Hugo (U)

Happy Christmas readers! Hugo is a perfect family film, for this time of year especially. (To my readers in South Africa, unfortunately you'll have to wait until February to see it)!

This review was first published in The Methodist Recorder (www.methodistrecorder.co.uk).

Hugo (U)

Martin Scorsese’s first foray into family entertainment has produced one of the very best films of the year. Hugo is an orphan living in a 1930s Paris rail station. Skilled with mechanics and in love with the movies, he lives a lonely existence maintaining the stations complicated clocks and trying to mend a robot left to him by his father. Ever dodging the dastardly Station Inspector, Hugo’s adventures bring him to a mysterious toy shop owner and his bookish daughter Isabelle. As Hugo and Isabelle form an unlikely friendship the tale of the boy’s past unfolds, interwoven with the history of early cinema.

Best known for his violent and bravura gangster movies, here Scorsese brings every ounce of his virtuoso directing skills and unrivaled technical mastery to younger audiences. A champion of film preservation, Scorsese uses Hugo to share his love of cinema with a new generation, and as the credits roll many parents are going to be hearing their little ones chirp “I want to be a film director when I grow up!”

That said, compared to more typical family adventure films Hugo is likely a little on the slow side for some. For each exhilarating chase through the crowded station there are two or more flashbacks to the dawn of filmmaking, with beautiful recreations of early films such as the seminal ‘Le voyage dans la lune’ (1902). While magical and inspiring for most, it may be less engaging for very young children.

The story’s theme is rediscovering purpose: Hugo tries to work out what his father’s robot is for; a retired filmmaker is reminded what he was born to do, and Hugo and Isabelle wonder how they fit into the world. The point is that if we lose our purpose in life then we are as broken as Hugo’s robot, and the teaching in the book of Ecclesiastes’ that there is nothing better than to find contentment in whatever God has given us to do, definitely resonates with that.

Chloë Grace Moretz is charming as Isabelle, and although Asa Butterfield is not quite as good as the title character he still does plenty to win the audience’s empathy. With the cast also featuring greats such as Ben Kingsley and Christopher Lee, and the cinematography showcasing the best of use 3D to date, Hugo is an emotional, edifying and truly exceptional silver screen experience for all ages.

The Ides of March (15)

Recently nominated for four Golden Globes and still in cinemas (just), The Ides of March is one to watch this awards season.

This review was first published in The Methodist Recorder (www.methodistrecorder.co.uk).

The Ides of March (15)

Opening with a speech about a politician’s religion being the Constitution of the United States, The Ides of March is a clever political thriller of the highest quality. The title comes from the date in the Roman calendar on which Julius Caesar was assassinated, and the plot is rife with backbiting and deception. Ryan Gosling is superb as Stephen, Junior Campaign Manager to George Clooney’s Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris. Stephen’s loyalty and ideals are tested as multiple scandals threaten to surface.

As well as starring, Clooney directed and co-wrote the film, and being a self described political liberal he clearly intended to make a point. The point would seem to be a mixture of generalised lamenting over the extent of corruption in politics, and a frank admission that even the best of us aren’t completely innocent. Isaiah 64:6 says ‘...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags’, and it is striking that even before Stephen loses his supposed innocence, he is already neck deep in lies and spin.

His troubles start when he begins an illicit relationship with intern Molly. What seems to them just a bit of fun soon turns out to be the opening of a Pandora’s box of nightmares. Once again Hollywood inadvertently illustrates how much damage could be prevented if society stuck to the Biblical principle of reserving sex for marriage.

Clooney and Gosling aside, the film boasts a dazzling cast of fine actors. Paul Giamatti plays the opposition’s experience hardened campaign manager; Marisa Tomei is a reporter who’s allegiances stretch no further than her latest story will allow, and the great Philip Seymour Hoffman gives yet another scene stealing performance as Stephen’s senior manager Paul.

The script powerfully brings home many truths that secular society is quick to ignore, with personal responsibility for action and inaction being high up its list of themes. When Stephen tries to excuse his campaign threatening behaviour, Paul cuts him down to size with the line ‘... you didn’t make a mistake, you made a choice”: a distinction which leaves the fresh faced protagonist speechless.

Clooney’s direction is solid and polished, and with surprisingly few direct parallels to 2011 American politics, rather than missing the mark he has had the ambition to make a film that might have the same impact it has today even decades down the line. Consummate, entertaining and honest, Ides is an eye opening must watch.

The First Movie (12)

This moving documentary is out on DVD Monday. It's a must see.

The First Movie (12) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

For many film lovers the first film they ever saw holds a special place in their heart. Others have been watching films since before they can remember. Critic turned director Mark Cousins’ 2009 documentary attempts to capture the magic of cinema as experienced for the very first time, in Iraq of all places, thus also showing a side of a topical country that news cameras never cover.

Cousins begins by describing his childhood as an imaginative youngster in Belfast, which like present day Iraq of course had bombs of its own. As a child the time he spent in his local cinema felt more ‘real’ to him than that spent in the everyday world outside of it, and he invites us to once again see through the eyes of a child, considering what might be ‘real’ in the experience of a group of children in the small Iraqi town of Goptapa. Like the rest of the country, Goptapa is a place with a history of unimaginably violent tragedy.

To introduce the townsfolk to the movies Cousins shows a selection of classic short films, followed by Steven Spielberg’s magnificent E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The kids go berserk, clapping and whooping at the finale! In the narration Cousins puts it that “Never have films about love, solidarity and loneliness heard such cheering.” It’s moving stuff.

Next the children are given little high definition cameras to take away with them, with instructions to shoot stories of their own. Without revealing what they come up with, the results demonstrate real creativity and an inner compulsion towards love rather than hate. Cousins refers to cameras as empathy machines, and anyone who witnesses what he has captured with his camera and the children with theirs, will be hard pressed not to be filled with compassion for the young people of Goptapa, who had no say on the situation which they were born into. The way that their environment has shaped their imaginations is affecting and vivid.

The film explores at a base level what the art of filmmaking can be, and the value that it holds for humanity. Cousins’ gentle style of direction and the delicate edit are the perfect fit to bring these points home. His insights delivered via voiceover periodically give way to magical montages, with music that breathtakingly enriches the images. This highlights not only the effectiveness of moving pictures to portray emotions and experiences, but also the way that sound can transform an image into something entirely new, or a place like Iraq into a children's wonderland.

When all is said and done Cousins doesn’t deny the reality of Iraq’s situation, including footage of his crew being ordered to stop filming by the police. As a snapshot of a rarely seen side of the country combined with a powerful reminder of the near elemental force of stories told with moving pictures, The First Movie is a true triumph.

The Help (12A)

The good people at The Methodist Recorder (www.methodistrecorder.co.uk) have given me permission to post the reviews that I write for them on here, with a wait of a couple of weeks from when the paper goes to print. My reviews for them are (unsurprisingly) more geared towards Christian readers.

Here we have The Help, which is still in cinemas and well worth a look:

The Help (12A)

The Help is a heartwarming tale set in Mississippi during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Local girl Skeeter is the only white person in her town with an affinity for the black maids who work in the white middle class homes. She alone seems moved by their mistreatment, and so she sets about using her skills as a writer to produce a book to shed light on their untold plight.

Based on the best selling book by Kathryn Stockett and directed by relative newcomer Tate Taylor, The Help deals with issues that aren’t perhaps as relevant in 2011 as they were in their day, but which do certainly conjure themes that are timeless and goldmines for truth about the human condition.

A lot of effort has gone into recreating the period, and the authenticity is enhanced by the absence of any big name Hollywood stars, bar perhaps guaranteed future star Emma Stone as the naïve but assured Skeeter. Visually the film glows with an inviting charm, making the story and experience it has to offer all the more appealing.

Unusually for a film on wide release, there are moments which unmistakably portray Christianity not just with respect, but also as a positive and constructive worldview. In order to write her explosive book Skeeter must persuade enough maids to be interviewed, at great personal risk to each. Both fear of God and conviction of what is right are clearly shown to be deciding factors in the maids’ decisions to stand up for what they believe in.

If there is a villain in the film then it is Hilly Holbrook, a bitterly racist prima donna. She is brilliantly portrayed with malevolent relish by Bryce Dallas Howard. Octavia Spencer is hilarious as the feisty and daring Minny, a maid who’s candid contributions prove crucial to Skeeter’s chances of success, and Viola Davis represents The Help’s best hopes for Oscar glory with her emotive performance as Aibileen, the bravest of Skeeter’s interviewees who has many stories of her own to tell.

The Help deals with a very dark period of history, and effectively considers themes ranging from hypocrisy through to friendship. In doing so Taylor has crafted a film that is thoroughly entertaining, and yet totally dignified in it’s reflections on racism, even boldly including the passé view that if you can love your enemy, then victory is yours already.

Camp Hell (15)

This is out in UK cinemas tomorrow (2nd Dec.) It's a poor film but I had fun panning it!

Camp Hell (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

If you liked the trailer for Camp Hell, don’t bother to watch the film. Falsely advertised as a fast paced supernatural horror, the story in fact moves at a snail’s pace, and most of the spooky finale is in the trailer anyway (not to mention nearly all of Jesse Eisenberg’s screen time!).

Tommy is a young lad sent to a pseudo-Christian camp where the youth are taught the dangers of sins such as premarital sex and, wait for it... rock music. He is haunted by a demon via nightmares, and when he fails to resist the advances of the alluring Melissa, his sin gives the demon cause to wreak havoc on the camp.

Now there are of course some fanatics in the world following twisted offshoots of Christianity, as there are of many other religions, and perhaps one day a film will be made that accurately and fairly portrays their pitfalls and hypocrisies. But Camp Hell is not it. The Christians here are a confusing mishmash of stereotyped Catholicism, evidenced by the camp being run by a priest, not to mention the characters making the sign of the cross every two minutes... and radical charismatics, whose main crime seems to be irritating people with their cheery songs and perpetual smiles. Writer director George VanBuskirk clearly wasn’t aiming for realism on any level, which is pretty disgraceful when his film claims to portray some of the inner workings of a popular world religion.

One thing the film does have going for it is the controlled and credible performance of Will Denton as Tommy. He very nearly lifts the quality of the production out of the gutter, where it would certainly belong if weren’t also for the accomplished cinematography. Valentina de Angelis however is horrendous as Melissa. To be fair it doesn’t help that her character is there purely as sin inducing eye candy for poor Tommy, but she simply couldn’t be less convincing if her face was made of plastic. Perhaps she has a future as a model.

The music is inappropriate and distracting, so much so that any atmosphere that might have been created is instantly evaporated whenever the score kicks in. The most frustrating thing about Camp Hell though is its ending; not that it doesn’t come soon enough (that too...) but that the conclusion is so bizarrely disconnected from all that has gone before, that any message or intention VanBuskirk may have had is completely lost.

Aside from a couple of entertaining (but irrelevant) half clever references to popular classics like Jurassic Park and Star Wars, Camp Hell is a distinctly lifeless film; boring, pointless and offensive. Save your time and money. Life really is far too short.

Taking Off (18)

If you love One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest then you'll like Taking Off (1971). Out on DVD & Blu-ray Monday 7th November.

Taking Off (18) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Whether it’s exploring Peter Jackson’s gore fuelled horror films, or Stanley Kubrick’s rarely seen Fear and Desire, there is a certain fascination to be found in discovering how future masters of their craft honed their cinematic vocabularies in the early days of their careers.

Taking Off, the 1971 feature debut for the U.S. market by Czech-American director Milos Forman, is an almost forgotten gem and a must see for any fan of his later work, such as the bonafide masterpieces One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus.

Jeannie Tyne is a shy teenager who runs away from home to take part in an audition with a popular anti-establishment band. Naturally her parents Larry and Lynn are sick with worry, and at a loss as to how to begin searching for their special only child. But as time passes the empty hole that Jeannie leaves in their lives begins to give way to a strange sense of rediscovered freedom.

Opening with a sequence showing countless auditioning young girls singing their hearts out, Forman makes brilliant use of music and unorthodox editing. The auditions continue to be intercut throughout the film, acting as a kind of Greek chorus complimenting and enriching the unfolding plot.

Larry, memorably played by Buck Henry, soon discovers a whole subculture of parents searching for their lost teens. Together with his wife he joins the so called ‘Society for Parents of Fugitive Children’, and they find themselves at such a large and prestigious meeting of this group that it feels like an awards dinner. The many parents there are willing to try anything in an attempt to understand the youth of the day, culminating in an outrageous but hilarious drug taking experiment.

Taking Off entertainingly studies the growing divide between an ageing and conservative generation and their offspring, young people growing more and more disenchanted with the free world that was won for them in World War Two.

Interestingly there is a young actress who is on screen for no longer than a minute or so, yet she sings a song so haunting and with such obvious talent that it might be the most lasting memory the film leaves with you. It’s the brilliant Kathy Bates, making her feature film debut as one of Jeannie’s musical peers.

Although a product of a bygone era Taking off can still speak to us in 2011, what with every successive generation of parents perpetually lamenting over ‘kids today’. Using a blend of edgy themes and absurdist comedy Forman instantly made his mark on American cinema, and given the stone cold classics which were to follow it’s something to celebrate that he was given that chance.

Orphans (18)

Today we have gritty British indie flick Orphans (1998), out on DVD and Blu-ray Monday 31st October.

Orphans (18) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Actor Peter Mullan’s 1998 feature debut as writer and director is a gritty, no holds barred Scottish drama mixing heartfelt agony and unexpected hilarity, resulting in a rich and powerful ensemble piece. This is a must see for any fans of British indie cinema.

Recently bereaved of their mother, four siblings (three brothers and a sister) embark on a sleepless night of turmoil and anguish ahead of her funeral the next day. Gary Lewis plays Thomas, the oldest and most emotionally bottled up brother. Thomas chooses to spend the night alone in the local Church, keeping vigil by his mother’s body. Douglas Henshall is spellbinding as Michael, perhaps the most interestingly written character in the script. After suffering a stab wound defending Thomas’ honour in a pub brawl, he rejects hospital treatment in favour of waiting for his next day of work, planning to pretend that it was a work related injury and thereby claim compensation. The film is laced with many such difficult to watch but extremely funny twists and turns, and although deeply sympathetic to his character’s burdens, Mullan was also clearly having a whale of a time bringing the dark and bracing humour of his Scottish homeland to the screen. Some of the passionate but boneheaded sweary dialogue is side-splitting.

Youngest brother John channels his feelings into a misguided crusade for vengeance against his brothers knife attacker. His misadventures take him on a wild roller coaster of emotions, and Stephen McCole plays the part with flair. The final sibling and only sister is the handicapped Sheila (Rosemarie Stevenson), who suffers after being left in her older brother Thomas’ care. His devotion to his dead mother trumps that for his live and very needy sister. Left to wander the dark streets alone in her wheelchair, Sheila serves as a symbol for where the bereaved’s focus should lie, but sadly rarely ever does.

At first the film’s score (an insight into the early days of now successful composer Craig Armstrong) feels overly melodramatic, but soon it’s appropriateness is made clear as it helps to soften the contrast between the film’s bleak atmosphere, and the explosions of comedy which appear left, right and centre. So pitch black is the style and tone that visually the picture looks like it’s been dipped in tar, and that coupled with Mullan’s emotive camera work and direction is shatteringly effective.

Orphans paved the way for Mullan to direct The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and Neds (2010), and as far as career launchers go it’s a belter. Here’s hoping he’ll take the reins behind the camera for many more films to come!

Devil's Redemption (2010) - my short film

My short film Devil's Redemption is finally online for all to see! The tables have turned... now it's your turn to review my film!



"Convicted sex offender Dave is haunted by nightmares of guilt, and sets off to find the woman he wronged... but can he make things right?"

You can also view or download in HD here for a small fee.

The Beaver (15)

Next week sees the DVD & Blu-ray release of Mel Gibson's comeback vehicle The Beaver, and it's pretty darn good:

The Beaver (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Mel Gibson is a good actor. Whatever the truth about his personal life, it isn’t relevant to that fact, and The Beaver features one of his best performances to date.

He plays Walter Black, a deeply troubled soul caged deep within a hardened shell of depression. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) has lost all hope of rediscovering the wonderful man who she married, having struggled through years of Walter’s ever increasing moroseness. She kicks him out, and of course that has no positive effect on poor Walter’s state of mind.

Enter the beaver. In a scene both hilarious and sensitive, Walter finds himself incapable of committing suicide and is finally talked out of it by... himself! Strangely drawn to an old hand puppet, Walter begins conversing with himself via the furry toy, and Gibson’s performance makes this potentially ludicrous turn of events seem not only plausible, but entirely convincing.

Jodie Foster also directed the picture, and it is her first effort behind the camera in sixteen years, much of which she must have spent practising! The story unfolds with a mature mixture of heartfelt respect for families torn apart by mental illness, coupled with a healthy injection of humour and wit.

Anton Yelchin plays Walter’s son Porter, and proves himself once again as a fantastically talented young actor. Hard as he tries, Porter finds it impossible to rid himself of his father’s every mannerism and trait, as he fights to escape the shadow of a dad who to him seems pathetic and helpless. Yelchin comfortably handles this complicated character, and clearly has a big career ahead of him.

Gibson’s soulful, naturalistic portrayal is likely informed by his rumoured personal battles with depression, but whatever his method he dominates the screen and makes you feel Walter’s pain. Being something of a shunned name in Hollywood these days his turn here is unlikely to garner the recognition it deserves, but it certainly is one of note.

The film has a distinctly European flavour to it, partly thanks to the darkly playful score by Marcelo Zarvos, characterised by its accordion tangos, but also due to the crisp and summery cinematography by Hagen Bogdanski, which helps to lend the heavy themes a softer, more digestible quality.

Inevitably the plot is tainted with some measure of Hollywood cliché, and particularly later on in the film some strands of the story risk getting lost in the realms of wishful thinking. However as a whole the tale rings true, the finale for example being far from as pat as it could have been, and for that writer Kyle Killen and the director deserve credit.

Killen’s ingenuity lifts The Beaver way above the cesspit of films full of trite and obvious metaphors, and without preaching delivers a timely message about accepting the unexpected, not judging the apparently strange, and however painful making the effort to keep your family under one roof.

Incendies (15)

Today we have the excellent and hard-hitting Incendies, recently out on DVD and Blu-ray.

Incendies (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)

Sometimes you wish the horrors in a film were just that, part of a horror film without root in reality. But here the horrors are all too real. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s devastating sucker punch of a film charts twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) on a journey that unravels their identities and unveils their past.

After their mother’s sudden death, the twins open her Will with her employer, a notary called Jean. In it she has asked them to travel to her home country in the Middle East, to discover the facts of their mysterious family origins.

The twin’s odyssey is interwoven with flashbacks to the past struggles of their mother Nawal (Lubna Azabal). The effect is straightforward and to the point, the intention clearly being to bring home to Westerners what life for many in the Middle East is really like. The tone is set beautifully by a recurring Radiohead song, which is strangely appropriate and avoids being jarring, with just the right contemporary blend of unsettling raw emotion.

Incendies (or ‘Scorched’ in English) is based on an award winning play by Wajdi Mouawad, which in the past has been criticised for being melodramatic, and some of that criticism could certainly be levelled at the film version. It is flawed then, but Villeneuve expertly and successfully disguises the plot’s weaknesses by pressing hard on the thriller button, and he never drops the ball in terms of suspense.

To put it simply, the ending, if you can stomach it, will leave you reeling. Undoubtedly it is one of the most gut wrenching and emotionally draining finales to a film in a recent years; the darkest secrets are truly saved for last. Therein lies another flaw however: though excellent in their respective roles, it was always a tall order for Désormeaux-Poulin and Gaudette to portray the extremes of emotional torture that their characters are put through. Thankfully such feelings are too distant for most of us to imagine, and the director partly compensates for this with great use of understated emotive imagery, symbols and sounds. Perhaps it’s best that some things remain unfilmable.

The cinematography is accomplished; nothing we haven’t seen before but still beautiful from time to time. Grégoire Hetzel’s score is haunting and very sparse; the film largely being silent aside from voices and atmospheric sounds. This creates an atmosphere of realism, thus lending the truths from the real world that the script brings to light even greater impact.

Not being a ‘date movie’ Incendies hasn’t won as many viewers as it deserves, but having been rightly nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars this year, it will hopefully be more successful on DVD. If you’ve got two hours to sit back and concentrate, then Incendies will engross, enlighten, shock and move you unforgettably.

In a Better World (15)

Finally a recent review of a film that's still in cinemas! It's of the Oscar winning Danish drama 'In a Better World', and you can also read it on the FilmJuice website here. Happy reading!

In a Better World (15)

Why do we go to the cinema? For escapism, solitude, inspiration and perhaps to feel something outside of ourselves, deeper emotion than we might feel comfortable with in real life. The Oscar-winning In a Better World (15) presents an emotional powerhouse of an experience that will not be soon forgotten.

The lives of two Danish families are intertwined by love, hate, and fate. We begin by following Anton, played by Mikael Persbrandt as he plies his skills as a doctor at an African refugee camp. The distance between his work and his home in Denmark creates an even greater distance between him and his estranged wife and his bullied son Elias. Elias finally makes a friend in Christian, a lad who has just moved to the idyllic town with his father after his mother lost her battle with cancer. Desperate for a friend, Elias will follow the angry and hurting Christian anywhere.

Director Susanne Bier brings the story to the screen with a mix of subtlety, in the intense yet understated performances given even by the child actors, and also pat climaxes, as the third act dwindles slightly into predictable and melodramatic territory. That is not to take away from the beauty of the complex and carefully constructed screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen. Simply reading the script would surely be an emotionally potent experience on its own.

The wonderful high contrast photography is sumptuous to behold, and Bier makes poignant symbolic use of landscapes and scenery throughout. The occasional use of crash zooms, especially early in the film, is not always effective, but jump cuts are put to good use, and the gentle music fits perfectly, bringing another layer of richness to the picture.

Unexpected moments of humour are slightly jarring yet welcome as they break up the lengthy ruminations on deep and dark dilemmas. It’s a film about consequences, revenge and the nature of evil. The sequences set in the African camp are sparsely scattered throughout the narrative, and serve as a parallel story highlighting to a more extreme extent the messages that the filmmakers want to leave the audience with. The effect of this is measured and shocking but ultimately condescending.

Part family drama, part thematic sermon, In a Better World has a lot to say about forgiveness, tolerance and grief. At one point a character cries out “I don’t know how to make everything right again!” A clichéd line maybe, but one to which many hearts in the audience might mutter “You can say that again”. Forgiveness is key, yet it is one of the most difficult things to do. Until a better world comes along we have to deal with this one, and films like this serve as a reminder that it is worthwhile to do so.

FilmJuice reviews!

I now have special permission from FilmJuice to post my reviews written for them on here! For now I'll just post links to them all except for the very most recent ones, which I'll be posting individually in the days to come.

Be sure to check out the excellent FilmJuice website here.

Patagonia
Hereafter
Holy Rollers
Life in a Day
Love Like Poison
His & Hers
The Way Back

All unposted Evangelical's Now film reviews!

You know what? Since I'm reinvigorating my film reviews blog there's no point posting old reviews one at a time... So I'm just going to link to all of my Evangelical's Now reviews that are not yet on my blog, and then tomorrow I'll do a post with all of my FilmJuice posts too! That'll get us nice and up to date:

Life in a Day
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
True Grit
Tangled
Gulliver's Travels
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

PDM film reviews are back, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!

Hello internet!

After a long hiatus I am now back. I will be posting film reviews that I've written since the last few posted until we catch up with the future and my latest reviews can once again grace this space! Happy reading.

We begin with my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, which I wrote for Christian newspaper 'Evangelical's Now' (http://www.e-n.org.uk/5323-Harry-Potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-1.htm), followed by my review of part 2, which I wrote for the fantastic website 'FilmJuice' (http://www.filmjuice.com/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-2.html)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Anyone hoping to enjoy this first part of the finale to the Harry Potter series, would be well advised to review all that has gone before to clue into this film. The world of wizards continues to descend into darkness, as the evil Voldemort gathers his powers, and Potter nears the end of his quest to defeat him.

A huge improvement on the previous instalment, Part 1 proves that the decision to split the story into two films hasn’t just paid off financially, but in terms of storytelling also. The characters are finally given room to breathe, so even those unfamiliar with the books can relate to them, and enjoy the warm dynamic between the main trio.

Many Christian’s have problems with the Harry Potter stories, and there is just as much witchcraft and wizardry in this film as the others. What makes this perhaps more objectionable, however, is a surprisingly graphic intimate scene between two of the young leads. Granted, it is presented as a mental projection imagined by one of the characters, and is masked by special effects, but such a moment can’t help but be more gratuitous on screen than in writing.

One of the main strengths of the series has always been its straightforward morals: good is good, evil is evil. Whatever one might think of spells and cauldrons, and the effect that such themes might have on children, at least on some level they are prompts to consider the existence of the supernatural.

More than entertaining, this first really emotionally satisfying Harry Potter film is a definite success. The story concludes when the final part is released in July 2011.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Ten years and eight films later, the Harry Potter franchise has come of age. For those feeling the strain of the series’ ever darkening tone, hope is in sight! ‘It all ends here’ declared the advertisements and, true to that, we have at last a Potter film with a proper climax, and what a climax it is. With the board set for Harry to make his final play against Lord Voldemort, good takes on evil in an epic battle which includes many of the characters introduced to us throughout the series.

No other saga has been nearly as popular as J.K. Rowling’s opus, and for non-fans who expected each film to be worth seeing in it’s own right that fact has been more than a bit confusing. How could the films be so successful when they exclude anyone without an exhaustive knowledge of the source material? Part 2 of the Deathly Hallows just about makes it worth having sat through the, frankly boring, last few films by having a clear direction towards a definite conclusion. For the first time in years a successful balance is achieved between the oppressively dark feel and the sense of fun that should never have been lost in the first place.

Almost immediately we are plunged into a breathtaking action sequence which feels like coming up for air after all the depressing exposition that has gone before. Having directed the final four Potter films David Yates’ standard of pristine cinematography, combined with faultless effects work remains a spectacle to behold. This is the first in the series to be released entirely in 3D and the illusion is nigh on perfect, delivering a new and unobtrusive sense of depth plus a boost of pure adrenaline to boot.

Overall the acting comes into its own here, with Ralph Fiennes giving a terrifying and nuanced performance as the villain to end all villains, Voldemort, which will surely do it’s job of giving younger children nightmares! Even Daniel Radcliffe as Harry is at his least wooden yet, unfortunately leaving Emma Watson in the dust, with her unimproved portrayal of Hermione remaining earnest but one dimensional.

The incorruptible values modeled by the lead characters have always rendered Rowling’s stories impervious to stronger criticisms and with so many young people obsessed with Harry Potter, desperate to be like him, his loyal and self-sacrificial character is genuinely inspiring. Without giving anything away, Harry’s story arc concludes by borrowing from the ultimate redemption tale of all time to truly moving effect.

With millions trying to guess where Rowling would lead Harry in the end, she amazingly still manages to surprise. Fans will be overcome with glee that the final film is by far the best of them all and that all the parts that had them wondering ‘will the filmmakers get that right?’ will leave them breathing sighs of relief. As gradual hints of colour and light finally make a comeback, along with melodies from John Williams’ scores for the first two films, smiles will be plastered on even the most cynical of faces.