Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is a very weird movie. On one hand, the Harry Potter series has never been more epic. On the other hand, it's never been this pointless.

A huge portion of The Goblet of Fire is dedicated to the "sillier" nature of Harry Potter: the sports, the melodrama between the kids, and the general ridiculousness of the magical world itself. The remainder of the film is dominated by the darkest and most powerful events we've seen yet. On one hand, the sillier stuff works. The kids are teenagers now, and a fair amount of humorously awkward melodrama makes sense. It's largely funny, and works surprisingly well.

There's some weird stuff going on with the cast this year. For one thing, every teenage male main character has extremely long hair for no apparent reason. It's really distracting.

Hermione seems emotionally unstable the entire time. All she does is worry about Harry or get angry at Ron. While her emotional reactions aren't unwarranted, the fact that we get little of the sharp-witted and brilliant Hermione from previous films is disappointing.

Ron seemed to pick this year to act like a suspicious unbelieving jerk towards Harry, without any real reason. Why is Ron suddenly so jealous of Harry? Eleven-year-old Ron was quick to sacrifice himself in the Wizards' Chess game for Harry's sake, but here he suddenly doesn't give his best friend the benefit of a doubt? A normal teenager would probably respond with this type of jealousy and suspicion, but Ron has proven himself to be better than this in the past. It doesn't really make sense, and it's not compelling drama nor humorous comedy. It's just an annoying distraction that could (and perhaps should) have been replaced by the same great trust and friendship that we've seen between Ron and Harry in the past.

Character problems aside, most of the teenagers' acting is slightly questionable this year. It seems like the director was actually encouraging the kids to overact. In a way, it works, since the awkwardness of the situation comes across perfectly. On the other hand, it's a bit distracting.

One notable change from the first three films is a new composer. John Williams' replacement, Patrick Doyle, takes cues from Williams in the tone and style of the music, but crafts a strong score that feels slightly different, yet totally fitting. Harry himself is given a specific musical theme that's woven into the score at various moments of personal drama. Without a doubt, it's one of the most emotionally powerful themes of the entire series.

As in the first two films, much of the story feels like it's jumping through a list of fantastical life-threatening situations. This can be a problem, as it means that the entire movie is basically a highlight reel of the most important events from the books.

The Quidditch World Cup is really fun to see. Prior to this, we've barely seen the magical world outside of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley. Here we finally get to see a bigger picture of the entire wizarding community. It really helps fill in some of the gigantic gaps in Harry Potter lore and paint a better picture of the world we're seeing.

The Yule Ball is a wonderfully funny chance to delve into the teenage angst of the Harry Potter world. With all we see of the trio dealing with grave threats to the school, it's refreshing and fun to see them sit back and just act like humorously awkward teenagers. As if that weren't enough, there's a wizard rock band. Singing such songs as "Magic Works" and "Do the Hippogriff." I mean, seriously. It gets no more ridiculous awesome than that.

The Triwizard Cup challenges are mostly nothing more than action scenes. They are, however, visually stunning and extremely well-directed. Harry's battle with the dragon is so amazingly real-looking that you can't help but feel totally enraptured by the tension of it all. The mermaid scene is perhaps less impressive, but it's still got good elements of fantasy horror and a healthy amount of imagination. The final challenge, the maze, is practically pointless. The danger within the maze is never revealed (aside from a few cantankerous bushes), leaving only a vague undefined threat that doesn't really catch the audience.

The ending battle with Voldemort, however, is so shocking and powerful that it elevates the film far above the level of "decent"-ness that it would have been at otherwise. It brings the story back to the Harry's personal journey and his lifelong fight against Voldemort. Perhaps more importantly, it transitions the Harry Potter series out of the more fun-loving initial four years and throws it abruptly into a much darker and deadly place.

When The Goblet of Fire gets it right, it really gets it right. The return of Voldemort is terrifying, horrific, and powerful. It's also a hugely important event that isn't resolved by the end of the film, thus finally breaking the general rule of self-containment held by prior films. On the other hand, when The Goblet of Fire gets it wrong, it just feels stupid. After dealing with the super-important events of the last film, why are we supposed to care about something as pointless as the Triwizard Tournament? This is a problem in the original book as well, but that doesn't excuse it.

The saving grace of the "pointless" events—the Quidditch World Cup, the Tournament, and the Yule Ball—is that, at the very least, they're entertaining to watch. They get a bit boring on repeat viewings, but they're still reasonably fun. The comedy is highly ridiculous at times, but not quite stupid. It works for the most part.

The filmmakers can't entirely be blamed for the problems with Goblet of Fire; they did just about the best they could with the source material. And, in the end, what's there is still good. It's not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, but it's definitely a fun movie with a shockingly dark and game-changing ending.

7/10

Fantastic Four

It sucked.


There's more to be said, but that sums it up pretty well. It was really bad.

1/5

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Here, Harry Potter takes a turn for the dark. Harry runs away from home in a fit of anger, discovers that a murderous madman is hunting him, and learns a terrible truth about his parents' murder.

The levity of The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets is mostly exchanged for a kind of shadowy fantasy. New director Alfonso Cuarón manages to craft a much more organic-feeling fantasy world, making the prior two films feel jumbled and almost silly by comparison.

The characters are all a bit better this time around. The kids seem to have all gone through puberty at once, and are about twice as mature as they were last time. Harry in particular gets a rather large dose of grow-up potion, as he is finally forced to realize his potential as a powerful wizard. In the past, Hermione was the only one out of the trio who could effectively use magic of any sort, with Ron and Harry being virtually useless in that regard. Here, Harry is clearly shown to be the most powerful of the three, and it's very cool.

Before the making of this film, the actor who portrayed Dumbledore, Richard Harris, died, and is replaced here by Michael Gambon. The old Dumbledore will be terribly missed, but the new one, while different, is also very compelling. He's perhaps a bit too similar to Gandalf the White from Lord of the Rings, but not to a terribly distracting degree. He's got that certain playfulness that Gandalf lacked, but the old Dumbledore always had plenty of.

Some of the best scenes in the film are the quiet moments between Harry and new teacher Remus Lupin. They have a very strong master/student relationship, and it does a lot to ground the story in real, relatable emotion.

The visual style of Harry Potter is reworked in a darker, more cohesive fashion. While the first two films sometimes felt like a jumble of bright colors, this one has a much more uniform and precise look. Much of the imagery looks as though it's taken out of the absolute best of dark fantasy art.

Many of the horror elements of the film are genuinely scary. The dementors are textbook death monsters, and Remus' transformation into a werewolf is horribly twisted—in a good way.

The visual effects get one notch better. The extremely brief Quidditch scene appears to be entirely made of live-action footage rather than CGI. The CGI creatures seen here are still not entirely perfect, but move realistically enough that it's easy to let it slide. Of special note is the extremely lifelike quality of Buckbeak the hippogriff. He moves and acts like a real animal, complete with all the bird-like quirks that you'd expect.

The music here is truly remarkable. John Williams' score feels far different from the first two films, utilizing an entirely new set of themes and a darker, less bombastic tone. There's still a few places where similarities to the Star Wars prequel scores seem to pop up, but it's likely not the kind of thing that anyone other than soundtrack buffs will recognize.

There are a few problems with the way the story is presented. Sirius Black's entrance portrays him as a madman, but he somehow becomes a likable, rather gentlemanly person in less than ten minutes. Harry is shown to completely change his opinion of Sirius in an instant, going from utter contempt and hate to regarding him as close family. It all happens entirely too fast.
Another confusing point is the final confrontation with the dementors and Harry's Patronus Charm. The animal identities of individual Patronus charms are never explained in the film, thus Harry's belief that his father summoned the stag-shaped Patronus doesn't make any sense. It's not plot-breaking, but it does create a mental stumbling block.
Finally, the last real problem with the film is the fact that it doesn't have a definitive ending. The villain escapes and Sirius' name isn't cleared. The kids discover the truth behind the the Potters' betrayer, but very little comes of it. All in all, Prisoner of Azkaban is more of an in-between chapter than a fully-realized story on its own, and comes off slightly as required viewing for future stories. It's no different than the book, but that doesn't necessarily help it much. At the same time, even if this is no more than an in-between chapter, it's still good enough that it's hardly a chore to get through—and the events of this film, while rather minor in the larger scope of things—do definitely become vastly more important in the sequels.

This really is the best Potter film yet. True, it's not as lighthearted and childishly fun as the initial two, but it's overall more enjoyable and feels every bit as magical as it did before.

8/10

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

It's been said that Zack Snyder's films have gory, fun, video game-like action, but no heart.  This is mostly true of Dawn of the Dead.

The film seems to be divided into three parts.  The first act focuses on the main character, a young nurse named Ana.  In true zombie film fashion, she goes to sleep peacefully one night, then wakes up the next morning to an apocalyptic nightmare.  Ana's story is initially rather boring.  While she is a likable character, the script and direction are simply not compelling.  The zombies shown in this film are not the slow-moving zombies of tradition, but fast-running, screaming ravagers.  While that sounds terrifying in theory, it's not all that scary in final rendition.  Rather than the haunting silence of zombie films of the past, this film relies on thrills with action scenes and badly-done suspense.  Indeed, some of the film's most horrifying moments are the times in which the zombies are not seen.

The second and largest section of the film begins when Ana meets more survivors of the outbreak.  Forming a group, they decide to proceed to a nearby shopping mall, which, being a sealed building filled with food and water, is seemingly a safe haven.  At this point, the film begins to focus on the interactions between the various characters, and is a bit more interesting.  However, the best part comes when the plot reaches the turning point: when the film stops being a horror film and becomes an action film.
If there's one thing Zach Snyder can direct, it's action.  It might not be the most clever or imaginative action, but it's still fun nonetheless.

All in all, however, the film comes off as being somewhat shallow.  The characters don't seem to have truly won or lost anything by the film's end, and one wonders what the purpose of the story actually was.  There's not enough action for it to be completely enjoyable on an adrenaline-fueled level, there's not enough character for it to be compelling, and there's not enough scares for it to be very thrilling.  What's left is an adequate but ultimately non-essential film.

But shooting zombies in the face is still awesome, so it gets a 6.
=D

6/10