Day 60: Harry Botter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Director: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson

First things first, you should know that I have never read a Harry Potter book. I enjoy the films a lot and I like not know what will happen next. I know a lot of fans of the book spend a lot of time complaining about changes made for the movies. Without having anything for comparison, I just get to sit back and watch some fun fantasy flicks.

This film felt like the 2nd movie of a trilogy (which I guess serves the same purpose as the 6th film of a 7 movie set). It was all build up to a big finale. Here we see Harry looking into the past of Tom Riddle to look for clues on how to defeat Voldemort. Meanwhile, Ron gets ladies, Hermione gets sad, Draco gets deathly, Dumbledore gets mysterious, and Snape gets treacherous.

The cast of these movies is ridiculous. There are so many great British character actors here. The three young stars have really grown into wonderful actors. Ron especially gets some great screen time here. I'm excited to see what the future careers hold for these three. This is first movie where Michael Gambon really impressed me. Here we see a Dumbledore who is much more what I would expect from a powerful old wise man: mystique, patience, and power. The real show stealer here, though, was new professor Jim Broadbent (who really never disappoints). He was a ton of fun as a befuddled psycho. Oh yeah, Alan Rickman was also up to his high standards of amazingness.

These movies are just great. I love the world building and production design. It's wild how much better this movie is than the first two, wich were pretty mediocre kids movies (except for the presence of Kenneth Branaugh in #2). This was not like a PG movie. It was dark, violent, and full of inappropriate innuendo. These kids definitely had hormones raging in this movie. It was like watching a WB teen drama with a lot of cool fantasy stuff going on.

My favorite scene was the fight against the death eaters at the Weasley farm. Wizard fights rock.

I wasn't sure all the time why certain things were supposed to be important, but I really don't care. I'm just glad to be along for the ride with these fun characters. I'm glad they're stretching out the ending. Hopefully it will be a satisying conclusion (something missing from most of the movies). The third movie is still my favorite, but these last two have definitely been a lot of fun. The best part about Harry Potter is that it's good for fantasy movies, something that there is not nearly enough of. Though I'll always be more of a Tolkien guy, I applaud the Potter world.

Lesson learned: Boys know nothing about how girls work.