Harry Potter, the boy who lived... come to die.

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II

(2011)

A bit of a crumbly end to the series; Part I actually worked better and that had some serious structural flaws.

Presumably fidelity to the source material has resulted in this misshapen climax (and the promise of extra bucks that didn't see the book truncated into one movie), which doesn't succeed in sustaining tension and, amidst the ongoing battle sequences, gives us only a couple of really memorable scenes. One is the bank "heist" near the start, featuring an extremely well-rendered dragon.

The other is a flashback sequence involving Rickman's Snape, which answers many questions but also signposts some serious bungling in narrative flow; Snape exits the story with a whimper, so the investment and intrigue surrounding his character never pays off in a cathartic way.

There are other problems of that ilk too; hoisting a charisma-free series regular, Matthew Lewis, to fourth lead may be true to Rowling, but it leaves a vacuum of indifference in the scenes where he holds centre stage. And while most of the rest of the cast are solid enough on the run or incantating, they show their limitations (or are let down by the script) when required to express teenage passions.

***

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

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Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

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Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
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The result is a giddily hilarious, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride (don’t believe The New York Times review: it is not “altogether more solemn” I can only guess Jeannette Catsoulis didn’t revisit the original in the interven…

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Can you float through the air when you smell a delicious pie?

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(SPOILERS) Ironically, given the source material, think I probably fell into the category of many who weren't overly disposed to give this big screen Spider-Man a go on the grounds that it was an animation. After all, if it wasn’t "good enough" for live-action, why should I give it my time? Not even Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's pedigree wholly persuaded me; they'd had their stumble of late, although admittedly in that live-action arena. As such, it was only the near-unanimous critics' approval that swayed me, suggesting I'd have been missing out. They – not always the most reliable arbiters of such populist fare, which made the vote of confidence all the more notable – were right. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is not only a first-rate Spider-Man movie, it's a fresh, playful and (perhaps) surprisingly heartfelt origins story.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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