The Elephant Man (4 Stars)

I'm a strange person sometimes. I watched "The Elephant Man" for the first time in 2013. I evidently enjoyed it, based on my rating and what I wrote about it. And yet I didn't watch it again until today, 12 years later. I wouldn't even have watched it today if it hadn't been presented by my good friend Alexander Kiensch at our monthly film evening.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if a person is so deformed that it's impossible to look at him without being repulsed? I would be polite enough to accept the person, but I wouldn't be able to overcome my inner feelings.

The film is a true story. At the beginning of the film John Merrick is 21. He was 27 when he died. When he was discovered in a freak show it was assumed that he was mentally retarded and mute. The doctor treating him soon discovered and he was of normal intelligence, and he was able to speak but preferred not to.

The film is moving as the portrayal of a man treated as an outsider for no fault of his own.

Success Rate:  + 3.2

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Perfume (5 Stars)

This is the latest film in the Best Of Cinema series. It's unique among the 24 films already shown or announced so far, as the only film that's less than 20 years old. Is that a mistake? Maybe it is, but it's a welcome mistake. It's a brilliant film, and it's already included in my top 100 film list. It's in 94th place at the moment, but I think it should be higher. I'll think it over next time I review my list.

Tonight I spoke with a few people in the cinema, and they'd all seen the film before. I've watched it four times since I started my blog, probably twice before. I wish I'd started my blog in 2003 when I first became a serious film fan. This is the first time I've seen it on the big screen.

One thing I didn't mention in my previous reviews is my shock at French executions in the 18th Century. Most countries used to hang criminals, and I thought that France used the guillotine, but not in this film. Is it historically accurate? The person is bound to a pillar and the executioner hits him with a hammer in eight places on his arms and legs, breaking his bones, after which he's left to die. Is it really necessary that the person should die in such pain, whatever he's done?

I expect to be writing less, if at all, for the next two weeks, because I'm going on holiday: one week in Borkum and one week in Karlsbad, on the northern tip of the Black Forest. I'll be looking after my grandchildren, so I doubt I'll have much time to write.

Success Rate:  + 0.3

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Perfume (5 Stars)

Dancer's Top Films #80

For me every actor has a signature role. That's one role that defines him, and it's the role that people think of whenever his name is mentioned. If there's an actor who doesn't have a signature role, it's either because I don't know enough of his films or because he hasn't yet made the film with his signature role. To give a few examples:

Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature role is the Terminator.

Bela Lugosi's signature role is Dracula.

Tom Hanks' signature role is Forrest Gump.

Nicolas Cage's signature role is Seth in "City of Angels".

Bruno Ganz's signature role is Adolf Hitler.

Keanu Reeves' signature role is John Wick. This is an interesting one, because I used to think his signature role was Neo in the Matrix films, but I've changed my mind. John Wick expresses more accurately who he is.

Beverly Lynne's signature role is Tanya X.

And Ben Whishaw's signature role is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in "Perfume". I don't care how many times he plays Q in the James Bond films, he'll always be the brooding serial killer Jean-Baptiste.

I can't write about this film without mentioning Karoline Herfurth, the stunningly beautiful actress who plays the plum seller. It was intended to cast an English or American actress for the role, but after a long fruitless search Karoline was picked, a German actress who had already worked with the director Tom Tykwer.

The film has epic proportions, despite its seemingly banal plot: it's about one man's quest to create the perfect perfume. 5,200 extras were used in the film, and the final orgy scene holds the record for the largest orgy on film, with 750 extras taking part. According to the director's commentary, they had to rehearse a whole week eight hours a day in order to feel comfortable with being naked.

These are just a few of the participants. It wasn't an easy scene to film, because the extras were all packed together in a cramped space. Amusingly, Tom Tykwer says that after making the film a large number of the naked extras still meet on a regular basis to reminisce about the film. Rolling naked in a courtyard with 750 other people must be a unique bonding experience.

Karoline Herfurth also appears naked briefly, though not in the orgy scene. She was already dead, Jean-Baptiste's first victim.

So many naked bodies, and yet Alan Rickman has to keep his clothes on. I bet he wishes he could have been one of the extras.

This is a magnificent film. It doesn't neatly fit any genre. It's a masterpiece.

Success Rate:  + 0.3

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Heaven's Gate (4 Stars)

This is an epic western, made in 1980, about the Johnson County War of 1890, in which hundreds of settlers from Eastern Europe were slaughtered by land owners. It follows the life of Jim Averill, a wealthy Harvard graduate who's been sent to Casper, Wyoming to supervise the hanging of a criminal. He becomes sympathetic with the plight of poor settlers from Eastern Europe after seeing a woman being beat up in the street.

The problem is that wealthy cattle owners let their animals graze on empty land between the mountains. When settlers arrived and staked claims, there was less land available. In addition, some settlers were accused of stealing cattle for food. The penalty for stealing a cow was execution without trial. That was within the law, because both the mayor and the sheriff of Casper approved of strict measures to combat anarchy. The most important organisation in the county was the Stock Growers Association, to which the mayor and the sheriff both belonged.

Averill finds out that 50 gunmen have been hired from Texas to carry out a final solution. A list has been made of 125 people who are to be killed. Averill's girlfriend Ella is also on the list. He organises a resistance, putting weapons in the hands of the settlers, but even though they outnumber the gunmen four to one their lack of skill puts them at a disadvantage.

"Heaven's Gate" is infamous for having been the biggest financial flop in film history at the time it was made, losing $40 million. It's blamed for having killed off the western as a film genre. The critics also hated it, some calling it one of the worst films ever made.

Maybe the problem for the critics was the film cuts. The original version was five and a half hours long, but it was cut to three and a half hours for the theatrical release. After only a week in the cinemas the film was withdrawn, and a year later it was re-released as a two and a half hour version. The version I watched today is dubbed the Director's Cut and was released on disc in 2012. It's three and a half hours long, but supposedly differs significantly from the original theatrical release.

How can you expect a film to retain its quality after such savage cuts? Certain things in the film weren't clear to me, and I'm convinced that my questions would be answered if I saw the additional two hours of footage. When Averill arrives in Casper and visits the Stock Growers Association, the sheriff tells him he's been barred from their meetings. When? Why? Averill seems to have a history in Casper. Everyone knows him.

Averill is also friends with Nate Champion, an enforcer for the Stock Growers Association. In an early scene Champion carries Averill back to his hotel when he's drunk. Friendships across enemy lines don't just happen. The two men have a history, and it looks like this history has been edited out.

Many critics today have reevaluated the film, based on the Director's Cut. I don't see anything particularly bad about it.

Before watching the film I knew nothing about the Johnson County War. Wikipedia's page is informative as a brief summary. The main characters of the film were real life people, but the film has changed the background of the main characters, Averill and his girlfriend. That's remarkable. In real life Ella Watson was a seamstress and a landowner, but the film portrays her as the owner of a brothel. She died childless, otherwise her descendants would be suing the film for slander.

Success Rate:  - 12.6

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Perfume (5 Stars)

Most people know Ben Whishaw for his role as Q in the recent James Bond films, but I can't look at him without remembering him as the cold killer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in "Perfume". It's a role he plays to perfection. Even though he's a serial killer, we can't help feeling for him and wishing him good fortune in his quest to find the perfect perfume. He's a charismatic psychopath who draws us in and charms us in with his faraway stare.

I can't think of any other film with a plot vaguely like this. Perfume as the motivation for a murder spree is a bizarre concept, but it seems so natural in the context of the film.

Maybe one of the reasons that we can so easily relate to Jean-Baptiste is the vicious brutality of 18th Century France. Torture is the answer to everything. If someone is suspected of a crime, torture him and he'll confess; just make sure you accurately describe what the crime is, or he'll confess to the wrong crime. If someone is sentenced to death, torture him first, just for the fun or it.

The last time I watched this film I claimed that we don't empathise with Jean-Baptiste. I don't know why I wrote that. It's obviously what I thought at the time. Maybe I needed to watch the film a few times for him to grow on me.

Success Rate:  + 0.3

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The Oxford Murders (4 Stars)

I could easily describe the plot of this film in a single sentence, but I shan't do it because that sentence would give away the film's ending.

"The Oxford Murders" is a slow-moving murder mystery that takes place in the intellectual community in Oxford. It's a unusual film for the director Alex de la Iglesia. It's also a strange choice of subject. As a Spanish director making his first film in English for 12 years it's remarkable that he's presenting a film that's very untypical for him.

Elijah Wood plays Martin, an American student who arrives in Oxford in 1993 to do a PhD. He's chosen Oxford because he's fascinated by the eccentric professor Arthur Seldom, who has written books on the philosophical implications of number theory. The film opens with Professor Seldom quoting from Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" to prove that Philosophy is dead. I read the Tractatus in my first year of university, and I can state categorically that it was never Wittgenstein's intention to kill off philosophical study. All he wanted to do was instate rules to govern philosophical debate, adhering to the school of logical positivism. Interestingly, Wittgenstein rejected a large part of the Tractatus in his later life, but many philosophers still consider the Tractatus the pinnacle of philosophical thought.

Shortly after his arrival Martin's landlady is killed. This is the first in a series of murders, for which the killer leaves clues in the form of patterns from number series. Martin is one of the prime suspects. Together with Professor Seldom he attempts to solve the case.

The film isn't just about Philosophy and Mathematics. There are also sexual intrigues. Martin is torn between two women, both of whom are connected to Professor Seldom. They're fascinated by his intelligence, he's fascinated by their bodies. As Martin's landlady states before her murder, "Arthur suffers from the same weakness as all men; he likes young women". Is that really a weakness? If it is I must be weak as well.

The film has been criticised by critics for being too boring. I disagree. I find the intellectual atmosphere of the film fascinating. The Inspector Morse series was also set in Oxford, but it was just a backdrop. In "The Oxford Murders" university life is an essential part of the story. Maybe the critics never studied Philosophy at Oxford University, so the film is too foreign for them to understand?

Nevertheless, I don't consider this film to reach the high standards of Alex de la Iglesia's other films. It's too different. It's not as mad, not as chaotic as his Spanish language films. It's the total opposite, a murder case that has to be solved by mathematical logic.

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (3½ Stars)

This is the fourth film in the Indiana Jones series, made with a long gap after the third film. 19 years! Was it necessary to revive the film franchise? That depends on who you ask. It was money in the bank for the film studios. I suspect that there were letters and emails being sent for years begging Steven Spielberg to do it again.

Does it still have the magic of the old films? Sort of. Steven Spielberg has never made a bad film. In my eyes he's the most reliable film director who has ever lived. He knows how to make films, he follows the required steps and he makes a quality film every time. However, he never takes risks. By avoiding risks he doesn't make the truly great films like Quentin Tarantino, but if he took risks he might make the occasional bad film. We need a Steven Spielberg who's consistently good. We also need the risk-takers who occasionally create works of brilliance.

As for "Crystal Skull" itself (I prefer to abbreviate the film title), it's a fun adventure. Harrison Ford travels round the world -- this time to South America -- to prevent mystical archaeological artefacts from falling into the hands of evil empires. In the previous three films the enemies were the Nazis. In "Crystal Skull" the enemies are the Russians. When the film was made there were criticisms from Russia that Russia was demonised, as if all Russians were evil. So what? The film is set in 1957, at the height of the Cold War, and Russia was generally regarded as the world's Evil Empire.

The main representative of the Evil Empire is Irina Spalko, played admirably by Cate Blanchett. She's dressed in an unflattering grey suit, more typical of Chinese Communism than Russian Communism, but the very unsexiness of her outfit makes it bizarrely appealing. She's a caricature, much like the villains of the early James Bond films. All that's missing is a ridiculous name, but Steven Spielberg doesn't do that. That's a shame. She could have been called Irina Spankyu.

An unusual aspect in this film is that instead of dealing with only mystical artefacts there are aliens involved, making this the first Indiana Jones science fiction film. The crystal skull in the title is the real skull of a visitor from another planet.

I've decided to give the film a relatively low rating because of my personal reaction to the film. It ticked all the boxes, I couldn't find any fault with it, but while watching it I found myself getting bored. I'm used to the Spielberg style, so it seemed too smooth and too predictable to me. I doubt I'll watch it again. Maybe, maybe not.

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Snowpiercer (1 Star)

It's not very often that I have trouble watching a film to the end. However disappointed I might feel when watching a film, I make an effort to stick it out in the hope that it will improve. "Snowpiercer" is a film that attracted me with its high profile cast: Chris Evans, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer and especially Ed Harris. They're all actors who I've seen turn in excellent performances in film after film, so gathering them together in one film is a recipe for success.

Or so it seems. Twice I paused the film and went to make a coffee, and felt tempted not to carry on watching.

First the plot. In the near future an attempt has been made to combat global warming. It backfired, plunging the Earth into a new ice age. The only survivors are the people travelling on a train that circles the world once a year. There are first class passengers, economy passengers and freeloaders. The latter group, presumably stowaways who jumped aboard to save their lives when the catastrophe began, live in the back of the train. At first they were given no food and had to resort to cannibalism. After a few months they were supplied with protein bars, tasteless but life-preserving, in exchange for doing menial labour on the train. After 18 years the train is still moving. One man among the freeloaders, Curtis, decides to stage a rebellion. He leads an army of rebels to challenge the train's creator, Mr. Wilford, who is rumoured to live in the very first carriage.

The train is full of superstition, orchestrated by the leaders. Mr. Wilford is revered as a God, the saviour of mankind. The train's engine is a sacred artefact.

I took some time to read customer reviews on Amazon. It seems that this is a film that divides opinions: some people love it, some people hate it, and there's no middle ground. I personally don't see how anyone can love it. It just doesn't make sense. Why should a train, of all things, be able to keep mankind's last survivors alive? Why is the exact one-year cycle necessary to travel round the world, even if the train really did travel so slowly? There are other ridiculous things that happen later in the film, which I'll keep to myself to avoid spoilers. The claustrophobia of everything happening in narrow railway carriages doesn't make the film terrifying, it just makes the action all the more ridiculous.

Despite the use of English speaking actors, this is a Korean film. Maybe that's part of the reason I don't like it. I've never enjoyed Korean films. It's difficult to say why. There's something about the style and the feeling of Korean films that disturbs me. I also have an aversion to post-apocalyptic films. "Planet of the Apes" is the only post-apocalyptic film which succeeds in showing futuristic terror. All the other films, including this one, are full of speculation about what might happen. This speculation often veers into barely credible ideas, such as people praying to television sets or dogs being trained to find women for breeding purposes.

The Skeleton Key (4 Stars)

Caroline Ellis is a young woman who takes a job as a live-in carer while trying to save enough money to go to college. She has to look after an old man who has had a stroke. He is now unable to walk or talk. Soon after she arrives Caroline realises that the old man is mentally aware and trying to communicate. She suspects that he's somehow been made an invalid by his wife.

The skeleton key in the film's title has only a small significance in the plot. I suppose that the screenwriter and director couldn't think of an original title based on the main plot elements alone, so they picked this name in desperation. The skeleton key is a key given to Caroline which opens all the door's in large house where the man and his wife live. It doesn't even make sense that she was given the key. They could just have given her a front door key and left all the inside doors unlocked, apart from the ones where she wasn't supposed to go. Caroline does go snooping. She goes into the attic and finds evidence of occult rituals. She thinks that it's voodoo -- the film takes place in Louisiana -- but she's told that it's hoodoo, an even darker form of magic.

The film is difficult for me to rate. I find it scary, but aesthetically it's not very appealing. The people and the surroundings are unattractive. This is deliberate, of course, but it isn't what I expected when I decided to watch the film. "The Skeleton Key" was a big box office success, but it was poorly rated by critics. As usual, I side with the public, not the professional film critics. Nevertheless, I feel that I need to watch it again to make a better decision.

Only Lovers Left Alive (4 Stars)

A problem with almost all marriages is that with time the passion fades. When a couple first meet they can't wait to rip one another's clothes off. Then they get married and they need to have sex all the time. After a while the glamour begins to disappear. They see one another at their worst moments, when they're sick or in a bad mood. As they become older their bodies are no longer as aesthetically appealing. Sex is reserved for special occasions. When it gets to that point the marriage can go one of two ways. Either they split up and find new lovers to rekindle their passion, or they decide to stay together because they love one another. The second case doesn't mean that the original passion has been rediscovered, it means that the couple have decided that there's enough positive in one another to continue without passion.

This all happens over the course of 30 or 40 years, the length of a typical marriage till death us do part. Now imagine that the married couple are vampires who have been together for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Despite the ability to stay forever young in appearance, the passion will be replaced by habit and routine.

In this film we see two vampires, Adam and Eve, played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton. They love one another, that's obvious, but the passion died centuries ago. Adam lives in Detroit recording rock music anonymously. Eve lives in Tangier reading books in the many languages she has mastered. When Eve visits Adam there's a friendly hug on the doorstep, but no welcoming kiss.

Things are shaken up when Eve's younger sister Ava hears that Eve is back in America and travels from Los Angeles to visit her. Ava (played by Mia Wasikowska) has managed to preserve the spirit of a rebellious teenager. Maybe it's because she was never married? She persuades Adam and Eve to go to a club and have some fun, but Adam ends up getting angry with Ava and makes them all leave early.

When I first watched the film in the cinema I gave it a bad rating. Click here for my review. I knew at the time I might like it more if I watched it again, and that's certainly the case. I criticised it in my first review for the lack of passion. Now that I've watched it again I can see that that's the whole point of the film. The passion is gone. The director, Jim Jarmusch, didn't want to make a horror film or a film in which vampires are glamorous and sexy. He wants to show that after centuries of existence life can get boring. The end result is bleak, but somehow alluring.

Tilda Swinton as a vampire. She's never looked so sexy!

Mia Wasikowska as a vampire. Do you think she would bite me if I asked nicely?

Tom Hiddleston as a vampire. He doesn't like to show his teeth in public.

Perfume (4½ Stars)

Following the death of Alan Rickman yesterday I've decided to watch two of his films. He doesn't appear on screen until halfway through the film, but from that moment on he takes his rightful position dominating the film with his Shakespearian acting. This is in part due to the relative vacuum around the film's main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, played by Ben Whishaw. This is, as far as I can see, deliberate. Jean-Baptiste is a man like no other who has ever been born, so no attempts are made to help us empathise with him.

The film takes place in France in the 18th Century, in the years before the Revolution. It was a time of great poverty for the masses, while the small ruling elite lived in luxurious excesses. Jean-Baptiste was born in the fish market of Paris. His mother had no intention of keeping the baby, so he was sent to an orphanage. At the age of eight he was sold to a tannery, where boys had a short life expectancy in the unsanitary working environment.

But as I already mentioned above, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was like no other man. He was gifted with a sense of smell that was phenomenal. He could accurately recognise people and objects by their smell, even at long distances. On the other hand, he had no emotions at all. He was incapable of feeling love, and he didn't even have feelings of lust. For him the only thing that mattered was being able to smell the most beautiful of scents.

If Jean-Baptiste had been content with smelling what was around him he could have lived his life in happiness and anonymity. This changed when he met the beautiful red-haired plum seller, played by Karoline Herfurth. First he was intoxicated by her smell, but then he accidentally killed her, and he was fascinated to realise that immediately after her death she smelt even sweeter. He revelled in this odour, but it faded after a few minutes.

This leads to a life-long obsession. He wants to find a way to preserve the scent of a dying woman. He begins an apprenticeship as a perfumer to learn how to preserve smells. After mastering this skill he sets out to create the ultimate perfume by mixing the scents of 13 dead women. This brings him into conflict with the wealthy nobleman Antoine Richis, played by Alan Rickman, because he needs his daughter for the perfume.

Why does Jean-Baptiste have such an obsession with red-haired girls? Do they really smell better than anyone else? I don't know, because my sense of smell isn't as well developed as his. However, my eyesight is good enough to verify that both Karoline Herfurth and Rachel Hurd-Wood are stunningly beautiful. I'm sure my readers will agree with me.

Hercules (2014 Film) (2 Stars)

You don't have to be a demi-god to be a hero.

I love the character of Hercules. I read the myths about him when I was young, then I read about him as a Marvel character who joined the Avengers, then came the TV series with Kevin Sorbo and the 2005 film starring Paul Telfer. This year there have been two films about Hercules, but the first one, "The Legend of Hercules" with Kellan Lutz, was never shown in English cinemas. I expected the film currently in the cinemas, the second Hercules film, to be at least as good as the 2005 film, probably better.

I was disappointed. In the very first minutes, when the voice-over said that we would be told the truth behind the legend, I groaned. Telling the truth about a well known character is usually an excuse to rewrite everything and create a work of speculative fiction. And that's just what I was presented today.

The film scales down Hercules. He's no longer the son of Zeus, he's just a mighty hero. All the stories about mythical creatures, like three-headed dogs and centaurs, are shown to be untrue. This would have been enough in itself for me to dismiss the film, but it got worse. Large sections of the film turned into military battles, army against army, rather than concentrating on Hercules himself. I would have preferred to see one man take on an army, but since this version of Hercules is only a mortal I could hardly expect it. And then there's Dwayne The Rock Johnson's atrocious acting. He strode from scene to scene, making wooden speeches without the least emotion. He's every bit as bad as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Conan films. He should go back to wrestling, he's a total failure as an actor.

Day of the Doctor (5 Stars)

Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.

Day of the Doctor (5 Stars)

Spoilers!

Spaceballs (4½ Stars)

I'm ashamed to admit that today is the first time I've ever seen this film. Yes, I knew it existed. Yes, I knew it was good. For years friends have reacted with shock when I said I've never seen it. I don't really know why I've waited 25 years.

This Mel Brooks film is primarily a parody of Star Wars, but it also references "Star Trek" (the original series), "Alien" and "Planet of the Apes". It often breaks through the third wall, especially in the second half of the film, which is something I greatly enjoy as a film making technique. The jokes about it being a film about something that is really happening during the filming are more frequent than they were in "Blazing Saddles".

I won't waste time talking about the plot. If you like Mel Brooks you should watch it. If you like comedies you should watch it. If you like science fiction you should watch it. In fact, if you like any sort of film at all you should watch it. And if you've never watched a film in your life, make this your first.

Labyrinth (3 Stars)

I haven't read Kate Mosse's novel, on which this film is based, but the trailers I saw impressed me so much that I had to watch it. The structure of the film is interesting in itself. It's actually two stories, one that takes place in 1209, the other in 2011. No, not time travel. The only connection is that the main character in the 21st Century story has visions of things that happened 800 years previously.

In South France in the 13th Century there was a Christian sect called the Cathars. In contrast to traditional Christianity they believed in reincarnation. Unlike other Christian groups they were tolerant, accepting the views of others, but the Catholic Church did not return the favour. French troups are sent in the name of the Holy Inquisition to wipe out those they consider to be heretics. The central character is Alais, the king's daughter. She is a Catholic, but most of those around her are Cathars. When the Inquisitors arrive her father reveals that he is the guardian of a secret book that reveals the location of the Holy Grail. This is one of three books, and though the three guardians do not know one another's identity they are all in the same town, and all endangered by the upcoming attack.

In the 21st Century the Cathars have long been destroyed, but a new cult has emerged, the Noblesso. It is a small group of people who have dedicated their lives to finding the three books, thought to be buried somewhere in the ruins of the castle. Alice Tanner is an archaeologist digging on the site, but unknown to her she is also a direct descendant of Alais. There is a psychic link between her and Alais across the centuries.

The film's structure is also its weakness. The two stories are told side by side, jumping from the past to the present. It's difficult to relate to any of the characters. I'm sure the novel itself is good, based on its commercial success, but the characters in the film seem two-dimensional. The only exception is Claudia Gerini, who plays the leader of the Noblesso. I'd never heard of her before, but she's evidently a top Italian actress. She stands above all the others. I'm curious to see other films she's appeared in. Can anyone tell me more about her, please?

Melancholia (4 Stars)

What do you get if you make an art house film with a big Hollywood budget? This is it. From the very few minutes where we meet the main characters overlaid with rich symphonic music by Wagner we know that we are going to be presented with something special. The film is soaked with existentialist philosophy from beginning to end.

Justine (evidently a member of a wealthy family) and Michael arrive at their family's mansion to celebrate their wedding. During the reception Justine has sex with one of the guests on the lawn and her husband leaves her. For the next few days Justine and her sister Claire sit in the mansion waiting for a rogue planet to collide with the Earth. Claire is distraught, but Justine is unconcerned that the Earth will be destroyed.

It's not really possible to say if the film is good or bad. It depends on what you expect from a film. The film is overwhelming. Nothing more, nothing less.

Perfume (5 Stars)

Dying flowers smell best.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (4 Stars)

It all ends here.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (3½ Stars)

This is Harry Potter's seventh year of school. This would be the upper sixth form, the last year of school for him, except that he's dropped out of school. He's gone underground after the events of the last film. Now he's on a mission to find parts of the Dark Lord's souls hidden in mystical objects called "horcruxes". From the previous film I understood that there were seven horcruxes, but now Harry only speaks about five. Maybe I missed a detail somewhere.

The film moves very slowly. I can't help feeling it would have been better to make one film out of the seventh Harry Potter book instead of two. Why was it split into two films? Was it for artistic or commercial reasons? I suspect the latter, but I haven't read a reliable answer anywhere.