If you die down there, you're welcome to share my toilet.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

(2002)

(SPOILERS) More of the same really, continuing Chris Columbus’ unswerving mode of following Steve Kloves’ sticking like glue to JK Rowling’s early structural template. Another mystery on the Hogwarts premises (you’d have thought the teachers would try to keep the kids clear of mortal peril until they’d at least graduated) that inevitably ties in to Voldermort. It’s marginally more honed this time, though, which means that when Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets – even the title is eminently resistible – finally knuckles down, it flows better. Unfortunately, it also has several major red flags to contend with.

Dobby. Sure, he’s supposed to be annoying, I know. Gollum by way of Jar Jar Binks. But did he have to be so wretchedly designed (not remedied by house elves of later instalments)? Some of the CG in this film is pretty good (the Basilisk, for one, and the flying car for another), but Dobby is never more than Smeagol-lite in attributes. Toby Jones voices him with duly pathetic dedication, but a fitting end would have been to have the elf’s head shoved in a blender, rather than being granted release from service to Lucius Malfoy.

It’s also a considerable problem how unwarrantedly long this movie is. Does it need to be pushing towards three hours, particularly when you could happily lose most of the first 40 minutes and barely notice? Doubtless Harry will be redone as a Netflix TV show at some point and at such a time this will seem positively spry, but as it is, the only verdict can be guilty as charged of indulgence in the first degree.

Exhibit C is Gilderoy Lockhart, the Frank Spencer of the wizarding world. It’s a decent performance from Sir Ken, much breezier and possessed of a light comedy touch than his recent Poirot, but the character beggars belief. Are we really to believe that a narcissist celebrity wizard is venerated by other wizards despite being patently inept at every turn? Why does he continually volunteer to perform spells in front of his peers if he knows he’s terrible at them? JK must have at least considered this point, as at one point Gilderoy imparts that the only thing he is (conveniently) any cop at is memory charms (by means of which he stole credit for others’ achievements). Unless he was intending to perform one on the entirety of Hogwarts, though, it doesn’t really wash.

Countering that are several sterling additions, though. Jason Isaacs is magnificently composed in his malevolence as Lucius, and there’s an enjoyable scene (relatively) early on where he and Mark Williams’ Arthur Weasely cross paths. Very different characters and performers, but it’s a treat to see them bring that into play (likewise, it would have been nice to see more between Lockhart and Snape, so evident is the latter’s disdain for the former).

Shirley Henderson’s Moaning Myrtle is also memorable. Nice to see Robert Hardy as the Minister for Magic too, who instantly seems like he’s always been there. I have to say, however, I find Robbie Coltrane’s “ever so ‘umble” giant-of-the-people serf irritating for the assumption we’re supposed to love him. That’s the class system for you.

As with its predecessor, elements of the novel’s plot are rather lost in translation. The gist of the opening of the Chamber of Secrets is explanatory enough, and the reveal regarding Tom Riddle is reasonably sound; that, through the awesome power of anagrams, he’s a younger version of Voldermort attempting to manifest. But it entirely escaped me that Lucius (at least in the books) didn’t realise the diary’s properties when he stowed it in Ginny Weasely’s cauldron (apparently to rid himself of an incriminating dark object and bring Arthur into disrepute – which all seems bit thin). Perhaps Voldermort should have been a touch clearer in his instructions.

By and large, Chamber of Secrets is amiable but very forgettable; it’s never a good sign when the most annoying elements (Dobby, Gilderoy) are the ones that stick in the mind. There is, fair’s fair, an amusing sequence in which Harry and Ron transform themselves into Slytherin boys in order to find out what Draco knows, but there’s also another of those quidditch games to get confused by. And Rupert Grint’s still streets ahead of the other juniors performance-wise at this stage, with Emma Watson’s rather over-emphatic delivery leaving her trailing a distant third.

So Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was Columbus’ last real involvement with the series (he retained a nominal producer credit); after this, the results would be universally more engaging and less sugar-coated (Columbus would try his hand at Young Adult again with Percy Jackson, but his directing career has been noticeably subdued since). Also Richard Harris’ final appearance as Dumbledore, sadly. The first two entries are much as I remembered them, undemanding, overly beholden adaptations that give non-fans little reason to invest themselves in the material. Fortunately, that would change in one fell swoop.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Doctors make the worst patients.

Coma (1978) (SPOILERS) Michael Crichton’s sophomore big-screen feature, and by some distance his best. Perhaps it’s simply that this a milieu known to him, or perhaps it’s that it’s very much aligned to the there-and-now and present, but Coma , despite the occasional lapse in this adaptation of colleague Robin Cook’s novel, is an effective, creepy, resonant thriller and then some. Crichton knows his subject, and it shows – the picture is confident and verisimilitudinous in a way none of his other directorial efforts are – and his low-key – some might say clinical – approach pays dividends. You might also call it prescient, but that would be to suggest its subject matter wasn’t immediately relevant then too.

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

The Apartment (1960) (SPOILERS) Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out ’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“ boy forgives girl and all’s well ”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve?

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

You just threw a donut in the hot zone!

Den of Thieves (2018) (SPOILERS) I'd heard this was a shameless Heat rip-off, and the presence of Gerard Butler seemed to confirm it would be passable-at-best B-heist hokum, so maybe it was just middling expectations, even having heard how enthused certain pockets of the Internet were, but Den of Thieves is a surprisingly very satisfying entry in the genre. I can't even fault it for attempting to Keyser Soze the whole shebang at the last moment – add a head in a box and you have three 1995 classics in one movie – even if that particular conceit doesn’t quite come together.

This guy’s armed with a hairdryer.

An Innocent Man (1989) (SPOILERS) Was it a chicken-and-egg thing with Tom Selleck and movies? Did he consistently end up in ropey pictures because other, bigger big-screen stars had first dibs on the good stuff? Or was it because he was a resolutely small-screen guy with limited range and zero good taste? Selleck had about half-a-dozen cinema outings during the 1980s, one of which, the very TV, very Touchstone Three Men and a Baby was a hit, but couldn’t be put wholly down to him. The final one was An Innocent Man , where he attempted to show some grit and mettle, as nice-guy Tom is framed and has to get tough to survive. Unfortunately, it’s another big-screen TV movie.

Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists!

Don’t Look Up (2021) (SPOILERS) It’s testament to Don’t Look Up ’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Archimedes would split himself with envy.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) (SPOILERS) Generally, this seems to be the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad outing that gets the short straw in the appreciation stakes. Which is rather unfair. True, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger lacks Tom Baker and his rich brown voice personifying evil incarnate – although Margaret Whiting more than holds her own in the wickedness stakes – and the structure follows the Harryhausen template perhaps over scrupulously (Beverly Cross previously collaborated with the stop-motion auteur on Jason and the Argonauts , and would again subsequently with Clash of the Titans ). But the storytelling is swift and sprightly, and the animation itself scores, achieving a degree of interaction frequently more proficient than its more lavishly praised peer group.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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