THREE REVIEWS

Yesterday I saw HARRY POTTER: THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 and found it engrossing and entertaining, but not as much as I had expected.  I’ve read some bad reviews of Part 1, but I thought Part 1 was quite good and loved the way it ended with the lightning bolt to the sky, and that’s where Part 2 begins.  First of all, Harry and his friends are now in their twenties, ten years after the first in the series was made, and they look their age, especially when seen along with some of the flashbacks that are used.  Probably the toughest thing for David Yates in directing this movie is the novel was so excellent.  As the last in the series of seven books, I thought J.K. Rowling did a a masterful job of pulling all the story lines together and concluding it in a really powerful way, and that all made it too complex to easily bring it to the screen (and thus two parts to the film).  Another problem, though probably minor, is I thought that if you hadn’t seen the earlier films you’d be lost in this one, at least at first.  but since I’ve read all the books and seen the movies, that’s hard for me to judge.  All the characters are back, and it’s like a WHO’S WHO of British sterling actors.  Harry and Valdemort (Ralph Fiennes) are stilll trying to kill each other, and together they wreak a lot of havoc.  Good overcomes evil, of course, but I won’t give away any particulars.  The special effects are seamless and fantastsic, and includes the best movie dragon I’ve ever seen.  The story is gripping, the acting excellent, and it’s worth seeing in 3D.  I give it  a socks up 8.

     With some time to spare I walked into WINNIE THE POOH just as it was starting.  It’s only a little over an hour long, but is a lot of fun.  It’s a Disney animated film that brings Pooh back to the screen (and surprisingly, there were more kids in this movie than in HARRY POTTER).  The kids loved it, and there was enough more sophisticated humor for adults.  Uhnappily, I read that all of the original voices of Pooh and his friends have died, but the replacemnts do a pretty good job of sounding fairly much like them.  Pooh is hungry for honey, of course, and he finds a note left by Christopher Robin saying that he has gone off, is buy, and will be back soon.  The stuffed animals all think he has been captured by the monster Backson and go about trying to rescue him.  It’s all rather silly but fun and has a few hearty laughs.  The animators did some really clever things in actually bringing the book to life.  I give it a 7.

     Being a member of the cast and in mid-production of the stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s EMMA, I decided to watch the Gwyneth Paltrow movie version last night (there are several others), since it was Book Club night for my wife.  I’m glad I did; it is a delightful movie.  I suppose it shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised how much it is like the script we’re doing; same source, but different writers, and it is a long book.  But with Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma, Ewan McGregor as Knightly, Alan Cummings as Elton, and Toni Collette as (a particularly unattractive) Harriet Smith, it’s a wonderful cast.  The costumes are beautiful, the story/adaptation hangs together well, the acting is superb, and the English setting is gorgeous; it is a delight and gets a socks up 8.7.  I was smiling all night.