Captain America: The First Avenger

I did the rant about 3D before, so won't waste words here. At least this film was more colourful than Harry Potter, so I could actually SEE the action sequences. Which was good, because they were extremely enjoyable. As was everything else.

There is absolutely nothing original in this film. Plot-points, characters, themes are all recognizable repeats from previous adventure, SF and war movies. What you get is more of them, and faster. Nazi scientists to laser guns to train heist to death scene to interrogation scene to motorbike-chase and so on.

Rarely have I seen a film go through the motions with such poise. Characters are as flat as cardboard, straight out of Hollywood history, but their lines are carefully balanced between sincere and arch, and are delivered with sharp timing. Not once did I wince, and I laughed quite a lot. Tommy Lee Jones seemed to be having a blast handing out deadpan putdowns to all and sundry, but he could also eat his words without having his authority undermined. Bucky was super suave as the playboy in the uniform, but his superior / inferior / ultimately loyal relationship with Steve Rodgers was also handled very well. Poor Peggy got stuck with the thankless romantic-interest role, but the film pushed the gushy stuff between the lines, so Hayley Atwell was allowed to be an adult and kick some ass as well as flirt and get jealous. Bit like Thor, tho, that kiss came out of nowhere (and at such a silly moment!). Better to have left it with arranging a date, but I'm guessing the film-makers lost that battle.

But really, Chris Evans carries this one on the back of his giant super-soldier shoulders. You couldn't have just got a smiling tank like Chris Hemsworth to play the role. Even when Cap acquires the bod, the face has to remain humble and honest. As a skinny, delusional glory-seeker, you still believe Rodgers has that quiet determination and bravery that would make him an inspiration. Chris Evans manages to convey a faith-in-oneself despite the failures and rejections life has brought, a faith born out of a simple but rigorous sense of what's right. When he speaks to Peggy, he is (or very quickly becomes) sure of himself, so you get the feeling that the reason he hasn't got the women before is because they haven't been listening. Bucky does shoot back the suggestion that Rodgers's ambition is fueled by a sense of inadequacy, but again, Evans's performance contradicts that reading. It's more simple than that. Rodgers wants to fight because he's the hero.

And Hugo Weaving wants to destroy the world because he's the villain ... pretty much. The thematic line being fed is the question of how to deal with power. The Red Skull is an Nietzschean strongman with the will to dominate all weaker forms of life. Hydra is the mindless, numberless force he assembles, and whose existence he defines and directs. On the other side there's Steve Rodgers, an ordinary kid given extraordinary abilities, and grateful for them, and with humility intact. He's been beaten up all his life, and now has the opportunity to fight the bullies back, on a global scale. The people he assembles around him aren't faceless, but diverse, and with personality streaming out of every pore. It's the free world against totalitarian terror. A time when things really were that simple.

But the film is also an extended origin story, because Cap wakes up in a new world where the bullies and the honest jons are much more difficult to tell apart. The opening and concluding scenes undermine the genre stereotypes and period fittings the film riffed on (much better than First Class did, btw), and hopefully set up a more complicated Captain America that we will see in The Avengers next year.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Allow me to moan frustrated about the horribly disfigured aspect my 3D glasses gave to this film. The spectacle cast in shadow, almost unrecognizable, to no purpose whatsoever. I paid the pounds sterling equivalent of £6 for this shit (this in a cineplex in Varna) and feel royally ripped-off. Kill this fad dead, please, movie-theatre-going public, I implore you.

THAT rant over with, we can move on to say that this final chapter was thoroughly enjoyable, with slight reservations. Radcliff will never be Harry Potter, but the onrush of events and the gravity of the melodrama serve to disguise that fact. Indeed, there is really very little space for the kind of character-building Part 1 indulged in, which comes as a relief. Shorter, sharper pay-offs, and a greater emphasis on metaphor and theme, make this installment arguably the best of an uneven series.

Two things, really, one done well and the other not. Heaven is hard to do in fiction, but the white plain stretching to pillars blurred with refracting light did the business. And the call-back in the final scene at King's Cross is overt, underlining the importance of free-will. What do I do now? -- that endless question. Death or the courage to go on. You get to decide.

But a Harry Potter film wouldn't be a true Harry Potter film without at least one concluding scene botched. Immediately after Harry threw the broken pieces of the Elder Wand off the bridge, I began to direct the scene differently in my head. Cut the sweep, Mr. Yates. Radcliff should have let Grint's question hang in the air, then grin and say "Yes!", giving the audience the impression that he WILL claim invincibility, greatness. And then he should have calmly snapped the wand in two, and dropped it as if it were worthless. Stepping down, trading a determined look with Grint, then Watson, and they all smile at each other. And they walk back to Hogwarts, like they always have before, picking up the threads of conversation as the camera cranes away. Power rejected as an empty prize, our heroes settle for love and normality -- the family dramas at platform 9 3/4 which close the film. THE POINT, of all of it, bottled, quietly sipped. THAT'S how it should have been done.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1

Oh so pretty! No, I'm not talking about Miss Watson, you pervert. On which note, what's up with that? On the pale, vacant English rose stakes, she's no Keira...

But we're off topic, the topic being OH SO PRETTY! Every location, every set, had this crisp sumptuousness about it. Harry Potter brings New Zealand's Lord of the Rings back home. It's not out of this world, it's this world, slightly out. Rowling's fantasy takes drab Britain and pushes the quaint, the eccentric, the scary and surprising to the fore, making the world familiar-but-not, strange but recognizable, delightfully weird. This film, even more than the three before it, gets that aesthetic effectively onto the screen.

Well shot too. The opening extreme close up is a stunner. Voldermort and Harry's 300mph air battle is another. Watch out for the snake, another stunner. The long animated sequence telling the story of the Deathly Hallows, another. In fact, almost every frame is gorgeous. I was in a state of constant stimulation all the way through.

Even tho Daniel Radcliffe is in it! It's pretty churlish, being mean about Mr Radcliffe. But honestly, there really isn't enough charisma there. My buddy Aitch concurs. And in a story where the relationship between these three friends is front and centre, Radcliffe's (lack of) presence leaves a huge hole. To be sure, the others don't get top marks either. Hermione's strop just doesn't convince (flipping HIT RON PROPERLY!). Watson is great at the snide and the troubled, but there's not enough love in between. Grint is better, but even he can't get the soppy speech about lights and hearts off the ground. If I were directing, I would have got all method on them -- getting the three to really go camping together for a month. ACTUALLY become friends. So that on screen, we can see those invisible bonds of affection that is such an enormous part of what Harry Potter is about.

I evaluate Harry Potter movies according to how many scenes make me wince. Deathly Hallows Part 1 only has one, which doesn't irritate so much as bewilder. Harry and Hermione's dancing was an interesting idea, but ultimately the experiment fails because it cannot replace what the film really needed -- a convincing portrayal of genuine friendship. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do, particularly if you have to be moody and silent all the time. Nonetheless, it's not there, and so (no matter how beautiful it is) the film leaves your emotions unbruised.