Monday, December 30, 2013

Harry Potter Christmas Marathon




Every time I watch the Harry Potter movies I receive a special feeling that spreads throughout my loins, and no I’m not talking about being turned on by Emma Watson (in the last movie of course), but instead I talk about the equally important feeling of Christmas!  Because each movie chronicles an entire year at Hogwarts, it’s pretty inevitable that there will be a Christmas sequence within each film, and within each of those sequences we witness the immortal words of “Happy Christmas Harry!” and “Happy Christmas Ron!”  Till this day (literally) every Christmas morning I witness, I feel that one of the boxes I open is going to contain within it an invisibility cloak, which I can then use to spy on the Girl’s loc…. People shopping at the grocery store.  Because I’m watching all the movies in chronological order, I feel it is my duty to rank the films from 8 to 1, with 8 being my least favorite film and 1 being the one I would like to watch while enjoying a fine cup of pumpkin juice. 

8. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
Let it be known that I love all the Harry Potter films, but for some reason the storyline in this one seems like it doesn’t really matter.  Of course I do love the scene where Edward Cullen dies, but even the death of that sparkling vampire can’t redeem the movie from that scene where we witness a wizard/emo/gothic/rock band performing a song about elves.

7. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
I know this is the first one in the series, and according to a majority of you nerds it’s the most “Loyal” to the book, but there are parts of this movie that seem severely dry.  It’s the part in the end where Harry kills the stuttering professor by touching his face with his hands “filled with love” (no pun intended) that weirds me out the most.  Seriously?  Voldemort you are a terrible nemesis not to have thought of Harry Potter’s “Lovely Hands” sooner!

6. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
A huge step up from the first movie, Chamber of Secrets is filled with more action and dark violence than the previous film. The 2nd year at Hogwarts was a doosie that included a large battle with man-eating spiders, a whomphing willow with a bad case of turret’s syndrome and a large snake roughly the size of Rosie O’Donnell. 

5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
I can honestly say that I’m pleased with all the movie endings in the Harry Potter series, but if I was to pick the Potter film with the absolute best finale then Prisoner of Azkaban takes the cake.  This was the Potter film that showed to me that from now on the story lines were going to be much darker, with even bigger consequences for the bolt-scarred hero.  The movie concludes with a showdown between Professor Snape, Professor Lupin, Sirius Black, Peter Petigrew and Harry Potter’s Posse, and it is an awesome sequence that reminds me of a more depressing/darker version of the showdown that takes place in the Good the Bad and the Ugly. 

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Oh this movie, finally the legendary director David Yates begins taking over the series up until the final film, and what a film it was.  Despite the fact that I hated the Umbridge character to the utmost (which apparently according to Potter nerds she was even worse in the book), I thought this movie was witty and an artistic good time.  What I loved most about this is that you really start seeing Potter and his friends struggle with hormones and trying to find love in High School life.  This is also when Hogwarts starts to seem just as ordinary as any other public High School in the nation, with girls wooing over boys and the boys trying to suppress their horny urges that they want to share with the other witches. 

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Oh the beginning of the end!  I feel recently with the ending of every movie series, filmmakers try to prolong the endings by splitting the final movies into two segments, which initially annoys me because I can get pretty impatient, but then I love it because I think to myself “instead of one movie I get two?!  This pleases me!”  Much like the saying “deep breath before the plunge”, Part 1 of the finale is just a whole mess of drama with the wizard and his two friends, and you see their lives completely torn apart before they all have to nut-up before the final showdown with the bald-albino-Dr. Seuss-character.  If all else fails and you end up not liking this chapter in the series, then you can always remember Harry and his female Cohort make out with each other naked!  Nuff said.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
How can anyone not like this movie? Unless you are one of those die hard Potter fans that are damn near impossible to please, then you will most likely find this to be an action packed/tear jerker of an ending to a fantastic series.  First of all we get to see Neville Longbuttocks become a Bad-A-Mother-Beep, and we finally witness Ron and Hermione suck face passionately after destroying a whore-crotch… I mean Horcrux.  We all hope that when a series comes to an end, that it ends in such a way that we can all go home happy, like an ending that is gift-wrapped with a bow on top presented directly to the viewer, and I can honestly say that Deathly Hallows Part 2 delivers just that.

1. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
This film remains my favorite because it holds a very special place in my heart, and that’s because Ginny Weasley finally decides to put her big-girl pants on and kiss Harry, because he’s obviously not man enough to do it himself.   To me this section of the story is the mark of when the movies started getting good with regards to both storytelling and artistic direction.  While all the other Harry Potter movies may be entertaining and visually impressive, the Half Blood Prince stands alone with its unique artistic narrative that never seizes to impress, and I’m especially talking about the flashback scenes when Harry sticks his head in Dumbledore’s bowl of liquids…  I’m assuming that it’s some kind of Kool aid, and not filtrate. 


Sunday, December 29, 2013

Prisioners




Something common in all of us is that we have opinions, whether we’re talking about politics, religion, healthcare or ethical issues, and we all profess to be staunch in what those opinions are.  This film stars Hugh Jackman who plays a father whose daughter gets abducted, and while working with the local authorities he discovers the person who he thinks made the abduction.  Due to the lack of evidence the lead suspect was released, and Hugh decides to take matters into his own hands by kidnapping the suspected kidnapper, and torturing him until he reveals where Hugh’s daughter is.  While watching Prisoners my wife and I agreed wholeheartedly that what Hugh was doing to that man was terrible, and that he shouldn’t have taken matters into his own hands, but then we took a step back and asked ourselves if we were in the same situation as Hugh, then “what would we do?”  

3 1/2 out of 5


Saturday, December 28, 2013

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug




What can I really say about the 2nd installment in the Hobbit series?  I know!  The best way I could describe my love for this movie is that it’s: the Hermione Granger to my Ron Weasley (that sounds gross), the Chocolate to my Peanut Butter Cup or the skinny-dippers to my Jason Voorhees.  Before the Lord of the Rings trilogy even ended, I always considered these “middle-earth” films to be the highlight of the Holidays.  People (like my mom) would come up to me and say “what do you want for Christmas?” and “are you excited for Christmas morning?”, and to them I would say “of course I’m excited for Lord of the Rings!!”  In this 2nd movie Bilbo Baggins continues his quest with the group of unnaturally hairy midgets to reclaim their rather crappy homeland, and in this portion of the quest he runs into spiders, a bunch of drunk men and a rather creepy dragon.  That to me was the best part of the movie when Bilbo interacts with the Dragon for the fist time, because it’s with that scene that you got to see Director Peter Jackson’s Horror roots come out in an extremely chilling fashion, it's just too bad that that scene didn't involve a lawn mower destroying everyone in the room.

4 1/2 out of 5

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Rapture-Palooza




Is it just me, or is that Anna Kendrick girl in every freakin movie?!  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the girl, and if anything I think she is more often than not the best actor in the movie she’s participating in.  This movie cracked the crap out of me!!  I forgot that they can make movies this witty and full of so many innuendo jokes that make my throat hurt from laughing so much (and no that wasn’t an innuendo joke there).  Craig Robinson stars in yet another film involving rapture and the Apocalypse after just finishing up with This Is The End, and he is Utterly hilarious (cow innuendo) as the lord of darkness himself, who’s only objective is to seduce Anna Kendrick with his highly inappropriate comments and lack of respect for humanity.

4 out of 5

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters




In this 10th installment of the Harry Potter Franchise, we see Percy (Harry Potter) team back up with his friends Annabeth (Hermione) and Grover (Ron) to save their magical camp (Hogwarts) from those who are trying to destroy it (Deatheaters).  As it turns out all those monsters (Deatheaters) who are out in the sea really hate the camp (Hogwarts) that Percy (Potter) is a part of, and so in order to destroy it they seek to revive (using the sorcerer’s stone) the great evil one who conjured up so much evil in the past (Voldemort).  Now of course I’m kidding when I say that this movie is just like Harry Potter, because it’s totally different… HAHA yeah right! Like fun it’s not!  Other than being totally unoriginal, one other drawback this movie contains is that it’s about as cheesy as Facing the Giants, as a deep dish pizza, or about as cheesy as any other Christian made movie in the history of Cinema, except for the Narnia films, because those movies are dope!  Now I’m not saying this movie was totally sucky, because there were some pretty awesome battle scenes taking place, and my wife thought it was cool to see certain monsters since she teaches Mythology as one of her classes.  I just have trouble with people in Hollywood and certain writers just piggy-backing off of themes that are mainstream in the teenage culture.  You see this the most with the movies that came after Twilight, because after that glittery vampire made love to the depressing Bella we started seeing movies like Warm Bodies, Beautiful Creatures, Mortal Instruments, Vampire Diaries, SNL’s Firelight, True Blood and The Originals.  After Harry Potter was made, we started seeing movies like The Golden Compass (which flunked), Spiderwick Chronicles and the Percy Jackson movies.  Like I mentioned previously, there are some redeemable qualities of the second Percy Jackson movie, but the filmmakers are kidding themselves if they think that they are going to create a franchise that resembles anything even closely related to the success of the Harry Potter films.
 1 1/2 out of 5