Bad Reviews on Potter and Order of Phoenix Movie

I only ever read the paper when I am working here at the security desk ... one of the gaurds or car drivers has usually left one, but I am usually a few days behind even when I do read it ... and since this is the first night I am in since last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, this comes from Fridays edition of the New York Post. Apparently the Tokyo premier of the Order of the Phoenix movie left some, including a London critic, rather unimpressed. I guess attendance was not exactly great either. Not surprising though. I'll just reiterate my previous statements ... if they want to pull the movie franchise out of the water before the flush handle gets hit (love that image ... just re-watched "The Mask" yesterday for some light hearted relief) they need to go with the horror/thriller/epic directors, and ones with a bigger name behind them to be able to throw some weight around to get the thing done their way - Shymalan on movie 6 and Gore Verbinski on movie 7. In other reviews though, I am very happy to report that even the NY post reviewer likes Ratatouille, which I am greatly looking forward to seeing with our friend's Nate and Julies kids if I can when I am back in Grove City for a week to work on another friends attic. Even better in Lou Lumenick's NY Post review is honesty. RT comes from Brad Bird, who did The Incredibles, and that film, from what I heard, got some scathing reviews of being "fascist," from some, for lack of better words, preoccupied or obsessed people. Lumenick, though, gives both films the same review of "I had my doubts going in but I loved the film when I saw it" - so that is cool and heightens My own recently viewed: Shrek 3 - really good, maybe a bit harder to follow than the other 2, for a younger audience especially, but I really liked it (not enough music though ... that's the one criticism - needed a really good song drop in like Funktytown in the last one or the Smashmouth song in the first one, both those movies did a good job of engendering the "need to get that soundtrack" impulse) Ocean's 13 - fun but disappointing. I mean, any movie where you have Al Pacino dropping his voice and saying "I know people ... who really know how to hurt people" ... it's worth seeing for the Pacino performance - but ebyond that, it didn't have the strong theme or the caper punch. 11 had both: the heist is the mechanical vehicle for the really important thing for Ocean, which is the love theme, but the heist also has that good caper reveal in the end where it is actually the action you already "saw" and thought you knew what was going on that you then find out what really happened. That was the weaker part of 12 was that, while I liked the themes they broadened out to (broadening out from romantic love to the role fo familial identity and discovery of one's own identity in romantic love), it came at the cost of the mechanical plot pay off in that the caper reveal at the end is sort of a desu ex machina - the whole thing was actually circumvented before any of the key action of the majority of the film. But 13 really didn't have either aspect. You know from the beginning they are getting back at Pacino for hurting Reuben (heck, you know that from the trailer), unlike the other 2 where you discover the real thematic motivation at the end, and there really isn't a good physical caper payload like the other 2. You know it is pretty mechanical when I can guess before hand what is supposed to be one of the plot surprises: In 12 there is a government agent who turns out to be Linus' (Matt Damon's) mom, and Linus is always worried about his super-caper dad being told of his perfomrances or anything that smacks of his dad having t pull him out of a bind, and so when a male FBI agent shows up in 13 who fits the age range, busting Ocean's crew int he casino ... even I know it is going to be Linus' dad, and I never guess those things (I find I enjoy a movie more if I am not trying to figure those things out along the way but simply taking in the movie etc). If you liked the first 2 movies and like Pacino, Pitt and Clooney together, 13 will be fun, if not, you're not missing much at all if you don't see it. (Disclaimer: this was the poorest recording quality of the 3 "Canal Street" versions I recently got - this, Shrek 3, which was decent quality, and Pirates 3 which was decent quality, but I already saw it twice in the theater). Fracture: I liked it. Nothing to write home about but I liked it. Typical Anthony Hopkins spooky stuff and Gosling Jr is pretty good in it. Plot twist was not as easy to figure out as Ocean's 13, I couldn't figure out the exact detail but I knew the basic device, but then I am into the object/s involved so I may have noticed certain things. Live Free or Die Hard: I loved it. As I suspected, from the cinematics of the previews, they were going for certain aspects and feels of the FPS games and I think they pulled it off. Even moreso I liked the use of post-modern theming without desparing - actaully has cut back some against other 90s and early 2000s movies where the FBI is the decrepit and bumbling agency superceded by the more secret intel agencies, in that in this one the "super-secret" agencies are the ones who screw up and the FBI guy is the one who is reliable and McClane can work with (same guy plays the FBI guy here as plays ferenscics cop in Fracture, Cliff Curtis, I think he has been around a little while but is just coming into some more prominent supporting roles, I like him). If you see it, tell me what you think, but I think the movie even has a quasi-slam on the banally superfluously snyde attitude of Seinfeld ... "that's what makes you that guy." I really like the "re-issue" movies from the 80s movies that have come out in the early to mid 2000s, the way they have taken what were originally simply good fun action/thriller stuff and worked in deeper thematics. The 3rd Terminator was that way (from doom and gloom relief in the 80s to a deeper theme of no unrealistically trying to stop judgement day, but to trying to survive it and remain human by picking up the pieces and rebuilding afterwards), and now this one from the Die Hard trilogy. I loved Die Hard With a Venegeance (#3 - even recently went back and watched it this past semester) for the chemsitry between Willis and Jackson, but this has distinctly added deeper PoMo themes. Classic line: McClane's daughter says to the sidekick kid something like, "take a moment and reach way down, because you're going to need to find a bigger set of ... to get through this" and the kid replies "I know that tone ... I'm just not used to hearing it from somebody with hair" (meaning baldy bruce as her dad). Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. What can I say ... Keith Richards (as Captain Teague, keeper of the "Pirate Codex") says to Johnny Depp/Sparrow "It's never been about living forever, Jackie ... it's about learning to live with yourself - forever" - Davy Jones, in one momentary glimpse of his former true manhood, bellowing "into the abyss!" as he takes the Dutchman into the charybdis to duke it out with the pearl with Barbosa at the helm, a wedding in a maelstrom and the ending blew even me away, and I was already expecting to love the movie. Whatever the reviewers say - I say they just can't handle it. I am trying, amidst many other things, to get a publishable essay done up on the movie using Heidegger and Tom Waits' "Hoist That Rag" (which I consider to be the best song of Waits' career, which is saying a lot coming from me ... i love Waits) as an interpretive counterpart to the opening AWE song "Hoist the Colors" So I'll just end with the first verse of the movie song: The King and his men, stole the queen from her bed And bound her in her bones The seas be ours and by the powers Where we will we'll roam Yo Ho, All hands Hoist the Colors high Heave Ho, Thieves and Beggars Ever Shall we die (Note: if you find lyrics listed anywhere you will find, "Yo Ho, haul together" but "all hands" is what they sing in the movie ... and what they sing in the movie as the last line has several variations: the gallows pirates sing "Never shall we die" and Sao Feng's leuitenant sings "Never Say We die" - the "never" is the "right" lyric, but I think the writers intended you to wonder if it is "ever" so that is why I put it like that ... part of the irony is precisely that they are singing "never" when the more fitting word at the gallows is "ever" ... I think it is conscioulsly intentional)