Remedial Movie Making please!
Added 11/21/2009
OH MY GOSH!! How does this happen! How does a series start off wonderful and then become this fast moving train we have here. Half the time I couldn't tell what was going on! Thank goodness I read the book or I wouldn't have understood half of the halved halved scenes. Again discrimination against hous elfs, "Hermione where are you!!! Again Dobby's contribution to the movie is taken over by who els but the incompetant Neville who somehow finds it by strolling past it once when you're really supposed to walk past it three times thinking what you want it to become. Hermione somehow knows of the room already but I too lazy to find it. Kreacher, the cause of Sirius' death gets barely a minute on screen so why may I ask is he even in here, just so the moviemakers could say he was there. Also when harry was training in Occlumecy he did reflect Snapes Legilimency spell but he didn't see that scene becaus all you see from unfocused Legilimency is fragments of scenes. Again the makers are too lazy to bring in the pensieve and do an entire scene. When Harry sees the scene in Snape's head he decides he doesn't care and runs away. Also the issue with Cho Chang, the love affair with her started out fine but it ended with no explanation with them not even going out just POP! apart. Dolores Umbridge has been transformed from a toad like woman to a skinny pink clad cheery woman. There really aren't enough scenes to really hate her and I would have felt sorry for her if I didn't have the many more numerous things she does in the book! Anyways I've lost hope for this series. I wil be seeing the Half-Blood Prince but just to point out to my sister, who has not read the book, what's missing. Chris Columbas please save this series!
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I Hope There's Pudding
Added 11/18/2009
As stated before, from the longest novel comes the shortest film. And I've no complaints. Again, the director cuts out most, if not all of the sub-plots, and just gives us a straight forward story with the main characters. Somethings have been altered as well, such as Cho Chang betraying Harry and the others from Cho's friend. Which in my opinion is the better dramatic angle as Cho's friend would've only been in this one movie and it wouldn't have had as much emotional impact on the characters. The main cast continues to improve and the older actors are still wonderful. Two of my new favorite characters, who practically stole the show for me when I saw this two years ago, are Helena Bonham Carter (who gets very good billing in this for being in it for a whole five minutes) as Bellatrix Lestrange and Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. Carter is wonderfully deranged as Bellatrix as the actress seems to be having a lot of fun being deliciously evil. Lynch is charmingly quirky and, despite this being her first film (I think), is excellent and I only hope that she continues to act several more films after the Potter series has wrapped. Imelda Staunton is very good as Umbridge but there's only so much I can take of the color pink and tedious crooked politician/sadistic teacher angle. I know that's how she is in the book but I find the character rather plain and not as interesting as some of the other plot-twist characters they've had before. Action wise, this is the one with the most of it, climaxing with a wizard's battle which is executed brilliantly (and one can only hope that the climatic battle in the final film will be just as exhilirating). Nicholas Hopper provides an excellent score, using Williams' themes to a minimum, utilizing some brilliant pieces of his own (the wizard battle being one of them).
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A very unfortunate directorial decision
Added 11/11/2009
Two years later I remember only two items from this movie--the only Harry Potter film for which I didn't buy the DVD.
ITEM 1: THE SPINNING NEWSPAPER
This very dated cliche from movies of the 1930s and 1940s is unbelievably unsuited to the magical quality of the previous Harry Potter films, especially when compared to the newspaper 'photo' of the Gringott's robbery in the first movie. Of the various special effects in the first movie, the Gringott's robbery photo is the effect that made the most stunning impression on me, and the one that continues to stay with me the most these many years later--not because it was spectacular but because it was such a wonderful combination of a simple off-hand magical experience with a mundane activity common to muggles as well (reading the evening newspaper).
ITEM 2: THE SHATTERING GLASS EXTRAVAGANZA
This seemed awfully noisy, and seemed to go on forever. The effect might have been more impressive if I hadn't seen it in another fantasy movie that had already come out a couple of weeks earlier.
OUTCOME: Although I attended each of the first five Happy Potter movies during their opening week, this movie led me to vow never to watch another Harry Potter movie directed by Yates. Not only did this movie put me off the Harry Potter series, it also put me off attending movies in theaters. I still buy many DVDs to watch at home, but I haven't been to a movie theater since seeing this film.
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A brief comment
Added 11/10/2009
Since there are already over 600 reviews of this movie I'll just keep my comments brief and touch on a few points that I wanted to discuss.
I enjoyed this movie overall but I have to say that it's the weakest and most problematic of all the Harry Potter movies, although it's not without some great high points, too. I note that many of the fans were disappointed in how much was cut from the original book, making the story arc somewhat disjointed and hard to follow. But then this was the longest, if I remember right, of all the Harry Potter novels and you just can't cram everything in even a modest sized book, let alone one this long, into a movie. But many characters who featured prominently in the book get very little screen time in this adaptation.
But the movie does have its good points. The best thing is how you get to see the young wizards growing in their magic skills as they learn to do magical tricks like discharge energy, repulse an attacker by knocking him back through the air, perform stunts similar to psychokinesis by manipulating objects from afar, and so on. This aspect of the movie is the most fun.
The problem is that there's a new, evil senior professor by the name of Ms. Umbridge who is almost bad enough to bring the whole movie screeching to a halt every time she appears. She will only teach the young magicians the theory, not the actual practical techniques of magic. This puts the students in a bind, because they still need to protect themselves from evil magicians like Voldemor and also pass their exams. There's also no explanation in the movie for this inexplicable policy of Umbridge's except she's a very bad person. But the young people show some grit and determination in their desire to learn no matter who or what gets in their way by forming an outside study group, which meets in secret to learn what they can on their own.
But Umbridge is such a low, despicable character that the whole move suffers as a result. Not the least of these problems is that she runs around with a rigid, unchanging rictus of an expression on her face that's sort of like smug, arrogant complacency combined with a somewhat pinched, pained grimace as if she has terminal hemorrhoids. It's too extreme an affectation and caricature and makes every scene with this character hard to watch. I don't think I've ever had a more negative reaction to a character in a movie, and I usually don't even have much of a reaction to characters in movies. But her whole persona is an embarrassingly bad idea and low point for what was already a problematic Harry Potter movie. The only good thing you can say about the Umbridge character is at least the name was a clever idea because of the allusion to the word, "umbrage." Well, I guess I take umbrage with Ms. Umbridge.
Although there are some fun and enjoyable parts to the movie, and I still enjoyed it for the most part, again, the movie suffers from some bad characterization, a patchy and difficult to follow plot, and the loss of some important story elements from the book. It seems now that the Harry Potter kids are almost grown-up teenagers the Hogwarts Academy has lost its warts and gotten a bad case of acne. I still enjoyed the movie for the most part but in comparison with the other great movies in this series I can only give this one three stars at most.
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Great Gift for pre-teen Grandson
Added 10/28/2009
I love the "Harry Potter" series and so does my grandson...and granddaughters, but Logan really enjoys them. We enter the "World of Magic" when we watch these together. It is a little grim for my youngest granddaughter though.
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Remedial Movie Making please!
Added 11/21/2009
OH MY GOSH!! How does this happen! How does a series start off wonderful and then become this fast moving train we have here. Half the time I couldn't tell what was going on! Thank goodness I read the book or I wouldn't have understood half of the halved halved scenes. Again discrimination against hous elfs, "Hermione where are you!!! Again Dobby's contribution to the movie is taken over by who els but the incompetant Neville who somehow finds it by strolling past it once when you're really supposed to walk past it three times thinking what you want it to become. Hermione somehow knows of the room already but I too lazy to find it. Kreacher, the cause of Sirius' death gets barely a minute on screen so why may I ask is he even in here, just so the moviemakers could say he was there. Also when harry was training in Occlumecy he did reflect Snapes Legilimency spell but he didn't see that scene becaus all you see from unfocused Legilimency is fragments of scenes. Again the makers are too lazy to bring in the pensieve and do an entire scene. When Harry sees the scene in Snape's head he decides he doesn't care and runs away. Also the issue with Cho Chang, the love affair with her started out fine but it ended with no explanation with them not even going out just POP! apart. Dolores Umbridge has been transformed from a toad like woman to a skinny pink clad cheery woman. There really aren't enough scenes to really hate her and I would have felt sorry for her if I didn't have the many more numerous things she does in the book! Anyways I've lost hope for this series. I wil be seeing the Half-Blood Prince but just to point out to my sister, who has not read the book, what's missing. Chris Columbas please save this series!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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I Hope There's Pudding
Added 11/18/2009
As stated before, from the longest novel comes the shortest film. And I've no complaints. Again, the director cuts out most, if not all of the sub-plots, and just gives us a straight forward story with the main characters. Somethings have been altered as well, such as Cho Chang betraying Harry and the others from Cho's friend. Which in my opinion is the better dramatic angle as Cho's friend would've only been in this one movie and it wouldn't have had as much emotional impact on the characters. The main cast continues to improve and the older actors are still wonderful. Two of my new favorite characters, who practically stole the show for me when I saw this two years ago, are Helena Bonham Carter (who gets very good billing in this for being in it for a whole five minutes) as Bellatrix Lestrange and Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood. Carter is wonderfully deranged as Bellatrix as the actress seems to be having a lot of fun being deliciously evil. Lynch is charmingly quirky and, despite this being her first film (I think), is excellent and I only hope that she continues to act several more films after the Potter series has wrapped. Imelda Staunton is very good as Umbridge but there's only so much I can take of the color pink and tedious crooked politician/sadistic teacher angle. I know that's how she is in the book but I find the character rather plain and not as interesting as some of the other plot-twist characters they've had before. Action wise, this is the one with the most of it, climaxing with a wizard's battle which is executed brilliantly (and one can only hope that the climatic battle in the final film will be just as exhilirating). Nicholas Hopper provides an excellent score, using Williams' themes to a minimum, utilizing some brilliant pieces of his own (the wizard battle being one of them).
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
A very unfortunate directorial decision
Added 11/11/2009
Two years later I remember only two items from this movie--the only Harry Potter film for which I didn't buy the DVD.
ITEM 1: THE SPINNING NEWSPAPER
This very dated cliche from movies of the 1930s and 1940s is unbelievably unsuited to the magical quality of the previous Harry Potter films, especially when compared to the newspaper 'photo' of the Gringott's robbery in the first movie. Of the various special effects in the first movie, the Gringott's robbery photo is the effect that made the most stunning impression on me, and the one that continues to stay with me the most these many years later--not because it was spectacular but because it was such a wonderful combination of a simple off-hand magical experience with a mundane activity common to muggles as well (reading the evening newspaper).
ITEM 2: THE SHATTERING GLASS EXTRAVAGANZA
This seemed awfully noisy, and seemed to go on forever. The effect might have been more impressive if I hadn't seen it in another fantasy movie that had already come out a couple of weeks earlier.
OUTCOME: Although I attended each of the first five Happy Potter movies during their opening week, this movie led me to vow never to watch another Harry Potter movie directed by Yates. Not only did this movie put me off the Harry Potter series, it also put me off attending movies in theaters. I still buy many DVDs to watch at home, but I haven't been to a movie theater since seeing this film.
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