Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

First, a note about the trailer for 2012: not even Chiwetel Ejiofor's name on the poster will put my butt in a seat for that one. Second, a note about the following comments: I assume that, by now, you know who the established characters are. Consequently, I'll not try to bring you up to speed.
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE begins with Harry Potter, bloody and exhausted, facing a media onslaught in the aftermath of the battle of the Ministry of Magic. Professor Dumbledore puts his arm around the boy, shepherds him away.

And then we're off, swooping through London with the Death Eaters, in a dazzling and frightening sequence that sets our hearts to racing even as it defines the stakes of the coming war between the forces of Voldemort and Dumbledore.

Back to Harry now, on a personal level as he navigates the currents of late adolescence and learns that, yes, he's pretty good at flirting, too. But Dumbledore appears and there's work to do.

The rest of the film is about a number of things, the story not least among them (Um, Spoiler Alert: Voldemort's up to something and it's up to Harry and friends to stop him.). And that's fine - it's a perfectly good story. But what makes the film worth watching, what makes it race right by, is the way it's also about finding oneself both in big and small ways, about the immediate pain of adolescence and the continuing process of growing into onesself.

Of course, there are a number of movies that address similar themes, and many do it well. What makes HPHBP unique is that it's a Harry Potter movie, a movie that lets us wander around fiction's most marvelous real estate and dazzles us with magic that ranges from mundane to whimsical to downright epic. Additionally, it lets us wander around with a group of actors we've come to think of as our own nieces and nephews; cute kids who are growing up all too fast, even as they make us proud. It supports these young actors with brilliant adults, including at least one who Can Do No Wrong. And it revels in its composition, unafraid to make the fantastical fantastic.

For these reasons and many more, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is a flat-out great time at the movies. This one is worth catching on the big screen.

W.

W bounced on and off my Netflix queue a number of times. I knew that Oliver Stone is a major director, but I didn't particularly care to sit for a two-hour tomatofest directed at our 43rd president

Yep, I expected a hatchet job, and some blademarks are clearly visible: Dick Cheney's Strangelove moment in the War Room, the mannequin that stood in for Condi Rice. But the movie got at what I perceive to be the fundamental nature of its subject: a good man out of his depth. Josh Brolin was phenomenal, making us believe in his character at every step in his journey, and taking all those Bushisms and weaving them into the natural language of a guy whose brain often outpaces his mouth.

While watching the film, I wondered why it needed to be made in 2008. I think there's a difference between a sitting president and and an alumnus, no matter how recent. As the Obama team has learned with the lack of traction of its "blame Bush" public strategy, unless the last guy in the job was a towering figure, he may as well be Jim Garfield. W was urgent during 43's presidency because then, he formed a member of our perceived "circle," those people in our daily lives who have the greatest impact on us. Now, he's like a member of that circle who has since moved away. He's a person in whom we're still interested, but that interest lacks the immediacy it once had.

Immediacy aside, W is still a film worth watching. It's a take on a man and a time by a master filmmaker with a surprising point of view. It looks great, most of the supporting cast is terrific, and it was over before I knew it.

Beyond Hypothermia

BEYOND HYPOTHERMIA is a bad, bad film.

Wu Chien-lien is an assassin who falls in love, wants to change, but must complete one … last … job. Ching Wan Lau is the love interest. Complications ensue. Which is fine, really, and has served as a rough outline for films ranging from ghastly (NAKED WEAPON) to serviceable (BANGKOK DANGEROUS) to pretty doggone good (SO CLOSE). A movie like this isn’t about the setup. It’s about the delivery.

The delivery here is all wrong. BEYOND HYPOTHERMIA gives us no reason to care about its assassin (Sorry, honey. Being good looking just isn’t enough when you kill people for a living.), its love interest (Buddy, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.), or especially its poncy villain (complete with silly hair) who is supposed to provide the suspense and danger. The dialogue is stilted, the photography and editing elementary at best, and the stuntwork uninspired. Though this film was a product of the 1990s glory years of Hong Kong action, it lacks the style and creativity that mark the period.

When a film fails to engage us on any level, when it doesn’t tell an interesting story or give us interesting characters or even look particularly good, there’s only one word to describe it. That word is horrible.

That word applies to BEYOND HYPOTHERMIA. What a waste.

Underworld

I'm not UNDERWORLD's target audience, really. I'm not a gun, leather, or goth fetishist. In my action pictures, I like to know who's shooting whom, and why. And I hate having to constantly adjust the volume on my headphones so I can hear the dialogue one minute without blasting out my eardrums through gunfire and explosion the next. But I liked it anyway.

I mean, c'mon, Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen hamming it up in a vampires vs. werewolves movie? Y'know, the kind of movie in which everyone has machine guns but the big battles are all hand to hand? The kind where the bad guy is named Kraven and everyone's a fashion model who spends a minimum of three hours in the gym every single day? How can that not, at least at some level, speak to you? What, you don't like wirework? You don't like contact lenses? You don't like extremely loud and extremely bad rock music? You must like it when the good guy gets thrown through a wall and falls to a puddle below, and the masonry that hits the water with him floats. No? What's wrong with you?

Well, I thought it was silly fun, just the thing to pass the time while stuck in an airport lounge waiting for the weather to clear. Sometimes, that's all that's required.

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky doesn’t make bad movies.

PI, the feature that brought him to my attention, was odd and engaging and unforgettable. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, his followup, ranks among the best movies I never want to see again. THE FOUNTAIN is one of only two DVDs I purchased that year.

THE WRESTLER, Aronofsky’s latest, does everything that movies are supposed to do. It introduces me to people and places that exist entirely outside of my experience and makes me care about them. Then it builds on that foundation to tell me a story that captures my imagination even as it breaks my heart.

In the film, Mickey Rourke plays “Ram” Robinson, a ‘roided out wrestling superstar who is well past his prime. Ram’s a decent guy, and he loves wrestling. But what do you do when the thing you love falls out of love with you?

This material could be an after school special or a DTV movie, but Aronofsky uses it to meditate on love and mortality and even honor, in a way. He evokes memorable and truthful performances, and his empathy for his people and their lives resonates with us well after the credits roll. In this director, we’re encountering a serious talent, a guy whose movies are worth seeking out. THE WRESTLER is a fine addition to his resume, and I recommend it without reservation.

TheDogs of Up, by Ian Alex Ellermann

My dad didn't mention the dogs in his review o' UP. But weren't the dogs awesome?!!? With mechanical collars that allowed them to speak English words?! C'mon, isn't that cool?

The dogs really helped boost UP to a good movie. Weren't the dogs awesome when some, maybe 3, were in planes?!!?

So I guess I did a short review, but remember: this is by a kid. Wait! Wait! Before I'm finished, wasn't it cool to hear the dog's voices through the collars and hear what they were thinking? My dad liked the dogs, too, but I think he should have mentioned them in his review.

The Hangover

THE HANGOVER is thin, but I laughed all the way through it. It isn't the best comedy I've seen so far this year, but it meets its goals.

Here's the setup: it's the day of the wedding. The best man; rumpled, bleeding, and standing in the middle of the desert; calls the bride and tells her, "We screwed up. We can't find Doug. I don't think the wedding's going to happen." We rewind to the beginning of the road trip, with four guys in a car on their way to Vegas for Doug's bachelor party, and away we go.

It's a fine setup for a movie, but so much depends on how far the filmmakers are willing to go to get the laugh. Fortunately, they're willing to go as far as necessary, piling the ridiculous on to the disgusting on to the witty on to the sweet. Here's a movie with legitimate comic surprises, well-delivered dialogue, and sight gags that work in themselves and as part of the larger narrative.

So I laughed, laughed, and laughed some more. But I already feel the movie slipping away. Unlike ROLE MODELS, the funniest thing I've seen in recent memory, it didn't have anything in it to hook me, to hang on to my imagination as I left the theater. The film is the cinematic equivalent of ice cream: fun while it lasts, but quickly forgotten.

Still, I can live with that. As long as you're in the theater, THE HANGOVER is a good time. That's good enough for me.

JCVD

JCVD is one weird picture. I like it.

In JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself, or a dramatically enhanced version of himself. His career is going nowhere: he just lost a part he didn’t want to Steven Seagal. His personal life is a shambles: he just lost a custody battle. His finances are ruined: he just bounced a check and he can’t get his plastic to work. So he does what anyone might do. He goes home to Brussels and goes to a bank to withdraw some of the money he knows is there. Problem is, he walks into a bank robbery.

There’s a passage in I Am Jackie Chan in which Jackie talks about a time when the studio at which he was filming got shaken down by the local mob. He was walking to work and was just outside the studio’s gate when three thugs approached with menace in their eyes. Jackie ran. Why? Because there’s a difference between stuntmen and thugs. Thugs can actually hurt you.

The guys robbing this bank are (in the context of the film, of course) real thugs with real guns that can actually kill people. Van Damme is quickly subdued and put with the other unfortunate hostages who happened to be around that day. Then the robbers realize they have a quite a bargaining chip, even a potential fall guy, and resolve to exploit him as best they can.

And there’s your movie. Van Damme is stripped of his bravado, his freedom, his remaining dignity. The film is a merciless flagellation of its star’s screen persona, offscreen missteps, and even purpose in life. It’s the most courageous thing Van Damme has ever done, requiring a level of dedication and honesty to which he may never before have subjected himself. And even if it isn’t entirely honest, even if it does wear a veil of fiction, what self-appraisal doesn’t?

JCVD didn’t turn me into a Van Damme fan: the guy makes DTV action pictures that don’t capture my imagination any more. But it did alert me to the possibility that there’s more to this guy than I thought. I look forward to his next serious picture. I hope he gets the chance to make one.