Harry Potter and the End of My Childhood

Well, it's finally come and gone! While I generally feel that the Potter saga officially ended when the book came out four years ago (wow, that long?!), a few weeks ago marked the end of any denial. It's done. Potter is now finished as a film franchise, and it's more-than-ever a reminder that I'm not a kid anymore (sigh).
I want to save my Potter review for last. First...
"Fish Tank" I've talked before about how art-house movies can often fall into their own tropes just as much as big blockbuster movies can (see my review of "Hanna" from my last post), and for a while I was worried "Fish Tank" was headed that way. I know the term "raw" gets overused with movies like this, but when done right, there's an honesty to the filmmaking that suits the hand-held, natural light aesthetics of these projects.
The movie starts out as the story of a troubled teen living in the British projects (I know they're probably not called that in Britain, but you get the idea) with a crappy homelife who clearly is headed down the wrong path. Her world changes when her out-to-lunch mother brings home an enigmatic new boyfriend, played by Michael Fassbender. Fassbender recently rocked my face off in "X-Men: First Class" and he does a fantastic job here, riding the line between attractive, dangerous, and caring all at once. Without ruining anything, I will say that "Fish Tank" is not afraid to go to some very scary, uncomfortable places (not a great one to watch with your parents as I did), yet it does so without making judgments on the characters. People are complicated and they're not always what they seem.
And while Fassbender is riveting to watch, possibly an even better performance is given by Katie Jarvis in the lead role as frustrated Mia. She swears, yells, and fights back against her surroundings, but you understand WHY she does it. For a first-time actress it's one of the best performances I've seen since Rob Brown in "Finding Forrester" (one of my personal underrated favorites).
A good comparison to "Fish Tank" would be the movie "Chop Shop," that tells the story of a young girl trying to survive in the slums of Los Angeles. "Chop Shop" does a decent enough job of portraying what it's like for this girl and her little brother to survive in their harsh world, but it doesn't really offer anything more. It's a snapshot movie that doesn't lead anywhere and ultimately doesn't have a story. Or if it DOES have a story, it's a pretty bleak one.
"Fish Tank" on the other hand, also shows a girl trapped and frustrated by her lower-class existence. But there's a STORY in it too--she meets Fassbender's character, relationships develop, she starts to change, and there are unexpected twists and turns along the way. Real tension and drama lies in the scenes, making me wince at times because I cared so much about the characters and was at times angry at them for making such poor decisions. Not once did I feel this way about "Chop Shop." I just thought, "Wow, this girl's life sucks." Possibly most importantly, "Fish Tank" ends with a ray of hope and new beginnings, whereas "Chop Shop" just ended with the characters trapped in the same situation they started out in. Symbolism can be hokey at times, and in "Fish Tank" there's a bookend involving an impoverished horse Mia tries to free from it's chain early on. Towards the end of the film after Mia has been forced to grow up a lot, but hasn't done much to change her living situation, she goes back to the horse only to find that it has died of old age. Seeing her break down crying, understanding that she felt like that same trapped horse, really WORKED and made you understand why this poor girl lashed out at the world so much.
All in all "Fish Tank" is an indie film in the best sense of the word--a modern coming-of-age tale that manages to evoke and move the viewer within the confines of the budget. I really liked it, though it's not one to necessarily watch for a "good time at the movies."

"Harold & Maude" Hal Ashby has directed some of the better movies of his time, and I also really like him because he worked with my fantastic editing instructor Bob Jones at USC, who was one of the more inspiring teachers I had while in film school. "Harold & Maude" is considered a classic, and several of my friends have stated that it's one of their favorite movies of all time (including my old boss Tabatha, who is one of my personal heroes...Tabatha if you're out there, I think you're fantastic!).
So maybe my hopes were too high. "Harold & Maude" is certainly a quirky and intriguing story, and its way of handling its obsession with the macabre through a twisted sweetness reminds me of Tim Burton's best works (and Ashby probably does it even better than Burton ever did).
But did I like it as much as, say, "The Last Detail"? Not really. It's a sweet, fine, unique film, but not anything I'm going to sit down and watch time and time again. Worth seeing for historical purposes, but I didn't feel it deserved the masterpiece status others seem to give it. It's possible I just saw it at the wrong point in my life (I'm 25 and so OLD!), although I personally believe the best movies can resonate with anyone, regardless of age.

"Super 8" On paper, this movie should have been my favorite movie of the year, possibly one of my favorite films of all time. It looked to fit the bill of "movies I wish I had made"--films that feature stuff so in tune with what I'm into that it's as if someone was reading my mind (if you're curious, this is also how I feel about "WALL-E" and "Moon"). "Super 8" is a movie about pre-teens growing up. It takes place in the late 1970s and features tons of my favorite classic rock music (like "Freaks and Geeks"!). A dog gets lost. It's (supposedly) about a father-son relationship. The kids are trying to make a B-movie in their hometown (boy, I can identify with THAT). And there's a big scary creature. What's not to like?
Well, there IS a lot to like, but it's not perfect. The cinematography, production design, and FEEL of the film is spot-on, perfectly encapsulating the decade, although the lens flare gets even more distracting than in Star Trek (at least in THAT movie you had a whole "the future's bright" excuse). The movie LITERALLY ends on a "fade to lens flare"; I guess old habits die hard. Acting-wise most of the kids do a decent job, particularly Joel Courtney in the lead role and Elle Fanning as the love interest. And the monster manages to be both horrific and sympathetic, behaving as a terrified animal would.
But at the end of the day, I wish they had handed someone like me the screenplay to polish things up. Abrams is perfect at coming up with gripping concepts, but often falls short when it comes to his common sense in delivering the goods. "Lost," "Star Trek," and even "M:I:3" were great roller-coaster rides that started to splinter to pieces the minute you applied too much logic to them. Well, maybe "logic" isn't the right word--but just a general mastery of story sense.
For example, in "Super 8" the monster is kept in the shadows for the majority of the film...fine. But there are definitely one too many scenes of the monster mysteriously jumping out of the darkness and attacking a dude. The first time when it attacks the police chief at the station, it's perfect. The chief gets attacked, we now KNOW the monster is destructive, AND it causes the father to get promoted to deputy, pushing the plot forward. But then a few scenes later we have a sequence where a man tries to restore some power lines and gets killed. Did the scene give us any new information we hadn't already got from the previous one? Was that character who got killed important at all? Not really. The second scene should have been cut.
Though some would argue, I think the log-line of this movie would read something like, "When a group of pre-teen kids set out to film a home movie, their summer is turned upside-down when a their town falls under attack by a mysterious and destructive monster." So ultimately, what's your film about, plot-wise, at the bare bones? It's kids vs. monster! Right?
But the kids don't interact with the monster at all until the third act. It's almost as if the monster doesn't matter to them. I'm not saying we need the monster fully revealed out in the sunlight, but scenes where the kids were facing off against the creature should have happened much sooner.
Also, the movie does a wonderful job in the first scene of setting what I thought would be the main character's internal conflict throughout the film--he's tormented over the death of his mother, and disconnected from his father who doesn't know how to be a parent. Great. Part of this is told through the overused "she-gave-me-this-locket" device, but it's an old-fashioned movie anyway, so I'm willing to let things slide.
And at the end of the film, the father rushes to his son and they embrace amidst all the chaos around them as (spoilers?) the monster's spaceship exits into space. This is exactly where the pieces should fit, but unfortunately neither character really EARNED this ending. The boy and his father don't really interact throughout the movie...the third act unfortunately becomes more of your typical damsel-in-distress stuff. Even though I liked the way it was handled, I would have downplayed the romantic angle of the movie and in the third act I would have the creature attack the military base (we know it hates military dudes). Now the boy has to rescue his FATHER instead. It's a movie about father-and-son, so you should have him rescue his dad! Duh!!!
And while I liked the feel of the monster, it's motivations didn't entirely make logical sense. It's shown killing and eating people which is cool, but suddenly it chooses not to kill this one group of kids because...what? They understood loss? It could empathize with them telepathically? Fine, but are you trying to tell me all the other dozens of people it's been snatching up don't have feelings? Why didn't the monster empathize with any of them, even a little bit? Wow, that monster's an asshole.
And the creature's plan for escape is a tad arbitrary too. We know it's building a spaceship to escape off-planet, but at the end after it's moment with the kid it just magically conjures up a bunch of cubes to assemble the ship, then it blasts off. Why didn't it conjure all those cubes earlier? A simple line about how it "wasn't quite finished yet" or something could have cleared that up. OR the main kid still has the last magic cube, and so he gives it to the monster in order for him to go home. I jokingly said that maybe the monster's spaceship had a locket-sized hole that needed filling in his ship's hull, and while that would have been ridiculous, it at least would have been a REASON for things to happen the way they did.
But despite all these issues, I've always felt that the mark of a good movie is that it lingered with you, and the wondrous spirit of "Super 8" has certainly stuck with me stronger than a lot of other movies have this year. It may be a film with some severe story scoliosis (thank you Blake Snyder!), but it was still a lot of fun.

"Horrible Bosses" A solid comedy with a dark edge, elevated by a spot-on cast in Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis, and Charlie Day as three good friends who decide they need to kill each others' bosses. Not the most original premise in the world, but the script is biting enough, and the cast sharp enough to make this one of the better comedies I've seen this year (though it can't touch "Cedar Rapids"). As the bosses nympho Jennifer Aniston is passable, cokehead Colin Farrell is hilarious but underused, and Kevin Spacey is delicious terrifying. Jamie Foxx also manages to squeeze quite a few laughs out of what could have easily been one joke as the workers' murder consultant, "Motherfucker Jones" (as a child he once stole money from his mother's purse, hence the name "motherfucker").

The most laughs probably go to Charlie Day as the most dimwitted of the three friends, which is to expected as Day is absolutely hilarious on "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." In my theater we had a rather "meta" experience, as Danny DeVito and his family were sitting behind us. DeVito is partially responsible for "Sunny's" success, so he was obviously there to support his boy Charlie. In the movie, Charlie makes a joke referencing Danny DeVito, getting Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" confused with "Throw Momma From the Train" starring Danny DeVito. The joke was clearly meant as a subtle wink to "Sunny" fans, but when it hit in the theater DeVito and his family of course burst out laughing more than usual. It was weird.

Lately a lot of people have been saying I remind them of Charlie Day now that I've fully grown-out my scruff and not lost my manic energy. I suppose this is a good thing.

"Bosses" does suffer by a truncated third act, when Spacey's character becomes downright murderous HIMSELF. The three friends look as if they're going to need a safehouse, and for a moment I thought they would wind up shacking at Aniston's home, but unfortunately this gag didn't pan out. It's too bad, because I think it could have been pretty funny AND integrated Aniston's character into the main narrative a little better. Oh well.

Regardless, the movie is certainly one of the better comedies of the summer (I liked it more than "Bridesmaids"!)

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" Oh boy. How do I even review this one?

All in all, the Harry Potter series has been a great ride. It isn't as perfect as Lord of the Rings, and I won't cherish it in my soul as much as the original Star Wars trilogy, but Warner Bros. has overall done a stellar job of adapting all eight (wow!) movies to the big screen, albeit with a few hiccups along the way. Are they perfect? No. Are they exactly as I imagined them when I read them? No. Do they even work as MOVIES for those who haven't read the books? Not really. But who cares? The spirit is there, the world feels right, and it has been a joy to watch the cast grow up through the years.

I reviewed that Part 1 of "Deathly Hallows" didn't really work as a film because it was far too disjointed and didn't ultimately end up going anywhere (as would be expected for half a film). Luckily in being the final film of the franchise this movie really feels like a full story, and the conclusion to the entire series ends on a satisfying note. It was hard not to get choked up when John Williams' score ran over the end credits. This really is the last "good" franchise from my childhood to be wrapped up (until we get "The Hobbit" I guess), and the midnight showing really felt like a true EVENT of events.

Being the final film, they throw everything at the wall--dragons, wizard battles, final showdowns, best friends kiss...it's all there! The movie does a great job of showcasing the "greatest hits" of the Potter franchise--we go back to Gringotts, we get to see the Chamber of Secrets again, giant spiders are show scurrying about in the battle for Hogwarts. Even one-off characters like Professor Trelawney get a little screen time. It's a hoot (no pun intended, Hedwig).

And unlike nearly all the other Harry Potter movies (except perhaps #3), this one put lumps in my throat a lot more than any of the others did. (SPOILERS!) Anyone who's read the books knows that Snape is the unsung hero of this tale (the Sam Gamgee of Harry Potter, you might say), and an opening foreboding shot of Snape staring down at the now dour Hogwarts offers a sense of what could be menace for those who don't know the backstory, but an anguished nobility for those of us who know the truth. When Snape's backstory is finally explained it is poignant and heartbreaking. We've been WAITING for Alan Rickman to do more than just glower behind-the-scenes, and seeing him finally emote in this way reminds us why he is such a truly good ACTOR and not just good at caricature. Seriously, if I saw Alan Rickman on the street right now I might give him a hug.

Nearly as heart-wrenching is the sequence when Harry enters the Forbidden Forest to die. In the book this scene never quite brought me to the edge (though the "wizard purgatory" part sure did), but in the movie it works beautifully. Seeing Daniel Radcliffe, who really has matured into a fine actor, march towards his doom lingers with us not only because his character is going to die, but symbolically because it's OUR turn to say goodbye to Harry Potter too. This IS the end. When his parents appear to tell him how proud they were of him, I might have had to dab my eyes a bit (especially when Gary Oldman says "to the end"...how can you not cry at the sight of deceased Gary Oldman?).

The movie also ends with a weird "nineteen years later" sequence featuring Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint in unconvincing "old people" makeup, taking their kids aboard the Hogwarts Express. The scene is a little hokey, but it reminds us how innocent these movies were when they started; at the end of the day, through all the dark events that have taken place, these are still films about magic and wonder, and they remind us how young and innocent WE were when we first picked up "The Sorceror's Stone" so long ago. Someday I hope to have kids, and one of the reasons I want to is so that I can share these beloved stories with them when the time comes.

All in all this has been a wonderful journey, and I am so thankful to have been able to grow up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione over the years. Your mischief has indeed been managed.

"Captain America" One of the better surprises of the summer. Joe Johnston is one of those directors that is able to often deliver the goods, but not go too much farther than that (and it's not really his fault that "Jurassic Park 3" and "Wolfman" were terrible...he works for the studios, and with the good comes the bad). Johnston's strength lies in his ability to create pulpy FUN, and "Captain America" feels a lot like "The Rocketeer" in all the best ways. It's retro, it's just the right kind of campy, it's a good old-fashioned "go America!" type flick. While I like when superhero movies can add a little gravitas to the mix (Nolan's Batman or the recent "X-Men: First Class"), unabashed glee can take you a long way too. At the end of the day it's still all about execution.

And the execution is good! Captain America would have felt wrong if it wasn't patriotic, and thank God they didn't try to "modernize" the story with a bunch of nasty questions about America's place in today's messy mid-East meddlings. Setting it in World War II is perfect, and it makes for a classic feel-good romp full of classy American heroes and snarling Nazi bad guys (I guess they're technically super-Nazis, but whatever). Letting the movie breath and have a sense of humor also helps alleviate what could have otherwise been a very uptight flick. My favorite joke is a reverse on the typical "save the child from drowning" gag--you'll know when you see it.

Overall the cast is great too. Chris Evans is one of those actors I always feel I should be jealous of because of his natural good looks but darn it, he just comes across as such a nice guy (and he was my favorite evil ex in "Scott Pilgrim"). The movie milks the sympathy we have for Steve Rogers every chance it gets, but it does it well. I'm going to get a bit personal here, but when I was growing up I was a bit of a shrimp, but I had a lot of spirit and drive (still do!). It's what allowed me to be a distance swimmer rather than a sprinter. In my opinion any muscle-bound genetic freak can jump in the water and be across the pool in a matter of seconds, but it's the kids with a lot of heart that are able to push themselves past their limits and swim 66 laps, after all the other events are over and most of the other swimmers have gone home. So a movie about a scrawny dweeb with the right sense of spirit being granted the gift of superpowers really GOT to me a lot more than the braggadocio of Thor or the snarkiness of Tony Stark (I guess this is why I like Spider-Man too...I root for the little guy). Plus the VFX of putting Evans' head on a shrimpy body were nearly flawless. I was trying to figure out how it was done and I'm still scratching my head. Kudos to the filmmakers for letting us spend time with Rogers before the transformation, and really GET what the character is about. These early scenes are without question the best part of the movie.

And the supporting cast is great too. Stanley Tucci is one of those actors who gets better and better every time I see him (can't wait for the "The Hunger Games"!), and many of my favorite moments in the beginning belong to him. It's a shame he departs from the film so early. Tommy Lee Jones hams it up just right as the no-nonsense colonel, and beautiful Brit Hayley Atwell has a classic 1940s beauty about her while still being tough (and MAN does she have great boobs). It takes a little while to get used to Hugo Weaving with a German accent, but he's always great at sneering when he needs to.

Even so, the first half of the movie is much better than the second half. Everything involving Captain America is great, from his creation to his getting used to his new strength, to the propaganda montage--all that stuff was bliss. Unfortunately the second half becomes a bit messier, as the villains plot is forced to come to the forefront, and it gets a bit too comic-booky for its own good. What's with the magical energy cube? Nazis with ray guns is kind of cool, but they ultimately aren't that formidable. I was never too worried Captain America wouldn't bash them all to bits. And how did Red Skull "die?" What was that about? And while I think "Captain America" is a better, more coherent movie than "Thor," I liked Thor's over-the-top Asgardian action sequences a lot more. And like all these Marvel movies, we're forced to get an ending that shoehorns us into The Avengers, which unfortunately didn't feel like the kind of ending we should have been given. Poor Captain America doesn't get to bang the girl with the big cans? How Un-American!

Even so, Captain America is a good old-fashioned time at the movies in the best sense, and in a year where there have been WAY too many superhero movies, it's still a good one.

Wow, did I just give all these movies generally good reviews? What has happened to me?!