209-210: Dark Knight Returns, Lethal Weapon

209: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1

With Batman: Under the Red Hood and Batman: Year One DC and Warner Bros have proven that they are able to translate their most famous property into great animated features. Their latest entry in the animated Batman series is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s legendary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. And once again they have done the caped crusader proud, because The Dark Knight Returns is fantastic. In fact, this is the first of two parts based on this material (the next one will be released in 2013). In part one we deal mostly with the resurgence of Bruce Wayne as Batman, the rise of the Mutants and the birth of a new Robin. Frank Miller wrote a compelling story about getting older and despite the odds going above and beyond duty to clean the city up and Bob Goodman (not a new name to the DC Universe) took that story and distilled a wonderful screenplay out of it. It is a more condensed version and it moves like gangbusters. It is compelling from start to finish and it will leave you wanting for more when you’re done. I for one can’t wait for the next part to be released.

210: Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon is a true modern classic. Along with Die Hard it represents some of the best genre filmmaking from the ’80s and I absolutely adore it. I return regularly to the adventures of Riggs and Murtaugh to see how a buddy cop movie should be made. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson work exceptionally well together in a thriller that never really stops to take a breather. Lethal Weapon works so well because we care about these characters. Martin Riggs is a suicidal cop who has to deal with the death of his wife and he is not doing a very good job. He is constantly on the verge of doing something to himself and his reluctant partner Roger Murtaugh doesn’t really need the hassle of babysitting Riggs. It’s the moments that Riggs has to deal with his problems that make the movie. Especially the scene when Riggs is sitting on the couch with his gun and the right moment Bugs Bunny is heard in the background saying “Merry Christmas!” is a perfect piece of acting and directing. And later there is the confrontation between Riggs and Murtaugh after Riggs jumps off a building that truly cements our sympathy for these characters. That scene will leave you breathless. With our sympathy firmly in place the rest of the outrageous story can unfold and we are there every step of the way with these guys. That’s what makes this one of the best buddy cop movies out there, if not one of the best movies ever made. It certainly is very high on my list of favorite movies ever.

204-208: Movies on an airplane

Watching movies on an airplane is never the most beneficial way. The screen is way too small and the movie itself is cropped, if not downright censored by the airline. But it does give you the opportunity to watch those movies that you never were intending to watch anyway. Recently I found myself on a round trip to Europe (a ten-hour flight), so I had some catching up to do. I ended up watching five movies all the way through and one, Madagascar 3, which I will finish at a later opportunity, because that movie was just bat shit crazy. The five movies I watched were:

204: Rock of Ages

Holy smokes, this was a mixed bag of good and bad feelings. I love ‘80s music, I love a good musical now and then and I generally like it when Tom Cruise goes balls to the wall. But Rock of Ages was just too much for me. Some of the songs I could get through, because to be honest some of the originals just deserve to be butchered, youth sentiment or not. Other songs were just too horrendous for words. For example, Malin Akerman and Cruise trying to create some sort of horrible version of Foreigner’s I Want to Know What Love Is (one of my favorite songs ever) made me jump to the screen to find the fast forward button. It was that horrendous. Besides the mostly not-so-good renditions of the songs the screenplay in itself had nothing new to bring to the table and started to irritate me after a while. In the end Rock of Ages just felt like an experiment gone wrong.

205: The Sweeney

The British are a rough bunch and The Sweeney proves that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law over there. Ray Winstone plays Regan, a hard-nosed cop who leads a team of officers who have their own particular brand of law enforcement. They don’t shy away from methods that are by many deemed less than desirable, but they get the job done and for some that is the only thing that counts. Regan comes under fire from Internal Affairs exactly because of his methods and to complicate his situation even further he is having an affair with the investigator from IA and an old adversary suddenly decides to return to the scene. With a pulse-pounding soundtrack, moody photography and excellent acting The Sweeney proves it is a force to be reckoned with. The Sweeney combines the style of Michael Mann, the bombast of Christopher Nolan and the mindless action of Michael Bay to create a whole that is thoroughly entertaining.

206: Men in Black 3

I was never a big fan of Men in Black. I found it to be really on the nose and most of the time not that funny. I was, however, impressed by the chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. In Men in Black 2 some of that chemistry was there, but it was overshadowed by an extremely bad screenplay that wasn’t able to reproduce any of the good stuff from the first movie. Now, several years later, we get a third installment, and I must say that the the people behind the scenes have redeemed themselves. This is a very funny and even in some way emotional return to the characters we liked so much in part one. Especially Josh Brolin as a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones is a home run. The movie has enough momentum to move along at a brisk pace with an ending that took me completely by surprise. I did not see that twist coming, but maybe that was a stuffy atmosphere in the airplane playing tricks on me.

207: The Bourne Legacy

I like the original Bourne Trilogy very much. Matt Damon managed to create a character that was on one hand a terminator and on the other a human being searching for his identity. All the machinations around him made these movies even more compelling, but it was really Damon who sold them. With The Bourne Ultimatum Paul Greengrass finished the trilogy in a very satisfying manner, so why would we need a fourth Bourne movie? Beats me, and The Bourne Legacy didn’t make me a believer either. We are led to believe that there are more people like Bourne out there, which is not really a stretch, and that they are controlled by a Jurassic Park-like scheme revolving around mysterious chems without which the agents can’t really perform. Legacy starts out decent with Jeremy Renner proving he is certainly up to the task to perform the physical part of the role, but director Tony Gilroy (writer of the original trilogy) can’t keep up the pace and he gets bogged down in a run-of-the-mill story that in no way can hold a candle to the Damon-Bourne movies. For the most part I was pretty much bored to tears by The Bourne Legacy.

208: The Watch

When The Watch was released in theaters I had the feeling I had already seen the best parts of the movie by seeing the trailer several times. And I wasn’t far off, because that was almost entirely true. Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and relative newcomer Richard Ayoade are all members of the neighborhood watch, while they don’t really share the same intentions for this extracurricular activity. As it so happens an alien invasion is about to go down in their neighborhood and they seem to be the last line of defense for the human race. The one thing that is great about The Watch is director Akiva Schaffer’s willingness to let his cast go off the rails most of the time. I got the feeling that a lot of what is shown in The Watch was actually improvised by the comedians during shooting. The most hilarious moments come when Vaughn and Hill are let loose, these guys are improve masters and it shows. If only the rest of the movie was as good as those moments. The Watch is long, largely not very funny and ultimately unsatisfying. Given the cast and crew involved this could have been a slam dunk, now… not so much.

201-203: Sister, Moonrise, Flynn

201: Your Sister’s Sister

Mark Duplass is on a roll lately. After directing the excellent drama Jeff, Who Lives at Home and starring in Safety Not Guaranteed he also played one of the leads in Your Sister’s Sister, Lynn Shelton’s newest feature. Duplass again creates a very likable guy, Jack, who has some serious issues to deal with. He decides to retreat to a cabin in the woods owned by his best friend, Iris (Emily Blunt). What he doesn’t know is that the sister of his friend, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), is also there to work out her own problems. Hannah and Jack strike up a relationship that culminates in a situation that is extremely uncomfortable for all involved. Your Sister’s Sister is, however, a sweet drama about recognizing each other’s flaws and forgiving them for it, however selfish their behavior might be. Highly recommended if you want a small drama about real people with real feelings.

202: Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson is a very divisive director. Ever since his first feature, Bottle Rocket, people have been debating whether his movies are works of art of just exercises in art direction. Anderson’s movies are often clinical manifestations of a very exacting brain. They present delightful worlds in which the characters are allowed to play to their heart’s content. His newest entry, Moonrise Kingdom, is no different and this time Anderson invented an entire island for his characters to play in. Everything revolves around two kids who run away from home to start a new life elsewhere. This puts the entire island on high alert, which results in funny situations and poignant drama. I liked Moonrise Kingdom a lot, but I also felt that it was really hard to get through the highly polished look of the film. Anderson is always a meticulous filmmaker, but this time he has taken his control of, in particular, camera movements to another level and that made the movie feel very artificial in many places. I didn’t get that feeling at all while watching his, in my opinion, best movies The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. I still recommend people seeing Moonrise Kingdom, if only for the top-notch performances of the cast.

203: Being Flynn

Robert De Niro’s career has in the last decade not been what it once was, but you don’t need me to tell you that. So it is nice to see that once in a while he wants to step outside his safety zone and take on a role that takes a little more effort than Meet the Parents or Analyze This. In Being Flynn he plays Jonathan Flynn, a self-proclaimed genius writer, but in reality nothing more than a con man who has neglected his family. The real main character, however, is Nick Flynn (played by Paul Dano), his son, who he has not seen in years. Nick also wants to be a writer, but struggles with the notion that he is not cut out for the job. One day Jonathan reaches out to Nick, which throws Nick for a loop. Does he want his father in his life, or does he want him to leave him alone. This predicament only worsens when Jonathan shows up at the homeless shelter where Nick works sometimes. Being Flynn is a movie about a very dysfunctional relationship between a father and a son with De Niro playing one of the biggest assholes in his career. Being Flynn could have been a very powerful movie, but it lacks the drive to make us connect more with the main character. Dano is fin as Nick, but the problem is that Nick is not somebody you want to root for. You want to give him a swift kick in the butt to get him to pick up his life and stop whining. While the performances are fine all-round, this casts such a large shadow over it all that just can’t be overcome.

196-200: Dr.No, From Russia, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Live Twice

James Bond has never been my so-called thing, but I remember really liking some of these movies as a kid. So with the release of Skyfall, which I did not very much like, I decided to watch all the James Bond movies in chronological order, because also there still are some blank spots in the world’s most favorite secret agent. By now I have watched the first five installments. Here’s in a nutshell what I thought about them.

196: Dr. No

I had never really finished watching Dr. No. I just didn’t find it all that interesting. And that sentiment didn’t exactly change when I watched it this time. I found it all to be incredibly silly with James Bond being more misogynist than I remembered from earlier viewings. The whole concept of Dr. No sitting on this “cursed” island waiting to exact his punishment on the American space program, all the while being protected by an armored tank disguised as a fire spewing dragon was a little bit too much for me. I have never read any of the Fleming books and I expect them to be just as silly.

197: From Russia with Love

This is where the real spy series takes off in my opinion. As a direct sequel to Dr. No it handles with the aftermath of everything that transpired in that far off island in the Caribbean. This time the Russians are brought into the mix with some honest to God spying going on. Plus we get trained assassins, great fights and nice gadgets. And we see Bond’s womanizing ways being used against him for the first time. I found From Russia with Love to be a much more mature movie than Dr. No with less silliness and more spy fun.

198: Goldfinger

With Goldfinger the series departs the SPECTRE storyline for a while (because Thunderball was still mired in legal troubles) to pursue Auric Goldfinger and his outlandish henchman Oddjob. Bond has to prevent Goldfinger from robbing Fort Knox in a strange but exhilarating raid on the highly defended facility in Kentucky. There is a lot about Goldfinger that is just as implausible as anything seen in Dr. No, but it bothered me a lot less here. For example, why would Goldfinger keep his most annoying adversary so close while planning the largest robbery in history? Well, probably to be able to utter the iconic line “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!” I had not seen Goldfinger before (except for some of the iconic imagery) and I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit.

199: Thunderball

With the success of the first installments it is clear that with Thunderball the production got a little bit out of hand. It starts with Bond’s use of a jetpack to escape a castle to drive off in his trusted Aston Martin. Than a surgically altered pilot hijacks a British airplane with two nuclear bombs on board, crashes it into the ocean where divers remove the bombs and camouflage the airplane. After a run-in with the beautiful Domino Bond is captured and he escapes again. He finds the downed airplane and he discovers a plan to destroys Miami Beach. A huge underwater battle ensues, Bond kills the bad guy and escapes with the girl. Sounds pretty conventional for a Bond movie, right? Yes, if only it didn’t take to looooooooong to get where it is going. I believe the director Terence Young had something to prove after not having directed Goldfinger. The result is a movie that is surely about thirty minutes too long. Also Sean Connery is noticeably getting tired of playing this popular character, which is understandable because he had been churning one of these movie out every year at this point. I found Thunderball anything but a pleasure to watch.

200: You Only Live Twice

When I was about ten years old I remember going to a friend’s birthday party where they had rented You Only Live Twice for us to watch. I was hooked from the first frame to the last frame. Rewatching this fifth installment I can certainly see why my ten-year-old self would fall in love with this movie. Space battles, vicious ninja, a volcano lair, a faked death, huge rockets and Little Nellie. What’s not to love? Well, as an adult I didn’t exactly take to You Only Live Twice as I once did. The production is still lavish and inviting, but the story is so full of holes and (even by Bond’s standards) stupidity that it sucked the fun out of it for me. Add to that the ridiculous transformation Bond goes through to become “Japanese” and I was done with You Only Live Twice. I’m sure my kid will live it eventually.

194-195: The War Room, There Will Be Blood

194: The War Room

Political documentaries tend to often be very polished and dictated by the rules of the party the documentarian is following. The War Room is a different kind of beast and probably one of the last of its kind. It started out as a simple doc following the managers of Bill Clinton’s campaign to become the President of the United States. At that time he was considered to be an outsider, some redneck from Arkansas who didn’t stand a chance in the highest political arena imaginable. As time moved on Clinton started to grow into a political force to be reckoned and the people behind the scenes and their unorthodox way of working became something of legend. The War Room tells their triumphant story and it is totally riveting. It is hard to put my finger on what it is that’s so compelling about it. Is it the unlikely friendship between the manic passionate James Carville and the calm calculated George Stephanopoulos? Is it the unprecedented look behind the scenes of a political campaign? Probably both. The War Room will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the last truly honest depictions of political maneuvering.

195: There Will Be Blood

Something very strange happened the first time I watched There Will Be Blood. All through the opening sequence I heard a very annoying piece of music that was totally out of whack with the original soundtrack. It was very distracting, but I powered through. I found There Will Be Blood to be a very powerful piece of work even if the first sequence still bothered me at the end. For years I dreaded returning to Paul Thomas Anderson’s opus, just because of that experience. Now, years later, I returned to There Will Be Blood and miraculously the opening was devoid of any annoying double soundtracks and it was a lot better than the first time I watched it. Now I could take in this brilliant movie from A to Z without distractions and what an experience it is. Daniel Day Lewis’ performance is compelling as anything he has ever done, the photography by Robert Elswit is spellbinding and the music by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is hypnotic and the conclusion will have you reeling in your seat. I still think Magnolia is Anderson’s best, most complete movie, with There Will Be Blood a strong second.

189-193: Bruges, Cliffhanger, Trouble, Chernobyl, Instead

189: In Bruges

In Bruges looked like just another action movie to me. Even the involvement of one of my favorite actors, Brendan Gleeson, wasn’t enough to get me to watch it. But during the years following its initial release more and more people came out of the woodwork to confess their mistake in dismissing In Bruges in the manner I did. I decided to give in and give In Bruges a chance and what do you know… it is brilliant. So incredibly not what I was expecting. Central to the story are two British criminals who are sent to Bruges in Belgium to lay low for a while after a tragic accident. There they have to wait for their boss to call with instructions. What seems to be a regular crime story with two thugs spending time in one of the most dreamy cities in Europe turns into an existential fight for survival and redemption. There are a lot of great performances in In Bruges. Colin Farrell is brilliant as the petty criminal who acts more like a bored child than a professional hitman and Brendan Gleeson is masterful as ever as the hardened criminal who is trying to keep everything together somehow. Their chemistry starts to build throughout the movie to culminate in a sequence that is truly harrowing. Martin McDonagh wrote and directed a movie that will stay with you for a long time. I loved it. See it.

190: Cliffhanger

It was a Saturday night, I was tired, so I went and stood in front of my DVD cabinet to find a movie that wouldn’t challenge me one bit. The result was Cliffhanger, a Sylvester Stallone vehicle directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) I had not seen in fifteen years or so. And with good reason, because this movie turned out to be even more dumb than I remembered. The screenplay is so incredibly full of holes and implausibilities that it took all the fun of the action out of it for me. I think the whole reason why I (and many with me) look back fondly on Cliffhanger is the opening sequence, which is as horrendously suspenseful as ever. If you have anything resembling vertigo I urge you to skip the opening sequence and pick up what happened there from the rest of the movie (that shouldn’t be too hard). When the screenplay turns out to be so incredibly dumb, is there still something to be enjoyed in Cliffhanger? Sure, the action is decent throughout the movie, the acting is deliciously over the top and the scenery is beautiful (actually shot in Italy, not Colorado). Cliffhanger is a clear example of just about every action movie made in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: big brutish heroes taking on mindless groups of evil doers with lots of explosions and extravagant stunts. It’s just that sometimes one movie hits it out of the park and the other takes a walk. And yes I am talking about Die Hard being the slugger, not Cliffhanger.

191: Trouble with the Curve

Trouble with the Curve is a sports movie of the most common denominator. And I so wanted this to be another Moneyball, a smart look at the business of baseball and what goes on behind the scenes of my favorite sport. But what I got was a melodramatic mess about an old baseball scout (Clint Eastwood) who doesn’t want to accept he is losing his grip on his job and his estranged daughter (Amy Adams) who wants to be close to her dad if only he wasn’t such an insufferable asshole. Trouble with the Curve is in fact the polar opposite of Moneyball. It goes out of its way to tell us that the new baseball (as seen in Moneyball and now used around the league) is much worse than the old school way of finding talent. Therefore everybody who has anything to do with computers and spreadsheets is presented as oafish and all the old guard is portrayed as lovable and eccentric. In addition to this incessant polarization the screenplay takes a turn for the worse when a telegraphed red herring from the first act is used to finish the movie in the cheapest way possible. During that first act of Trouble with the Curve I thought I was dealing with a movie that understood baseball, but it turned out it didn’t know anything about it at all. I guess I’ll have to grab my copy of Moneyball and erase Trouble with the Curve from my baseball loving brain.

192: Chernobyl Diaries

As far as useless found footage movies go Chernobyl Diaries is right up there with the worst of them. We are witness to a group of young people traveling around Europe and ending up in the Ukraine to participate in a tour of the area surrounding Chernobyl, the site of the most horrendous accident involving nuclear materials. Their focus is Pripyat, a village where everybody had to drop what they were doing to escape the evil that was spouting from the reactor. Now, supposedly, the radiation levels are low enough to go wandering around the village (which they aren’t by the way in real life). Of course their visit isn’t without peril, because when they want to leave the village they discover they are not alone, something has been left behind. Chernobyl Diaries comes from the brain of Oren Peli, who also fathered the Paranormal Activity series. As with so many other found footage crap movies, Chernobyl Diaries doesn’t think it’s necessary to actually convincingly tell us a story that could be called found footage. The camera angles are all circumstantial and in no way believable like the pioneers (e.g. The Blair Witch Project) were. Let’s hope Chernobyl Diaries doesn’t spawn a load of sequels as Paranormal Activity did and still does. That would be truly disastrous.

193: You Instead (Tonight You’re Mine)

Having been to quite a few music festivals in my younger days (wow, I sound old) I can get behind the vibe of You Instead (or Tonight You’re Mine, I’m not sure which is the right title), David Mackenzie’s latest feature. He actually filmed the movie at a music festival and that lends it a tremendous amount of goodwill. Goodwill that is much needed, since the screenplay is nearly devoid of anything interesting. It is a love story about two musicians, one British and one American, who are handcuffed to each other by some mysterious festival patron. They will have to spend the rest of the weekend, their gigs and day-to-day activities chained to each other. Of course something beautiful blooms between the two of them and everything will be all right in the end. You see, nothing special. The charm of You Instead comes from the images and situations Mackenzie chooses. The drunk, muddy, stoned get-together around a campfire, the sweaty tents filled with thumping music and those quiet mornings when you try to think of a reason why you drank so much the night before (believe me, I’ve been there). This was actually the only reason why I continued watching You Instead… nostalgia. At least You Instead has a lot more life to it than Mackenzie’s last feature Perfect Sense, which I found excruciatingly boring and completely forgettable.

188: Die Hard

On their most recent episode the guys over at Battleship Pretension were talking with Mike Schmidt about their favorite cops in movies. At least, that’s what they were trying until Tyler revealed he had never seen Lethal Weapon. Understandably the conversation stopped dead in its tracks at that point, because really how can you record a show about movie cops without having seen Martin Riggs in action. But this blog isn’t about Lethal Weapon, it’s about Die Hard, the other brilliant cop movie from the ’80s and one of my favorite movies of all time.

Ultimately the conversation between Tyler, David and Mike went to Die Hard, a movie about an ordinary cop in a very extraordinary situation. I suppose everybody knows the story: John McClane travels to Los Angeles to spent the holidays with his wife and kids, who moved there six months earlier. He arrives at his wife’s workplace, the towering Nakatomi plaza, during the annual Christmas party, but at the same time a group of criminals infiltrates the building to take the building hostage. John manages to stay hidden and he starts to singlehandedly take out the bad guys one by one. Even if you haven’t seen Die Hard (what the heck are you doing with your life if that’s true) you probably have seen one of the numerous copycats that it spawned: Under Siege, Cliffhanger, whatever else. None of these movies, however, come even remotely close to the brilliance of Die Hard.

The brilliance of Die Hard lies in the fact that it employed the everyman hero so effectively it made the movie extremely relatable for audiences. Casting Bruce Willis in the role of John McClane was a stroke of genius. He isn’t some muscle-bound superhero who can punch his way out of a situation without so much as a scratch. This is a guy who isn’t even really that nice to begin with. He is a gruff cantankerous macho asshole who loses his temper all too easily, especially when talking to his wife who just wants to make a better life for her family. Actually, we are not supposed to like John that much at the beginning of the movie. He has to earn our trust and sympathy. He has to show us that he is capable enough to diffuse this extremely volatile situation. It really isn’t until we see Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) shoot Mr. Takagi in cold blood that we see the shock on his face and we know then that he is one of us. He is horrified and runs, he bumbles his escape and nearly gets shot. From that point on we are with him for we know he is a human being. When a few scenes later he has to make his way across a floor full of shards of glass and we get to see the aftermath in which he has to full glass from his foot we feel for him unconditionally and we have forgotten his negative traits, even though he does show his snarky cynical side every so often, but that’s more for comedic purposes.

Coincidentally, during my Harry Potter marathon, I was constantly thinking of Hans Gruber when Alan Rickman appeared on-screen as Snape. Rickman’s Gruber was branded upon my very soul as one of the most awesome villains ever thought up for a movie. His understated demeanor, sophisticated manners and brilliant delivery of some very iconic lines (“Shoot ze glass!”) were so fresh and unexpected. He wasn’t some scumbag who used physical force to get what he wanted. He used his charm and words to get to his prize. Of course, when that didn’t work he didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger, as witnessed when he dispatches Mr. Takagi without so much as thinking about it. Absolutely horrifying to realize that somebody can have such a schizophrenic way of doing things. You just didn’t know what to expect from Gruber after that moment in the conference room.

John McTiernan knew exactly how to make us root for John McClane by letting him improvise his way through the movie. Nothing McClane does goes smooth and without a hitch. He has to do outlandish stuff like dangling from a gun strap in an elevator shaft, throw explosives down another shaft and jump off the roof of a building with a fire hose strapped around his waist to escape a huge explosion. Never do we get the sense that John knows what he is doing. He improvises without knowing if what he is doing is actually going to work. We are right there with him when he jumps off the roof and hope to God that the hose will hold. Die Hard is an incredibly tense movie and unique in its sort. Even the sequels couldn’t recapture the same feeling the first movie bestowed upon us.

Next to being incredibly tense Die Hard is also very funny, but the comedy is never used at the expense of the situation. When McClane has to crawl through an air conditioning duct and he bitches about being there (“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…”) it is funny, but we also get his frustration. There are so many moments like this where you have laugh-out-loud moments that are also very uncomfortable, because you are feeling like you are there with John. That makes Die Hard one of the best action thrillers out there. It is thrilling, funny, tense and ultimately totally unforgettable.

186-187: Back to the Future I & II

Back to the Future

Back to the Future was one of the first movies I clearly remember seeing on the big screen. It was the actually the first movie the new movie theater in my hometown screened. Before that we had to go to the next big town and we just didn’t have the time and the money to do that in my family. With the new theater the next phase in my life began and it started with Back to the Future. From that point on I could go to the movies whenever I wanted to and I assure you that was what I did… a lot. It is therefore no surprise that Back to the Future occupies a very special spot in my heart. And I am glad to say that after nearly twenty-eight years it still holds up. Though some of the humor and visual effects don’t hold up so good Back to the Future makes up a lot of the wear and tear with a tremendous amount of good old-fashioned fun. This movie is bursting at the seams with situations and performances that are totally engaging like the diner scene where Marty meets his father for the first time or the confrontation between Biff and George that seals the deal for Marty. Or the entire character of Doc Brown, for that matter. I return to Back to the Future on a regular basis, just like someone will return to their favorite ice cream to feel better.

Back to the Future Part II

Back to the Future Part II isn’t regarded as a very good sequel. I happen to like it, though. I like the way the uppity tone from the first movie is turned upside down to create an atmosphere that is totally menacing. From the moment Marty arrives in the future you know this is not going to end well. True, the catalyst that sets off the adventure (the sports almanac) isn’t the strongest in the world, but it gets the job done. It sets in motion a mind-boggling time travel adventure that takes us to several of our favorite moments from the original movie, but now shown from a slightly different perspective. It is great to analyze how these scenes were transformed and reenacted from different viewpoints. It is uncanny how Zemeckis managed to do this. I look back on Back to the Future Part II like I do on Alien3, I know it is flawed, but I recognize the way it expanded on the original material and enriched it. I would even go so far as to say that I like Part II better than Part III, because I never actually understood the whole appeal of moving the story to western times. But that’s one for a future piece.

185: Hope Springs

Marriage is hard. I can tell you this from experience. It is a delicate game of give and take that can be screwed up far too easily. Kay (Meryl Streep) knows this all too well. She has been married for over three decades, but over the years anything resembling passion has been replaced by routine and more importantly… distance. Her husband, Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones), doesn’t see the problem. He gets his breakfast every morning, is home for dinner and falls asleep in front of the television. Kay and Arnold have become roommates instead of a married couple and Kay wants some of their old life back. She arranges an intense therapy session and tells Arnold she is going, whether he wants to come or not. Along the course of the therapy sessions, led by Dr. Feld (a surprisingly restrained Steve Carell), secrets are revealed and problems are laid bare.

What Hope Springs wants to tell us is that when we want a marriage to work there has to be passion and communication. Without those two elements there is no use in staying married. Even more important is the message that forcing these two elements is often even worse. Both Kay and Arnold try to force their love for each other in extreme ways and both times they fail. They (and we) come to the conclusion that love is organic and inexplicable and that it can’t be coerced by way of some strawberries or candles. It probably helps a little, but if the foundation isn’t there, forget about it.

Hope Springs is surprisingly candid about all these revelations and this is mostly due to the brilliant performances of the central cast. I connected a lot with Jones, mostly because I recognize some of myself in him (and vowed to change some of those traits after seeing the film). Streep channels her age perfectly and shows us a vulnerable side that is heartbreaking. Carell rounds out the trio with a performance we have not seen often from him. He never loses his cool and moderates the conversation between Kay and Arnold instead of dictating it with his usual shenanigans.

I had already heard through the grapevine that Hope Springs was a lot better than the poster or trailer made it out to be. This is true, but there are certainly problems with Hope Springs. Director David Frankel’s (The Devil Wears Prada) incessant use of songs is so overtly manipulative that it becomes almost expected that we get Annie Lennox’s Why? blaring from the speakers when our heroes need to work out something crucial in their relationship. Luckily the performances overcome Frankel’s constant search for melodrama by not giving in to his wishes. Streep and Jones play their parts so down to earth that no amount of musical melodrama could tear them down. Maybe that’s why Hope Springs works so well.

181-184: Harry Potter Marathon, Part 2

And here we are at the other end of our Harry Potter marathon and I must say that it hasn’t been the chore I was expecting it to be. Watching these movies in order in a short amount of time is really beneficial for someone like me… someone who hasn’t read the books. It keeps fresh the enormous amount of details that need to be remembered to make sense of it all and adds to the appreciation of this movie series.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

From now on the proverbial excrement hits the fan. At the end of Goblet of Fire we were witness to the resurrection of Voldemort and now the race begins to save the world from his clutches. With a new director at the helm, David Yates, who would go on to direct all the remaining movies, the series takes on a much more dire tone. Gone are the whimsical elements from the story up to make room for more teenage angst, ever more perilous adventures and dark secrets revealed. At Hogwarts the situation is worsened by the arrival of Dolores Umbridge, a spy for the Ministry played wonderfully by Imelda Staunton, who turns the school into something that more resembles a prison. Harry, meanwhile, tries to convince the world that Voldemort has indeed returned, but nobody wants to believe him. Even his friends start to doubt him. His inability to convince anyone and the doubts about his own role in the whole scheme of things start to take their toll on Harry. Thankfully Daniel Radcliffe is able to shoulder this burden and give Harry enough depth to make these trials believable. The character Harry Potter seems to be in capable hands.The film ends with a spectacular sequence inside the Ministry of Magic with wall-to-wall visual effects and another riveting confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. I had my problems with Order of the Phoenix, but they are outweighed by the enjoyment of so many of the other elements.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

This is the point where I started to lose interest when the movies were first released. To be honest, I felt left out, because so many of the concepts in this movie were foreign to me. Much in Half-Blood Prince seemed only enjoyable when you actually had read the book. But now, with all five preceding movies still fresh in my head, I must admit that I was wrong. The puzzle pieces fell into place more easily now. You just have to really pay attention to ever detail, because everything comes back in some way, shape or form. In Half-Blood Prince a new element is introduced: the Horcrux, an object infused with part of someones soul. It turns out Voldemort has hidden several of these Horcruxes and Harry (together with Dumbledore) vows to retrieve all of them and destroy them, in order to weaken Voldemort to the point where he can be killed. This provides a framework for the rest of the movies with several encounters revolving around these objects. But that’s not all. Draco Malfoy is chosen as the sacrificial lamb to do Voldemort’s bidding, the Weasley home is attacked by Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius Black’s niece or killer, and a very important character is killed at the end of the movie. All very dramatic stuff. That is why the casting of Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn is so important to this movie. He is the perfect combination of lighthearted and dramatic. His acting is a breath of fresh air in the often quite heavy atmosphere of the Harry Potter world. Imelda Staunton had the same task in Order of the Phoenix, providing comic relief. All in all I really liked Half-Blood Prince, mostly because of the intense dramatic moments.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

And so the ending begins. Battle lines are being drawn, sides are taken. Harry, Hermione and Ron are on the run from the Death Eaters, who have taken over the Ministry and attacked the wedding between Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. From that point on the story of Part 1 becomes a road movie about our three heroes trying to make sense of the whole mess. Ron becomes more and more angry at Harry for not doing enough to safe the wizarding world, Hermione is trying real hard to solve all the riddles that are thrown at them and Harry is hard to work to find the remaining Horcruxes without getting himself killed. If you are expecting a rollicking adventure movie this time around you are in for a surprise. While there are certainly moments where the story picks up the pace, the majority of Part 1 takes on a very subdued tone. A quiet before the storm, if you will. Once again, watching Part 1 in the theater was a boring and confounding experience for me. I hardly knew what a Horcrux or a Death Eater were, so you can imagine that this time around I liked Part 1 a lot more. I started to feel a lot of empathy for these kids who are thrust into this otherworldly adventure that is way beyond their years. No child or teen should be made to carry this burden. One of the most endearing moments comes when Harry asks Hermione to dance at one of the worst moments possible and for a few minutes they forget everything that is happening around them to enjoy the moment as they should have if the circumstances were different. Although the movie as a whole may not be the most exciting adventure of them all, I think this installment has a lot of heart and in that regard is a good setup to what is to come next.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

And what comes next is the culmination of everything that transpired prior to Part 2. Voldemort has acquired the tools and the army to once and for all to take over the wizarding world. Everything comes to a spectacular close with Harry and his friends trying to discover the last Horcruxes, the Order of the Phoenix taking back Hogwarts and ultimately Harry preparing himself for his all important duel with Voldemort. As with every installment of the Harry Potter series. A lot of ground has to be covered before we get to where we are going. It is understandable that they split Deathly Hallows into two parts. If the book is half as dense as the movies, than that is one hell of a book to get through. Together these movies take up nearly four and a half hours of your time and not a lot of it is wasted on frivolous nonsense.

This is Harry Potter’s Return of the Jedi. This is the moment everything comes together and the big finale kicks off. Thinking back to the first movies in the series I didn’t think these kids could have acted their way out of a paper bag when the story would become more dramatic, but they have grown… a lot. Radcliffe still isn’t the best actor ever, but he holds his own across from a powerhouse like Ralph Fiennes. I could get behind what he was going through and that is a lot more than I expected. Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are still his trusty sidekicks and though there is a lot of frowning and scowling going on they carry the weight of everything their characters went through on their shoulders.

I really liked the way Deathly Hallows worked out. A lot of the loose ends were tied up neatly, even though Rowling needed a sizable flashback to do so. There were some surprises in there, but I got the feeling that there was so much information to be conveyed that the movie moved just a little too fast through it all. Maybe I have to watch it again sometime to get every last detail of the story (or maybe just read the books). One huge gripe I have with the concept of the Room of Requirement. In Order of the Phoenix it was nice, but since then it feels as a way of dealing with dead ends in the plot and having people move in and out of Hogwarts undetected. It got a little tiring to see it pop up again and again as a deus ex machina. Other than that I really liked Deathly Hallows, Part 2.

The Sum Total

Well, has this marathon changed my perception of the Harry Potter series? Absolutely. As I said at the beginning, I had seen all these movies (minus one) before, but never fully appreciated the arc Harry Potter goes through during these movies. It is actually a great story about somebody who has to carry an enormous burden before he is in any way capable of doing that and the way he copes with that responsibility. Next to the story that is engaging and fun there is the enormous technical achievement of these movies. Producer David Heyman managed to produce eight (!) major blockbuster movies in about twelve years or so. These movies have beautiful scenery, fantastic art direction and spectacular visual effects, all of them produced on an extremely tight schedule. Like the Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter movies deserve an honorary Oscar or something for the sheer audacity of attempting this undertaking. And on top of that Heyman got the original cast to stick around when everybody was saying they could never pull that off.

It was a good decision to do this marathon, because it opened my eyes a little to what other people are so wildly enthusiastic about. It still isn’t Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but it has certainly made me curious and what do you know maybe I will read the books one day.