Braveheart

This is another movie I've seen large sections of but never the whole thing. Mel Gibson directs leading man Mel Gibson through a vast (and in places vastly inaccurate) historical epic that manages a special combination of artful filming and awesomely brutal violence. We need more Best Picture winners that feature a bearded Brendan Gleeson bashing British troops' heads in with a giant hammer. The first 50 minutes of the movie were well put together, and in places it was fairly moving, but I was still waiting for anything to finally happen. Then it did, and it was pretty great. The brief scuffle where William Wallace and the townspeople wipe out the British occupying their village might actually have been my favorite scene in the movie. It's not as grand or vicious as some later battles, but it's just extremely entertaining and satisfying.

After the rebellion finally gets going, there's a couple hours that alternate between the military exploits of Wallace and his merry band of Scotsmen, whether brief glimpses or full blown battle scenes, and the state of things in England as Patrick McGoohan brilliantly portrays King Edward. I seriously loved his performance. When he's not menacingly threatening those who disappoint him and passing laws allowing nobles to rape newlyweds, he's throwing people out of windows for speaking to him out of turn. It's pretty great. Things slow down after a couple things don't turn out well for the Scots, and then we go through a pretty nonsensical subplot involving the future queen of England. Some stuff happens and there's the last dramatic few scenes depicting the inevitable conclusion. I was actually impressed by how tasteful and powerful some of that stuff was. I don't think it does everything right, but Braveheart was a pretty outstanding movie of its type.

Torchwood - Season 1

Torchwood is the more adult spin-off of Doctor Who, although the added bloody violence and swearing don't really make it a better show. Instead of traveling through time and space meeting aliens and solving their problems, Captain Jack Harkness and crew stick around the same basic location in Wales and deal with whatever wacky cases fall into their lap. There's a decent amount of variety and creativity in the stories, including multiple cases of people accidentally falling through time and the discovery of strange alien artifacts. It's not all sci-fi either, such as one episode that's pretty much just a straight up The Hills Have Eyes sort of horror story.

Besides the main action there's also an inordinate amount of sexual tension as everyone wants to bang or is banging everyone else. It actually gets in the way of what I want to watch the show for, because there's a lot more subtle and interesting ways to do that sort of thing on a lot of other series. And it kind of undermines the seriousness a bit, because you know, screwing your coworkers isn't very professional. Still though, Torchwood is a fairly entertaining detective/science fiction show that fans of stuff like Fringe might find they like. It ties in with its parent series in a vaguely interesting way, and is a bit of a nice thematic break from it. The finale was just about as absurd as anything in Who, though.

Spaced

Spaced was the breakout hit for its creators, who went on to make popular movies like Shaun of the Dead and are now recognizable successes. It's a short and brilliant little series about a couple of new friends who pretend to be a couple to get an apartment. The focus of the show thankfully isn't their wacky hijinks as they try to keep up the ruse though, it's just a funny look at life through the eyes of its interesting cast of characters. A huge part of it is pop culture references, as Simon Pegg's character spends his time playing video games and trying to break into the comic book industry. There's a lot of references to Star Wars in particular, and an episode in the second season heavily satirizes The Matrix, the events of which the characters call "slightly unbelievable".

For the most part, the show is just pure fun to watch. Even when I wasn't laughing out loud, I usually at least had a smile on my face. There's only 14 episodes across two seasons, but each one is good and packed with references and inside jokes, making the show a little too esoteric for some members of the general populace but a big treat for anyone who gets it. Even when it's not trying to be funny it succeeds. It says some genuine things about friendship, and the relationship development between co-writers Pegg and Jessica Stevenson is extremely well done. It doesn't last very long, but Spaced is pretty close to the perfect sitcom.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Despite not liking the book so much (besides the ending it's not very eventful for the penultimate chapter of an epic story), David Yates was able to turn the Half-Blood Prince into a mostly successful movie, showing to me that the key to a good Potter adaptation is keeping the spirit of the story in a well-made film, not just being as faithful as possible to the book. I thought it was just a bit too long and leisurely paced, but the cinematography and editing in individual scenes was brilliant, it was probably the funniest Potter movie yet, and it pulled off the crucial moments as well as could be hoped. There's a lot of interesting use of color throughout as Yates clearly experiments with the look in his second turn at the helm, and even if what's happening seems as pointless as it did in the book, at least it's nice to look at. There's not a lot of digitally created terrors this time, but some of the visual effect stuff is more subtle and pretty impressive, and I was actually a bit surprised that it was only PG because while it may have been less explicitly violent than the other recent films, it wasn't less menacing in tone.

Ralph Fiennes' Voldemort is absent this time as the students spend most of the movie besides the surprisingly long opening scenes within the magically protected walls of Hogwarts, and the threat of evil is mostly in the background as roving bands of Death Eaters assault and terrify both the magical and mundane worlds. There's an added scene of violence in one of the movie series' few moments of pure fabrication, but it did help with the deliberate pace and also conveyed the sense of danger that just mentioning occasional attacks elsewhere wouldn't have. Despite the reincarnated villain being a no show, Tom Riddle's presence still exists in some background exploration that leads to the discovery of a way to potentially defeat him, and he is seen in flashbacks portrayed by a couple different actors. At his youngest he's played by Fiennes' nephew, and to be honest it's the scariest he's been in the whole series. Prancing around with a snake nose just doesn't compare to a child who seems evil way beyond his years. His teenage version is a ponce in comparison.

Anyway, a lot of the normal course of the movie is spent showing the increased romantic tension among the main cast of students as they seem to have the opposite sex on the mind more than the increasingly looming risk of violent death. There's a lot of humor too, as Draco Malfoy's subplot is almost the only time we see how serious things are. There's also Michael Gambon's finest turn yet as Dumbledore, with a mix of seriousness about Harry's task and fatherly concern for him that perfectly captured the character to me. Alan Rickman's also great as Snape, and I can't picture anyone doing the part better. Helena Bonham Carter hasn't had a ton to do in these movies, but she does embody the part of Bellatrix fairly excellently and she should be good in the last couple movies. The scene near the end where Harry and Dumbledore leave Hogwarts briefly was very effectively pulled off and tense, with some really nice effects work in one of the only true scenes of flash, but I was a bit disappointed in the climax. The crucial moment was fine, but the way the stuff around it was removed, not only was it not as exciting as it could be, but it effectively made a good deal of Malfoy's subplot irrelevant and unnecessary. I'm not sure the Deathly Hallows needs to be two parts after they did the first six books in one piece, but it should be fun, and I believe Yates can do it after his work on the last two movies.