Saturday morning my first movie was Uncle Kent, the new movie from Joe Swanberg. Like all of his movies, it was very low budget, unwritten-sounding dialogue, and lots of sex and nudity. Actually, not as much sex and nudity as his other movies, but still quite a bit.
The story was about a guy named Kent. Kent is a single guy living in LA, and he meets a girl from New York over chatroulette. He invites her to come out and stay with him for the weekend. She accepts, even though she has a boyfriend. Obviously he likes her and is hoping something will happen between them. Something does, but not what we expect. They find a girl on craigslist that is advertising for a threesome.
I liked the movie, but like all of Swanberg's movies, it really could have used a re-write and some editing. There are parts with very interesting discussions, but also parts where nothing happens and we are just watching Kent sitting around doing nothing. I'm not sure who I could recommend it to.
Uncle Kent was proceeded by a short called Ex-sex, which was very good.
The next movie I saw was Happy, Happy. This Norwegian movie claims to be a comedy, but I didn't laugh much. It was more of a drama. It's about an unhappy housewife. Her husband won't pay attention to her, and she starts having an affair with the neighbor next door. The only thing unique about the movie was the setting. Other than that, this type of story has been done before, and done much better.
The strange thing about the movie was the musical interludes. Remember the scenes in There's Something About Mary where the guitarist and drummer would appear and sing a song randomly? Kind of like that, there are interludes where we see a vocal quartet singing. It makes no sense and the movie is not the kind of comedy that can pull off those kind of absurd interludes.
Next I saw The Last Mountain, a documentary about coal and mountaintop coal removal, a destructive process that was outlawed until the Bush administration made it legal. It was very good and it pissed me off, like all of these political documentaries do, because it shows once again how laws are written by corporations.
The last movie of the day was Abraxas, a movie about a Japanese monk who used to be a punk rock guitarist. He decides he wants to play again, so he gets a band together and performs outside at the monastery. It was very interesting and unique, but also very tedious. Not recommended.
On Sunday I started off with Terri, a movie about an overweight high school kid. He lives with his uncle (The Office's Creed Bratton) who is usually heavily medicated, he goes to school in his pajamas, and he has no friends. So it's a feel good.
Things get entertaining when he is talking to the vice principal (John C. Reilly), but there are quite a few boring scenes where he is off by himself doing things like setting mouse traps. Late in the movie it starts to get really interesting when he starts making a couple of friends. A really cute girl in his class starts to get interested in him because he is nice to her, and eventually he invites her over to his house to hang out. His other friend comes over and the three of them start drinking and taking his uncle's pills, then things really get interesting.
Yet another movie that I liked, but it isn't easy to sit through and most audiences probably won't enjoy it.
Next I went to check out A Machine to See With at the New Frontier. This is no movie. You register, they take your cell phone number, and 15 minutes later you get a call. For the next 70 or 80 minutes you are walking around town following instructions from a pre-recorded voice. The basic idea is you are planning to rob a bank. It was a fun experience, but the end was kind of a letdown. Although, the end really depends on how many other people are currently participating, and how they behave. It's a very interesting idea and I'd love to see the company behind it take the idea further.
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Eccles Theater trying to cover Red State. The Westboro Baptist Church was in town to picket Kevin Smith's latest movie, and he invited his fans to show up and protest against the protest. There were some very funny signs out.
I covered the red carpet and managed to interview the actors from the movie, including Stephen Root and Melissa Leo. I will post some video once I get a chance to do a little editing.
I wasn't able to see Red State. There is no press screening, and there are only 2 public screenings, which made it the hottest ticket at the festival. There was a lot of hype about how he was going to auction off the rights to the movie right there in the theater after the screening, but he ended up deciding to release it himself. He will take the movie on a tour then release it himself in October.
The last movie I saw on Sunday was The Devil's Double. It's partly based on the true story of Latif Yahia who was chosen to be a double for Uday Hussein. Dominic Cooper plays both Latif and Uday, and this is the best work I have ever seen from him. He plays both parts so differently that I forgot it was the same actor.
There is some really tough stuff in the movie. I have read about Uday Hussein and some of the horrible things he did, like kidnapping random girls off the street, raping them, then dumping their bodies. We see a bit of that in the movie. We also see torture, disembowelment, shootings, all that gory stuff.
The movie uses the true story as a base, then it invents some stuff. I don't know how much is true, but at some point Latif decides to try to escape Iraq. I had some problems with the movie but it was worth seeing for Dominic Cooper's performance.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday at Sundance
On Friday I only managed to take in 1 1/4 movies. I will explain.
I got up to Park City in time to see Kaboom, the new film from Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin). It ended up being a great first movie.
The story is about Smith, a bi-sexual college student. His best friend is a lesbian named Stella. He is attracted to his straight roommate, Thor. For the first while, it seems like it is just a movie about these characters. And they are very enjoyable characters.
Then things start to get wierd. The girl Stella is seeing seems to have magical sexual powers. These creepy guys wearing animal masks start lurking around. A red haired girl asks Smith for help, slips a flash drive in his pocket, then seems to be killed by the animal masked men. Was it a dream, a hallucination, or did it really happen?
The movie was a lot of fun, but I haven't decided how I feel about the end. It starts ramping up the crazyness, and the audience I saw it with was laughing the entire last 5 minutes. The end comes so abruptly that it's like a punchline. In a lesser movie, the ending would ruin it for me. But I liked it enough that I think it just adds to the fun.
After Kaboom I decided to see Magic Trip, which is a documentary about author Ken Kesey's 1964 trip across America. It was doing absolutely nothing for me and bored me to tears, so I left after 20 minutes or so.
I had to leave the festival early for a family thing, so that was it. Saturday I plan to stay in Park City all day and see as many films as I can.
I got up to Park City in time to see Kaboom, the new film from Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin). It ended up being a great first movie.
The story is about Smith, a bi-sexual college student. His best friend is a lesbian named Stella. He is attracted to his straight roommate, Thor. For the first while, it seems like it is just a movie about these characters. And they are very enjoyable characters.
Then things start to get wierd. The girl Stella is seeing seems to have magical sexual powers. These creepy guys wearing animal masks start lurking around. A red haired girl asks Smith for help, slips a flash drive in his pocket, then seems to be killed by the animal masked men. Was it a dream, a hallucination, or did it really happen?
The movie was a lot of fun, but I haven't decided how I feel about the end. It starts ramping up the crazyness, and the audience I saw it with was laughing the entire last 5 minutes. The end comes so abruptly that it's like a punchline. In a lesser movie, the ending would ruin it for me. But I liked it enough that I think it just adds to the fun.
After Kaboom I decided to see Magic Trip, which is a documentary about author Ken Kesey's 1964 trip across America. It was doing absolutely nothing for me and bored me to tears, so I left after 20 minutes or so.
I had to leave the festival early for a family thing, so that was it. Saturday I plan to stay in Park City all day and see as many films as I can.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Sundance Day 1
Day one at Sundance. This afternoon Robert Redford, Keri Putnam (Executive Director) and John Cooper (Director) held their annual press conference to kick off the festival. Here is one short video from the press conference. Excuse my shaky cam style. I was sometimes trying to film with one hand.
Update: I also went to New Frontier to check out the exhibits. I took a few pictures but they didn't come out. It was too dark.
In years past the New Frontier has been on Main Street, but this year it is being held at the Miner's Hospital. Not as good a venue. Instead of having everything on one level in a big open space, everything is crammed into 3 buildings. The main building is very cramped and darkly lit. As you are walking through it is hard to tell what is an exhibit and what is an employees only type area.
The exhibits are pretty interesting, but I was disappointed with the Three's Company: The Drama setup. It is just a room where footage from the first season of Three's Company plays. The dialogue has been re-recorded by James Franco and his friends. They try to make it a drama rather than a sitcom.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Country Strong - 1 1/2 stars
This movie is a lot like last year's Crazy Heart - if Crazy Heart really sucked!
At the beginning of the movie we meet Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund from Tron: Legacy). Beau is a country / western singer. We know this not only because we see him on stage performing, but because he always wears jeans, western shirts, cowboy hats, and he drives a beat up Ford pickup. During the day he works as an orderly at a rehab facility.
One of the patients is a country superstar named Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow). Kelly likes Beau to play and sing for her, and she helps write his songs. Her husband/manager James (Tim McGraw) shows up and takes her out of rehab, even though she is not ready to leave.
The next night, James sees Beau perform at a club and asks him to come on the road and open for Kelly. Here is where I checked out of the movie, because Beau says no. Anyone who loves performing wants 2 things: to perform for as many people as possible, and to make a living doing it. But Beau says no. He likes performing for people, and he doesn't care where. He's perfectly happy to keep playing in local bars.
Of course he changes his mind and does join them on the road, or else we wouldn't have a movie. But if we didn't have a movie, I wouldn't really mind. In fact, I would prefer it. This movie is so badly written, the only fun I had was watching Kelly get drunk and try to perform. She is so bad she has to be helped off stage while the curtain comes down and the band continues to play.
The dialogue is horrible. There is a scene where Kelly asks Beau "you think I'm crazy, don't you?" He should answer that no, she isn't crazy, just an alcoholic. But what he says is "love and fame just don't mix." What the hell does that mean? It does go along with the message of the movie, which seems to be being a star is bad, it's better to remain unknown. The end of the movie (spoiler alert) is Beau performing in a small club on a ranch somewhere. He has passed on the opportunity to record, tour, be a star and make lots of money.
The movie tries really hard to be dramatic. I think they expect people to cry. But during what should be the saddest moment in the movie, I was just chuckling. The movie just doesn't work.
At the beginning of the movie we meet Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund from Tron: Legacy). Beau is a country / western singer. We know this not only because we see him on stage performing, but because he always wears jeans, western shirts, cowboy hats, and he drives a beat up Ford pickup. During the day he works as an orderly at a rehab facility.
One of the patients is a country superstar named Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow). Kelly likes Beau to play and sing for her, and she helps write his songs. Her husband/manager James (Tim McGraw) shows up and takes her out of rehab, even though she is not ready to leave.
The next night, James sees Beau perform at a club and asks him to come on the road and open for Kelly. Here is where I checked out of the movie, because Beau says no. Anyone who loves performing wants 2 things: to perform for as many people as possible, and to make a living doing it. But Beau says no. He likes performing for people, and he doesn't care where. He's perfectly happy to keep playing in local bars.
Of course he changes his mind and does join them on the road, or else we wouldn't have a movie. But if we didn't have a movie, I wouldn't really mind. In fact, I would prefer it. This movie is so badly written, the only fun I had was watching Kelly get drunk and try to perform. She is so bad she has to be helped off stage while the curtain comes down and the band continues to play.
The dialogue is horrible. There is a scene where Kelly asks Beau "you think I'm crazy, don't you?" He should answer that no, she isn't crazy, just an alcoholic. But what he says is "love and fame just don't mix." What the hell does that mean? It does go along with the message of the movie, which seems to be being a star is bad, it's better to remain unknown. The end of the movie (spoiler alert) is Beau performing in a small club on a ranch somewhere. He has passed on the opportunity to record, tour, be a star and make lots of money.
The movie tries really hard to be dramatic. I think they expect people to cry. But during what should be the saddest moment in the movie, I was just chuckling. The movie just doesn't work.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Wednesday, 12/22 and Saturday, 12/25
Because of Christmas, the studios are releasing some movies early (Wednesday), and some movies on Christmas day. For once, no movies are opening on Friday.
True Grit - 3 1/2 stars (opening Wednesday)
I have never seen the original with John Wayne, but I understand that this movie is a closer adaptation of the book than the 1969 version was.
Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a young girl who's father is killed by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). When Mattie realizes that the local law enforcement is not going to pursue Chaney, she decides to hire a marshal herself to bring Chaney to justice. The marshal she hires is Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Rooster seems to live in the back of a saloon, is drunk most of the time, and wears an eye patch.
This movie was written and directed by the Coen brothers, and it isn't as quirky as their movies usually are. Two of the things the Coens are great with is dialogue and casting. Both are excellent as usual in this movie. A great scene early on involves Mattie negotiating with a stable owner to get the money for her father's horses. It's not necessarily a funny scene, but it plays so well that I was laughing about how much I was enjoying it.
I do have a couple of minor complaints. One is that Bridges delivers his dialogue with such a gruff voice that sometimes it's difficult to understand him. Another complaint is the ending. The movie builds to what should be a climactic showdown (or two), but I felt a little let down. After the last of the bad guys were dispatched, I was thinking "that's it?"
Those are minor complaints in an otherwise great movie. Go see it, even if you aren't a fan of westerns.
Little Fockers - 2 stars (opening Wednesday)
The first movie was a great comedy. The second was funny, not as good as the first, but still enjoyable. This third movie in the series is just bad. I don't think I laughed at all the first hour. Late in the movie I started to enjoy it a little, but that was only because I have had 2 previous movies to invest in these characters, and I did care about what happened to them.
The worst scene is in the trailer. It involves Greg (Gaylord) Focker (Ben Stiller) trying to cut the turkey at dinner. He slips, cuts his hand, and sprays blood all over everyone at the table. That just isn't funny. At all.
A big problem in the movie is Dustin Hoffman. Originally Hoffman wasn't going to be in the movie. The studio refused to meet his salary, so the script was written without Bernie Focker. After they finished filming, they were under budget enough that they could suddenly afford Hoffman. So they re-shot several scenes and incorporated them into the movie. It's obvious in the movie where they changed it. Hoffman has very few scenes on screen with the other actors. Usually he is on the phone with someone, and you can tell how the original movie was the character talking to someone about Bernie, and now they are talking to him.
One thing I did like in the movie was the way Greg finally learned to stand up to Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro). The first two movies, Greg was scared to death of him. In this movie, when Jack tries to interrogate him, he just says "you know what, Jack? I'm tired, I'm not playing this game, I'm going to bed." He finally learns to stop letting Jack control him.
I can't recommend the movie to anyone, but I'm sure fans of the first two movies will want to see it.
Gulliver's Travels - 2 1/2 stars (opens Christmas day)
When we first meet Gulliver (Jack Black), he is working in the mail room of a big newspaper. He has a crush on an editor (Amanda Peet) but he is too shy to ask her out. One night when they are both working late, he walks into her office. When she asks what he wants, he chickens out and says that he is interested in writing travel pieces for the paper. Because this happens all the time in major newspapers (who have a huge travel budget even in this age of dying newspapers), she immediately hires him and sends him on a trip to the Bermuda Triangle.
When he ends up on the island of Liliput, the tiny people there think he is a scary monster. But once he saves their king's life by putting out a fire using the boy scout method, he is suddenly their hero.
There are some very funny lines in this movie. The citizens of Liliput no nothing about movies or rock music, and because Gulliver is played by Jack Black (who is also a producer of the movie), he stages performances of The Empire Strikes Back and Titanic, and he even gets the little people to dress up as Kiss and perform for him. He also creates his own version of Guitar Hero.
Overall this is a dumb movie. The jokes are juvenile and kids will like it more than adults. It did make me laugh in spots and it doesn't totally suck, but I don't ever need to see this movie again.
The King's Speech - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)
Colin Firth stars as King George VI of Britain. The King has a stutter, and it wouldn't do for the people of the empire (at that time, a quarter of the world's population) to hear their ruler stuttering. So he hires a speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Lionel's methods are unusual, and one thing that rubs the king the wrong way is his insistence that "in this office, we are equals." This just isn't done. George is a king and Lionel is a peasant.
Their scenes together are the best parts of the movie. Geoffrey Rush is always good, and as he argues with King George (or Bertie as he calls him), they start to become friends. At one point in the movie, Bertie confides that Lionel is his only real friend.
The title refers to the speech that King George gives as Britain is preparing to go to war with Germany in 1939. The speech is the climax of the movie, and it is a genuine moment of triumph when he delivers the speech without stuttering too much (that isn't a spoiler; it should be obvious how the movie will end, plus the trailer gives away the whole movie).
I enjoyed the movie, but it isn't best picture material (as many Oscar bloggers are insisting). It is a bit stuffy, and it will appeal more to people who are interested in the royal monarchy.
I Love You Phillip Morris - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)
This movie is like Catch Me If You Can, but with lots more gay sex.
Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a man who one day decides to come out of the closet, leave his family and his job as a policeman, and starts committing all kinds of fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle. Over the course of the movie he claims to be a lawyer, gets a job as a CFO of a medical company, escapes from prison many times, and meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).
I enjoyed the movie, and the most incredible thing is that it's a true story. I can't believe how ingenious he was at escaping from prison, and I can't believe that his schemes actually worked.
True Grit - 3 1/2 stars (opening Wednesday)
I have never seen the original with John Wayne, but I understand that this movie is a closer adaptation of the book than the 1969 version was.
Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, a young girl who's father is killed by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). When Mattie realizes that the local law enforcement is not going to pursue Chaney, she decides to hire a marshal herself to bring Chaney to justice. The marshal she hires is Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Rooster seems to live in the back of a saloon, is drunk most of the time, and wears an eye patch.
This movie was written and directed by the Coen brothers, and it isn't as quirky as their movies usually are. Two of the things the Coens are great with is dialogue and casting. Both are excellent as usual in this movie. A great scene early on involves Mattie negotiating with a stable owner to get the money for her father's horses. It's not necessarily a funny scene, but it plays so well that I was laughing about how much I was enjoying it.
I do have a couple of minor complaints. One is that Bridges delivers his dialogue with such a gruff voice that sometimes it's difficult to understand him. Another complaint is the ending. The movie builds to what should be a climactic showdown (or two), but I felt a little let down. After the last of the bad guys were dispatched, I was thinking "that's it?"
Those are minor complaints in an otherwise great movie. Go see it, even if you aren't a fan of westerns.
Little Fockers - 2 stars (opening Wednesday)
The first movie was a great comedy. The second was funny, not as good as the first, but still enjoyable. This third movie in the series is just bad. I don't think I laughed at all the first hour. Late in the movie I started to enjoy it a little, but that was only because I have had 2 previous movies to invest in these characters, and I did care about what happened to them.
The worst scene is in the trailer. It involves Greg (Gaylord) Focker (Ben Stiller) trying to cut the turkey at dinner. He slips, cuts his hand, and sprays blood all over everyone at the table. That just isn't funny. At all.
A big problem in the movie is Dustin Hoffman. Originally Hoffman wasn't going to be in the movie. The studio refused to meet his salary, so the script was written without Bernie Focker. After they finished filming, they were under budget enough that they could suddenly afford Hoffman. So they re-shot several scenes and incorporated them into the movie. It's obvious in the movie where they changed it. Hoffman has very few scenes on screen with the other actors. Usually he is on the phone with someone, and you can tell how the original movie was the character talking to someone about Bernie, and now they are talking to him.
One thing I did like in the movie was the way Greg finally learned to stand up to Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro). The first two movies, Greg was scared to death of him. In this movie, when Jack tries to interrogate him, he just says "you know what, Jack? I'm tired, I'm not playing this game, I'm going to bed." He finally learns to stop letting Jack control him.
I can't recommend the movie to anyone, but I'm sure fans of the first two movies will want to see it.
Gulliver's Travels - 2 1/2 stars (opens Christmas day)
When we first meet Gulliver (Jack Black), he is working in the mail room of a big newspaper. He has a crush on an editor (Amanda Peet) but he is too shy to ask her out. One night when they are both working late, he walks into her office. When she asks what he wants, he chickens out and says that he is interested in writing travel pieces for the paper. Because this happens all the time in major newspapers (who have a huge travel budget even in this age of dying newspapers), she immediately hires him and sends him on a trip to the Bermuda Triangle.
When he ends up on the island of Liliput, the tiny people there think he is a scary monster. But once he saves their king's life by putting out a fire using the boy scout method, he is suddenly their hero.
There are some very funny lines in this movie. The citizens of Liliput no nothing about movies or rock music, and because Gulliver is played by Jack Black (who is also a producer of the movie), he stages performances of The Empire Strikes Back and Titanic, and he even gets the little people to dress up as Kiss and perform for him. He also creates his own version of Guitar Hero.
Overall this is a dumb movie. The jokes are juvenile and kids will like it more than adults. It did make me laugh in spots and it doesn't totally suck, but I don't ever need to see this movie again.
The King's Speech - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)
Colin Firth stars as King George VI of Britain. The King has a stutter, and it wouldn't do for the people of the empire (at that time, a quarter of the world's population) to hear their ruler stuttering. So he hires a speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Lionel's methods are unusual, and one thing that rubs the king the wrong way is his insistence that "in this office, we are equals." This just isn't done. George is a king and Lionel is a peasant.
Their scenes together are the best parts of the movie. Geoffrey Rush is always good, and as he argues with King George (or Bertie as he calls him), they start to become friends. At one point in the movie, Bertie confides that Lionel is his only real friend.
The title refers to the speech that King George gives as Britain is preparing to go to war with Germany in 1939. The speech is the climax of the movie, and it is a genuine moment of triumph when he delivers the speech without stuttering too much (that isn't a spoiler; it should be obvious how the movie will end, plus the trailer gives away the whole movie).
I enjoyed the movie, but it isn't best picture material (as many Oscar bloggers are insisting). It is a bit stuffy, and it will appeal more to people who are interested in the royal monarchy.
I Love You Phillip Morris - 3 stars (opens Christmas day)
This movie is like Catch Me If You Can, but with lots more gay sex.
Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a man who one day decides to come out of the closet, leave his family and his job as a policeman, and starts committing all kinds of fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle. Over the course of the movie he claims to be a lawyer, gets a job as a CFO of a medical company, escapes from prison many times, and meets and falls in love with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor).
I enjoyed the movie, and the most incredible thing is that it's a true story. I can't believe how ingenious he was at escaping from prison, and I can't believe that his schemes actually worked.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 - 3 stars
The 7th Harry Potter book was my favorite to read. The six that proceeded it were all basically setup for the events in the last book. The problem is there are a lot of boring parts of the 7th book, and they're all in the first half. And this movie is the first half of the book. By the time the movie ends, I really wanted to see the second part.
After six movies, this is the first one to drastically alter the formula. Every movie before this started at the beginning of the school year at Hogwarts. The movie covered one school year, and at the end there would be a big climax. This time, Harry, Ron, and Hermione don't go back for their final year at Hogwarts. The reason is they are going to look for the remaining horcruxes (items that hold pieces of Voldemort's soul).
Early on in the movie, the ministry is taken over by Voldemort's people, and the wizarding world becomes a fascist police state. The ministry is obsessed with getting rid of wizards who are not pure bloods (the wizarding Master Race). Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to go on the run, and they spend the entire movie hiding from the ministry.
One thing I didn't like in the movie was how much time they spend in the tent. There is a long section where the three have no idea how to proceed. They don't know where to look for the horcruxes, so they just sit around moping. This could have been shortened in the movie. If they had done that, they would have had more time to include a couple of other things from the book that were cut out.
One other complaint I have is with the dialogue. Except for a few jokes here and there, the characters only say things that advance the plot. Once in a while I wish the characters would talk about what just happened. For example, Snape becomes headmaster of Hogwarts. In the book, they talk about this when they read it in the paper. It's kind of a big deal. But in the movie, Harry hears it announced over the radio and doesn't say a word about it.
I really liked the music in this movie. This is probably my favorite HP score since Prisoner of Azkaban (the last movie scored by John Williams). The score really helps make this movie feel epic. I also liked the animated sequence that explains the history of the Deathly Hallows.
Overall I liked the movie. It's one of the better ones in the series. It just feels incomplete without the finale of the second film. July 15th can't get here fast enough.
After six movies, this is the first one to drastically alter the formula. Every movie before this started at the beginning of the school year at Hogwarts. The movie covered one school year, and at the end there would be a big climax. This time, Harry, Ron, and Hermione don't go back for their final year at Hogwarts. The reason is they are going to look for the remaining horcruxes (items that hold pieces of Voldemort's soul).
Early on in the movie, the ministry is taken over by Voldemort's people, and the wizarding world becomes a fascist police state. The ministry is obsessed with getting rid of wizards who are not pure bloods (the wizarding Master Race). Harry, Ron, and Hermione have to go on the run, and they spend the entire movie hiding from the ministry.
One thing I didn't like in the movie was how much time they spend in the tent. There is a long section where the three have no idea how to proceed. They don't know where to look for the horcruxes, so they just sit around moping. This could have been shortened in the movie. If they had done that, they would have had more time to include a couple of other things from the book that were cut out.
One other complaint I have is with the dialogue. Except for a few jokes here and there, the characters only say things that advance the plot. Once in a while I wish the characters would talk about what just happened. For example, Snape becomes headmaster of Hogwarts. In the book, they talk about this when they read it in the paper. It's kind of a big deal. But in the movie, Harry hears it announced over the radio and doesn't say a word about it.
I really liked the music in this movie. This is probably my favorite HP score since Prisoner of Azkaban (the last movie scored by John Williams). The score really helps make this movie feel epic. I also liked the animated sequence that explains the history of the Deathly Hallows.
Overall I liked the movie. It's one of the better ones in the series. It just feels incomplete without the finale of the second film. July 15th can't get here fast enough.
Fair Game - 2 1/2 stars
This is the story of Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA agent who was outed by the Bush administration during the Iraq war. Most of the movie is pretty interesting. It starts out showing all the undercover work she was doing in other countries. As the administration starts asking the CIA to look into WMDs in Iraq, she starts investigating. She gets an Iraqi born American woman to travel back to Iraq in order to get information from her brother about Saddam Hussein's WMD program. Her husband, Joe Wilson, the former ambassador to Niger, goes to Niger to investigate the rumor of Niger selling yellow cake uranium to Iraq.
As the movie progresses, we see Scooter Libby questioning the CIA. As they tell him that there is no way Iraq could have WMDs, Scooter interrogates them about the possibility that they are wrong. Then comes the point where Bush announces to the country that Iraq is working on acquiring WMDs and war is inevitable. One minute the CIA is saying that they are sure Iraq has no WMDs, the next minute Bush is twisting their findings around and presenting false information as fact.
After the war starts, Joe Wilson writes an op-ed piece in the newspaper explaining the truth of the matter. In order to discredit him, the white house leaks the fact that Valerie is an undercover CIA agent. This ruins her career, and leads to the death of many of her operatives in Iraq.
The movie is very interesting when it is focusing on these facts. The problem is as the movie goes on, it starts focusing more and more on the Wilson's marriage and the strain that this is putting on them. If they had focused more on the facts of what happened, it would have been a better movie. I especially wanted more information on her operatives out in the field that were killed because of the white house's treasonous actions.
As the movie progresses, we see Scooter Libby questioning the CIA. As they tell him that there is no way Iraq could have WMDs, Scooter interrogates them about the possibility that they are wrong. Then comes the point where Bush announces to the country that Iraq is working on acquiring WMDs and war is inevitable. One minute the CIA is saying that they are sure Iraq has no WMDs, the next minute Bush is twisting their findings around and presenting false information as fact.
After the war starts, Joe Wilson writes an op-ed piece in the newspaper explaining the truth of the matter. In order to discredit him, the white house leaks the fact that Valerie is an undercover CIA agent. This ruins her career, and leads to the death of many of her operatives in Iraq.
The movie is very interesting when it is focusing on these facts. The problem is as the movie goes on, it starts focusing more and more on the Wilson's marriage and the strain that this is putting on them. If they had focused more on the facts of what happened, it would have been a better movie. I especially wanted more information on her operatives out in the field that were killed because of the white house's treasonous actions.
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