Or, You-Know-Who and the Bird Bunch. I have to confess right away that I’m really not a Harry Potter fan. The more hype the books got, the more determined I was never to read them. And I still haven’t, though from what I hear, that’s just as well here. The books keep getting thicker, but this movie is the shortest yet — though at two hours, eighteen minutes, ‘short’ is purely relative. The point is, I don’t really know the whole Hogwart’s mythos, and could never survive a Harry Potter trivia contest. I’m just trying to look at these as movies, without the hype.
That can’t be done, of course. It’s all hype. It isn’t such a bad movie in spite of that, though. Strangely, the effects are iffy in places — with all the money they have to throw at this film, everything should look more real than the person sitting in the next row, but sometimes it doesn’t. And I can’t figure out why they bother to have Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort — with all that makeup on him, it could be nearly anyone playing the part, and the poor guy’s just wasted. Maybe they should have hired someone cheaper and spent that extra money on effects.
Anyway, the kids have grown, and the problems are darker. Voldemort is alive and up to no good, but the Ministry of Magic (led by Robert Hardy as Cornelius Fudge — Robert always seems to end up as bad guys these days) is doing its best to hide the truth and make sure no one believes poor Harry. Imelda Staunton, as the scenery-chewing Dolores Umbridge (Rowling should have just given in and spelled it ‘umbrage’) is sent to crack down on Dumbledore’s treasonous scheme to take over said Ministry by instituting a series of ‘reforms’ at Hogwart’s to keep the kids in line. One of them states that boys and girls can’t ever be within eight inches of each other, which you know was a bad move. If anything’s going to make teenagers rebel, it’s a rule like that.
And rebel they do. Harry, Hermione, and Ron have learned about the grownups organization, the Order of the Phoenix, and now they’ve formed their own — a (co-ed) group of students learning all the magics that Umbridge has tried to suppress, and incidentally getting a lot closer than eight inches in the process. This secret school part is pretty cool, actually.
Speaking of cool, though, I think I’ve figured out the secret of the Harry Potter success, at least when it comes to the movies. I think a big part of the reason why I liked this movie as much as I did is because it reminded me so much of other movies. Not other HP movies, just movies in general, and a few books for good measure.

Pink = Evil

Umbridge, for instance, is a classic Stepford Wife. She’s always wearing pink and smiling even when she’s doing something terrible, and looks like a moving waxwork doll up until the end when she finally gets dirty and rumpled. (It should, by the way, be a crime to use as much pink as she does. Painting the stone walls of a castle pink is just wrong.) The Ministry’s whole disinformation campaign is completely 1984. The repressive school? Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Early on, as Harry and Mr. Weasley take a surreal little trip through the Ministry building, it seems a lot like a Monty Python sketch, right down to random bursts of flame. They even go a little Matrix-y, which was kind of a shock. I’m not kidding. There’s this hallway covered with black, shiny marble-like tiles, and they have a huge battle there that’s a lot like the huge gun battle in The Matrix that gave me one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. Only with magic instead of bullets, of course.
So how can it not be popular? There’s something for everyone! I just can’t decide if they meant to imitate all this stuff, if it was all accidental, or if I’m reading too much into it. It also helps that so many popular actors are back, too, of course — Emma Thompson is there, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham-Carter, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, and now I have to stop before I get carpal tunnel. You’ll recognize nearly everyone, that’s the point.
Of course the three kids are all back. Daniel Radcliffe is turning into a pretty good actor, and so is Rupert Grint. I never really liked Ron before, but he’s starting to grow on me. Emma Watson… not such a good actor in this one, I thought, but not too bad. She did the lighter stuff fine, the scenes where it’s camaraderie among the friends, but she seemed very stiff on the more serious lines. And the films are definitely getting more serious. The fights are scarier, the monsters are nastier, and Helena Bonham-Carter totally channels her performance in Corpse Bride to look really creepy. The giant spiders are still the creepiest — I forget what movie that was, because they’ve all blurred together — but this one has its moments. They borrow a little from The Mummy, too, with the bad guys turning into whirlwinds of sand. Wow, maybe I am reading too much into this…
Okay, no more parallels, just a ranking: three and a half idols. Not suitable for the younger crowd, and please don’t announce the names of all characters and creatures as they appear, like the woman behind me did. The important thing is that it’s safe for the non-rabid-Potter-fans like me, and entertaining even if you don’t know the name of Dumbledore’s best friend’s second cousin’s neighbor, who once invented a really cool spell.

Or, Die Hard times 4, which is what I hear some are calling it. It’s been a while since I saw any of the first three, but it’s entirely possible that more stuff was destroyed in this one than in all those three put together. I understand that audiences get jaded, and you need to add more thrills, but wow.
Still, it actually isn’t just a blow-things-up movie; there is a plot, and a decent one, though it will feed any paranoiac’s wildest fantasies. It’s based on an article called “A Farewell to Arms”, by John Carlin, a speculative piece written for Wired magazine a decade ago. You’d never know it was based on something that old, really. The technology may grow, by leaps and bounds, but the big problem that goes with it is, in the end, the same old problem: anything anyone can make, someone else can break.
And today, most of the making and breaking involves computers. Matt Farrell is a white-hat hacker (I’m not sure that’s the current term any more, but you know what I mean) who gets pulled unwittingly into the biggest computer game of all time. He’s played by Justin Long, whose first big movie role was as Brandon, the computer-geek hero kid in Galaxy Quest (I just love that movie), so I guess things haven’t changed much for him. Except he’s a little older and cuter — I think it’s the sarcasm, which I always find attractive.
Anyway, his security algorithm is being used by Timothy Olyphant, as the big bad villain, though he seems to consider himself just another working guy who happens to have the plan — and the capability — to shut down the entire U.S. infrastructure. After getting bits of code from a group of hackers, he starts killing them all so as not to leave any loose ends — always a good plan for the evil genius — but when they go after Matt, the Bruce himself is there, and he’s been told to bring Matt in alive. Guess who wins that argument?
Matt is brought before FBI Deputy Director Bowman (Cliff Curtis, who I also reviewed in Fracture — I like him, actually, he needs more roles) who is struggling against the chaos the cyber-terrorists are causing. (Has anyone else noticed that the bad guys these days seem to speak French a lot? I’m not sure why that is, but the trend continues here…) They shut down power grids, crash the New York Stock Exchange, and give every car at every intersection in every major city a green light, all at the same time. Ouch.
The government is scrambling to control the damage and save lives, and they have no time or resources to spare, really, for going after the root of the threat. So though Bowman does what he can, there’s only one lone computer hacker and one lone New York cop to stop Big Bad and his team. Guess who wins?
The audience was really into this movie, I must say. And there were some very good lines, and some nice little unexpected bits amongst all the rather predictable mayhem. Kevin Smith (Yep, that Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Silent Bob fame) has a nice little part as one of Matt’s fellow hackers, the Warlock, which I’ll bet he had fun with. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as the Bruce’s daughter Lucy, actually gets a pretty good part, which doesn’t often happen with the hero’s dependents, and never once falls into damsel in distress mode, which was absolutely great. Though the Bruce is still the Bruce, he does need some tough youth on his side.

The Bruce gives Matt his first lesson in the fine art of Dying Hard.

I was worried that he might seem too old for the film, actually, but that didn’t happen. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t pass out at times from the sheer abuse of all those landings on concrete, the various explosions he was caught in, and of course the bullet holes, but I would have wondered that about a twenty-something. That’s just the standard movie-hero toughness. But the character has the wisdom of experience, if not the energy of youth, and it really makes for a good sort of hero overall.
So, though I don’t want to support the Hollywood tendency to assume that if one explosion is good, seventy-three must be better, I’m giving this three and a quarter idols. It still has a bit much of that sequel feel to it, but considering what fourth movies in a series are sometimes like, I’m not going to complain about that here. I have a feeling that, like Kevin Smith, everyone just tried to have fun with it, which is the best way to make the audience have fun too, I think. The only thing I didn’t have fun with was all the computers blowing up. That’s making me nervous…

I was justing finishing off a pile of fragments I had on my desktop today. Wow, some seriously dark stuff…

• A Turn for the Worse Piano, Violin, and Clarinets. Years from now – this will be classified as a “fragment”. But it is still long enough to be useful for some applications
  
• Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet Sounds like someone is leaving and feeling bad about it.
  
• Grave Matters Holy lush strings! Good background. The front and back sections are independently loopable.
  
• Simple Duet A simple piano and violin duet. Still getting used to that cursed violin. Touchy, touchy instrument, that violin is. This one isn’t so depressing as the others.
  

Yep. I went to see a horror movie. That’s spooky right there. It’s based on a Stephen King short story of the same name, which I’ve never read, because to be on the safe side, I’ve always assumed Stephen King was too scary for me. He’s even scary in real life, apparently — I once knew a guy who grew up with Stephen King, and it sounds like that whole town was seriously creepy. But I really like John Cusack, and I survived The Messengers all right, and though I try to avoid seeing reviews before picking out a film, I couldn’t help but realize just how bad Evan Almighty was. So 1408 it was.
John plays Mike Enslin, a writer who, after turning out one of those “stunning debut novels” that “heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice”, sinks into the realm of the new age section and the bargain tables, churning out book after book on hauntings: the 10 Scariest Hotels, 10 Scariest Graveyards, etc. He’s never seen a ghost, or indeed anything that really required explanation, apparently, but he gives his readers what they want — stories about strange atmospheres and eerie noises.
But he himself wallows in depression, drinking a lot (which you’d think might make him see a few things right there) and wearing his cynicism and annoyance with the world like a suit of armor. He lives like a beach bum in California, and dresses kind of like a regular bum, though I did like the baseball cap that read “Paranoia is total awareness”. It’s all to help him forget the pain of the daughter he lost. When he gets a postcard of the Dolphn Hotel in New York, telling him not to go to room 1408, it’s all just part of the job to him, another place trying to build up their business with a good ghost story.

It’s just so hard to find a good hotel room in New York these days.

Samuel L. Jackson (Gerald Olin, manager of the Dolphin) is billed in this movie also, which is actually kind of strange. He has one really good long scene with John at the beginning, before things get creepy, and then one odd little scene later, and that’s it. He’s really intense, as always, and scary in his own right as he tries to persuade John not to stay in the room, but it seems like something of a waste of Mr. Jackson’s talent. Tony Shalhoub (Men in Black and TV’s Monk — he’s from Wisconsin, just like me!) is also here, but don’t go for popcorn, or even blink hard, or you’ll miss his bit of exposition.
You know that John ends up in the room, though, in spite of Mr. Jackson’s best scares. Even a thick file folder full of pictures of all the gruesome deaths, stretching back 95 years, doesn’t dissuade him — not because he’s particularly brave, but just because he doesn’t believe in anything anymore.
This was, overall, a pretty creepy movie. But it’s more creepy in the sense of a drunk’s visions while in the grip of the DT’s, or someone having a really bad trip. It’s a tour of John’s subconscious, really, and the horror there is different than the standard horror movie stuff– it’s all more psychological horror, except for a few instances when the film lapses into slight silliness. The “Claw Hammer Maniac”, for instance, really wasn’t as scary as you might expect from the name — he made me jump, but only because he popped up out of nowhere. The really frightening things were much more subtle — mints appearing on the pillow out of nowhere, the TV blaring to life for no apparent reason, and the scariest thing of all: repeated playings of “We’ve Only Just Begun”, by the Carpenters. Yikes.
But aside from a few effects that just didn’t work out as they should have, it was pretty good. I’m giving this one three and a half idols. The film’s almost wall-to-wall John Cusack, which is fine with me — he’s a really good, low-key actor, which is what this movie needs. He plays a great cynic who suddenly finds out there’s more left in the world than he thought — not necessarily such good stuff, but at least more than he’d had before. And the moral of the movie is simple: When Samuel L. Jackdson tells you not to do something, you listen to the man. Seriously.

There are just so many movies these days to feed the inner comic geek! Strangely, I never got around to watching the first Fantastic Four movie, but I don’t think that mattered much this time. The FF was never a favorite of mine, but I’ve read enough of their comics to know what it means when “Latveria” shows up in the captions, and who always follows the Silver Surfer around, so I was pretty prepared for this sequel.
Too prepared, maybe. More than once I knew what people were going to say before they said it. I’d like to think that’s a sign of familiar characters well-written, but I think it’s more a sign of a predictable script. Still, they throw you pretty much right into the action, and you’re not likely to get bored watching.
Earth is in trouble. A strange, comet-like UFO has been spotted, and everywhere the thing goes, around the globe, bizarre things happen. The pyramids in Egypt are coated with snow. Power fails. And huge craters, 200 meters across, appear and look like they go all the way through the earth’s crust. That’s a looong way. Oh, and Reed and Sue are trying to plan a wedding in the midst of a total media circus. Obviously this crisis calls for some super-heroics.
Now, the guy playing Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is too young, but at least he can manage Reed’s super-brains. Jessica Alba, however, is totally unconvincing as a blonde, and I’m not sure why they bothered when they didn’t make her brother Johnny (Chris Evans) blond also. Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is a pretty convincing Thing, though, and most of the scenes of he and Johnny bantering are good, and very much like the comic. Other such scenes just kind of feel like they were forced into the script, and were vaguely embarrassing, but on the whole, the actors have the camaraderie down, and it was nice to see.

The Human Torch and the Silver Surfer have a little heart-to-heart in the stratosphere.

The chaos (the environmental chaos, not the wedding planning chaos) is apparently being caused by a silvery man who rides around on a silvery, shiny surfboard. Hence, the Silver Surfer. (Duh. He’s played by two people: Doug Jones, who seems to be mainly a bit player and voice actor, and Laurence Fishburne as the Surfer’s voice. I never would have guessed that, though, because he really doesn’t sound like Laurence Fishburne.) Just like our heroes, he’s also cosmically charged, and an early encounter with him leaves Johnny’s powers unstable and prone to ‘swapping’ with his teammates. I remember that sort of thing happening in the comics also — poor Johnny often seemed to end up being the klutz, accidentally making things more difficult for the team, and that’s what happens here, all right.
The U.S. Army gets involved too, of course, and shoots missles and yells orders and does all the other things you expect but which never seem to help. It’s Sue that finally manages to make some sort of connection with the Surfer, because it’s always the pretty girl who gets through to the marauding, misunderstood bad guy, and they discover that they have a lot more to worry about than one surfing alien. My fellow comic geeks (and anyone who’s been looking for spoilers on the net) will know all about Galactus, who, thankfully, doesn’t look a thing like he does in the comics.
Does it work as an action movie? Absolutely. It’s a semi-mindless action-fest with good effects, just made for summer release on the big screen with giant stereo speakers everywhere. It isn’t much else, though. So two and three-quarter idols for this one. It really can be a fun movie if you don’t think about it too much, but I just can’t rank anything three full idols if I’m not interested in owning it on DVD, and on a smaller screen, this just wouldn’t have the visual kick it needs. From what I’ve heard about the first movie, it’s at least better than that, but that isn’t saying much. If you really want a good team super-hero flick, go rent X-Men 2 and watch it on the biggest screen you can find.