Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Grim tidings

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) • View trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.17.09
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Steve Kloves is the best thing that ever happened to the Harry Potter film franchise.

The skilled screenwriter was sorely missed on 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the only one of the six films that Kloves didn't script. It was, quite frequently, a narrative muddle that both failed to capture the essential plot elements of Rowling's sprawling novel, and completely perplexed viewers unfamiliar with Harry's universe.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, right) has no idea who previously owned the battered
old textbook that has made him such a whiz in potions class, and he really
doesn't care; Hermione (Emma Watson), on the other hand, is both suspicious
and worried. Ron (Rupert Grint), alas, is too absorbed by sports and an
aggressive new girlfriend to notice such things.

Thankfully, Kloves is back, and this new big-screen adventure — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — is much the better for his participation.

(The good news continues: Kloves already is working on the two-film adaptation of the series' final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, scheduled for release in 2010 and 2011.)

Despite the enormity of the task, Kloves carefully advances the key plot points involved with the deadly Lord Voldemort's efforts to penetrate the magic-protected walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, while also devoting plenty of time to the hormones raging within our young protagonists. The characters, 11 when introduced, now are in their sixth year at Hogwarts, which makes them 17 ... and madly, desperately, hopelessly in love.

And not necessarily with the right people.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), his brief fling with Cho Chang now an uncomfortable memory, can appreciate the romantic agony of Hermione (Emma Watson), whose fondness for Ron (Rupert Grint) has grown during the previous two films, and now is blindingly obvious to everybody ... except Ron himself. Vexingly, he has encouraged the romantic overtures of sappy Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave, appropriately smothering).

For his part, Harry is brought up short by the degree to which Ron's younger sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright), has blossomed into a young woman whose former little-kid devotion has become a bit more serious.

Unfortunately, young love is the least of Harry's problems. Half-Blood Prince opens with a nasty prologue, as Voldemort's villainous "Death Eaters" — led by the giggling psychopath, Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter at her seductively sinister best) — boldly assault targets both in Harry's magical world (the shops of Diagon Alley) and in the more public "Muggle" realm of downtown London.

I Love You Beth Cooper: Puppy love

I Love You Beth Cooper (2009) • View trailer for I Love You Beth Cooper
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity, smutty content and frequent bad teen behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.16.09
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I'm grateful for filmmakers who don't need to hit the ball out of the park every time.

After helming the first two Harry Potter entries and bringing Rent to the big screen, director Chris Columbus must've been exhausted ... and, one suspects, fed up with the sheer size and scope of such projects. No surprise, then, that he'd return to the simpler, gentler style of his younger days — specifically his 1987 directorial debut, Adventures in Babysitting — and renew his acquaintance with "little" pictures.

If Beth (Hayden Panettiere, center) is in sight, then her thuggish boyfriend can't
be far behind ... a realization that prompts delight from Treece (Lauren Storm,
left) and Cammy (Lauren London), and absolute terror from Denis (Paul Rust,
left) and Rich (Jack T. Carpenter).

The result, a charming adaptation of I Love You, Beth Cooper — Larry Doyle wrote the screenplay, from his own 2007 novel — certainly covers no new ground in the teen romantic comedy genre, and in fact feels overly familiar at times. But Columbus and Doyle blend the formulaic ingredients with enough skill to keep us entertained, and the engaging young stars inhabit their roles with enough conviction to sell the material.

Doyle's script is funny, earthy and just gross enough, at random moments, to hold the attention of a young target audience. Sadly, though, that demographic probably will avoid this film like the plague. Beth Cooper feels too much like an adult's perception of the teen scene, which automatically makes it uncool; this film also lacks the up-to-the-minute pop score that made Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (for example) a more successful teen package.

(I liked it anyway. Sue me.)

This film represents a bid for big-screen stardom by Hayden Panettiere, an ongoing presence as the plucky high school cheerleader on TV's Heroes. She plays a high school cheerleader here as well, which probably won't do much to impress future talent scouts with her range ... but, in fairness, she definitely nails the part.

She and co-star Paul Rust are the primary reasons for this film's success: Both deliver winning, thoroughly sympathetic performances. The premise also is can't-miss, since we've all cast ourselves as hapless geeks in long-ago romantic fantasies about being tongue-tied in the presence of The One Who Got Away ... for the simple reason that we never worked up the courage to say anything to the guy or gal in question.

That's a future memory that Buffalo Grove High School valedictorian Denis Cooverman (Rust) is determined to avoid. Encouraged overmuch by best friend Rich (Jack T. Carpenter), Denis uses his graduation speech as a means to confess his worshiped-from-afar, never-before-revealed love for Beth Cooper (Panettiere), the hottest girl in school ... while also putting names to several other white elephants who stampeded through the senior class.

Whatever Works: Mostly successful

Whatever Works (2009) • View trailer for Whatever Works
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.10.09
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Woody Allen's life and film career certainly have been a long and strange collective journey; at this point, it can become difficult to determine where one leaves off and the other takes over.

Since he has written and/or directed at least one film per year since 1971 — a truly astonishing output — and is best remembered for idiosyncratic and extremely personal works such as Annie Hall, Hannah and her Sisters and Deconstructing Harry, one can't help believing that Allen has employed cinema to exorcise personal demons and struggle toward an understanding of life, the universe and everything.

Even when he's criticizing her, Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) cheerfully hangs
onto every word coming from Boris (Larry David), because she believes that
anything spoken by a "genius" must be worth embracing. Eventually, a funny
thing happens: Rather than diminishing Melody's vibrant, sunny nature, Boris
begins to perceive the flaws in his own behavior.

The delightful surprise, of course, is that so many of these highly personal films have succeeded as mass entertainment.

All of which brings us to Whatever Works, a quirky little comedy-drama that builds to Allen's current solution to the Big Secret: a Chimera he has chased since 1975's Love and Death. Whereas this pursuit and its possible answers were more complicated back in Allen's younger days, his epiphany now is encapsulated in this film's very title.

Love, happiness, job satisfaction and everything else in life are, as this film's Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David) keeps reminding us, a fragile combination of luck and struggle to begin with: Ergo, we must do anything necessary — whatever works — in order to seize and hold onto it.

Even when peace and personal fulfillment involve thinking outside the box. Particularly when that's the case.

The problem, despite this film's upbeat message and truly delightful resolution, is that Yellnikoff — no accident, that last name — is such a bitter pill to swallow.

David, famous for his work in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, more or less takes that character to misanthropic extremes in this film. Boris is a cranky, miserable, world-class grouch who somehow hasn't managed to drive off the small coterie of friends necessary to serve as a reluctant audience for his endless rants about people, society and every topic from child-rearing to gun control.

A former Columbia professor and self-proclaimed genius who came close to winning a Nobel Prize for quantum mechanics, Boris now is known mostly for his failures: failed marriage, failed career and even a failed suicide attempt. He now spends his days insulting the small children unfortunate enough to study chess with him.

Moon: Thoughtful sci-fi

Moon (2009) • View trailer for Moon
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.9.09
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"The Cold Equations," a classic science-fiction short story written by Tom Godwin in 1954, concerns a space pilot in a one-man ship that has been sent on an emergency mission, to bring desperately needed medical supplies to the settlers on an outlying planet.

While en route, the pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: a feisty teenager hoping to visit her brother on the distant world ... a plucky, personable young woman everybody would love to have as a younger (or older) sister.

The monitor readouts rarely change, and this seems just like any other day
inside the lonely mining base dumped on the far side of Earth's moon ... but as
Sam (Sam Rockwell) is about to find out, this particular day will become
anything but ordinary.

Trouble is, the ship's fuel consumption has been calibrated precisely to the weight of the pilot and cargo: anything more — particularly something as heavy as a second person — and the ship won't reach its destination. The medicine won't arrive; countless colonists will die.

We readers, fully aware of what must be done, turn each page with mounting dread, hoping that Barton will figure out an alternate solution.

But no: The laws of physics and mathematics cannot be bartered with. Eventually, helplessly, Barton must cycle her out of the airlock.

The story's final two pages are chilling and instantly, permanently memorable.

So-called "hard" science-fiction rarely involves aliens, space battles or improbable time travel paradoxes. The futuristic setting is, instead, a reasonable extrapolation of modern society; such stories are driven by the same human conflict that would fuel a straight contemporary drama.

Sometimes the stories are parables: intentionally disturbing scenarios of what might result, if society continues to behave in a particularly short-sighted manner.

Movies made from such stories aren't vicarious thrill-rides such as I, Robot and the countless Star Trek and Star Wars installments.

Translation: They're rarely popular in the box-office sense that big studios demand, particularly in this 21st century. Which is ironic, considering how such films often have a far-reaching impact that exceeds their flashier, cotton candy-headed cousins.

I must confess surprise, however, that a film as cleverly scripted and persuasively realized as Duncan Jones' Moon has been marketed as an alternative "arthouse flick."

Are we to believe that arthouse/indie theaters are becoming the last refuge of thought-provoking drama, even when the trappings are science-fiction? What have those corporate Hollywood behemoths wrought?

Public Enemies: Alluring villainy

Public Enemies (2009) • View trailer for Public Enemies
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.09
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The difficult trick is to make John Dillinger somehow appealing — or, at the very least, interesting — without sanitizing one of America's most notoriously vicious criminals.

Trust Johnny Depp to unerringly walk that extremely fine line.

Judging by Johnny Depp's portrayal of John Dillinger in this film, one would
think the notorious bank robber disliked killing people, and did so only with
great reluctance. History suggests otherwise, but Depp makes us believe that
this guy has a semblance of conscience.

Public Enemies, thanks to Depp's superbly nuanced performance as Dillinger, belongs in the company of Bonnie and Clyde, as one of Hollywood's great pop-culture portraits of American crime. Indeed, director Michael Mann's Public Enemies has much in common with Bonnie and Clyde, which was billed with the lurid tag line "They're young ... they're in love ... and they kill people."

Back in 1967, director Arthur Penn's unexpectedly gory crime saga was a trend-setter, foreshadowing the culture of violence that soon would pervade Hollywood. Its unsettling blend of casual brutality and glamorous star power — Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were "it" at the time — has been duplicated with equal panache by Mann, with the dazzling celebrity wattage handled just as effectively by Depp and co-star Marion Cotillard, fresh from her Academy Award win for La Vie en Rose.

Sadly, the violence in Public Enemies is nothing new, with bloody deaths by Tommy-gun a frequent occupational hazard for good guys and bad guys alike, as this narrative — scripted by Ronan Bennett, Ann Biderman and Mann, from the book by Bryan Burrough — moves inexorably toward Dillinger's well-known date with destiny at Chicago's Biograph movie theater on July 22, 1934.

Aside from Depp's excellent work, this film's distinctive style comes courtesy of Mann, who orchestrates the carnage with the same snap and panache that made 2004's Collateral such a visceral experience. The difference is that we don't really have a virtuous and principled protagonist to root for — Christian Bale's Melvin Purvis is a bit too chill to be sympathetic — although you'll no doubt need to resist that bewitching gleam in Depp's eye.

Alfred Hitchcock was famous for this ability to "trick" audiences into identifying with his many villains; we unconsciously wanted Robert Walker Jr. to reach the dropped cigarette lighter with which he planned to frame the hero in Strangers on a Train, just as we hoped Barry Foster would successfully pry his distinctive tie pin — which might identify him to the pursuing police — from the rigor-frozen fingers of his recent victim, in Frenzy.

Mann and Depp accomplish the same feat, as Purvis and his fellow FBI agents repeatedly close on Dillinger and his associates: Despite knowing Dillinger's eventual fate, we keep hoping that he'll survive this skirmish, and then that one, and then the next ... because, darn it, Depp makes the guy too interesting to lose.