Dir. David Yates. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson Hogwarts deserves better than the ending it’s given. In the book as well, the Battle of Hogwarts is a sort of crumpled, bloodstained love letter to the school where the majority of this story has taken place. In some ways that’s even more true in… Read More Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)
Dir. David Yates. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint What Half-Blood Prince has in bunches, as much as any Potter movie with the possible exception of Goblet of Fire, is humor. If this is one of the Potter movies you cape for, then how funny it can be has to play a significant role. There’s some good… Read More Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Dir. David Yates. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon Chris Columbus’ versions of Harry Potter were loving if long-winded, Alfonso Cuaron’s…I hate using this word, but it really was disruptive…and remarkable, and Mike Newell’s clean and effective. If those are all true, then David Yates’ versions are by and large ham-fisted. Yates’ four adaptations… Read More Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Dir. Mike Newell. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint The Potter books total over a million words. The movies come to nearly twenty hours. There are any number of scenes that must have been difficult to adapt for myriad reasons, but the absolute most difficult scene to turn from words to images is the… Read More Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Dir. Alfonso Cuaron. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson As a lad, I was so certain that the job of a filmmaker was to be as faithful as possible to the material s/he adapted. I have been wised up significantly since then, but I have to confess that because of that particular foible, I… Read More Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Ryan Philippe In retrospect, it was a mistake to make Gosford Park a murder mystery. What makes Nashville and Short Cuts effective is the unbelievably patient burn among small pockets of people which culminates in an event which no person can ignore. In Short Cuts, it’s the earthquake that no one can escape from;… Read More Gosford Park (2001)
Seeing Things Secondhand 