mildconcern.com

The last of our ultimate Harry Potter Retrospectives is the personal story of my own journey with the franchise, starting in July 1998 at the age of 10 and ending in July 2011 at the age of 23. Hopefully this will put the rest of the retrospective in context and show that I wasn’t always so quick to gush about the films.

I first heard about Harry Potter in my penultimate year in Primary School (Elementary School for any Americans). I can distinctly remember someone trying to explain the plot to me, including a detailed description of something called Quidditch. It was incredibly rare for a book to be the talk of the playground, so at the school’s next annual Book Fayre I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone along with Michael Morpurgo’s War of Jenkins’ Ear. I was in love, I can’t remember enjoying any book so much up to that point. Harry Potter was just a year older than me and so I could really relate. The fear of Secondary School was looming and the idea of a place filled with magic and adventure was exciting. Besides, Harry Potter contained none of the references to “heavy petting” which made Adrian Mole so confusing.

Read more »

Related posts:

A Pixar film comes out today!!!! It’s the worst reviewed Pixar film ever!!!!

Cars 2
It’s not just that this is the worst reviewed Pixar film ever, it is getting a huge amount of negative reviews, 64% to be precise. Admittedly I didn’t enjoy the original Cars, but it makes no sense to follow a film about learning to take it slow with a film about spying. For shame, Pixar. For shame.

Beginners
What looks like a touching film about a man connecting with his father as he deals with coming out as a gay man late on in life, and with the fact that he has terminal cancer. Expect to laugh, cry and then call your dad.

The Big Picture
As per usual in France a man kills his wife’s lover and then assumes his identity and flees the country. Expect a flurry of sex and violence followed by an hour of scenery and quiet contemplation.

Horrible Bosses
A mediocre film made good by an impressive cast. Fans of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will be excited to see Charlie Day, everyone else will be confused by his presence.

Gilda (limited release)
The classic Rita Hayworth film returns to the silver screen. It won’t be in 3D so why bother.

The Violent Kind (limited release)
A biker gang are the victims in this horror after one of their women becomes possessed and hillbillies come for her. I want to see it just to make sense of the synopsis.

Break My Fall (limited release)
The synopsis on this film’s website is long and confusing, I bring you a short excerpt; “In the three days leading up to Liza’s 25th birthday things finally come to a head between Liza and Sally. After a failed birthday dinner the four friends are plunged into emotional meltdown at an illegal rave and by the end of the night there’s no going back to how things were.” Sounds tiresome.

The Lavender Hill Mob (limited release)
Another classic re-released, this title starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway as an unlikely pair of smugglers.

One Life (limited release)
A family orientated nature documentary with a terrible level of info online. Narrated by James Bond.

Related posts:

While the younger cast of the Harry Potter series may well have been works in progress, the adult roles were filled with pretty much every working actor in Britain with a familiar face. It was these actors who initially kept us coming back for more, without whom we may never have learnt to love the boy wizard and his chums. Below we run through our top fifteen of the adult performances across the eight films in alphabetical order. We tried to whittle it down with no success.

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape
We start with an actor whose performance has ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous, and often in the same film. As Harry’s most consistent antagonist Snape offered up an ambiguous character, often seeming to be more evil that he was. What makes Rickman’s performance legendary are his epic pauses and dangerously slow delivery, as if trying to get as much screen time as his brief dialogue will allow. In the final film Rickman delivers both his slowest speech and his most moving performance. There are few better in this list.

David Bradley as Argus Filch
It’s hard to believe that in the earlier films the major danger was being caught out of bed by Filch, a far cry from the fantastical battles the franchise concludes with. While often a menace to our heroes, Filch was ultimately a fun character bringing two of the biggest laughs in the finale and a warm nostalgic feeling with them.
Read more »

Related posts:

Over the course of the eight Harry Potter films a group of young actors went from amateurs to movie stars, but are they any good? We’ve updated our charts to give you our opinion on who was the best actor and who should give up now.

After each of the eight films we scored Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Tom Felton out of ten for their acting ability, the results can be seen below.

As you can see film seven was the moment when each of the main three had equal acting skills, but from there they each went in a different direction in the final film.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter

Daniel Radcliffe certainly looks like the perfect Harry Potter, it’s just a shame that when the films started he was the worst actor of a weak bunch. As with the rest of the kids Radcliffe learnt on the job and gradually got better up until the fourth film where he was required to lose control of his emotions. Anger and sadness at the death of a friend and the rise of an enemy were not within Radcliffe’s range and he dropped back down. From then he slowly recovered while gaining comedy chops in Half Blood Prince and then proper dramatic muscle in Deathly Hallows Part 1.

After the impressive display in Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Part 2 was a step in the wrong direction as his performance became patchy again. When required to be sincere or earnest Radcliffe falls short, and a final showdown against evil is not a relaxed occasion. Regardless, Daniel Radcliffe has come a long way since 2001 and it will be interesting to see him play a different character. We’ll be watching him closely with Excel at the ready.
Read more »

Related posts:

You may remember that last month we spent two nights at the BFI IMAX watching all seven Harry Potter films over the course of two nights. (Thanks BFI IMAX!) We finished our journey through the franchise on Monday night as we watched and scored Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. What follows is a run down of all eight films, written using the increasingly brief and incoherent notes we made at the time. Spoilers lie ahead.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

In which Harry Potter learns he is a wizard, goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and defeats a teacher harbouring the evil wizard Voldemort at the back of his head.

We start the franchise with an over-long film with terrible acting, odd prosthetics and scenes bordering on pantomime. From the initial scenes with the Dursleys playing out as a knockabout comedy to the final showdown in which a man completely disintegrates, Christopher Columbus produced a completely uneven film which relies mostly on reaction shots for laughs. Horrible acting from the kids is made up for by sheer cuteness and ultimately the film is a bit better than you remember. 6/10

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The series continues with Harry hearing voices and writing in a diary which writes back. Turns out that pesky diary was Voldemort again.

As the kids seem to have experienced a growth spurt since the previous film they are less cute and their acting has improved slightly to compensate. Early scenes at the Burrows with the Weasley parents are great but even Julie Walters can’t make exposition work properly. Jason Isaacs and Kenneth Branagh are pretty awesome but Christopher Columbus again fails to make anything remarkable happen. With students being attacked (but surviving) the series begins its journey into becoming “dark”. 6.5/10
Read more »

Related posts: