Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Blu-ray released November 16, 2009

Hermione, I think someone wrote a book about us...

While the third film in the series, the Alfonso Cuaron directed Prisoner of Azkaban, remains its artistic high point, David Yates’ two most recent instalments in the Harry Potter franchise are polished and engaging. Charting the ever rising influence of the nefarious Lord Voldemort, Half-Blood Prince alternates between those dark and ominous rumblings and the frothy teen romances developing between the leads. These two equally intriguing halves dance around each other but pull us in different directions. The two never satisfyingly converge.

A new Hogwarts staff member is custom in each new episode, and here Jim Broadbent plays the newly appointed potions teacher, Horace Slughorn. His appointment is a ruse concocted by Dumbledore, who is attempting, though Harry, to exploit Slughorn’s knowledge of Voldemort’s past. Meanwhile, the Dark Lord has given Draco a difficult and dangerous task akin to Anakin Skywalker’s Faustian moment of lopping off Count Dooku's head. To aid Draco on his mission, his mother and the scene stealing Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) coerce the delicious Alan Rickman’s Severus Snape into a magical agreement to act as his protector. Concurrently – and tangentially – we also follow the romantic entanglements of the hormone-infused leads, which include Harry’s growing affection for Ginny and Hermione’s crush on the oblivious Ron.

Drenched in Gothic greys and blacks, visually the film is a wonder, but unlike the earlier films, even The Goblet of Fire, the tone is overly drab and melancholy. No doubt foreshadowing events to follow in the final chapter (Deathly Hallows, split in two), much of what occurs merely seems to be a lull before the storm. Even the momentous death near the film’s end, no doubt known to most, fails to deliver the emotional punch it should.

Despite the inherent perils of telling a story with the same characters – and same villain – over a half dozen movies, each film has nonetheless worked on its own terms, a feat which few other series can claim. More akin to a TV show (or a series of novels, perhaps?), each episode contributes to the arc while still retaining its own satisfying structure. In Half-Blood Prince, the structure works as a means of getting Harry, Ron and Hermoine in a position for the final act, but less so as a stand alone narrative. With a less easily defined plot that seems to amount to zero by the end, character development becomes prominent, a characteristic which makes the story impenetrable to those who have at very least not seen all of the previous films.

This two-disc high-definition package offers a pristine visual and sound transfer. One would expect nothing less from such a recent high-profile release. The special features include a “maximum movie mode”, a Blu-ray exclusive, where one is able to select features at scene-specific points throughout the film.

The features available on the DVD release are presented on the second disc. Emphasising the Potter juggernaut over content, these features are directed towards the younger cohort of fans, with the young stars presenting short segments on the major facets of the production. Also on the disc is a 45 minute documentary entitled “J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life”, a preview of the Harry Potter theme park to be built in Orlando, Florida, which looks suitably kitsch but will no doubt send fans into a frenzy, and a stack of deleted scenes. Were it not for the already extended running time of a shy over two and a half hours, some of these transitional scenes would have added to the film and made it more easily comprehensible to the uninitiated.

Beautifully crafted, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an example of what an A-list blockbuster should be: well-made, entertaining and sophisticated. Whatever its narrative shortcomings as a stand alone story, most telling is that, by the end, one feels the next installment can't come soon enough.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Released December 3, 2009

Look, honey, a cockroach!

There’s a lot of hype surrounding this micro-budget horror film. Shot for a mere $15000 it has already recreated the box-office success of The Blair Witch Project to which it is clearly indebted. The trailer, which barely includes any scenes from the film, depicts apparently common scenes of terrified audiences huddling in fear. One critic called it the “scariest movie ever made”.

Said critic must have been watching a different film to I, since while offering some effective suspense sequences and an ending which has some sort of payoff, most of Activity burns along with no sense of plot or characterisation.

The setup is thus: a couple, Kate and Micah, move into a San Diego home and are restless about the presence of malevolent spirits in their upstairs bedroom. Micah setups up a camera to monitor them in their sleep. It’s not long before strange noises are heard, lights switch themselves on and off and doors sway on their own accord. They are visited by a psychic who suggests it may be a demon. Perhaps they should consult a “demonologist”, he tells them. Conveniently out of town, Kate and Micah instead are left to deal with the deterioriating situation alone.

The hand-held camera is modestly effective and uncredited writer/director Oren Peli cleverly uses sound and its absence to heighten the suspense. The lack of production values is consistent with the idea that the footage is real and found after the fact by the San Diego police, but the film's sparseness is also its weakness. There’s nothing here that engages on any level above the most primal. While that may be true of many horror films, at least they do so with some sense of narrative and style.

Paranormal Activity may be refreshingly devoid of gore, but it's so simplistic it's also devoid of most anything else.

The Informant! (2009)

Released December 3, 2009

Matt Damon in Movember

The versatile Steven Soderbergh's latest film is a dark comedy that feels like a cross between Catch Me If You Can and Burn After Reading.

It’s set in the early 90s but you can never really be sure. Some details, like the brick-sized mobile phones and green text on antiquated computers, fit, but others, from the retro jazzy score and the idyllic white-picket fence suburbia, suggest anything from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The protagonist is equally difficult to define. Portrayed convincingly by a moustache-totin', heavy-set Matt Damon, he is Mark Whitacre, an executive for the agriculture company, ADM. Outwardly a talkative idealist, his thoughts are rendered in a stream of consciousness voice over in which he discusses such important questions as whether or not a polar bear considers its black nose a hindrance to its camouflage. After learning of a price-fixing conspiracy within ADM, and prompted by his wife, he becomes a whistle blower for the FBI and a makeshift undercover agent.

Not trained for the task, he nonetheless blithely manages to clandestinely record meetings and gather enough evidence to convict. Despite planning to expose his coworkers as frauds and swindlers, he still naively believes he will still have a place at the company when the guilty are exposed.

Whitcare is an enigma to the other characters, the audience, and ultimately himself. His journey from the early scenes, which zip by in a blur of 1940s-esque dialogue, to the latter which examine the consequences of the investigation and Whitcare’s ever evolving version of events, is both funny and engaging.

Drowned in a warm lather of yellows and oranges and accompanied by a prominent and bouncy score by Marvin Hamlisch, the film is beautifully constructed. Damon could very well garner Oscar consideration, and again proves that he's both a superstar and a talented actor.

Night at the Museum 2 (2009)

Blu-ray released November 10, 2009

Ben Stiller and Amy Adams gawking at the size of their movie

Amy Adams can brighten up the room, or at least light up the screen, which is what she does in this bigger and more colourful sequel to the 2006 hit. She plays a sassy 30s film star version of Amelia Earhart, busting at the seams with her love of flying and sense of adventure. She also has an impetuous crush on the hero, Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), whom she is helping navigate, this time, through the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C.

The first Night at the Museum worked beautifully as an advertisement for the American Museum of Natural History, and this seems destined to do the same for the National Air and Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art. It had to be this way, since without it the filmmakers would never have received permission to film in the real locations. Think of it as the Top Gun for museums.

We find Larry having left his life as a night guard behind and instead running a successful infomerical business. Smartly dressed and cruising around in a chauffeured vehicle, he heads back for a visit his old haunt on Central Park West. He discovers that his old friends, including Owen Wilson as Jedediah and Steve Coogan as Roman Emperor Octavius, are to be transported to storage in the Federal Archives underneath the National Mall in D.C. Robin Williams' Teddy Roosevelt is to be left behind, presumably because Williams wasn't keen on the sequel.

It's for the best since Larry encounters far more engaging characters on his subsequent rescue mission. They include Adams' aforementioned Amelia and Hank Azaria, channeling Boris Karloff, as the evil Pharaoh Kahmunrah. Kahmunrah plans to open the gates the underworld so he can rule the Earth (or something). He is aided by the womanizing Napoleon, plain confused Ivan the Terrible and a young, black and white Al Capone, who inexplicably never gets to fire his Tommy gun. Maybe that was a clause in the filmmakers' Smithsonian contract.

Like many high-budget sequels, the number of characters and ideas flattens the narrative, but many of those are so exuberant it hardly matters. A visit to the Lincoln memorial, flying the Wright flyer inside the Air and Space Museum and, best of all, jumping into the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor kissing a nurse on V-J day in Times Square, 1945, flash by one after another. Larry's character arc is predictable, and the message to kids that they should "do what they find fun" is obvious, but it's affable and inoffensive. It sits more comfortably than the occasional lapses into juvenile humour, which will amuse only the most undemanding kids.

The Blu-ray release is superb and heavy on special features. There are two commentary tracks, one by director Shawn Levy and another from the writers, Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. There are twelve featurettes, the best of which is a twenty minute "A Day in the Life of Director/Producer Shawn Levy", which follows him on a particularly effects-heavy day of shooting, and is a great insight into the day-to-day process of creating a big-budget feature. There's also over half an hour of deleted scenes, many which are alternative versions of scenes in the film with different improvisations, and a gag reel mainly featuring Azaria and Ricky Gervais, who plays the original museum's director.

Night at the Museum 2 is unashamably an ungainly, unsophisticated big budget effects-laden Hollywood production with an obvious agenda. If you are willing to accept that premise - and who am I to fault those encouraging young people to be interested in history - then it delivers what it promises.

If not, then see it for Amy Adams. She's postively phosphorescent.

Note
This is a new disc and may require a firmware upgrade on some older players.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Released November 19, 2009

Jennifer Garner and Ricky Gervais are an odd couple. As he (Mark) picks her (Anna) up for their first date, she gleefully informs him "I was just masturbating". "That makes me think of your vagina," he replies. Not only do the characters in this Gervais-verse never tell a lie, they have no control over what they say and when.

Society is thus peaceful and serene. Despite the lack of the existence of "art", for that stems from lies, Gervais works for an insidiously white collar production company that produces non-fiction films. He writes scripts so that very serious old men can dryly recite historical events directly to camera.

Miraculously, he suddenly acquires the ability to lie. He uses his new found power both for good (relationship advice, helping the homeless) and evil (getting rich) and invents a myriad of stories about a "man in the sky" who controls everything on Earth. People listen, and begin to believe he is some kind of Prophet. The one thing that seems unattainable though, is Anna, who likes him but doesn't want kids who are "chubby and snub-nosed".

Gervais’ usual dry and rambling humour is unusually flat and repetitive. Jennifer Garner though, is warm as always, and the supporting cast, including Jonah Hill, Rob Lowe and Tina Fey do draw the odd laugh. But there's only a limited amount an audience can invest in protagonists who have no social skills and no comprehension of Gervais' situation.

With a clever but ill-conceived premise, malleable according to the whim of the plot, most of The Invention of Lying misfires. Still, you have to admire the audacity of a film that turns into a scathing satire of religion and paints Gervais as a Christ figure. It ends up being more of a drama than a comedy and that, perhaps, is most telling.

Cold Souls (2009)

Released November 19, 2009

The idea behind Sophie Barthes' feature debut as writer/director is inspired. What if, she asks, the human soul doesn't merely exist, but can be extracted? What would a human be without a soul?

Paul Giamatti, playing a version of himself, is an actor struggling through rehearsals of Chekov's Uncle Vanya. Anxiety ridden, he meets with Dr. Flintstein (a suave David Strathairn) in an office that's a cross between a dentists and a hair salon. Flintstein offers him a solution: have his soul extracted and free himself from the burden of his emotions. Do so, he says, and "everything becomes functional”.

The procedure is a cop out, of course, the newly soulless Giamatti now able to perform, but without conviction. After his soul is stolen by a Russian-American soul trafficking business, in desperation he chooses the soul of a Russian poet as a temporary solution. While Paul seems little different whether or not he has his soul, his perceptive wife (Emily Watson) knows something is amiss.

Bleak yet darkly comic, this philosophical tragicomedy is reminiscent of the work of Charlie Kaufman, minus the overt surrealism. Barthes' wrote the script for Giamatti, and it shows. His furrowed brow and hilarious deadpan mesh perfectly with the absurdity of the premise, which is played straight as if soul storage were an everyday practice.

The script was a screenplay competition winner, and is inventive but conventionally structured. By the time Giamatti visits an austere snow-covered St. Petersburg, as if that was necessary to visualize the characters' mood, the unwavering weight their grievances almost becomes too much. It does however reflect the film’s point of view: without a soul we would be unburdened, but empty; you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

A Serious Man (2009)

Released November 19, 2009

The Coen Brothers' most recent opus is decidedly odd. It opens with a non-letterboxed prologue reciting a myth from Jewish folklore about a rabbi who may, or may not, be a malicious spirit - a "dybbuk". Shifting to late 1960s Minnesota suburbia, we find Physics teacher Larry Gopnik lecturing a class about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and whether Schrodinger's cat is, or is not, dead. As an audience member watching A Serious Man, you may well ask yourself whether you are meant to laugh, or whether you are meant to cry. Perhaps it is both simultaneously.

Relative unknown Michael Stuhlbarg, in a perfectly pitched performance, plays Larry, the most ineffectual protagonist in recent memory. When he discovers his wife is sleeping with another man, instead of confronting her or taking matters into his own hands, he merely shrugs in perplexed wonder. God's plan, if there is one, seems to involve Larry subsequently sleeping at the local motel, the "Jolly Roger", and accepting awkward embraces from his conceited competition, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed).

These are not Larry's only problems. A Korean student at the school is attempting to bribe him for better grades, his son is more interested in F-Troop and smoking pot than his studies. and his even more hopeless brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), is sleeping on the couch. The sum of knowledge he is able to extract from visits to three rabbis, in a desperate search for answers, is to "accept the mystery". Helpful, indeed.

Who and what is doing the tormenting, and whether or not anyone has the power to do anything about it, is the focus of the Coen Brothers' enquiry in a film which is as funny as Burn After Reading but bleaker than No Country For Old Men. Drawing upon their own childhood, this awkward and hilarious satire of jewishness, faith, family and life is so grim it may alienate some. By the time the credits roll around you, like Larry, are no closer to finding "Hashem", "God" or "Truth".

Perhaps, the Coen's suggest, we're not meant to.