Crazy, Stupefying, Lovely.

     Stupid, Crazy, Love is a movie more silly and complex than any other romantic comedy, where the writing always catches you by surprise.  The plot gets off to a slow start after Emily (Julianne Moore) tells her husband Cal (Steve Carrol) that she wants a divorce due to an affair with a coworker.  When Cal goes to a nearby pick-up bar to nurse his fresh wound, he meets a mysterious ladies' man (Ryan Gosling) who wants to teach him how to "recover his manhood".  So Cal tries to distract himself and move on with life by buying new clothes and new drinks and hooking up with new women.        
     But love is in the air.  Cal can't give up hope of his ex and secretly does her gardening at night; Emily finds herself missing him when her new relationship amounts to nothing.  Their thirteen-year-old son (Jonah Bobo, who's too-long hair bugged me through the entire movie) is obsessed with his babysitter and "soulmate" (Analeigh Tipton) and tries to strip himself of the "little kid" label for her benefit, while she attempts the same thing for her older crush, his father.  Even the Gosling character player can't help falling for his latest girl (an lively, convincing performance by Emma Stone).  All the character's life crash together into one in a shocking, hysterical climax.  The end is a bit over-the-top ridiculous, and the very end comes quite suddenly, leaving the movie unfinished and not at all correctly predicted.

A New Pooh

     Silly old bear!  Winnie the Pooh and friends made a hit come-back with this latest movie, simply titled Winnie the Pooh.  It consists of two well-known stories.  Eyore has loses his tail, and a contest is held for the person (or animal) who can find the best replacement.  Meanwhile, Christopher Robin has goes missing, and the only clue he leaves for the animals is a note saying that he was captured by a Backson; everyone sets out to rescue him.  Maybe these narratives are a little too well known; more than once throughout the movie I thought, Isn't there already a Winnie the Pooh movie that tells this story?  But the film puts enough of a fresh spin on the tales to leave movie-goers more than satisfied.  

     The flick switches between the pages of a storybook and the real-life story, with the narrator talking to the characters every once in a while to keep them on track.  The tale falls off the book pages and into the Hundred Acre Wood (sometimes quite literally).  There's lots of comedy, too.  Tigger, showing off some good slapstick humor, sneakily stalks his prey, a balloon, pounces, and then starts freaking out when it sticks to his fur.  Later on, after a flurry of jokes accidentally made by Pooh, Tigger attempts to train Eyore to be his Tigger Number Two, with a lot of paint and injuries, but no success.  Has Winnie the Pooh always been this hilarious?

     At 70 minutes long, the film's biggest, and arguably only, flaw is lack of length.  But Winnie the Pooh is really just a short, entertaining snippet.  It's good at what it does, which isn't something you can say for every movie.

                                                                

Farewell, Harry.

     So far, it's been a summer of sequels, and now, finally, we have the sequel.  The grand finale to a project spanning over thirteen years, seven books, eight movies (Despite my wishing they had made one long movie for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows instead of two short ones.  I mean, look at long and successful movies like Lord of the Rings and Avatar.), and a theme park.
     Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II begins right where Part 1 left off, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione finding and destroying Horcruxes (little bits of dark wizard Voldemort's soul).  You can tell that this movie is a continuation; there really isn't much of a beginning at all.  The rest of the film unfolds at a breakneck pace perfect for the film's action plot.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione break into Gringotts Wizard Bank (one of the movie's best scenes, involving Hermione's comical attempt at being Bellatrix Lestrange, scary multiplying fake treasure, and a breathtaking escape on a dragon), destroy the Horcruxes, and kill Voldemort -- boom, boom, boom.  This action is intensified by the soundtrack, a thrilling combination of old and new.  There are no pauses for breath, save a few for romance -- between Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, Neville and Luna.
     This latest sequel also really showed off the talent of supporting actors we haven't seen since Half Blood Prince.  Brave Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) defends Hogwarts fiercely during the final battle; Seamus Finnigan (Devon Murray) returns as the funny character we saw and loved in the first film.  In addition, the Harry Potter world in Deathly Hallows Part II has lived up to the high expectations set by the previous installments.  The Gringotts set was especially captivating -- the treasure, the architecture, the roller-coaster ride that led to the vaults.

     Harry Potter book-lovers may have noticed that some scenes in the movie unwisely diverged from their corresponding parts in the book.  Such as the final battle against Voldemort at Hogwarts.  In J.K. Rowling's novel, Harry had killed Voldemot in front of a crowd of onlookers, who promptly started celebrating.  There hadn't been any fight between the two of them, just the one blow.  In the movie, Voldemort had chased Harry into some remote area of the castle, where they exchanged continuous spells before Harry uttered the pointless line, "Let's finish this the way we started it.  Together." grabbed Voldemort, and jumped with him out of the school from several stories up.  Then they hit the ground and went on fighting.  Huh?  While this scene may have been suspenseful for some to watch, let's not forget that Harry is a teenager facing the most powerful wizard alive.  Harry would never have been able to hold his own in a long duel against Voldemort.  And what was that with the jumping?
     Another part is when Harry told his old teacher, "I never wanted you to die, Remus, especially after you had your son."  What son?  Quite regrettably, the movie, unlike the book, didn't include the scene where Remus finds out he has a son and asks Harry to be the godfather.   And, though the movie's title is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the story of the Hallows remains unfinished with the movie's end.  Harry never realized, as he did in the book, that he owned the Invisibility Cloak from the legend.  Nor did he use the Elder Wand to fix his own broken wand.  Instead, he tore it in half, leaving himself wand-less.  These issues leave you with the feeling that the movie wasn't very well thought out.
     Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II concludes with an epilogue, taking place 19 years later.  The characters hardly look like married adults, but Ron and Hermione already have two kids, and Harry and Ginny have three.  The four of them are seeing their kids off to Hogwarts at Platform 9 3/4.  Here, in Harry Potter's final minutes, where the whole story began, is where the sentimentality and nostalgia lost after the first two films makes a rare appearance.  A good one, too; very fitting for this last good-bye.