Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

It's almost time for the final chapter of the Harry Potter series to hit theaters, so it's time for me to re-familiarize myself with the last few films (and review them) before the final wizarding battle.  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth film in the series, and in many ways is the turning point in the seven- (or eight-, if you count the Parts 1 and 2 of the final movie separately) part tale.  The kids are starting to look like teenagers (because they were actually becoming teens), we finally get some face time with the (to this point) mysterious villain of the series, Lord Voldemort, and the children are finally old enough to be legitimately accountable for their acting skills.  This is also the first movie that was forced to make drastic changes between the novel and the screenplay, since the book was over 700 pages and the movies from the 300 page novels clocked in at over two hours each.  The Goblet of Fire is my personal favorite book in the series, but that doesn't always translate into liking the screen version, does it?

Like the past few movies, The Goblet of Fire focuses on an entire year of schooling at Hogwarts, and the trials and tribulations that young Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) go through in their fourth year.  This year offers something unusual, though.  In an ongoing effort to make the wizarding world a friendlier place, the legendary Triwizard Tournament is set to be held at Hogwarts; the chosen champions from three schools will compete in a series of tests, with the winner gaining fame for him or herself and honor for their school.  That means that a sizable group of students from the vaguely French Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the vaguely Eastern European Durmstrang Institute will be staying at Hogwarts this year.  This shouldn't directly affect Harry, since he is under the age restriction to compete, but his name is selected --- along with champions from Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts.  It's called Triwizard for a reason; this fourth selection is a bad omen, because someone very sneaky and powerful had to be responsible for it.  But why would someone want to arrange for Harry to compete in the Tournament?  Perhaps because it is extremely dangerous.  Perhaps there is another reason.  Nevertheless, Harry has to worry about this on top of all his normal studies.  This year is actually worse for him than usual, because his selection makes him notorious within the school and with his friends as a glory hog; add that to Harry's first real attempts to date a girl, and you have the recipe for an awkward year.

Speaking of awkward...nice suit.

Once again, the acting in this Harry Potter is a marked improvement over its predecessors.  Daniel Radcliffe finally seems to be getting the hang of things and does a good job of playing an awkward teenager.  Emma Watson is given a more complex part this time, and she nails it; her scenes at the dance were great.  Rupert Grint finally seems to be stepping up to the challenge, too, although his improvements are primarily in his comedic timing.  There are a few noteworthy additions to the cast at large in this film, with the most obvious being Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody.  Like the past few guest-starring Hogwarts professors, Gleeson is given a lot to work with, and he clearly has a good time as the eccentric and war-scarred professor.  Ralph Fiennes makes his Potter debut as Lord Voldemort, and he does a good job of being EEE-veel; I'm still not a fan of his noseless character design, but it is taken from the books, so...whatever.  This is also the first time we see Miranda Richardson as the tabloid-writing Rita Skeeter; she is fine, but her parts in the films never approaches her presence in the novels.  David Tennant has a small but important role as a fidgety over-actor.  Two of the other Triwizard competitors have popped up in other films; Clemence Poesy has had a few small American movie roles, and Robert Pattinson has been in...something...I forget what.  Neither is very impressive here, but most supporting child actors aren't.

Foreground: a vampire and a wizard.  Background: ethnic diversity.

The rest of the supporting cast is still around, and as solid as ever.  The teaching staff of Hogwarts is great, as usual, even with limited screen time.  Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, and Warwick Davis are all good, but I really enjoyed some of Alan Rickman's subtle choices, especially how he chooses to reprimand students.  Gary Oldman makes a cameo in a pretty cool special effects scene, but he doesn't get to add much to the overall story.  Similarly, I thought Timothy Spall, Jason Isaacs, and Tom Felton were fine in their returning parts, but none really had much to do in this movie (except Felton, who isn't much of an actor yet).  One of the more welcome expansions to an existing role was that of the Weasley twins, played by Oliver and James Phelps; they had been around in the past few movies, but they played a larger part here, and their mutually shared dialogue was endearing.

I think Oliver's the one that blow dries his hair.

This movie was directed my Mike Newell, andI think he did an impressive job editing this movie down to a digestible length.  The pace is pretty quick and it centers on the Triwizard Tournament, at the expense of the typical glimpses into everyday life at Hogwarts.  I liked that choice, as it kept things fresh and made this a very different film than the previous three.  This movie had the best performances from the cast to date; whether that was through his work or because the cast was getting old enough to sharpen their acting chops, I don't know.  This film has a more washed-out look to it, which mirrors the more serious tone that it would take.  Overall, I think he did an admirable job maintaining the spirit of the book while cutting substantial amounts from the film.

This movie marks a lot of firsts for the Harry Potter series.  This is the first time that the kids looked like normal students; they wore street clothes, grew ugly shaggy haircuts, and wore their school uniforms as sloppily as possible.  Incidentally, this movie has my favorite hairstyle for Harry; before this, it was just a mop top, after this it's very neat, but this is the unruly mess I pictured from the books.  This is also the first time that romance reared its head in the Harry Potter series, and it was handled surprisingly well.  This is also the first movie to skip the wizard game of quidditch (yes, it's mentioned, but we don't watch a match); that was always a "wizards have fun" part of the earlier films, but skipping that aids the more serious tone of this movie.  Most importantly, though, this is the first film in the series that makes good on the ever-lingering threat of Lord Voldemort.  Finally, we get to see bad wizards doing bad things, and we even get a wizard duel.  It was all pretty sweet, I have to admit.  I should also point out that one of my favorite pop stars, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, was the lead singer in the Weird Sisters, the wizard rock band that played the Hogwarts dance; fans of Pulp and Radiohead might recognize some of the other band members.  Let it be known, even wizards like to rock.

Jarvis needs to know if you can dance like a hippogriff

As the complete lack of criticism above might indicate, I really liked this movie.  It is definitely my favorite Harry Potter chapter to this point.  A lot of it was done in pretty simple ways; it builds upon the foundations laid in the earlier films.  It's San Antonio Spurs-basic competence, but it works.  Is this a deep movie?  Not particularly.  Will it bring in new viewers into the series?  Probably not.  It is a treat for those that have followed the series and grown up with it.  The Harry Potter franchise has always stood out for making the right decisions on how to adapt its stories, and this was the film that showed that it was possible to adapt a huge book into a regularly-sized film.  This was also the last film that the cast was contractually obligated to make; this could have been the last in the series, or the precursor to an abrupt shift.  Instead, it took the serious tone that The Prisoner of Azkaban hinted at and ran, making this appealing to both the magic-loving innocent in us all and the dark part of us that wants to see bad wizards doing bad things.  Definitely the strongest entry in the series up to this point, and a promising look at things to come.

Oh, I thought up one criticism.  Wizard sports have to be the worst spectator sports ever invented.  All three Triwizard tests had the audience staring at nothing for most of the matches (an empty arena, the surface of a lake, and at the edge of a hedge maze).  Don't even get me started on quidditch.  Wizards need to take a page from muggle sports and build a damn jumbo-tron.

...And, because I love Jarvis Cocker so damn much, I have to include this interview with him.  At the time, he hadn't released any new music in about four years, so it was refreshing to see and hear from him again.  Man, I'm such an Anglophile sometimes.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Hmm...Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time...well, since there is a subtitle to the film and it's not a sequel, I guess we can conclude that this movie was meant to launch a new film franchise.  The good news is that there is plenty of source material to base this and future movies on; the bad news is that this is a movie based on a video game, and I've made my opinion on that pretty clear.  And, since it was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer --- who has produced everything from the Beverly Hills Cop films to the National Treasure movies --- you can be sure that the movie is a suitably huge and probably dumb action movie.  That's not a bad thing, since dumb action movies are as American as apple pie, rednecks, and anachronistic social conservatism.  Sometimes, it's fun to turn off your brain and watch pretty people do impossible things.

Right off the bat, you know this movie is going to have you rolling your eyes.  You could take the street rat song from Aladdin and it would fit suspiciously well in the opening sequence as a young orphan avoids apprehension by authorities.  That young orphan earns himself an adoption by the good King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup), King of Persia, when he stands up to a royal guard that was abusing another street rat.  So let that be a lesson, orphans; if you're not cute enough to get picked by normal people, try attacking a powerful person's security detail.  You will be buried in an unmarked grave for your actions earn their trust and affection.  

Jump ahead in time a bit, and Prince Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is now the fun-loving, rough-and-tumble, but hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold-type Prince of Persia.  His two older brothers (and real Princes) are Tus (Richard Coyle), the eldest and one that tries his best to earn his future crown, and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell), the most aggressive of the family.  On their way to a war that is so important that it is only mentioned once, a spy arrives with information that the sacred city of Alamut is secretly supplying the enemies of Persia with high-end weapons.  American audiences have heard that one before, right?  The brothers and their uncle/advisor Nizam (Ben Kingsley) hold a war council to decide what to do; Dastan votes to continue on to the war their father assigned, but Nizan convinces the others that this weapons threat is important enough to take action immediately.  Through some moderately unlikely and acrobatic heroics, Dastan manages to sneak into the fortified city of Alamut and open the gates, allowing the Persians to take the city with nary a casualty...on their side.  During the brief battle, Dastan defeated a man that was on a mission from the Alamut ruler; his (failed) mission was to guide a particular dagger out of the city and toward safety.  Dastan snagged the dagger and all the props for capturing the city.  As a reward, his father offers him the hand of Alamut's ruler, Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), in marriage.  It is customary to give the King a gift when he enters a new city, but Dastan is no good at that sort of thing, so he gladly takes some fancy robes that Tus offers him for the gift.  However, when King Sharaman dons the robes, it seems that the robes are tainted and the good King dies from what appear to be severe chemical burns.  Who gave the King the robes?  Why, it was the Prince that has no hope of ever being King, but should be pretty happy with his lot in life, since he's not a street peddler!  Blame him!

So, Dastan and Tamina go on the lam.  Why does she accompany him?  Well, Tamina is the guardian of the Sands of Time.  When placed in the glass handle of the dagger Dastan is holding, they can rewind time for the holder.  It's pretty cool, but the dagger only holds a minute's worth of sand, so if you need a mulligan in life, you better act fast with the dagger.  Theoretically, if someone found the sacred cache of time sand in Alamut and used the dagger with it, the time limit would be irrelevant and the user could go back to any part of their life --- of course, that would anger the gods, who would destroy the universe if that ever happened.  Dastan figures out the power in his dagger and realizes that this is the reason for Persia's attack on Alamut, and that the King's men will never find the weapons of mass destruction the spy told them about, because they don't exist.  Someone wants that dagger very badly.  Is it Tus, who has the most to gain and handed the robes to Dastan?  Is it Garsiv, who would need to do a little more additional killing to be king?  Or do the filmmakers think we're idiots?  Seriously, why would Ben Kingsley be in this movie, looking like Jafar, if he wasn't the villain?  And why would the brothers even need to master time?  But no, we're supposed to play along with Dastan as he walks his way down logic street.  Once Dastan's train of thought finally leaves the station, he has to stop the mysterious evildoer from wrecking time and the world.  And maybe, if he's lucky, he'll learn a few things about himself, life, and love.

I'm not much of a Jake Gyllenhaal fan.  Yes, I liked Donnie Darko, too, but I haven't been impressed with anything I've seen him in since (although I haven't gotten around to Brokeback Mountain yet).  He's okay in this movie.  As far as the physicality of his role went, he did a pretty good job.  He appeared to be quite the swashbuckling little Persian and, aside from the impractical haircut (if you're going to have fashionably long hair, you should probably keep it out of your eyes in sword fights).  As far as his acting went...well...he's not terrible, but he's pretty bad.  Specifically, he has a startlingly low supply of charm for a lead character and no chemistry with his romantic interest.  Speaking of whom, Gemma Arterton wasn't much better.  She has more to work with, since she gets to point out what a moron Dastan is for most of the picture, but she is just as convincing as Gyllenhaal when it comes to showing love on-screen.  The acting savior of this movie was Alfred Molina in the supporting role of Sheik Amar, a crafty entrepreneur.  He had energy, charm, and was funny --- all the things you would expect from main characters, but this movie lacks.  Ben Kingsley more or less mailed his performance in, but his uninspired work is still better than most actors on their best day.  Gisli Orn Gardarsson did a decent job as a creepy assassin, but the rest of the cast was just average.  Director Mike Newell continues his eccentric resume (Prince of Persia, Harry Potter, and...Mona Lisa Smile?), but this is definitely not one of his better outings.  I was impressed by the quality of his action sequence direction, but the obviously fake romance between his leads was disappointing from the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

But was anyone really expecting amazing acting from this film?  I certainly wasn't.  I was looking for some big, dumb action, and this movie delivers.  The action is pretty good, and it is plentiful.  Most of the more ridiculous action scenes (running up walls, anything remotely acrobatic, etc.) are taken from the video game; in its own way, this movie does a good job staying true to its video game roots and still telling a comprehensible story, "probabaly " better than most video game adaptations.  Aside from the time-pausing scenes, I couldn't tell what stunts Jake Gyllenhaal was doing and what was CGI, so the production values and editing were great.  There were far too many unnecessary slow-motion shots, but that happens in action movies nowadays.  While there was no gore in all this violence, I thought the action was handled pretty well.

Surprisingly, the action doesn't feel like it was the top priority in the movie.  I think they were trying very hard to make a sister franchise to Pirates of the Caribbean.   It's got swashbuckling action and a hero coming of age, it's got a sassy female lead who tries to embody Girl Power, and it even has an amusing and guylinered supporting character with questionable morals in Alfred Molina. How does it stack up?  Well, it's certainly worse than the first Pirates, but I think it was better than the other two.  So, not great, but not terrible.  Here's the thing: this is the story of a Prince of Persia --- my favorite character shouldn't be Alfred Molina.  In Pirates, Johnny Depp stole the show because he's a pirate and pirates steal.  Here, we have two princes in supporting roles that have little more than anger to define their characters; they're definitely not going to be the characters you enjoy watching.  That leaves us with Body by Jake.  His character is not smarter or funnier or stronger than his brothers; he is just supposed to have better morals as his defining trait.  And while that might be a great differentiating point when picking out a husband, it's not really a big deal in an action hero.

Of course, the ridiculousness of the film could be another reason why it falls short of its franchise-mimicking aspirations.  It would be easy to pick this movie's casting apart by accusing it of "whitewashing," but the deed is done, and now it's time to judge.  My overwhelming reaction to this movie is that there are more white people in Persia than in Illinois.  That is one whitebread, cracker empire.  And, apparently, English with a British accent is the language of choice.  Of course it is.  I bet this movie was a huge hit in Iran.  On the other hand, it's not like Aladdin was a multicultural buffet, and this film borrows a lot from the animated classic.  The whole race thing is silly enough to ridicule for the entire running time, but there are ample opportunities to mock this film.  I bet you didn't know that there Persian ninjas are called Hassansins, probably because it rhymes with "assassins."  Oh, and the lead ninja is from Norwegia, which makes him probably the least ethnically-correct ninja ever.  Oh, and did you know that you could take a booby trap to safety?  That is stupider than Indiana Jones finding a doorway to hide in as the giant boulder rolls past him.  And I'm not even going to go in detail about the ostrich jockeys --- here's an actual quote from this movie: "Did you know that ostriches have suicidal tendencies?"  What?  WHAT?!?  How does that line find its way into a $150+ million dollar movie?  And that's the best line in the whole movie.

Prince of Persia has solid action and an amazing plot (by video game movie standards), but pretty awful characters and a cliche-ridden script.  In my eyes, I call that a wash.  However, the ending (hello, deus ex machina) is bad enough to tip this into sub-par territory.  Not that I expected anything less from a plot device that goes back in time, but it was pretty bad.

However, this is a great movie to laugh at.  It's very watchable and the enormous budget just makes the film's failures even more amusing.  I grant this film Lefty Gold status, as it is easily the most entertaining bit of Hollywood fluff I have ridiculed in the past year.  As Lefty Gold, The Sands of Time deserves