Monday, July 18, 2011

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

I don't know what I can say about this movie that is going to matter. I don't have the technical knowledge to talk about any problems it may have had with sound, light, editing, etc. (for what it's worth, it looked and sounded fine to me), and the global hype about the film makes any discussion of plot and characters secondary to the narrative about this being an end of an era and a big deal to the current crop of Gen Y/Z/whatevers.

That being said, I thought the film was a fitting ending to the series, keeping pretty faithful to the book (as far as I can remember, I'm not a fanboy). I will say that you'd be well advised to see part one again if you haven't in a while, as this movie jumps right into the story and it was a little distracting trying to recall the details from where it left off).

I do think this is the best of all the David Yates-directed films in the series, for what that's worth. I still wish that some of the action from this movie wound up in the first one, as there were times I found things moving a bit fast for my taste.

Also, thanks to whoever finally convinced the powers that be to let the actors play themselves in the epilogue. Even if they didn't look particularly mid-30s, subbing in new actors would have been sad.

Saw a number of previews:

Hugo, a Martin Scorsese-directed movie about a French kid who inherits a clockwork man from his father (Jude Law) that apparently has some sort of instructions or message for the kid. There was a lot of chasing around a train station involving a Javert-lite policeman. Not sure how the Mob fits in.

Abduction, the Taylor Lautner spy thriller that the wife called a Bourne Identity for the Twilight set. Sorry girls, he's mostly clothed in this one.

Happy Feet 2, which will make my son very happy. Bonus points for using "Mama Said Knock You Out" in the trailer.

The Dark Knight Rises, the last of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Not a bad trailer for a film that's a year out. Makes me wish I'd seen the other two.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, in which Guy Ritchie finds a way to make ever more stuff blow up than in the first movie. There is copious use of Maxim guns, Downey in drag, Noomi Rapace (best known as the original Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish movies of the Millenium trilogy), and the first encounter with Moriarty (played by Mad Men's Jared Harris!).

The AMC-provided pre-movie ad reel included a "preview" of Dolphin Tale, based on the true story of a dolphin who was given a prosthetic tail. It stars Harry Connick, Jr., Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. Seems like an innocuous family film.

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