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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Wow.  Here in the seventh installment of the franchise, the plot pulled the characters out of Hogwarts and put them in the wider world.  As a result, the film was primarily made up of the three leads, and the rest of the students were mostly missing from the film.  And here we got some truly professional adult performances out of them.  Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson were phenomenal. The movies are certainly no longer being made for children to watch.

But as great as Radcliffe and Grint’s performances were, I think the MVP in this movie was Emma Watson.  Her acting, by this film, had reached a point of perfection.  Her emotions were real and there were several scenes where they were put on display in a visceral way.  There was the scene where Ron is injured, and she is putting the healing potion on his wound.  She is visibly shaken, barely able to do what needs to be done.  There is the scene where Hermione and Harry are in the graveyard, and she feels so bad for her friend’s pain that she creates a wreath on the grave of his parents and puts her head on his shoulder.  And later, her screams when Bellatrix is torturing her, were devastating.  For me, Watson nearly stole the show.

There were so many things that this movie got right.  This is the first part of the final book in the series.  The tension that has been building since the first film is just getting tighter and tighter.  Yes, this movie feels like setup for the franchise’s big finale, but that’s exactly what it needed to be.  And there was still plenty of action and wonderful storytelling.  The visuals continued to uphold the high standard of the previous films, and there was just as much magic and wonder.  The only difference is that now, most of the whimsy is gone, replaced with a dark and ominous aesthetic that helps to build that tension.

I liked that we got to revisit one of Harry’s best villains, Dolores Umbridge, who was just as perfect now as she was in The Order of the Phoenix.  We had a lot of that sequence where three other actors played Harry, Ron, and Hermione, through the use of some pollyjuice potion.  And while I’m talking about that whole part of the movie, I loved Peter Mullan as the Death Eater Corban Yaxley.  His screen time was short, but memorable.

One of the more unique sequences of the film was actually animated.  It was where Hermione is reading the tale of The Three Brothers, which explains what the Deathly Hallows are.  It was so beautifully done.  They didn’t just give us a cartoon of the story.  It was artfully done.  I mean, it was a gorgeous sequence.  The way that the figure of death is drawn was amazing.  Just watch how his robes flow as if he is underwater.  Perfection!

Now, I don’t want to be that book snob, but having read the books, I have to confess to a disappointment.  The films didn’t really go into the significance of the objects that were turned into Voldemort’s horcruxes and how he obtained them.  The books do, and I think it would have been fascinating to see as part of the film.  But that’s only a minor complaint. 

And I have to mention the masterful way this movie ends, with the death of Dobby.  In a way, it was more devastating than the death of Dumbledore because with the Headmaster’s demise, we saw it coming.  Also, he was an active combatant in the great war.  But Dobby was like an innocent bystander who was just trying to help his friend.  And his death was nothing more than an act of cruelty with no purpose.  It made for a tear-jerking ending to a great film.

Top 10 Favorite Parts

1. Rufus Scrimigeour giving Harry, Ron, and Hermione items left to them by Dumbledore.
2. The infiltration into the Ministry of Magic.
3. The argument where Ron leaves the company.
4. Harry and Hermione dancing, finding a short moment of happiness.
5. Ron destroying the Locket
6. Ron returns to Hermione.
7. The Story of the Three Brothers.
8. Dobby rescuing Harry from the Malfoy dungeon.  “Of Course, Sir.  I’m an elf.”
9. Bellatrix’s hint of a smile after she throws the knife that kills Dobby. 
10. Luna comforting Harry when Dobby dies.  “There.  Now he could be sleeping.”  I love that line.

2021 – Belfast

This was a small and intimate film which was directed by Kenneth Branagh.  It was a very personal film for him, and was somewhat based on his own childhood and experiences, growing up in Norther Ireland, right around the time when The Troubles started.  And just to get it out of the way, I’ll mention here that the film seemed to imply, at times, that the terrible conflict and the riots were religiously motivated, the Protestants and that the Catholics were fighting each other, but in truth, The Troubles was a political struggle, which the movie didn’t really address.

But I suppose that was appropriate.  Most of the narrative was told from the perspective of a nine year old boy named Buddy, excellently played by Jude Hill.  In that respect, a child wouldn’t really understand the politics of the situation, but the simple difference between the two religious denominations would be easier for him to grasp.  There is even a scene where Buddy is talking with his cousin, Moira, played by Lara McDonnell, about how to tell the difference between a Protestant and a Catholic, which to the children, is apparently by their family name.

But the real conflict in the film is the fact that Buddy’s father, known only as Pa, and played by Jamie Dornan, and his mother, Ma, played by Caitriona Balfe, disagree about whether to remain in Belfast, which is becoming more dangerous by the day, or to leave, and go to England, where Pa has a good job.  Ma is so set against leaving because she has always lived in Belfast in a community where she, the kids, and the extended family, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, are all looked after by the whole community.  This conflict is only resolved at the climax of the film, where a known, if not trusted neighbor, Billy Clanton, played by Colin Morgan, nearly murders Pa in the street during a riot, over his refusal to take a side in the political struggle of The Troubles.  Ma finally sees that her home is no longer safe, and the next time we see them, they are leaving Belfast. 

And lest I forget, I have to mention four other characters who were important to the film.  There was Buddy’s older brother, Will, played by Lewis McAskie.  While Will wasn’t really crucial to the story, he rounded out the family nicely.  But then there was Buddy’s classmate, Catherine, played by Olive Tennant.  She was the smart girl who Buddy had a crush on.  She was the focus of a cute and almost romantic subplot that ended when Buddy’s family left for England.

But very important to the story was Buddy’s grandparents, Pop and Granny, beautifully played by veteran actors Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench.  Hinds was like the philosophical voice of romance and reason in the film, offering Buddy sage advice about love and passion, while Granny was a strong and independent soul who showed pragmatism and determination in the face of struggle, a stereotypically Irish trait, one might say.  And I happen to think that Judi Dench is one of those actors who can do no wrong.  Once again, she was wonderful.

There are several themes in the film that were apparent to me as I was watching.  One is that there is real value in being part of a community that looks after its own.  Another is knowing when that community is no longer functioning in that capacity.  It was a difficult lesson for the family to learn, and yet to recognize that the dreams of your childhood don’t always suffice to keep what you love safe in an adult world.  Another theme that was beautifully and lovingly touched on was that of acceptance, something that was driven home as the Protestant family is waiting at the bus-stop at the end of the movie.  Pa takes Buddy to say goodbye to Catherine, who happens to be a Catholic.  Pa tells his son that if the Catholics are good people, their religion makes no difference, and they would always be welcome in his home.

The movie was mostly filmed in black and white, but it was an interesting directorial choice to have color at key moments.  In the beginning, as the opening credits are being shown, a modern day Belfast is being shown in color, but as soon as we are taken back to the late sixties, everything goes to black and white.  But even then, whenever Buddy is watching a movie, or going to a play, the fictions within the movie are in color.  For example, the family went to a production of A Christmas Carol, and the actors in the play were in color. Or when they went to see Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, the image on the screen of the movie house was in color.  I’m guessing this was supposed to show how the young Kenneth Branagh’s childhood… I mean Buddy’s childhood, was elevated by the movies he saw.

This movie’s strength was in its really powerful performances by it fantastic cast, namely the child actor who carried most of the film, Jude Hill.  He was a natural.  He seemed to be at ease in front of the camera, and was able to keep up with the rest of the cast, even in small in intimate scenes with the likes of Judi Dench and Jamie Dornan.  The movie was only a little more than an hour and a half long, but I feel that I really got a good sense of who Buddy was, and that tells me he did his job well.  If I had any complaints, it would only be that I wish they had shown more actual danger because of The Troubles.  It might have given the light drama a little more weight, if I had felt a stronger sense of danger for the family.

2021 – Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Not only were the visual effects for this Marvel movie incredible, but it was just a good movie.  It was full of fantastic action and bright, glowing colors, which I like, but it also had a great story and some dramatic depth.  Color was a very important part of the story telling, not only in the sets and costumes, but also in the visual effects.  In fact, the difference between blue and gold, when it came to the actual Ten Rings, was a plot point, and the two opposing powers looked great on the screen.  They were bright and flashy, and beautifully designed!

There were so many things that the visual effects people did right on this film, but there are four in particular that I’d like to mention.  The first is that the CGI creature effects were top-notch.  There were actually a lot of digital creature effects, the most notable of which were the two dragons in the film’s climax.  There was the Guardian Dragon and the big-bad Dweller-in-Darkness Dragon.  The snake-like Guardian Dragon had this beautiful red and white color scheme going and was just gorgeous.  I especially liked the shots that were close-ups of his face.  The black dragon looked terrifying and properly menacing!  They looked so realistic from every camera angle, every focal distance.

The second thing that caught my attention was the water effects.  Now, you might say that we’ve seen CGI water effects before, but not like this.  As part of the narrative, the Guardian Dragon could control water, and used it as a violent weapon to ensnare its enemy.  The water looked so real!  The texture, the consistency, the lighting, the spray, the foam!  It was all so perfectly rendered!  And lest I forget, the whole magic water-map scene was fantastic!

The third effect that caught my attention was the compositing, which, of course, was consistently good throughout the entire movie.  The fantastic environments that were a seamless combination of real set pieces and digital environments were beautiful.  I especially liked the land of Tao Lo.  It was gorgeous!  I imagine natural, outdoor environments must be harder to create.  Cityscapes have all the hard lines of buildings, roads, signs, and the like, to make compositing easier, but because of my lack of knowledge about the mechanics of digital compositing, I could be wrong.

And finally, I have to make mention of the digital face replacements and CGI people.  I know that it is now becoming pretty common-place, especially in action films, to have a stunt man doing the difficult physical movements of a character, and to then replace the stunt man’s face with the actor’s face.  But it is also just as common to have an actor doing his thing, and then changing his entire body into a computer generated image to do all the physics-defying acrobatics, and we, as the audience, never even notice the transition, and Shang-Chi did this perfectly!