Some Reviews

I’ve seen a couple of movies recently, thought I’d let you know in comparatively brief reviews what I thought of them.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

RATING: B+

I liked it, nice work. Director David Yates is starting to get really comfortable in his position, and his camerawork is more confident than last time around. The special effects have stepped up a notch, and Quiddich games finally look like they’re actually happening. This is also the first HP film where Daniel Radcliffe completely owns the role; he’s always looked perfect, and his slightly wooden acting has been forgivable since Harry himself is a little awkward, but something clicks into place in this performance that has never been there before. There is charisma and gravitas going on here, and while I lament that this couldn’t have surfaced sooner, I also appreciate that Radcliffe has clearly been trying to step up his game with each new entry. Emma Watson, who was the shining star of the first few flicks, is for some reason getting more and more uncomfortable with each go. She’s still good, but there are moments where it seems like her training is too theatrical, and she puts too much (in the words of Calculon the acting robot from “Futurama”) “AAACCTTINNG TALENT” into moments that should be played gently.

I’m not even going to bother telling you that Alan Rickman is the man as Snape, but I’m quite surprised by how Michael Gambon has improved as Dumbledore. While some might say he gets a bum rap for replacing the late Richard Harris, I think he has been guilty of straying too far from Rowling’s masterful image of the Headmaster, turning him into a bizarre, unsympathetic, almost violent person. However, something is finally working right this time around—maybe the script is better tuned to him, maybe he’s listened to his feedback, but whatever the case I’m okay with him. (SPOILER) I still wish he would have cared more about the benevolent, loving side of Albus, but I can’t deny that he sent the character out in style. (END SPOILER)

Public Enemies

RATING: C-

Sigh. I kept thinking about that line from Macbeth: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” This is a very long movie with a lot of characters who love, fight, and die, but the filmmakers never even approach making any kind of statement about any of it. It’s all flat. Some have been fooled into thinking that Johnny Depp’s John Dillinger is a three dimensional character, but he isn’t. He’s charismatic, sure, and Depp squeezes every drop the script gives him, but the story still starves because there’s an absolute famine on those pages. It’s all mind-numbingly rote: Dillinger escapes, Purvis hunts him, Purvis catches, Dillinger escapes, Purvis hunts him, over and over, and all the while it feels like director Michael Mann thinks he’s too cool to say anything about what’s going on. There is not a single discernible character arc in this picture, everybody comes out the same way they went in, even if they’re dead when the damned thing’s over. Worst of all, Christian Bale’s Purvis and Depp’s Dillinger have absolutely no relationship of any kind. They don’t like one another, they don’t hate one another, they just point guns and fire. Perhaps Mann would argue that this is “historically accurate,” but this is a movie. If you’re going to do a picture about two men at war, you do not have any excuse for giving them nothing to say to one another. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it, too: you can’t put a drab, uninteresting plot in front of me and then get all Pontius Pilate on it, acting like it isn’t your fault just because you read it in a book.

My other significant gripe is the camerawork. Mann elected to shoot “Enemies” with a combination of HD cameras (mainly the F-23 and Ex-1), a bold choice for a period piece. While I admire his gusto, I can say without hesitation that his gamble failed. Nine times out of ten, the pixelated image quality is enormously distracting, and the night time scenes are so bad they border on unwatchable. There is also a bizarre insistence on close ups and extreme close ups in every scene that really hampers the clarity of the picture, as if Mann is trying to out-Bourne “The Bourne Ultimatum.” What the hell was he thinking, covering dialogue scenes with a fast zoom on Christian Bale’s cheekbones? Arrrghh!

That said, the whole thing goes off with gloss and professionalism: the bank robberies are staged like ballets, and there’s one spectacular shoot-out that occurs around a cabin in the woods which may just be worth the price of admission. Bale and Depp both work hard, Billy Crudup is great as J. Edgar Hoover, and the dialogue is written with razor sharp precision. Marion Cotillard is absolutely enchanting as Dillinger’s girl, and probably the only truly rounded character in the whole piece (I can only imagine how magical the movie would have been if she was the central character, and all these robbers and G-men were just supporting). There are positive things to say here, so the movie is not a complete wash, but there’s too many misfires to ignore. Making a good movie is not about being flawless, it’s about knowing which flaws you can risk and which you can’t. Michael Mann, a brilliant and accomplished director, should have known not to risk a vapid story or hazy lensing.

As a side note, his next movie better hit hard, because this is the second time in a row he has made a mindless, meaningless crime picture. A few years back, he gave us “Miami Vice,” which also suffered from a complete absence of character or meaning. “Enemies” is unquestionably better, since it has a great action scene and top-shelf actors, but it’s disquieting to know that I can’t write “Vice” off as a fluke. What are you doing, Michael?