claudemercure

An 11-year-old orphan finds out he is a wizard, and subsequently attends wizarding school, where he learns intriguing facts about his past.

Too many scenes fall flat. From the moment Dumbledore casually walks on-screen, the magical elements are treated in a matter-of-fact manner; director Chris Columbus fails to imbue them with a sense of wonder. There are fake-looking special effects (the backgrounds during the flying scenes), as well as some good ones (the moving staircases). But the worst offender is the generic, intrusively over-active score.

Despite all the flaws, the story carries you along. Columbus tends to encourage overacting, but several of the actors here (especially Maggie Smith) apparently didn't oblige. Alan Rickman is probably the best-cast actor in the movie.

Harry finds out a maniac has escaped the wizard prison Azkaban, bent on killing him.

A darker, fast-moving installment. The reins are finally given to a real director, and the results are a dramatic improvement. Alfonso Cuaron gives the film an appealing visual style, brings the characters down to earth (with the help of the costume department – the clothes now look like they've actually been worn), while making the film's fantastical elements (the Dementors, the Whomping Willow) feel at once more real and truly magical.

It also helps that the young actors have matured to a level where they've actually begun acting. The only real flaw is that by accentuating the sense of fun, the film ends up feeling a bit slight.

Harry and his friends make their way back to Hogwarts for a final confrontation. By this point it's clear that this is no longer a children's fantasy story. The stakes are kept high by a sizable body count and heavy themes such as self-sacrifice. The film is anchored by Harry's weighty realization that he is a horcrux and that he must die. J.K. Rowling's clever final plot turns remain intact, including a moving trip through Snape's memories. Slight changes – such as having Harry and Voldemort confront each other away from everyone else – render the climax a bit less memorable than it might've been. Also, Harry's relationship to Ginny feels rather perfunctory, having barely been established in the previous films.

Entertaining comedy/drama/fantasy has a lot to keep you busy (and excellent special effects), but doesn't measure up to its epic pretensions. It would've benefited from sticking to comedy and eschewing sentiment. Instead it pushes every button imaginable to jerk a reaction out of the viewer, and tries to dictate your emotions with a pushy music score. The movie lapses into silliness at times, and is self-indulgent for the last hour. Director Robert Zemeckis attempts to evoke each era by illustrating its clichés and by scoring it to a procession of over-familiar songs that serve as lazy, embarrassingly obvious signifiers of their times (Sweet Home Alabama, Hound Dog, Blowin' in the Wind, California Dreamin', For What it's Worth, On the Road Again, Mrs. Robinson, etc.). I love a lot of those songs, but they've become clichés themselves by now. Tom Hanks is funny and convincing in the title role, but Forrest is too much of an invincible saint to be very interesting.

A young girl watches her father and brother get killed in a boating accident (or does she?). Eight years later she is sent away to a summer camp with a suddenly high fatality rate.

The plot borrows elements from Friday the 13th, but this slasher pic is superior in every way. There isn't really any suspense, but the story is fun and compelling, the visuals have a sense of style, the killings are creative, and the movie ends with a properly shocking image.

Karen Fields and Desiree Gould go over the top in their roles as, respectively, a slut and a nutty aunt, but aside from them, the acting isn't bad at all. The high camp factor is icing on the cake.

Ten directors make short films based on their favourite operatic arias. Lots of pretty pictures, but most of the segments are either pointless, senseless, or dull. Exceptions: the contributions of Jarman, Russell, Sturridge, and Temple.

I took very brief notes on each: "Un ballo in maschera": dull, clumsy, amateurish-looking and incoherent. D- "La virgine degli angeli": weird, dream-like story works; good cinematography. A- "Armide": weird and seemingly pointless, though not boring and vaguely artistic. B- "Rigoletto": this funny segment tells the most straightforward story. A- "Die tote Stadt": pointless, uneventful pretty pictures. D+ "Les Boréades": pointless incoherence. D "Liebestod": baffling sex and death story with pretty pictures. C- "Nessun dorma": clever, disturbing abstract art. B+ "Depuis le jour": somewhat effective. B "I pagliacci": slightly affecting opera scene is too simple. C+

A submarine crew investigates a mysterious underwater accident and come to believe they may be dealing with aliens.

Unfocused but always compelling, at times moving, adventure/fantasy takes a while to get going, but it has likable characters and suspenseful scenes (including a harrowing near-drowning). Beautiful effects animate the aliens, which are without much point. They don't fit or do anything instrumental to the plot.

They are given more purpose in the expanded version, which benefits from added exposition but suffers from overliteralization of the film's message, conveyed in the hopelessly heavy-handed final plot turn.

Entertaining, engrossing, handsomely mounted mini-series based on Stephen King's novel has some scares, some stylish images, and some moments of depth. The first half of part 4 is especially potent and breathlessly paced. But in abridging his story, King made some bad choices, leaving in things that don't translate well to a visual medium (the series bogs down in part 3) and removing too much narrative glue. Also, the pushy score gets cloyingly folksy in the second half of the series, and the climax is a bit mucked up by a very literal "hand of God".

Apart from a rather monotone Molly Ringwald (as Fran Goldsmith), an insufferable Peter Van Norden (his Ralph Brentner and Joe (Billy L. Sullivan) should've been left right out of the script), and some sub-par bit players (including King himself), the cast does a great job. Gary Sinese is solid as Stu Redman. Jamey Sheridan does exceedingly well in a difficult role; he captures Randall Flagg's charm as well as his creepy glee, and he projects intensity and an appropriately larger-than-life presence without going over the top. (The special effects transforming him into a demon were a very bad idea. He was doing fine creeping us out without them; they turned his character into a cartoon.) Laura San Giacomo is perfectly cast as Nadine Cross; she is vivid and mesmerizing as a damned woman. Ruby Dee actually gives Mother Abigail more depth than King did. Corin Nemec has obviously read the novel, and he adds shades to Harold Lauder that were absent from the script. The character of Larry Underwood loses quite a bit of dimension from page to screen, but Adam Storke gives it a good shot. Miguel Ferrer makes Lloyd Henreid memorable. Matt Frewer makes an entertaining nutcase. Shawnee Smith is vivid as a creepy sex bomb. Ed Harris and Kathy Bates manage to give full performances with very small roles. Surprisingly enough, out of the cast, it is Rob Lowe's interpretation of his character (Nick Andros) that comes closest to his book counterpart.

Uninvolving, sometimes chilling horror film has some shocks, and some powerful, unsettling images and sequences.

The book this is based on is one of my favourites, but my problem with this adaptation isn't that it isn't faithful enough. Rather, it's the fact that the relationships are not believable, the script is awkward, and the dialogue trite.

Expressionless Shelley Duvall is a terrible actress and Jack Nicholson is badly cast (he fails to play a regular guy, which is what's needed at the beginning of the film). Danny Lloyd does a great job, however.

The build-up to the climax is inadequate (though the ending does have some suspense). It looks as though Kubrick could have done something great with this, but he never gets a complete handle on the genre.

In Nazi-occupied France, a group of soldiers make it their mission to kill Nazis. Meanwhile, a Jewish-French cinema owner concocts a plan of revenge.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino sticks to his usual combo of gore, humour, clever dialogue, and grace notes of actual human emotion. But he departs from it by employing a linear narrative structure. Also, for the first time, he doesn't seem to be paying homage to a particular film genre. And though the dialogue stands out, it's considerably less showy than it's been in his previous films. The speeches don't sound so much like speeches.

There are many scenes of expertly orchestrated tension, and the movie is juicy entertainment (thanks in part to Christoph Waltz's nuanced, committed performance as the main villain). But in the end, there is a sense that this was much ado about very little, which means the movie will probably have low repeatability value. All of Tarantino's movies are cartoonish on some level, but in this case his touch may have been too light to give Basterds longevity.

Coming out of rehab to attend her sister's wedding, a woman ends up opening up old family wounds.

From what I've read, this is very much a love-it or hate-it movie. It bored some people and irritated others, and I can see why. Those who found much of it dull are probably used to more conventional Hollywood films that use less subtle methods to grab their attention. Those who were annoyed simply lacked the sense of empathy the film shows towards its characters. Me, I found it engrossing and immensely moving, and the main reason is that it's about family. Even though it wasn't mine, I could relate to the way the characters behaved. It helps that the actors - particularly Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Bill Irwin - turn in very real performances.

In this cross between Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and A Clockwork Orange, two insolent young psychopaths torment a vacationing family.

It was hard to organize my thoughts on this movie, never mind rating it. As a thriller, this is a tense, well-acted, and relentless experience, marred only by a contrived sequence two-thirds through in which characters behave in unbelievably stupid fashion. However, said sequence is preceded by an incredibly effective ten-minute take. Unusually lengthy takes are often deemed self-indulgent, but this one is anything but.

As an ideological statement, though, this film is a failure. And there is no doubt that writer-director Michael Haneke is trying to make a statement. By having one of the psychos address the camera a few times, saying things to the effect that they have to give the viewers their money's worth, Haneke is essentially wagging his finger at anyone who has ever enjoyed the portrayal of violence in a film. This theme is certainly open to debate, but the problem is that Haneke expresses it in such a condescending way. His harrowing treatment of violence already serves as an excellent counterpoint to other films that glamorize it. There was no need to then leave viewers feeling as though they'd just been lectured by a stern parent.

The last time a filmmaker made me angry, it was when I saw Independence Day, and it was for the same reason. In both cases, the writer and the director display contempt by assuming their audiences are idiots. My anger didn't really ignite, though, until I watched a short interview with Haneke on the DVD. It made me never want to see another one of his films. The man is disgustingly full of himself.

So why the relatively high rating? Because as pretentious and self-important as Haneke is, he is also very talented. The movie is very effective on an emotional level, and it's possible to watch it while ignoring the director's wrong-headed decisions.

In an alternate version of the mid-eighties where Nixon is serving a third term, costumed heroes are outlawed, but they must unite to fight an oncoming threat. That's a shabby outline, but it's hard to summarize this plot. I read the comic book this is based on, and the adaptation turned out pretty much exactly as I expected: faithful but lacking most of the book's more subtle shadings.

Watchmen is one of those things people have long said couldn't be filmed. They were wrong, and this is about as good a job as anyone could be expected to do. But it still left me unsatisfied. It's certainly entertaining, and the movie gets the characters right (especially my favourite, Rorschach, thanks in large part to actor Jackie Earle Haley). The book is dark, moody, and ambiguous whereas this is a loud and boisterous action film. One of the main problems is that it makes every character "cool", which takes away some of the depth found in the book. It also fails to provide a proper build-up to the reveal of the "villain"'s plan (which has been changed from the book to something rather mundane). And the fight scenes are generically shot. Director Zack Snyder really needs to lose his distracting affectation of switching from slow motion to regular speed.

A birthday party among gay friends turns into a harrowing emotional experience. Writer Mart Crowley was obviously influenced by Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf - a deeper, funnier, and more disturbing play and film.

The jokes in The Boys In The Band mostly fall flat, because it's so obvious they were written. The drama is much more effective. Hank and Larry have a realistically complex relationship, and their turn at the game of "telephone" is the film's most moving scene. And the prototypically acid-witted Harold could easily have been a caricature, but somehow Leonard Frey makes every bon mot and theatrical gesture come from a genuine place.

Speaking of theatre, I rarely forgot that this film was based on a play, but that didn't prevent it from being engaging. Director William Friedkin is in large part responsible for this. His judicious decisions throughout - from well-chosen reaction shots to a good sense of dramatic timing - facilitate the viewer's emotional involvement.

The Boys In The Band has been controversial among the gay community for portraying gay men as psychological disasters. I think this criticism is invalid. First, only one character (Michael) is a true mess. The problems of the others are more ordinary in nature. Second, it happens to be true that being gay is damaging, because from birth, we are taught that homosexuality is wrong. Even if no one says that in so many words, homophobia is impossible to avoid. It's been deemed acceptable behaviour for so long that it's become subtextual in everyday life. This leads to the self-loathing depicted in the movie, and to its too-baldly stated message: "If only we could just not hate ourselves quite so very much."

Jodie Foster purchases a fancy new home, only to have thieves break in on her first night there. Luckily, the place comes equipped with an impenetrable "panic room" where she and her daughter can hide until the bad men go away. Of course, things don't end up being this straightforward.

The actors do a great job, there is much suspense to be had, and much pleasure to be derived from the resourcefulness of the characters. There are also some clumsily handled contrivances to be dealt with, and a camera with attention deficit disorder. Maybe director David Fincher was trying to make up for the fact that the action takes place in a restricted space, or maybe he had some visual tics left over from Fight Club. Whatever the case, there is no excuse for pointless, distracting, nakedly pretentious shots such as the one in which the camera appears to pass through the handle of a coffee pot.

John Cusack plays an author whose specialty is debunking supposedly haunted locales. In this movie he tackles a hotel room, which he finds out really is, in the words of manager Sam Jackson, "an evil f***ing room". 1408 starts off on the right foot, using the skeptical Cusack as a surrogate for the viewer. And the writers and director do manage to create a few scary moments early on, but the movie is plagued by two main problems. First, the story is saddled with some heavy-handed "lessons". Second, and even more damaging, the movie is completely lacking in interior logic. The tricks the room deploys against Cusack are rather random, too often reliant on cheap shock value, and sometimes just plain laughable (It's too warm! It's too cold!! The sprinklers are going off!!! The mini-bar is empty! Oh, the horror!). And the way Cusack vanquishes the room is lame: he simply burns it down. Why would that even work on a supernatural room? Then we get the underwhelming final scene, when Cusack's ex-wife hears their dead daughter's voice on his tape recorder.

From what I've read, the director's cut at least has a better ending, with Cusack dying in the fire he sets. Jackson later sees an apparition that implies Cusack and his daughter are reunited.

In the last shot of the theatrical preview for this movie, we see Mulder and Scully turn around to stare at something we assume is very significant. Turns out it's merely a pedestrian reaction shot. And as such, it represents I Want To Believe very well.

This movie gets pretty much everything wrong. First off, it assumes that people watching it have not only seen, but also remember the weak last few seasons of the show. {WHAT FOLLOWS WOULDN'T BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER BY THE FILM'S DIRECTOR, SINCE HE SEEMS TO ASSUME WE ALREADY KNOW THIS} I had no recollection of the two leads ending up romantically involved, which is an incredibly wrong-headed development. Mulder and Scully's platonic partnership was the show's strongest building block. Seeing them in bed together came as a "what the f--k?" moment and felt as wrong as incest. {END MILD, INSIGNIFICANT SPOILER} Then there's the impression that series creator Chris Carter (who wrote and directed this movie), Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny have all forgotten not only who these characters are, but what the show was about.

The actors call each other by their characters' names, but it feels like a bad impersonation. The biggest problem might be the story, though, which needed to feel like more than just an afterthought, a contrivance to get our duo to investigate spooky goings-on. Speaking of which, the supernatural plays a surprisingly tiny part; apparently, Carter even forgot the genre of his TV show. The main plot feels too mundane (at least until its secrets are revealed at the end, which does provide a few welcome horror thrills). There is an entire pointless subplot devoted to a dilemma faced by Scully at the hospital where she works. The film's subtitle is repeated to eye-rolling effect every time. A recurring character from the show makes an appearance but is given nothing to do. Then Duchovny spouts a few pseudo-profundities, and the whole mess mercifully ends.

I remember first hearing rumours about a new Indiana Jones movie a few years ago and wondering what the point was. I felt they had already managed to squeeze two good movies out of it (Temple of Doom sucks), and that there wasn't anything left to milk.

Now, the filmmakers have proved me right. To watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Interminable Title is to constantly be reminded that there is no reason for it to exist. Millionaires Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford can't possibly have done it for the money, so I assume they were hoping to recreate the spirit of fun of the first movie. And that's the main problem with this film (and with many sequels): if you try to copy an original movie, you're sure to lose something in the process. Indeed, Indiana Jones and the Case of Acute Sequelitis suffers from that "not so fresh" feeling. As a result, there is no suspense. The third film in the series compensated for its sequelness by having a witty script and juicy father-son dynamics (it helped that Sean Connery was perfectly cast as Indy's father). But the script here is sorely lacking in wit. Ford is game, as are Cate Blanchett (cast as the villain) and the still-radiant Karen Allen (returning from the first movie). But none of them are given anything of interest to do. The story is uninvolving, and the plotting muddy.

To its credit, the film is never boring, and contains one moment and one scene worthy of the first film. Best moment: the magnetized lamps in the warehouse tilting in unison. Best scene: those creepy red ants.

Describe a movie using the word "eerie", and you've basically got me hooked. So I had been meaning to see this one for a while. Fortunately, it didn't disappoint. The plot: a bunch of college girls in 1900 go on a picnic, and four go missing. Though the pace is the very definition of slow, this bare string of a plot held my interest for 107 minutes, because narrative is not the point at all here - mood is. Director Peter Weir deploys sound design that would do David Lynch proud, and a surprising assurance for a novice. He exploits the mystery of nature to create some downright creepy moments (the same way the directors of The Blair Witch Project would 24 years later).

Stay away from this one if you have no attention span, or if you need a movie to provide you with closure. Or if you're one of those retards who complained that there was no witch in The Blair Witch Project.

A teenage kung fu fan magically (and against his will) gets to go on his own kung fu adventure. This could have been a lot worse. The kid is surprisingly tolerable (it helps that he takes a lot of abuse), there are some pretty good fights, and the story, a Karate Kid-Star Wars mash-up, kept me fairly interested, if not invested.

This is the first film to feature martial arts movie stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li together. I should point out that I've never seen any of the latter's films, and the only thing I've seen Chan in is Around The World In 80 Days. But I imagine their fans must be pretty disappointed this is their first joint venture. For one thing, the kid is the main character, and the movie is geared at his age group, so not much edge is allowed. Also, though the fights were choreographed by a master (Woo-ping Yuen, who's worked on the Kill Bill and Matrix films), they were filmed by a man who usually directs kiddie fare. The result is that you'll feel like you're watching a good fight, whereas in the hands of a director like Quentin Tarantino, you forget you're watching a movie. Not to mention illogical moments that have the bad guys hover, waiting for the hero to dispatch an opponent before moving in. The movie as a whole needed a higher dose of internal logic to make the audience give a crap about what happened on screen. For example, the kid becomes a skilled martial artist in the space of a couple of weeks. Also, a teenage girl character serves rather obviously as nothing more than a plot appendage to balance out the largely male and adult cast.

So, not horrible, but kind of a waste of time.

Stephen King hasn't had much luck at the movies. I think the main reason is that the movie people usually get distracted by the flashy scary stuff in his stories, and entirely miss the careful characterization that makes readers care about what happens.

They didn't forget about it this time, though. I wouldn't call myself a Frank Darabont fan (director of two other King-based films – Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile). The first two times, he took solid stories and rendered them mushy and cliché-ridden (I realize I won't make a lot of friends around these parts with that statement). The Mist isn't perfect, but it doesn't suffer from those flaws. For most of its running time, it's an excellent horror movie – intense, and grounded by realistic performances and dialogue. (Plus some cool creatures.) But it does stumble at least twice. The first time occurs when a bunch of characters have a conversation the purpose of which is to tell the audience about the movie's subtext. Thanks, Frank. I mean, we are idiots, after all.

But the biggest problem is the misguided ending (what follows discusses tone but doesn't spoil specific plot points). I don't care that Darabont deviated from the original story (I'm not a stickler for "faithfulness"), but what he comes up with fails on multiple levels. The final moment of Twilight Zone-style heavy-handed irony is bad enough. But just before that, Darabont gives us a scenario that strains credibility so badly (the level of the characters' despair does not remotely justify their actions) that it becomes obvious it was contrived purely for shock value. Adding insult to injury, he seems to think he can pass off his cheap shock ending as something deep simply by slathering Dead Can Dance's portentous "The Host of Seraphim" all over the tail end of the soundtrack (it's a great tune, but out of place here). Instead, it only serves to expose the pretensions of someone who would try to infuse a giant-bug movie with unearned depth.

So, this is a very good scary movie... if you tune out in time.

This is a first: a Harry Potter movie that bests its source. The first, second, and fourth movies were okay at best, and the third one was as good as the book. But book 5 is the weakest of the bunch, and the filmmakers have done what I was hoping they would do - distill it. In the book, Harry's life reaches new levels of miserableness, and he turns into an irritating teenager. Making matters worse for the reader is the fact that the book sorely needs editing; it takes forever to get to Hogwarts. The book is filled with so much unpleasantness that it's a chore to trudge through. Plus, it introduces the series' most annoyingly cutesy secondary character, Tonks.

The movie fixes all that. It looks great and is fast-paced, breezing through the opening pre-school scenes; Harry remains testy, but not overwhelmingly so; and Tonks is now a fun addition. The film also makes the Dumbledore's Army scenes more dynamic and retains the essence of two great new characters, spacey Luna Lovegood and insidious evil incarnate Dolores Umbridge. At the same time, this one suffers from an ailment that plagued its predecessors as well: in attempting to stuff the plot into a 140-minute movie, some depth is inevitably lost. Books 4 to 7 all need to be three-hour epics.

For a silly horror movie, my expectations for this were a bit high. I read the book six months prior to seeing the movie, and I loved it. The teaser for the movie kicked ass. And I read some material on the website that made it sound like the filmmakers tried hard to create a good adaptation. They did try, but it wasn't enough.

Finally watching the movie was an odd experience, because my hopes for it and my memory of the book kind of got tangled up with what I was actually watching. After giving it some thought, though, I have to say I'm a little disappointed.

The story concerns a group of tourists in Mexico who decide to check out some ruins. Horror ensues. The cinematography is good, the visual effects are smartly deployed, the score is effective, the acting is good. I think the problem lies in the script and the direction. The opening scenes that serve to introduce the characters are rushed. The whole movie feels like "this happened, and then this happened", allowing no room for us to care much about the characters. And that is deadly for a story in which bad things happen to everyone. To be properly paced, the movie needed to be about twenty minutes longer.

That being said, there are several effective scenes of suspense and shock.

This is the third movie in a row that Gus Van Sant has directed in a style that is guaranteed to test the patience of many. The first two were Gerry and Elephant. All three movies feature very long takes in which nothing (in the conventional movie narrative sense) happens (also, all three happen to center around death). But if you allow yourself to get used to the unconventional approach, it yields rewards, the main one being that these films are very effective at putting you in their respective moment. The first two had stronger tools to pull you in, though. Gerry had its stunningly visualized existential terrain, and Elephant, a tangible mood of doom.

Here, though, we have the last days in the life of rock star Blake, based on Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide. Blake spends the film's 97 minutes mumbling, ambling, avoiding people, making Kraft Dinner, and sometimes playing music. If you've ever been depressed, it will help you appreciate the movie, which does an excellent job of dramatizing the disease... without drama. I have to admit I was bored at times. But one scene in particular roused me, at the halfway point - Blake playing music using several instruments. We watch this in a very slow reverse tracking shot, from outside, through the window. As we keep drawing farther back, Blake's music becomes noisier and less significant at the same time. It's a neat visual metaphor for the disparity between what goes on in our heads and the way people perceive us.

I'm glad I saw this movie, but I'd only recommend it to very patient, open-minded viewers.

It appears that in the last few years, Will Smith has grown up. It's done wonders for his acting. There are a few moments of levity in I Am Legend, but nothing like the non-stop stream of bad jokes that helped make Independence Day so atrocious. Mr. Smith has learned to bring gravity and vulnerability to a role when it is required. He expresses several states of mind here with skill.

But I think big-budget action/science-fiction movies have grown up too. After all, Will didn't write his own quips in his previous blockbuster movies, and his directors likely encouraged him to ham it up. The nineties are rife with movies that don't respect their audience's intelligence. The Fifth Element, Alien Resurrection, The Rock, and Armageddon are a few others which spring to mind, movies that undercut their own suspense by drowning it with idiotic jokes.

Anyway, this movie is an example of the darker breed of sci-fi film that has emerged since. Most of humanity has been wiped out. All that seems to be left is Will Smith, and some scary humanoid creatures. The post-apocalyptic world is vividly realized (there are weeds growing through cracks in the middle of downtown New York streets), and it truly feels like Smith is the last man on Earth. The scenes of suspense are intense. If you enjoy science fiction tinged with horror, I recommend this.