Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Remember when I said watching Part 1 when it was on disc meant I could go see Part 2 in the theater and be really fresh on it? Heh. Anyway, the final film in the long-running Harry Potter series finally brings the story to a conclusion, answering a few questions and putting an end to the reign of the evil Lord Voldemort once and for all. I hope that isn't a spoiler. Having now seen both of the films that were made from the final book after it was chopped in half, I definitely think they should have been one movie. I understand why Warner Bros would want to increase their profits by splitting them up, and avoid a running time that was too long. But they could have easily cut the two films into a single three hour one, and I think it would have been a better movie.

Part of the fallout of splitting the story up is that Part 2 has a pretty odd structure. It has a low key little beginning sequence where Harry talks to a few people and establishes his goals for the rest of the film, then cuts to a partly comedic, partly exciting sequence where he and his friends break into a bank to retrieve one of the doodads they need to defeat Voldemort. It's a solid first act, but then the film skips the second one entirely and jumps straight to an extremely long and drawn out climax for the whole series, when the gang returns to Hogwarts to find the last pieces of the puzzle and fight off the evil army, with help from the other students and pretty much every friendly character from the series' history. There's an ebb and flow of excitement and drama during this part that prevents it from straining too hard or forcing its momentum to a grinding halt, but I can't say it entirely avoids feeling off from time to time. The larger cast outside of the main three kids gets more attention here than they did in Part 1, and it was nice to see a lot of these characters get a last moment or two even if they never got developed in the movies nearly as much as they did on the page.

Besides some of the night scenes being too dark to actually tell what was going on, I didn't have many problems with this long sequence until near the end, after all has been revealed and the game is finally on. A couple things just didn't quite work. The Deathly Hallows themselves were a last minute narrative device already in the books, and they come off even more so here. They were already explained in Part 1, but that needed to be reiterated here in Part 2 for those who might have forgotten, and the explanations are brief and incomplete. They seem less like well-considered keys to victory and more like cheap explanations for why the good guys are able to win without actually having to be smarter or stronger than their opponents. And the final battle itself is just a bit clumsy - it's bigger and more spread out than it appeared in the book, which doesn't really do it any favors and seems like a poor reaction to the less than perfect ending J.K. Rowling crafted in the first place. I don't know if I'm presenting my issues well, but the main thing is just that this series has great production values, but the final scenes presented in this film don't quite live up to the decade of preparation that led up to them. I think David Yates did a solid job bringing the second half of the series to life, but he rarely rose above that mark. It was ultimately an entertaining movie though, befitting a likable if imperfect franchise.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Black Ops is Treyarch's fourth Call of Duty game, and it seems like they've finally gotten the hang of the series. They've long been seen as a very secondary developer in comparison with Infinity Ward, the team that created the series in the first place, but with that studio obviously having issues following the departure of many key employees, Treyarch has the opportunity to establish themselves as top dogs. Black Ops has already surpassed Modern Warfare 2 in early sales, and I certainly had a good time playing it.

If there's one thing the Black Ops campaign does right, it's that it's consistent. I've played all of the main entries in the series except for Call of Duty 3, and every single one of them, while fun and impressively presented, has had moments of pure frustration that lasted way too long. When the series was primarily set in World War II, they occasionally liked to throw in missions where you had to defend a lightly fortified position for several minutes, and these always ended up being frustrating trial-and-error sections as you repeatedly got killed and tried something slightly different the next time until you miraculously made it to the end. As the series went on, they started using this type of mission less, but there still always seemed to be at least one level that asked too much of you, just overwhelming you with enemies without stopping to ask if what they were throwing at you was realistically playable. Thankfully, Black Ops has no sections like that. There were a few moments that irritated me a bit, but they were never as bad as the series can be.

I hesitate to call it the best game in the series though, because while the campaign is consistently pretty good, it doesn't often reach its previous high points. It's possibly just series fatigue after playing seven of these in the last five years, so I'm pretty familiar with what the games do well at this point, but it's just not as impressive as it's seemed in the past. There are some interesting scenarios that play out for you and a few really cool set pieces. It was nice seeing the vehicle sections return with so much vigor, and I appreciate that this is the first time the series has really focused on a single character for the play, besides three missions where you play as Ed Harris and Gary Oldman (which is cool too). But the most tightly designed and scripted moments are rarely as shocking and compelling as the Modern Warfare games at their best, as their focus seems to be less on what's cool and more on just being brutal as hell. There are some very violent things happening, including several that you do yourself, and the way the game lingers on it feels sort of gross and seems like it's trying too hard to please frat boys who would otherwise stay away from the story in favor of the online.

The multiplayer is cool, but it's just not why I like these games. I know that at this point, the majority of Call of Duty players must spend the majority of their time with the games shooting friends rather than computer enemies, but the amount of effort put into single player shows me at least the developers still care. It's an impressive game visually, especially the work by the effects team, and while the gun sounds still aren't as dynamic as in Battlefield, it sounds pretty good too. The use of licensed music worked for me even if the choices were obvious, and the celebrity voice cast did a nice job, even if Sam Worthington sounds way too Australian a lot of the time. I liked the story for the most part, as it got the most attention of any game in the franchise, and the writers seemed to enjoy working in as many historical figures, conspiracy theories, and real-life locations and operations as possible.

It's odd that they dropped campaign co-op play after having it last time, but you can understand with the focus on the storyline this time. Obviously zombie mode can fill that gap a little bit, but it's pretty much the same as it was before, and really doesn't measure up to Spec Ops in terms of variety and replayability. They actually do a lot of little things to surprise you with the amount of stuff they crammed onto the disc, although in the end, it's another Call of Duty game and that formula can really only take you so far the more you use it every year. Still, it's worth a try.

Call of Duty: World at War

It's interesting to play World at War right after Far Cry 2, because they represent very different approaches to the same basic idea. The latter is all about providing you with an environment in which any number of things can happen based on what you do inside it, while the former is a series of planned events hand crafted to give every player the same experience. This is Treyarch's third stab at the Call of Duty franchise, and if the first two are like this, then they've proven themselves very capable of aping what Infinity Ward does with slightly diminished results. You can see how they took a lot of cues from the fourth game in terms of creating a more cinematic and dramatic feel, treating it a bit more like being in an epic war movie than being in a war. This works fine with a fictional, modern storyline, but doing it with a real historical event in which millions of people died seems a bit crass.

There's nothing wrong with showing a more brutal side of the war, because it's not like the real thing was completely clean and gentlemanly. It's just the tone of it that seems off, like it's trying to make the player think it's way cool instead of seriously considering the dark truth of the period in history. In any case, the attitude of the game doesn't negatively affect the design, which is pretty solid until near the end. The two campaigns that interweave despite being at different points in time focus on an American in the Pacific and a Russian on the Eastern Front, and there are some interesting missions here and there, such as a mimic of the flashback sniper missions in the last game with the Russians and a pretty intense and desperate naval battle with the Americans. It sort of falls apart near the end though, as the developers failed to realize that it's entirely possible to have a huge and dramatic final battle without it being stupidly, unfairly difficult and seemingly not even well debugged. As with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl last year, a frustrating final act really soured my opinion on a game that for the first 80% of its existence I was enjoying quite a bit more. It's really not that hard to keep that ending bit balanced, but it keeps happening like this.

This game is really what told me I need to upgrade my machine, as even on quite low settings it often chugged in more open areas and for some reason ran way too fast indoors to compensate. That's partly shoddy programming, as other developers released games around the same time that my computer can handle fine, but it's really time I improved what I'm playing with. Still, the game was pretty nice looking despite the issues, although I can't say the same about the sound. The series is known for its quality sound design, but a lot of the guns and explosions sounded weak to me for some reason, and while some of the orchestral music was quite nice, the inclusion of crunching metal guitars really wasn't. I liked the voice acting though, as throughout the game I was being commanded by Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman, which automatically makes anything I'm told to do more awesome. The dramatic story moments didn't hit me nearly as hard as the last game's, but they were still pretty fun for the most part. There are some nice things to be found here, but in the end, World at War is a pretty flawed game.

Batman Begins

I haven't been posting lately, mostly because I've been rewatching some old movies. No reason I can't talk about them, though.

Somewhere in between its release in 2005 and seeing The Dark Knight, I forgot that the first Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie was as good as it was. I still think Knight's better, but Begins is damn solid in its own right. What's impressive is how he manages to make films that capture the coolness of Batman and comic books in general without having particularly good action scenes. They're a big part of what makes the Spider-Man movies (at least the first two) great, which is the only super hero movie franchise I've enjoyed on the same level as the revived Batman, and usually what carries action movies in general, but they really aren't what makes Batman good. Sure, the fights are there, but they're pretty poorly filmed; lit too dimly, shot too close, and cut too fast. This is partly a stylistic choice to make Batman more secretive and menacing, but it doesn't make for particularly entertaining sequences. Both movies have had decent car chases, but it's really the characters that drive the show, and that's what makes them so much better than the other riffraff.

When Begins came out, origin stories were all the rage, and they still are to some extent, it's just that more properties are already established. A good origin story can be very compelling, the problem is they end up being similar and you can only see a guy accidentally gain powers and adapt to it over the course of an hour so many times before it gets boring. But that's what makes Begins interesting; not only is it a story we haven't heard before, it's one about a character's motives, not the magic MacGuffin that turns him into a freak. (Note: I intentionally misused the movie term "MacGuffin" here, because the next several films I'll be talking about are directed by a man who has no idea what it actually means. Guess who it is!) Showing Bruce Wayne's slow transition into Batman, one he makes because he comes to feel a true need to help people and not because he's strong enough to throw trucks now, is a truly interesting one, and then we get to the second half, which is a pretty darn good crime story besides the somewhat ludicrous doomsday device. The cast is obscenely good, with nearly every significant part played by a well-known talent, and despite the hate she got I think even Katie Holms was competent. Liam Neeson plays a good mentor, but he shows here that he can do other things as well. Besides the fights, the film's only failing in my eyes are the attempts at humor later on, which seem somehow more frequent as the drama builds and usually fall flat. Gordon's racing to get into place with the new Batmobile and stop the bad guys from destroying the whole city, do we really need a cutaway to a random bum telling him he likes his car? In any case, it's not perfect, but it's exactly the reboot Batman needed to fit into this era of a more serious super hero.

The Dark Knight

Batman Begins was one of the better releases in the now quite popular comic book/super hero movement in modern action movies, although it wasn't perfect. The Dark Knight isn't either, of course, but it is probably the best comic book movie I've ever seen. I'd be lying if I said a big part of that wasn't Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, but the movie wasn't one-note either, as it excelled in most areas. A problem with Begins was the action scenes themselves. The movie completely captured the grittier, darker mood that the Batman franchise took in the 80's, but when people were getting violent it often got confusing because darkness and the trendy shaky camera conspired to muddle what was actually happening. The Dark Knight still isn't perfect, but it's generally easier to see what Batman's doing as he pounds faces in. There are some excellent vehicle sequences as well, which were amplified in intensity by the great and incredibly loud sound design, with my seat in the theater actually rumbling when huge trucks were barreling around. It's not restricted to loud moments - there are plenty of times, usually involving the Joker, where it's impressive how well they got across the characters sickly violent nature without ever breaking the PG-13 rating.

Most of that though is all Ledger - the guy really dove into the character and created one of the most unnerving performances I've ever seen. Every tick, every line shows you the depth of his psychosis. Although I thought it was more impressive, the job he did really shouldn't be compared to Jack Nicholson's in the 1989 film, because they're very different. Nicholson's Joker was perverse and hilarious, Ledger's is just perverse. There are times when he will make you laugh, but that isn't really the goal. I haven't seen any of his other work, but his passing is truly unfortunate. He had quite a talent that we won't have seen enough of. Not that he was the only good member of the cast. Bale's Batman voice is still a little weird, but he does a good job of handling both ends of the character. I haven't seen Eckhart do much serious stuff, but he is great portraying the downfall of Harvey Dent. Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine don't stretch their talents that far but are solid playing familiar characters. I don't like how they had to recast Maggie Gyllenhaal in Katie Holmes' old role, but she probably does a better job than Katie would have. Nolan really impressed me with Memento, and whether he does another Batman or moves on, he's one of the more talented directors working right now. There were some surprises with how he handled all the different characters, but I thought they did a great job keeping everything in check and entertaining.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The seventh book came out yesterday, which will finally end the story that millions of people have been caring about for a decade. I've always liked them, and the movies were entertaining visions of the story, although as I've said previously, of the first four, I'd only consider the third to be a good film. You can add the fifth to that to make it two good ones.

Whereas the first two were too childish for my tastes, the fourth just seemed muddled in its execution. I understand that in converting a book that long into a movie less than three hours long, you're going to have to make cuts and slim things down a bit. I just think they handled it better this time around than they did before. Goblet of Fire seemed all over the place, while Order of the Phoenix distilled the plot down to the necessary elements. I don't think it's much of a coincidence that the third and fifth books are my favorites as well, and it's quite possible I'm just holding that against the fourth movie subconsciously. It just seemed like they were more concerned with the overall plot. Of course Voldemort returns in the fourth book, and it's extremely pivotal for the whole series. Still, a lot of the actual movie itself was more concerned with the tournament and dances and stuff like that than what was really going on.

Daniel Radcliffe has come into the role of Harry well. It's a bit difficult, since Harry's 'roid raging throughout the whole thing, and it would have been easy to come off a lot worse than he did. The other students are pushed back a bit to focus on the main character, but they're still pretty good. Gary Oldman is great as he always is in his reprisal of the role of Sirius Black. The casting is brilliant as ever, with new characters like Luna, Umbridge, and Bellatrix all picked perfectly. If there's one thing the whole movie series should be commended for, it's the casting. My only problem is that they should have just Ralph Fiennes do his part instead of covering him with that stupid snake makeup that makes him look idiotic. This was also the most exciting movie so far, and the visual effects in the climactic scenes were great. Goblet of Fire actually cut monsters out of the movie, which was the opposite of what you'd think they'd do with a movie. Order of the Phoenix has combat between wizards at a level we haven't seen before, and it's really pretty sweet. The Order coming to save the day might be the best scene in the series. The final showdown was done terrifically as well, and the whole final act is just good. The story has already ended for some readers, but I'll make sure to watch the last two movies to see how they handle it.