first, the milestone, the vanguard. I'm not kidding when I say our generation may finally have an idea of what it was like for our parents to see Star Wars when it revolutionized science fiction cinema.

This is an important movie. It's beyond a matter of opinion, mine or anyone else's. I enjoyed the story and I absolutely enjoyed the way it was told, but if someone else didn't enjoy the story I couldn't blame them. It's still worth seeing, on the biggest screen you can find and unquestionably in 3D (extra charges are worth it), because Cameron delivered what his raging hubris almost guaranteed he couldn't. We're not talking about the eventual DVD, or a 2D dollar theater experience, we're talking about seeing it as the director intended: in the best theater you can where, miraculously, we can get inside his head and see the whole world he imagined. I know I sound excessive and dramatic when I say that it's more than a movie, it's an experience, but I'm saying it anyway. It's more than a movie. It's an experience. And while it's not perfect, it is unlike anything you have ever seen before.

A

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

I’ll write this like Stephenie Meyer and start at the end: Does it really matter that I, or anyone else, give this movie a letter grade or number of stars? The Twihards have seen it already—my ears are still ringing from the din of the midnight showing—and the disinterested will surely need more convincing than the recommendation of one man. So is there any point in listing pros and cons? Let’s start over at the beginning.

12:15am, the previews end, and with glacial speed the dark screen reveals the title fans have waited a year to see: New Moon. It’s good that the opening shot is painstakingly slow, it sets the tone accurately for what follows. Like its predecessor, this adaptation of Meyer’s cherished series stretches a small amount of plot into an unforgivably long film, wherein moody close-ups and heavy breathing are meant to serve as highlights. I’m getting off track, where was I? Oh yes, opening night.

The shrieks of euphoric viewers died away in time for the audience to hear the second half of the film’s epigraph—film’s can have epigraphs too, you see—lines stolen from Romeo & Juliet to inform viewers, “this is a serious love story with serious consequences that you should take seriously because it is serious literature… seriously.” It’s not that Meyers borrowed from Shakespeare’s famous play, it’s more like she snuck up behind it, hit it over the head with a rock, drug it into an alleyway, and stole its lunch money.

The plot is as follows: Edward’s family almost kills Bella. Edward leaves. Being away from Edward almost kills Bella. She spends time with muscular Jacob Black who falls in love with her. Rogue vampire almost kills Bella. Jacob Black and his family are werewolves. Jumping off a cliff almost kills Bella. Edward gets misinformation and thinks Bella died. Rushing to Italy to stop Edward from committing suicide almost kills Bella. Everyone gets back to rainy Forks, WA. Now Edward and Jacob are both in love with Bella. Cue credits. Yes, many things almost kill Bella.

Did I give too much away? How can I have? The movie, like the book, is just a set up for the third installment when the vampire/human/werewolf love triangle will finally be allowed to run rampant in celebration of what this series really is: a soap opera. Readers won’t have to wait long for the third film, Eclipse. It’s promised to hit theaters in a scant seven months. How can they churn out movies so quickly, you ask? Simple: quality has been abandoned.

New Moon’s special effects are passable, but only just. Where is the jaw dropping CGI we saw in director Chris Weitz’s The Golden Compass? When the perpetually shirtless men of New Moon transform into werewolves, even the adoring screams of devoted fans can’t hide the fact that they look fake. As for the vampires, the superhuman speed blurs look like TV effects, the pale skin looks like an Avon add gone awry, and the sunlight-induced sparkling is as ridiculous on screen as it is on the page.

Bad effects can be overcome by a solid story and strong performances. New Moon has neither. The plot fits snuggly into the category of placeholder, and the only performance worth mentioning belongs to Taylor Lautner’s rarely clothed torso. Is there an Oscar for “most muscle built by an actor at risk of losing his role to a bulkier candidate?” No? Too bad. As for the humans in the cast, three or four manage to create engaging characters, but don’t plan on seeing them, as strictly background players their cumulative screen time is approximately fifteen minutes. The rest of the film’s 130 minute running time is slavishly devoted to Bella moping, Jacob flexing, and Edward sparkling. The adaptation is accurate, though. Shoddy literature begets shoddy cinema.

It’s funny that the two positive elements of New Moon are those exclusive to the film version. The soundtrack is an indie hipster’s skinny-legged, fixed-geared dream come true, and the gray/green scenery of the Pacific Northwest inspires more of a longing in my heart than all the teenage vampire romance novels in Utah could ever dream of doing. Alas, nice songs and nice backgrounds cannot a dreary debacle save.

We’re at the conclusion. This is where, true to Stephenie’s form, I restate what I said at the beginning and add a final word. Does it really matter that I, or anyone else, give this movie a letter grade or number of stars? Honestly, probably not. It is a bad film, but a lot of people will see it. Ebert himself couldn’t change that. The series’ black and red dust jackets continue infecting the shelves of Borders nationwide, and the hysteria accompanying last year’s film is returned in full force. For the sake of the film itself, then, and not the potential viewers, I call its bluff.

Welcome again to cinemas Twilight Saga, you poorly made, over-hyped mess. You want to play with the big kids and that’s fine, but the truth of the matter is you can’t contend. You aren’t a film. You’re a cheap trick, an empty product. So run your course, draw your crowds, make your money. Just don’t pretend to be something you’re not: remotely legitimate filmmaking.


D

The Golden Compass

I'm so sick of writing/talking/hearing about this movie and the book series that I almost don't want to write this review. Then again, it's this or study for finals... and let's be honest, who really wants to do that? I read this book series over the last couple weeks because I generally attempt to read books before I see the movies, or at least try, and also I wrote an essay about these books/movies and the controversy surrounding them, and I needed to do my own "research." (Clearly the one time I actually made a serious effort to do exhaustive research was a thinly veiled excuse to read atheistic books without being burned at the stake as a heretic.) Anyway, the point is, I really didn't like the books, when it was all said and done (that is, when the eleven-year-old "heroes" had killed God, recognized self enjoyment as the greatest goal of life, and started kissing non stop and probable having some kind of faux-sexual interactions by means of their blessed dæmons. Did I mention they were eleven?) Yeah, sorry about that, I got ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh, right, I hated the books. The heroine, Lyra, is a brat and is celebrated as such. Her greatest talent is lying (Odysseus, anyone?) and while it gets her out of several tight spots, it doesn't change the fact that she is an annoying character. Philip Pullman, the author, clearly hates God and Christianity and while I'm all for free will and freedom to think/say what you want, I couldn't help feeling sorry and depressed for this guy who writes books consumed by a misinformed hate of a religion that he perceives to be something it isn't. I'm getting off track again. The point is, I hated the books, but I had a free ticket and was just too curious to NOT see the movie, so I went, and what do you know, I hated it too. Funnily enough I hated the books and the movie for opposite reasons. While the books held your attention (for the most part) from start to finish, I disliked them because the ultimate message was depressing and, quite frankly (as a Christian), blasphemous. The filmmakers, fearing controversy I expect, dumbed down the anti-Church/anti-God themes, which are what the books are all about. If they continue making them (which I sincerely hope they don't, although am curious to see if they do) they will have to be more up front about all those themes, but they got away with castration of the underlying theme in this first movie. That is to say, they almost got away with it. They didn't remove the Roman Catholic Church- oops, I mean The Magisterium (let's get real, they're synonymous)- from the movie, they only made it less obvious that The Magisterium represents the RCC. What we, the viewers, were left with was a villain in the form of a big, controlling, corporation that is more like a caricature of 1984's Big Brother than anything else. We have the clergy and officers of the movie's Magisterium swooping around adorned with big cheesy looking golden "M"s which remind the audience of something out of an unsuccessful rap video. Hearing the characters chatter on about "Dust" and their authority and the prophecies of the witches is unintentionally humorous. It's the same way it was with the film adaptation of The DaVinci Code: what was sharp and intriguing, not to mention controversial, on the page, is dull and laughably far-fetched when we hear it coming out of the mouth of our own favorite Hollywood deities. It ought to be noted that the actors seem to give it their all. Nicole Kidman, as the series' most fascinating character, Mrs. Coulter, is phenomenal. Daniel Craig is alright, for the brief moment he's in the movie, though I have a hard time seeing him as the Lord Asriel we read about in The Amber Spyglass, only because he seems too human and not enough like a war lord. The movie's other great performance, besides Kidman's, is turned in by Sam Elliot as Lee Scoresby, the Texan Aeronaut. At first, I didn't like Dakota Blue Richards (the newcomer depicting little-miss-second-Eve, Lyra Belacqua) but by the end of the movie I decided that she was decent for a child actor, and easily a better actress in a her debut role than any of the Harry Potter trio were in The Sorcerer's Stone. Ian McKellen was oddly boring as the voice of Iorek Brynison, the armored King of the Ice Bears. Not that he wasn't trying, I just found his character tedious and disengaged. The story, which I will not go into lest I threaten the immortal souls of the three people who might actually read this review (no but really, I'm just SICK of talking about it), was rushed and disjointed, not to mention cut short at the end, sparing the audience what might have been the strongest scene in the movie. One of the most interesting elements of Pullman's books is the manifestation of the character's souls in their animal companions, called "dæmons." (Agenda?) The eyebrow-raising name aside, it is interesting how Pullman weaves these dæmons into the story, how they interact with their people, and how they interact with other people's dæmons, especially when the people are fighting, or kissing, or manipulating each other. As realistic as they looked, I felt like the movie never really got the dæmons right. The conection between Lyra and hers, Pantalaimon, was never as understood as it was in the book, and this, too, helped the movie lose its emotional weight. Something I've come to expect of my fantasy book adaptations is good music, and I found myself constantly thinking about how distinctly unimpressive the score for this movie was. Lord of the Rings has a magnificent score, and I firmly hold to the opinion that the John Williams' Harry Potter score is among the best of this past decade, but the music for this movie was not memorable except in that it was memorably unmemorable. (you understand, yes?) I will mention that the movie looks fantastic. The special effects are first rate, and the locations are superb (though for the most part, I suspect, the grandeur is thanks to the miracle of blue screens). There you have it. My opinions without breaks and without any kind of purposeful order, now you know what you might have heard had you been sitting next to me in the theater. I won't tell you what everyone in the theater heard when the credits rolled and I realized my favorite part had been cut, for it was highly inappropriate and slipped from my mouth before I had a chance to think about it. I will tell you though that I didn't go into this movie expecting to hate it. I expected it would be entertaining and subversive to Christianity (not that those two are synonymous, they are just the two strongest features of the books). Sadly, and happily, the movie was neither of those things. Happily it wasn't subversive to Christianity, not yet anyway, because the money grubbing studio execs didn't dare keep Pullman's themes intact. But sadly it wasn't entertaining either, because the money grubbing studio execs didn't dare keep Pullman's story intact. In the movie, children have their dæmons cut away from them by evil scientists in a process called intercision, and the result is that they are soulless and empty, not dead, just blank. Pullman's books are, as he said, about killing God. Well they took that out of the movies thus far, and the result is a movie that seems to have undergone its own version of intercision and the result is the same: soulless and empty. We have a few good fantasy movies to look forward to, there's the sixth and seventh Harry Potter movies on the horizon (a series which is getting progressively better and could reach a position of excellence akin to the LOTR series if it continues doing so) not to mention we have six more Narnia movies on the way. New Line Cinema obviously plans on making the entire His Dark Materials trilogy into movies, and the end of this movie sets the second up even more than the first book did the second. Be that as it may, this was a bad movie, and the majority of critics have panned it, so perhaps it won't be all that successful. Once the box office numbers start rolling in, we'll have a better idea, but for now it remains unclear whether or not there will be a movie of The Subtle Knife (the follow-up to The Golden Compass). If there is, let's hope they have the common sense to change director and screenwriter. If there isn't, good riddance to a depressing series, an unfaithful adaptation, and a whole lot more controversy than a movie this poor really deserves.

C-

Enchanted

Well, here goes nothing. Once again. I am coming off of the longest stretch of seeing almost no movies that I can ever remember. In the last four months I have seen a movie in the theaters three times. Never mind that two of those times were spent seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the fourth and fifth times at the dollar theater. We are talking about a monumental change here. I saw a movie every weekend last school year, and probably more than that last summer. Hello California, land of nine dollar matinées and immobile young students. Perhaps it's because of this LONG dry spell that I found the first new movie I saw in the theaters in four months to be pretty grand, but then again perhaps not. This is, as I often promise them to be, a very short review. I loved this movie. That's not to say that it was amazing or anything, but it was very charming and excellently cast. Amy Adams (who is my future wife, I am now convinced) is absolutely perfect in the lead role. She is as beautiful and musical a Disney Princess as we are ever likely to see, and though the temptation was undoubtedly very strong, she never once condescends to playing the role. She believes in the character wholeheartedly and, thanks to her infectious screen presence, so do we. Patrick Dempsey, otherwise known as McDreamy, is pretty good for the role he plays, as is James Marsden who after The Notebook must be getting used to playing the goodhearted, but rejected, suitor. Susan Sarandon is painted up like a cheap streetwalker, but part of that (at least) had to be in the script. The story both follows and politely pokes fun at, Disney princess formula, which is it's strength and toward the end it's only real weakness as a city-top "action-lite" scene becomes just a little too much to take. It doesn't matter at that point, because as the title suggests, we've been thoroughly enchanted and can forgive these Disney monster-makers their cheap and out-of-place little climax. Go see it as a family, go see it as a date movie, if necessary go see it by yourself, but go see it one way or the other. It's too much fun to resist.

B+

Harry Potter (1-4)

I haven't got the time/drive to write four separate bits especially considering there will be a maximum of three people who actually read them (one of them being myself) and a whole one who really cares, so I'm lumping the first four Potter movies into one short post. I'd like to make the disclaimer that for every movie, made and soon to come, I am not grading on how well they translate every last detail to screen. The movies are, I think, compliments to the books and can be best enjoyed by those who have read them. It's like a brief reminder of a more rich and sensational experience that would take longer to read. As for the lazy people who would rather watch them and not even try the books, they have my pity for they have no idea what they're missing. Anyway, the point is, none of them come close to matching the books, but I grade them as they are; movies that try to tell the stories in spirit if not always in letter.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The first movie in the series is its weakest, and the charm is continually lessening. However, Rowling's fantastic vision is translated in the visuals if not completely through the performances of th multiple young actors. I like this movie a lot, but there's no denying that the special effects are not state of the art anymore, and as hard as they try the three leads especially have not quite filled the demanding roles. From the get go, though, they look the parts almost perfectly (the only exception being that Harry's hair, perpetually untidy in the novels, lays flat most of the time here). When I read the books I imagine some characters differently than their on screen counterparts, but not the Harry, Ron, or Hermione, although I have a great deal more affection for the literary trio than I do for the cinematic one. All in all it's worth seeing, but it is cheesy and as stated before, it's no comparison to the remarkable source material.
B


Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The charm that comes with seeing it all for the first time is gone here, so it's lost a little magic, no pun intended. However, it's been replaced with a darker story and a cast that is improving. The trio are passable, the script is occasionally sketchy, and the special effects, while better than the first, are still presented in a bit of a kiddy-theme-park style. One such effect is the phoenix Fawkes, which is presented like a plumpish peacock here, though in later installments I would have preferred a more dnagerous looking hawk or eagle style bird, and with more vibrant colors. It's superior to the first film, that much is sure, but like I said before, the first had that novelty and with that gone it's only a little bit better. I sound like I'm not all for it and that's not true. I have a special place in my heart for this book in the series, (though I couldn't really tell you why) and I think this one does a fairly good job of translating it to screen.
B+


Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Though I enjoyed the first two Potter movies, this is the first one I loved, and it remained my favorite for three years, even after number four. The key to its success is the fact that a new director, Alfonso Cauron, came on board and completely reworked the cinematic world of Harry Potter. He didn't change the actors, but the grounds of Hogwarts seem to have changed and expanded, and every shot no longer looks like it's been dipped in greenish-yellow candy coating. Things like the presence of the Dementors in this the third installment brings a whole new level of darkness to the series, as much as that might annoy the few people who for some unknown reason want to keep Harry at age 11 for seven years, and for once the film almost captures that incredible feeling you get when you're reading one of the books. The last 45 minutes, especially, are a work of cinematic excellence apart from the fact that they are a brilliant adaptation of one of the series' most exhilarating sequences. Another thing about this movie, something that was lost in number four, is the fact that someone seems to have given time and thought to the cinematography. A series as brilliant as Harry Potter deserves, I think and I doubt you'll disagree, artistic vision to at least attempt to do it justice on the screen. Anyone who's read the books knows that page after page is filled with the sort of inventive fictional stuff that, done right, could be wondrous to behold. The scene that gets me every time is the one in which Harry and Sirius are attacked by the Dementors at the lake. While Chris Columbus might merely have pointed a camera and said "go," Cauron has filmed a beautiful and hair raising scene of awesome cinema (I think) that even surpasses the way I envisioned it while reading (a rarity for these movies). Lastly it is worth noting that the kids here make leaps and bounds when it comes to their acting abilities. They aren't incredible or anything, but you can watch it and actually believe them in their roles. I held my breath after watching this movie (figuratively of course) because it was at the time the only great one in the series. Were more to come, or would we slip back into the days of "good but not great?"
A


Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
This was the first Potter to be rated PG-13, and having read the books I can safely say that there's no going back. Prisoner of Azkaban was not strictly a kids movie, as the first two were, and it is still superior to this film, but Goblet of Fire is definitely more adult and that is certainly a good thing. The acting skills of the kids seem to hold over from the last film, with the exception of Emma Watson, playing Hermione Granger, who seems to have concentrated all her abilities into her eyebrows which rise and fall dramatically with each breathy line. I'm being mean. She's not awful. However, she seemed to be more on her game in the last one, and as much as she looks the part, she's still got to work on her performance. Hermione is arguably my favorite character in the books so I'm bound to be especially critical her the film version. That said, this movie is still a great one, though it has the sad task of condensing Rowling's first mammoth sized novel. Every loss in the adaptation process is felt regrettably by fans of the books, but the main story is intact and is briskly moved along. I haven't mentioned the adult performances in these movies as of yet, but it should be noted that Alan Rickman, as Professor Snape, is seriously incomparable in this, and all of the Potter movies. Also brilliant, though criminally underused, is Miranda Richardson as the tabloid journalist from hell, Rita Skeeter. There are not as many moments of brilliance in this film as there were in the last, but the one that was most important they nailed; the graveyard duel at the end. I cannot describe to you what I felt when I first read this finale in the book. From the resurrection of Harry's longtime nemesis Lord Voldemort (theatrically embodied by Ralph Fiennes), to the unexpected result of their duel, right down to Harry seeing the ghosts of his parents and recently deceased friend, this is another of my most favorite sequences in the series. Really though, think about it. He's a 14 year old boy, being tortured and jeered by what are essentially wizard Nazis, and he's told quite plainly that he's going to be murdered on the spot. The staple of fantasy literature is that the authors are always throwing in last minute information right before it's going to matter. However here, and really throughout all of Rowling's seven part epic, Harry manages to escape by means of previously learned skills and provided aids that we could never have guessed would play such crucial roles. I kid you not, and I know it sounds lame, but I wanted to stand up and cheer after I read this part of the book. Harry is a grand hero because we read his story and we don't just want to be as brave and heroic as him, we honestly tell ourselves that we could be in the same situation. After I saw this movie I thought two things right off the bat. First of all I thought, "Awesome, but not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, though that's a pretty tall order after all." And second I thought "We've had two OK ones and two great ones, I guess we'll have to wait and see what the majority is."
A-

Transformers

If you've read a thing I've written in the past four months, or had even a hiccup of a movie-themed conversation with me in that time, chances are you probably know that I was against this movie from the get go. Turns out... I was absolutely right! I don't really care that it made $150+ million in it's first five days, nor do I want to hear that I couldn't possibly understand the phenomenon, having not grown up with the toys. The fact of the matter is I sat in the theater for two and a half hours not for a second being anything less than excruciatingly aware that I was watching an awful movie. I'll make some lists now, for that is a good idea from time to time.


Positives (these are the only things pulling this trash up from a big fat F)

• Shia LaBeouf is becoming a terrific actor. He was great in Holes, and more recently in Disturbia and Surf's Up. Despite his goody two shoes pedigreee of such Disney Channel offerings as Even Stevens and made for TV movies, he is amusing to watch and he seems to really try in his roles, with great success I think. If this movie had had even more of him it would only have improved it, but even as the lead he was cut off too often by other boring one dimensional characters.
• The special effects are incredible. That goes without saying for almost all summer blockbusters, but I'll say it anyway. They only really had one effect to display, and that was (no brainer) the transforming robots. It lost its "wow" factor after the first 67 times, but for some reason two days after seeing the movie I suddenly had a craving to see every vehicle around me transform. Alas, there were no combines or swathers as transformers, perhaps in the dreadfully inevitable sequel.

Negatives

• The movie is based on toys. Need I say more? It seems so. I don't care that the Decepticons and Autobots had their whole little story invented to grace the cardboard packaging of the nonsensical toys, the fact remains that this whole thing is invented to support the idea of a toy that can be, in one position, vehicle, and, in the other, a large robot. The movie is a commercial, nothing more. It's a successful one, for I went out to buy a transformer a few days after because I wanted to see if I could recreate the whirring and shifting gears of the movie's transformation sequences. (I feel as though I'm a junkie and transforming is my crack, er, fix, whatever).
• John Voight. He plays... John Voight. No, scratch that. He plays John Voight in a Michael Bay movie. which brings me to my next bullet point.
• Michael Bay. This is a Michael Bay movie. He knows it too. But he thinks this is a good thing. 'This is a hundred times cooler than Armageddon!' says one extra in the movie as the aliens crash land on earth (before taking their forms as every up and coming car in the GM catalogue). He actually thinks he's earned the right to be self-referential. I think he's spent too many hours in front of a computer whipping up the predictable explosions we are pummeled with start to finish. He isn't a screen legend, he's a hit and miss product of every bad influence Holly wood can have on a filmmaker, and I hesitate to even call him that. This isn't a film, it's a stunt.
• The dialogue is painful from "In the beginning there was the cube" to "I'm not leaving without Bumblebee!" breathily announced by the mercifully gorgeous Megan Fox (five minutes in I was desperate for any small enjoyment, even if it is the horribly objectifying observation of little-miss-easy-on-the-eyes. Hey, the rest of the leads are made of plastic, right? No one gets mad about people eyeballing them) What is an already poorly written script is only made worse by every form of botched accent you can imagine at one point or another.
• Peeing jokes!? I could have gone my whole life without watching a robot pee on someone, or was it the dog, I don't remember. The point is, all the humor that wasn't specifically under the watchful eye of Shia was lame at best.

There were even more little here and there annoying things that added up to one rotten movie, but the point is, I think, made. This is the worst kind of movie. It doesn't just maul our screens nation wide; it is actually and adamantly consumed by a public that ought to demand better, even in their summer entertainment! When we pay a ton of good money to see crap like this we encourage the studios to make more garbage and we dig the grave in which we will soon lay American cinema to rest. I'm as guilty as the next guy; I went and saw it too, at the ridiculous student price of $8.00. That money is no longer burning a hole in my pocket, it's burning a scar into my conscience! We've got an 18 screen cinema about twenty minutes from home, if I'm behind the wheel that is, and with so many screens you'd think we'd have a nice choice of good movies, right? Right. WRONG! They're so busy filling six screens with this summer blockbuster, and three and two more with this one and that one, that before you know if you've got the same selection as the smaller theaters, except you've got more showtimes. I had to drive forty minutes, not to mention in a nice loopy trail through the hellish streets of Portland to get to a theater where they were showing "Once," a charming and excellently made small movie about Irish musicians. I paid $8.50 to park in a garage, not to mention $5.00 for a drink at the concession counter. Add in, of course, the $7.00 price of the ticket itself, and you're looking at $20.50. Why, may you ask, is seeing a truly worthwhile movie a $20.00 venture that eats up half of a day? Ladies and gentlemen, as answer to my own question, I give you Transformers. Michale Bay ought to be ashamed of himself, making a movie this ridiculous (what's next, a Polly Pocket movie?). Producers ought to be ashamed of themselves, backing such a feeble product. It turns out Steven Spielberg can do wrong when it comes to movies. Theater owners ought to be ashamed of themselves, running this drivel when so many superior offerings exist. But most of all, and hate me if you want, we the audiences ought to be ashamed of ourselves, for paying attention to this junk. Yes, if you saw it you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I ought to be ashamed of myself as well... don't worry, I am.

D+

Ratatouille

After ten years of making reliably excellent movies it comes as no surprise to me that Pixar's latest movie is a fantastic one. The story is about a rat and a garbage boy, both of whom dream of being chefs, who work together to realize their mutual dream. The animation is top of the line, as is expected, and the story that seems a little unremarkable at first becomes an involving and heartfelt one thanks to the plethora of unique characters and sincerity on the part of the filmmaker. What surprised me most about this one, what set it apart from its fellow Pixar movies, is that for the first time the kids seemed to be the secondary audience. I think that if I'd watched this at five or six years old, besides being a little frightened by a handful of fairly exhilarating scenes, I would have been a little bored. The humor is more often subtle than overt, and the story isn't one that would resonate very well, I think, with younger audiences. It's not that kids won't enjoy it, I just think that there's no way they are getting everything out of it that was put in. Pixar is long past having to prove themselves, but if they needed to this would do the job. It puts movies like Shrek the Third to sad shame, and it reminds us that it's not to much to ask for a few excellent movies during the summer. As far as Pixar movies go, this one is second only to the Toy Story pair and The Incredibles. Their are a couple awkward moments as the always far-fetched idea of humans and animals interacting excessively is forced to join up with the realistic setting of the chefs and their fine French restaurant. However these awkward moments are slight and rare, not to mention completely overshadowed by the film's many other admirable qualities. This gets my vote for Best Animated movie, and having seen most of the others out this year I'd say it has a good chance at winning. I'm not even kidding when I say thank God for movies like this, it's a call to action for the lazy movie makers who give us trash just because a studio will back them and they can get away with it. A movie can be big and extravagant and also excellent and original at the same time. If you don't believe me, go see Ratatouille.

A-

Paris, Je T'aime (Paris, I Love You)

This movie is a collection of sixteen shorts, averaging about five minutes a piece, depicting different scenes or stories concerning love in the city of lights. It sounds a bit like Love Actually, but while that movie (like most other montage films) tells a number of complete stories each with its own plot arc and all that, Paris, Je T'aime tends to stick with a single scene, at the start, middle, or end of a story. They are little more than snap shots, and each has its own style thanks to the individual directors of each. THe only thing more impressive than the list of directors (which includes the likes of Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cauron, Wes Craven, and Alexander Payne) is the expansive cast ranging from the always breathtaking Natalie Portman to a wonderful Gena Rowlands. A coupel of the vignettes were misses, but the majority are heartfelt little scenes that inspire viewers to consider love, whether it be between a man and a woman, a parent and a child, or two vampires (one of my personal favorites though far from the norm so don't think they're all so outlandish). It's playing practically nowhere, so recommending it be seen in theaters is almost nonsensical, but Paris looks particularly beautiful up close, so if you can find it on a big screen I strongly encourage you to see it. It is both happy and sad in equal measures but that's life I suppose, and I guess they're telling us that's love as well.

B+

Surf's Up

I've fallen WAY behind with summer movies, so these will be short and to the point, hopefully. Surf's Up was pretty much awesome. Not only was it vasty superior to Happy Feet, the other recent animated penguin movie, but it was perhaps even better than the godfather of penguin movies. March of the Penguins. Obviously it wasn't as impressive as seeing all the real life penguins waddle around all winter and raise their young and so forth, but watching them surf is cooler than watching real surfers. The story, while a bit cliché, is not heavy handed and the voice talents work wonders both by themselves and especially in scenes of dialogue which were recorded with multiple actors in the sound booths, contrary to traditional animated movies. The sound isn't the only feature of the movie made in a non-traditional process, but for that information you'll have to read up on wikipedia, or more reliably just listen to a directors commentary later down the road. The story focuses on Cody Maverick, an up and coming surfer, who (of course) learns that a real athlete loves the sport not the win. The supporting characters are all hilarious and the dry dead pan humor, similar to that found in the office, is so offhanded that you could easily miss it. Too bad if you do, because most of it is comic gold, but not to worry the DVD will be out soon and you can watch it, as I certainly will, again and again.

B+