Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Spoiler level: Moderate

The Harry Potter in the latest film, The Order of the Phoenix, is a different wizard than the one we’ve come to know from the earlier installments. Gone is our sweet little Harry in the red and gold scarf. “I’m angry… all the time,” he complains, and even Hermione and Ron seem to hang back a little from him. That this is eventually explained away in magic terms does not diminish the subtext – our boy is growing up and it ain’t pretty.

Adolescence is kind to few, but the genius of Jo Rowling’s series is that it makes literal the perils of teenagerdom. We all felt like we were going to die in junior high, though usually of embarrassment. In Rowling’s world, real lives hang in the balance as the forces of good and evil collide, but the everyday concerns of adolescence are given nearly as much weight. Yes, yes, Voldemort has returned, but is Harry going to kiss Cho? Are Ron and Hermione secretly in love? And what about poor Ginny Weasley? Aaaaah! Potions aren’t the only things bubbling up at Hogwarts this time around.

Speaking of Hogwarts, British TV director David Yates doesn’t quite seem to be under the magic spell of the institution as much as the previous filmmakers. For the first time in the series, Hogwarts feels dingy and dangerous. The enchanted staircases and portraits are barely glimpsed, and I don’t remember seeing the resident ghosts wafting through the halls. Even an impromptu display of joyous fireworks is cut short by tragedy. The unthinkable has happened – Hogwarts has turned into your terrible middle school. I might be suffering from a mild case of schadenfreude, but I like this new dreadful Hogwarts. There’s no time to stop and smell the vomit-flavored jellybeans when you’re fighting for your life.

The Order of the Phoenix finds Harry and headmaster Albus Dumbledore becoming pariahs in the magical world. Nobody is willing to believe that Voldemort has made his comeback, and The Daily Prophet, the wizard version of Star Magazine/Fox News, has launched a successful campaign to discredit Harry and Dumbledore’s version of the events of the last movie. The clueless and reactionary Ministry of Magic assigns one of its own, Dolores Umbridge, to be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor. She dresses in pink Jackie O. type outfits, and has plates with mewing kittens on her office wall. She’s very clearly evil, and sort of reminiscent of Joan Cusack’s pastel gold-digger in Addams Family Values. With the Ministry’s backing, she gains more and more power and enacts more and more rules limiting the freedoms of the students, ostensibly for their own safety. Hmm. This sounds a little familiar.

In fact, this is the most overtly political of the Potter movies, and there was a danger that it could have ended up as dreary as one of those Star Wars prequels. But screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, taking over for Steve Kloves who scripted all of the previous installments, chose carefully what to include and what to keep out, and he’s managed to turn the most overstuffed book of the series into the tightest film. There’s less action, at least until the finale, but the interpersonal dynamics are rewarding enough for this to dodge the mantle of the “filler chapter.”

Yates has the fortune of working with a top-flight cast of British vets, but the standout in this film is Imelda Staunton as Umbridge. She gets more screen time than any other adult, and sure makes the most of it. There’s a scene where a student is given a pen with no ink, and her reaction as the scene plays out its horrible conclusion is absolutely chilling. Umbridge is a one-note character, but Staunton manages to transcend that and deliver a fully-fleshed out monster.

With the emphasis on Harry’s internal struggle, coupled with the shorter-than-usual running time, some of the favorite characters from the other movies get the short end of the (broom) stick here. Hagrid and Dumbledore are noticeably absent for most of the film, and offer barely a line apiece to explain their disappearances. Ron and Hermione spend a good deal of the movie exchanging worried glances about Harry. Emma Thompson and Julie Walters basically have cameos, and aside from one virtuoso scene with Staunton, even the great Maggie Smith is pushed into the background.

Make no mistake — Order of the Phoenix is The Harry Show all the way.

Fortunately, for maybe the first time in the series, Daniel Radcliffe is up to the task. Yates clearly spent time with the actors, and the performances are better than ever (with the possible exception of Emma Watson, who seems to be developing some unfortunate actor-y mannerisms). Radcliffe has never been the most naturalistic actor; in the earlier installments you could almost see the director coaching him from the sidelines. But being around these great thespians seems to have finally paid off. He even manages to share a few scenes with that master of intensity, Gary Oldman, and not get blown off the screen. This movie, much more so than the others, rests on his shoulders, and part of the exhilaration here is seeing him finally bloom into a real actor.

And this feels like a real movie too, not just a cash-generating machine (which, of course, is precisely what it is). Alfonso Cuaron’s Prisoner of Azkaban is still my favorite of these movies so far, with its nice balance of whimsy and darkness. Order of the Phoenix may be a little harder to love, mostly due to the grim nature of the source material, but it has its rewards. The final battle is the best set piece in the series yet. The opening scene with the Dementors is wonderfully shot and scary. And the glimpse of Snape’s own lousy childhood is a welcome bit of backstory. I would call Order of the Phoenix the second best of the series, and, while I would like to have seen Cuaron’s take on one of these later chapters, I look forward to Yates’s work in next fall’s Half-Blood Prince. He’s laid the groundwork for something great.

Transformers

Spoiler level: Low

I guess there’s some good news and bad news here. The good news is that Transformers is Michael Bay’s best movie to date. The bad news is that that’s kind of like winning the “World’s Prettiest Slug” competition. By definition, Michael Bay movies begin at “watchable” and work their way down from there. Since I think this is as good as it’s going to get with him, let me be the first to declare – “Transformers is perfectly watchable!”

But dammit, it should have been more than merely “watchable.” I know this a movie based on a toy line, and, while I’ve never played with the toys or seen the TV series or 1986 movie, I bought into the hype a little. The trailers were pretty great, the robots looked fearsome, and I convinced myself that producer Steven Spielberg would have a mellowing effect on Bay, who I hoped would tone down his patented seizure-inducing camera and editing style that makes his action scenes all-but incomprehensible.

Not so much. But the worst offense of Transformers is that it’s kind of boring. I would have thought that all the jokes about the animal cracker scene in Armageddon might have entered Bay’s consciousness a little, but if there’s a director alive who sticks to his over-sized and polished guns, it’s him. Transformers is full of “animal cracker” scenes, where new It-boy Shia LeBeouf woos improbable high-schooler Megan Fox. LaBeouf’s a better actor than Ben Affleck, at least in that he manages not to look incredibly bored when taking these big paycheck roles. But even his disarming likability isn’t enough for us to care about his character too much. This is Transformers, and we paid to see big Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots do some damage. It’s not quite as bad as Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, where the titular character disappears for a 45 minute stretch of the movie while Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo bicker, but it’s not as far away from that as it should be either.

And then there’s all the “comedy.” Really, we’re only halfway through the summer, and I’ve already had all the action comedy I can handle. Fresh on the heels of the sitcom-with-effects that was Fantastic Four 2, Transformers offers up giant alien robots that learned English from the internet, and therefore say things like “my bad” when stepping on flowers. There’s also a little evil robot (they’re called the Decepticons) who’s like an Ewok crossed with Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 (if Ewoks and Johnny 5 were, you know, evil). It twitters and coos as it scurries around wreaking electronic havoc, and you just want to kick it back to whatever the hell planet it came from. The human comedy’s not much better, with a paint-by-numbers Bernie Mac cameo, and a conversation about masturbation between Sam and his parents. OMG LOL, which is about the only annoying thing the Transformers don’t say.

I know, I know. I said it was watchable. And it mostly is, thanks to the crack effects team. I don’t agree with the design of the robots, who, for the most part, are too spiky and complex for us to realize which end is up, but they did a fine job of bringing them to life. The leader of the good robots is Optimus Prime, a red, white, and blue semi (USA! USA!) who speaks with a deep, commanding tone (when not forced to utter lame pop culture catchphrases), and is voiced by Peter Cullen, a holdover from the TV series and animated movie. Being a non-fan, this doesn’t mean too much to me, but I admire the producers for throwing the faithful a bone, and not insisting on Liam Neeson or James Earl Jones. Prime is clearly the Christ figure of the series, and I wonder if the producers would have had more luck selling this movie to churches than the holy abomination that was Evan Almighty.

The actual physical transformations from vehicles to robots and back again are pretty great. The digital animators have done a fine job of making the motions of these machines seem almost organic. My favorite of the good robots (the Autobots) is Bumblebee, the giant robot that turns into Sam’s first car, a canary yellow Camaro. Bumblebee can’t speak (which may be why he’s my favorite), so he communicates through songs on the radio. This leads to more “comedy,” of course, but I was willing to overlook it, because Bumblebee is more or less Sam’s dog, and who doesn’t love a dog? This is sort of like Bay’s version of My Dog Skip, only with guns and cheesy nu-metal.

Unfortunately, Transformers is one of those films, like the Tenacious D movie, that hits its peak in the first scene. It has a great opening, where a robot disguised as a military helicopter attacks a U.S. military base in Qatar. There’s some explosive action and effects, and Bay actually manages to conjure up some suspense, as the soldiers try to figure out how to stop a threat that is beyond the scope of their training. I was hoping that this is the type of movie Transformers would be — a straight-up alien attack movie, in the vein of Aliens. In reality, the tone is more like Flight of the Navigator (jeez, I’m old). The climactic battle between Jesus vs. Satan, I mean, Prime vs. Megatron, is certainly noisy and destructive, but it doesn’t have the clarity of that first scene. It’s too chaotic and difficult to tell which pointy metal robot is decking which other pointy metal robot.

I haven’t even really gotten into the ridiculous plot. There’s some nonsense involving Sam’s great-great-grandfather’s spectacles on eBay, an enormous power cube that can magically shrink down to the size of a UPS box, Mars, Sam’s report card, etc. It’s all pretty dumb, and the flimsiest story imaginable to get from one action scene to another. And I didn’t mention the staggering amount of product placement on display here. To show this movie on commercial TV would be redundant. But all of this would be forgivable if the action really delivered. It doesn’t though. You may leave the theater in awe of the technology that was used to create the movie, but that’s not the kind of awe Transformers was going for.

Live Free or Die Hard

Spoiler level: Low

Sometimes lowered expectations are a good thing. Coming into the summer movie season, Live Free or Die Hard looked like this year’s Terminator 3 — the last wheezing gasp of a mostly forgotten franchise. So I’m pleasantly surprised to say that Die Hard 4 (as I’m going to call it for the rest of the review) is almost insanely fun.

Die Hard 4 scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had. Sometime over the course of the last 15 years or so, the traditional shoot-’em-up action movie morphed into something else. Something…lamer. Think about The Mummy and its sequel, and how hard it was to become involved in their stories because everything felt so fake. If everything is digital, it’s hard to feel any real risk, and therefore involvement with the plight of the characters. A giant sandstorm in the shape of a face isn’t scary, primarily because it so obviously doesn’t occupy the same space as the flesh and blood actors. You have to be a really skilled director (like Spielberg in Jurassic Park) to pull it off.

Len Wiseman, Die Hard 4’s director, is no Spielberg. He directed the messy vampire/werewolf Underworld movies, which are some of the worst offenders of cheesy, bad CGI. But for this movie, he wisely eschewed his bag of digital tricks and went old school, making use of real stuntpeople and real exploding cars. It’s a movie that’s a little out of touch with modern times, and it feels like a breath of fresh air.

Bruce Willis’s John McClane is also a little out of touch with modern times. The twelve years since the last installment of the series haven’t been kind to the NYC cop. He’s divorced, his daughter will barely talk to him, and he looks really really tired. Early on, he gets an assignment to pick up hacker Matt Farrell (yep, the Mac guy from TV) and bring him in for questioning about a computer breach the FBI just monitored. In keeping with the theme of “wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time” on which these movies are built, Farrell’s evil employers pick this moment to try to kill him. Much mayhem and explosions ensue, and Die Hard 4 never really slows down after this point.

The main scheme involves a group of cyber-terrorists who are planning a “fire sale,” a systematic shutting down of everything in the country controlled by computers, creating mass chaos and an opportunity to make a few bucks. The scope of the villains’ crimes has been escalating throughout the series, and this scheme is the largest yet. As McClane might be the least-qualified person to deal with anything involving computers (you get the impression he might not know what email is), he keeps Farrell along to explain how things work, for both his and our sakes. This, of course, leads to much protecting of “the kid,” while still giving Farrell a few shots to prove his usefulness. It’s all pretty by-the-numbers stuff, but somehow it works. I actually like Justin Long. I think he’s given a series of solid comic performances, ranging from Galaxy Quest to Dodgeball, and he’s a decent sidekick here, bringing the one-liners and incredulous reaction shots, and keeping Bruce Willis from sinking too far into grouchy old cop-ness.

Mostly, though, the dialog scenes just exist to get us from one action scene to another. And the action scenes here are frequently amazing, assuming you don’t get bogged down in “plausibility” and “physics.” C’mon, it’s summer! Why wouldn’t you use a car to take out a helicopter? I don’t want to give too much away, but there are several terrific set pieces, some of which reminded me of Speed, which is still the gold standard in improbable-yet-fun action. It’s the kind of movie where, if there’s an Asian woman, you know she’s gonna bust some martial arts moves. Where the bad guys don’t kill our heroes when they have the chance, despite the fact that they kill innocent people all the time. Where railings exist to be fallen over, and power plants exist to blow up spectacularly. It’s all so ludicrous, so…summery.

And there are plenty of legitimate problems. The editing is some of the worst I’ve seen in awhile, with closeups not matching long shots, and really bad ADR (dubbing during post-production). The main villain, played by Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant, is completely underwhelming, looking like he might burst into tears at any moment. And the entire subplot with Kevin Smith playing a basement-dwelling computer nerd is unnecessary, not very funny, and seems to be there just so Smith can continue his hobby of ridiculing geeks.
But you know what? It doesn’t matter. These are small things to look past. In just a few months, we’re going to be knee-deep in suicidal writer biopics, depressing war dramas, and (undoubtedly) Renee Zellweger’s tears. So why not grab some popcorn, a big ol’ Slushee and go see some crap blow up shot through a blue filter? Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1988!