Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ***

Director. David Yates

Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Ralph Fiennes, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, John Hurt

Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman,Clémence Poésy

Can mediocre literature make good cinema? This, and not how to kill Voldemort, has been the biggest mystery in the entire Harry Potter movie saga which began precisely a decade ago. Perhaps under precise hands even things as immaturely misguided as J.K. Rowling's bestsellers could achieve some sort of efficiency or even brilliance (Alfonso Cuarón's entry in the series is still the only one that came close to this) but most of the Potter films have reveled in big setpieces, lazy performances and too much information that might've worked in literature but feels muddled and conspicuous in cinema.

Take for example the horocruxes Harry (Radcliffe) has been searching for the last two films. In all honesty anyone could've told him about this since the beginning and get Voldemort done with. Why wait ten years to let him know how to destroy his biggest enemy? Raising values and teaching children how to find their true worth in the face of adversity by way of faceless demon creature? Maybe.

More cynical audience members might be willing to call it squeezing money out of your wallet though and they might be right. In all cases, these movies could've been retitled Harry Potter and the Efficiency of the Red Herring. The fact that this is the last film and therefore forces the director and writer to tie everything up gives it an urgency that the other movies never had. This is obviously evident in the huge dramatic punch the movie carries. There are farewells, deaths, shocking twists (Gambon's Dumbledore wasn't as nice as we thought and Rickman's Snape was!) and it all comes down to an anticlimactic showdown between the young wizard and Voldemort (Fiennes who will be remembered as one of the creepiest villains in film history).

For all its flaws the film results quite entertaining and after a tedious start picks up and delivers the goods at a brisk pace.

The children still are rather dull actors (except for Granger who oozes onscreen charm) but lukcy for them they are surrounded by astonishing actors. Smith gets more of a chance to shine this time around and in a fantastic fight scene, Walters goes all Lt. Ripley on the equally superb Bonham-Carter.

This time more than ever, the visual effects and production design seem to click and some scenes are completely spellbinding but perhaps most of the film's value is merely because it's the last one. As such it comes as a complex beast to evaluate in terms of purely adequate artistic value. The Potter films were never meditations on life and to come out of them with the desire to engage in Bergman-ian dialogues is out of the question, but they could've had a little something extra that went beyond the notions of just telling a story.

As exciting and harmlessly captivating as this installment is, leaving the theater you might notice you have already forgotten what the movie was all about.

The King's Speech *½

Director: Tom Hooper

Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

Guy Pearce, Eve Best, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall

Jennifer Ehle, Claire Bloom, Derek Jacobi

It seems that for as long as there have been movies, that's how long their need to convince us they're just like us, has existed.

Why have most movies lost the need to revel in their own cinematic-ness? Why such a need to make us identify with them?

If you're looking for answers to those questions you might as well stay away from The King's Speech, a film so secure about its heart-tugging contrived maneuvers, that it dares to pretend it's a story about the every man when in fact it's a piece of ideological brainwash that reinforces the notion that the people watching it are precisely the exact opposite of what they're watching onscreen.

The film basically deals with King George VI's struggle with stuttering. We see him shame his father (Gambon), be bullied by his brother (Pearce), be nurtured by his wife (Carter) and eventually be cured by magical Australian Lionel Logue (Rush) before delivering the speech that, according to the movie, mattered more during WWII than the tons of lives lost afterwards.
The film is handsomely made but it's slightly offensive to think that more thought was put on the details in Helena Bonham Carter's hats, than in the way the film relishes in its somewhat fascist ideology.

With each new scene we see how more and more it's buying its own love for royalty and its seemingly "human" approach (awww it's tiny Queen Elizabeth!) is nothing more than a reaffirmation for the film's condescending look at the world that surrounds it.
As Hooper and company fail to find anything to question about the characters, these become puppets at the command of a modern fairy tale that pretends to exalt humanity when all it does is trivialize war in the face of royal adversity.

Sure, the king's achievement was notable and a triumph on its own, and sure, the fact that the people around him congratulate him on his success and seem to forget about the larger reality outside Buckingham Palace is quite normal, what's baffling is that the film fails to question these things.

It comes as no surprise that the film's best performance and its biggest asset comes in the shape of Eve Best as crown wrecker socialite Wallis Simpson; it's through her that we get the only glimpse of seeing what lied beyond the crown, beyond the obligations and especially beyond the facade.

If it wasn't for her we'd be stuck with a bunch of people who use their status as means to demean other- when Queen Elizabeth pokes fun at commoners who feel surprised to meet her, it's not really cute, it's disturbing- and as much as the film tries to make Lionel and the King achieve some sort of Becket like synergy, not such relationship is truly ever formed.

We are presented with a portrait of a group of gorgeously lit saints whose own personal troubles amounted to more drama than the Blitz and while some might get a kick out of watching the intimate lives of royals, their lives here are so restrained by public relations that this doesn't even serve as royalty porn, its purpose was never to allow us into their lives but to perpetuate the sort of ideology that can pass patronizing as back patting.

For a film that deals so much with communication, it's a shame that The King's Speech muffles the audience's voice so much.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I **

Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes
Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltraine, Jim Broadbent
Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson, Rhys Ifans, John Hurt
Julie Walters, Imelda Staunton

Have you ever noticed how the trailers for the Harry Potter movies often make for much more exciting experiences than the films themselves?
Judging from what we were presented in the previews for this (the first part of two, in the series finale) this movie should've made us be on the edge all the time, gasping for air and having our jaws fall to the floor in amazement.
The truth is that the film feels like nothing else than a marketing ploy to extract every single penny from Potterites and those who accompany them to the cinema.
It's said that this film was meant to be as close to the book as it possibly could and perhaps that is why it fails to be engaging in a purely cinematic level.
The filmmakers seem to have forgotten that not everyone has read the books (or ever intends to) and besides recreating entire passages from J.K. Rowling's prose, they should also be creating something worthy of being transferred to the silver screen. Something that will feel magical for everyone who buys a ticket.
Instead we get almost three hours of Harry (Radcliffe), Ron (Grint) and Hermione (Watson) moping and setting up tents in lush forests where they hide from Lord Voldemort (Fiennes).
The kids are looking for the horcruxes they began looking for in the previous installment but now have to deal with the fact that the entire magical world is under Voldemort's rule.
Still there's not even a single moment when we feel these people are real and before you make some joke about Muggles keep in mind that these characters should be true to the world they inhabit.
This almost never happens, except of course with the mature actors but this movie belongs mostly to the children. Yates is often redundant (how many times can we see Ron feeling Potter envy in this series?) and while he concentrates on silly twists we never understand how is it that the kids have no protection against evil but still packed a different coat to wear during their escape.
The action sequences are limited and as usual character development is restricted to a few moments of big dialogues that often result more stilted than not (why are they wasting Carter's Bellatrix Lestrange so much? She has such potential!)
It's a shame that the film feels so stale when absolutely everything is so handsomely crafted. The cinematography by Eduardo Serra evokes ancient carvings and even when he tries too hard to emulate Andrew Lesnie's magnificent work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Alexandre Desplat provides a sumptuous score that perfectly works with John Williams' already iconic theme.
When you come to think about it, this movie might be the exact opposite of The Two Towers, an introspective chapter that serves mostly to link plot turns. While Peter Jackson's movie managed to make the film a stand alone piece upon itself, Yates makes this Potter feel like waste the movie's almost three hours long and we find out what the deathly hallows are during the last fifteen! He even includes his own Gollum in the shape of Dobby (and sometimes even Ron) but fails to make any sort of emotional connection between what we're seeing and what we're supposed to be feeling.
Speaking in simple literary terms Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I is a luxurious hardcover version of a silly airport novel.

Fantastic Mr. Fox ***1/2

Director: Wes Anderson

Few working directors have such a recognizable visual style as Wes Anderson (if that is good or bad is another matter). In "Fantastic Mr. Fox" his first foray into animation (if you don't count the strange sea creatures from "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou") he transports his unique aesthetics to a world populated by furry, anthropomorphic puppets.
Particularly Mr. Fox (George Clooney playing Danny Ocean) a former chicken thief who chose the right path and became a newspaperman after his wife Mrs. Felicity Fox (a sly Meryl Streep) became pregnant.
When his son Ash (a brilliant Jason Schwartzman) is twelve fox years old, Mr. Fox decides he's had enough of his quiet domestic life and sets to pull off one last heist.
He recruits Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky) the superintendent opossum, and Felicity's athletic nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderon) to rob the farms of Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and Bean (Michael Gambon).
The job goes as planned but the angry farmers retaliate and plan to get rid of Mr. Fox, his family and all the neighboring animals.
This forces the charming hero to make things right and solve the sort of existential -crises-hiding-behind-entertaining-facades that Anderson has become known for.
But "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is more than "The Royal Tenenbaums" in stop motion, based on Roald Dahl's novel, the movie actually digs deeper than Anderson ever reaches with live action.
It's as if this micro world was invented just for him as he populates it with an assortment of characters, quirks and details that are a pleasure to behold.
The puppets' little coats and accessories have textures that we could stare at for hours and the stilted way of some of their movements is a shocking contrast to the relentless need of CGI to imitate real life.
Watching this movie we're supposed to know we're watching something unreal, perhaps Anderson's actual intention was to have us wonder throughout the film "how did they do that?". This is an interesting proposition because it immediately forces us to experience the wonders of childhood where even thunder was a mystery (it might be no coincidence again that Mrs. Fox is obsessed with painting thunderstorms).
The film's surrealistic nature serves Anderson because he is finally able to explore the absurdities of his characters without the selfconsciousness of actors.
He's at such balance with the animation technique that we recognize several visual keys (like Kylie's insanely funny blank eyes) from his live action films, but if he went and gave the real Bill Murray (who voices a real estate Badger here) a furry coat, the result might be just weird.
Anderson's detachment from keeping an equilibrium between what we see and how we respond gives him the chance to create one of his greatest characters in the shape of Ash; a son trying to live up to what he thinks his father expects from him.
The droll characterization of Ash-who wears a weird cape and underwear that makes his father think he's "different"-offers enough fantasy and truthfulness to make us laugh while blushing because at some level we might recognize ourselves in him.
Forget about the zany dialogues (although Anderson and Noah Baumbach made a witty adaptation), the Jarvis Cocker cameo or the intricate production design, the real wonder in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is that when we see a puppet shed a tear we too might be getting misty eyed.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince **

Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith
Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Bonnie Wright

"Are you confused?" asks a concerned Albus Dumbledore (Gambon) to Harry Potter (Radcliffe) as they uncover yet another dark mystery halfway throughout the film. "I wouldn't be surprised if you were" he continues without waiting for Harry's reply.
Dumbledore, as it seems, may not only be speaking to Potter, but to an entire audience, who have never read J.K. Rowling's famous books and will have a hard time following, or even being interested, in a movie that contains as many plot holes, discrepancies, lack of character subtext and coherence as there are tastes in Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.
Since there is no re-introduction needed the film throws us back into Hogwarts where Harry and his friends Ron Weasley (Grint) and Hermione Granger (Watson) return for another year of misadventures.
This time around Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters, who have seemingly recruited Draco Malfoy (Felton) as an inside agent, have been attacking the Muggle world and are, as usual, trying to infiltrate Hogwarts and help their master take over the world.
After almost reaching a decade of movies, the Harry Potter series has become formulaic and by now everyone knows that all of the films will at some point have all of the following: Christmas vacations, a Quidditch match, a sudden attack from Voldemort and a new professor in the school.
Said professor now comes in the shape of Horace Slughorn (Broadbent) who is reluctant to return to Hogwarts, but does so after insistence from Dumbledore.
Slughorn may possess valuable information about Tom Riddle (A.K.A Voldemort) which might help the good guys get rid of him before long.
Dumbledore of course recruits Potter to carry out this mission and most of the film consists of the execution of said plan.
The problem with such a thing is that the films have fallen also into a state of disconnect from any sort of "realism".
Why are we supposed to believe that things go wrong only when the kids are back in Hogwarts? Does evil also take a summer break? None of the films in the saga so far have been able to create believable links between each installment.
It's ironic when Professor Minerva McGonagall (Smith) tells Harry, Ron and Hermione "why is it that whenever something happens, you three are always involved?".
It's obvious that they're the stars, but it should be only obvious for the audience, not the characters themselves.
Most of the ensemble does a good work; people like Smith, Gambon, Carter (who is a wicked tease!) and Rickman can do no wrong (he is a particularly sinister scene stealer) and the delightful Broadbent brings freshness to what was feeling like a stale staff.
The kids on the other side are obviously still learning their craft. Most of the time they act like actors acting.
This problem is more obvious with Radcliffe, who movie after movie, manages to turn Potter into an uninterestingly smug kid playing humble and nice.
It comes as no wonder however that they act this way, when the film constantly neglects their "human" side. They are forced fed with dialogues and quips that have no verosimilitude and because of this the film loses its most important ally.
There are several subplots involving their sexual self awareness. Harry begins to fall for Ron's sister Ginny (Wright) while Hermione puts aside her pride and accepts that she might have feelings for Ron. They all of course spend most of the film denying such things and date other students to get over their actual feelings.
And it's not so surprising that these are the most involving scenes in the movie, where the kids get to act like kids and saving the world is something that comes second after finding who they really are.
The film is filled with sexual innuendos (that seem accidental) but actually make the whole thing feel alive for once. There is a particular Quidditch match where the position of Ron's broomstick only rises more as he becomes more satisfied.
But then the director comes and completely de-sexualizes the characters turning them into words straight out of a screenplay.
One, that isn't even that good to begin with. Writer Steve Kloves' delivers his most uneven script of the series yet. Many things in this installment seem incomplete; several key characters disappear for long periods of time and some are featured just for the sake of filling a billing.
Even if you haven't read the book it's easy to detect that a lot of material has been ignored because the plot advances in a bizarre way, it stalls more than it flows.
Fans of the book will probably dislike this feeling, but those who go to the theater expecting to see a movie will also have much to wish for.
Both Kloves and Yates seem to have forgotten that they are crafting a movie and unlike in literature there are things that can't be found by turning back a page at your desire.
"The Half-Blood Prince" feels more like a work in progress than an ultimate adaptation and very few scenes evoke a pinch of emotion out of the viewer.
It's a shame because with the magnificent work of the tech department (the costumes and art direction are stunning) the look of the saga has finally matured.
Particularly with the achievement of director of photography Bruno Delbonnel, who does actual magic with the light and his camera.
Several scenes in the film will take your breath away just from the sheer beauty they possess. Delbonnel transports his sunny French take into Hogwarts which is a more macabre environment.
His aesthetic sometimes recall nineteenth century fairy tale engravings which had both the mystery and the humanity that fascinated and attracted people so much to these stories.
Through his lens for the first time the things inside a "Potter" movie feel less like props and more like actual lived-in heirlooms.