Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Let's make a deal - the Elder Wand for your nose

Grade: B +

Director: David Yates

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, and Helena Bonham Carter

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

As the action-filled climax to the acclaimed fantasy series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 dispenses with much additional character development or insight, save for Harry’s revelatory gaze through a prism formed from the tears of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). Instead, the film draws upon a decade of Potter iconography to fashion a nostalgic quietus – with familiar creatures and supporting characters, both living and dead, given one last turn in the spotlight – en route to the fated Ragnarok between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes).

It is a wistfulness bound to be shared by the British film industry, which the “Harry Potter” franchise has almost singlehandedly buttressed since 2001. Indeed, the entire “Potter” saga has always been best interpreted from a British standpoint. “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is no exception, with the assault on Hogwarts by Voldemort and his dark army especially evocative for a country that over the last 70 years has suffered The Blitz, decades of IRA terrorism and the 7/7 London Underground bombings. An image of students and faulty tending to the dead and injured amidst the rubble of Hogwarts is eerily, perhaps purposefully reminiscent of the aftermath of Luftwaffe air raids during World War II.

Formerly a savior in waiting, Harry Potter is in full Messianic bloom. Instead of a conquering king, however, Harry discovers that his true destiny is to die so that the world might live. He’s even given his own Garden of Gethsemane moment, during which he communes with the heavenly apparition of his father, mother and others.

As BFFs Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) again help Harry try to vanquish Voldemort, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 carries an enjoyable but inevitable air. Director David Yates, whose four Potter films saved the series from a critical standpoint, dutifully fills in the narrative blanks amid what amounts to a special effects extravaganza.

The singular saving grace comes late in the film at the end of a chat between Harry and Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) inside an ethereal incarnation of King’s Cross railway station. “Is this real, or has this been happening inside my head?,” asks Harry. “Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry,” answers the undead headmaster. “But, that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

The exchange – slightly reworded from J.K. Rowling’s prose – lands like a load of bricks. Even the cursory suggestion that events occurring beyond – and perhaps even before – this scene might be figments of Harry’s imagination is itself a ruse.

In truth, Dumbledore’s response is directed at the viewer, underscoring the porous line between fiction and individualized reality as insightfully as François Ozon’s Swimming Pool or anything written by Charlie Kaufman. Moreover, it is an instance of utter symbiosis between art and audience, both an acknowledgement and validation of the Potter faithful that have queued up to buy the books and donned capes and makeshift wands to watch the movies.

Capped by a sunbathed, symbolic coda, the enduring moral of the Harry Potter series is the timeliness of art. Nineteen years hence, Harry, Ron and Hermione won’t be the ones introducing their grade school children to the magical wonders of Hogwarts; it’ll be the now-teenage fans who grew up with them.

Neil Morris

Originally published at www.indyweek.com: http://goo.gl/XCDxV

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Ocean's Fourteen

Grade: B +

Director: Wes Anderson

Starring the voices of: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Michael Gambon, Wallace Wolodarsky, and Eric Anderson

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 27 minutes

In many ways, Wes Anderson is the perfect director to adapt a Roald Dahl children’s novel.

It isn’t that Anderson is slavishly faithful to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Yes, the basic premise is still about a chicken-thieving fox trying to outfox – and save his friends and family from – three evil farmers. Indeed, the film opens with the book’s familiar limerick: “Boggis and Bunce and Bean; One fat, one short, one lean; These horrible crooks; So different in looks; Were none the less equally mean.”

But, Anderson also makes room for his recurring film motifs: The comic mix of poignancy and dry humor; the use malapropism and eggcorns; the inclusion of folk and rock music; even the onscreen titles are printed using Futura Bold font. For the voices of the animal characters, the director casts several of his oft-used actors, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, and Jason Schwartzman.

Moreover, Anderson scrubs the class-conflict subtext in Dahl’s 1970 original text and, in its place, turns the parable into another tale of personal destiny and family dysfunction, a la The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. Ultimately, the suitability of Anderson is that he is, in many ways, the modern-day, cinematic counterpart to the eccentric Dahl. If anything, the animated backdrop affords Anderson more freedom for his trademark quirkiness than live-action settings.

Voicing the titular vulpine paterfamilias, George Clooney sounds like the sort of sly fox who could routinely talk himself and friends into and out of trouble. After swearing off a life of crime for a career as a newspaper journalist, Mr. Fox moves his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) and son Ash (Schwartman) out of a hole and into a hardwood tree that happens to overlook Boggis’ chicken farm, Bunce’s duck and goose warehouse, and Bean’s (Michael Gambon) apple cider cellar.

Mr. Fox and his opossum super, Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky), launch clandestine, nocturnal raids that prompt the farmers’ escalating efforts to kill him. Felicity suffers her husband’s instinctual, dangerous schemes, while Ash struggles to win his father’s affections over his athletic, popular cousin, Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). The lessons to be learned include embracing and being true to one’s self – it is worth noting that the woodland creatures here talk, dress, and act like urban sophisticates except when performing basic functions like eating or arguing, when they assume their natural growling, scarfing traits.

That said, the joys of Fantastic Mr. Fox are far simpler. Juxtaposed nicely with rudimentary stop-motion animation, the dialogue is at once cerebral and sassy. Unlike in some of their previous efforts, Anderson and co-writer Noah Baumbach never venture into pretentiousness; if anything, the closing battle royalé and coda are overly trite and tidy. The truth is that Anderson’s films usually connote a depth they do not actually possess. What’s fantastic about Mr. Fox is that any deeper meaning is only icing on the cake. For once, Wes Anderson just wants you to have a good time.

Neil Morris

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Next up on QVC: selections from the Hogwarts Collection

Grade: B +

Director: David Yates

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Tom Felton, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham Carter, and Bonnie Wright

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 2 hours, 33 minutes

During the heyday of James Bond films, it seemed every successive 007 movie was tagged as “The biggest Bond of all.” Similarly, the principal critique of each new entry in the Harry Potter saga is whether it is the “most mature” or “darkest” Potter film yet.

While devotees may prefer the childlike charm of the two Chris Columbus offerings, the visual skillfulness in Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban, or the post-9/11 zeitgeist of Order of the Phoenix, the truth is that differentiating between any two Harry Potter films is rather like choosing between Wonder Bread or Sunbeam: Each are satisfying, but at the end of the day, they’re both just white bread.

Until now. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince not only dramatically distinguishes itself from its forerunners, but also validates the series as a whole. In the able hands of returning director David Yates, this is the funniest, most visually sublime, and, yes, darkest addition to the Potter canon. You are taken in from the opening dissolve, in which Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), now trumpeted as the Chosen One, is caught in the crosshairs of Paparazzi flashbulbs, just starting to bear the weight of expectation and shielded only under the protective wing of his mentor/surrogate father-figure, Dumbledore (Michael Gambon).

Lord Voldemont and his Death Eaters continue to tighten their grip on both the magical and outside Muggle worlds. Although we never glimpse Ralph Fiennes, the film wisely spends time informing us about Voldemont’s dark past when he was a student at Hogwarts named Tom Riddle. Along the way, Harry also uncovers an old textbook full of secrets scribbled by its former owner, the mysterious “Half-Blood Prince.”

More than any other, this Potter film grasps the fact that the series’ true magic rests not in passageways, potions, and periphrastic spells, but in the relationships between the characters. Of course, there is the seminal trio of Harry, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), now steeping squarely in the hormonal whims of adolescence angst. At various points during the Quidditch matches, the flying broomsticks straddled by competitors vying for the affections of female onlookers conspicuously assume a phallic form.

But, the story’s principal couple has always been Harry and Dumbledore, and their bond has never been more personal than here, taking on a heightened father-son air, even including Dumbledore making repeated causal inquires about Harry’s love life.

Virtually the entire film is pitch-perfect, from the pacing to the visual effects to the best ensemble acting thus far in the series. In roles they have played since their preteens, Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint have matured as actors along with their characters, although still overmatched against their Royal Shakespearean Co. costars. Indeed, Gambon has made us forget Richard Harris, while Jim Broadbent steals the movie as the dotty, yet haunted Professor Slughorn.

The real star of Half-Blood Prince, however, is Yates, an experienced television director who is already tabbed to adapt J.K. Rowling’s final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Yates has taken hold of the franchise reigns so firmly that he is comfortable imprinting it with his own filmmaking style while also being given license to depart occasionally from Rowling’s literary blueprint. The happy result is a Harry Potter film that not only stands apart, but one you’d want to see again. That might be the most amazing magic trick of all.

Neil Morris