Review: Noah

Let’s start with my creative retitling of the epic drama Noah from director Darren Aronofsky. I suggest that it makes more sense as Transformers: Revenge of the Righteous. Yes, somehow a film about a guy who gets a message from God that tells him to build a huge ship to rescue every animal because a storm of, well, Biblical proportions is on the way has been turned into a fantasy epic complete with 15-foot tall rock…Read More

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt 1

It all started with a juvenile fiction novel about a teen boy with hidden magical powers and a grand wizarding destiny that he finds by leaving his non-magical “muggle” family and attending an English boarding school with a magical twist, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That book was published in 1997 with the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and a film version followed in November, 2001. Since then the seven Harry Potter…Read More

Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Six films into the Harry Potter series, it seems like Harry, Ron and Hermione are old friends and family members. Between the books and the films, it seems that they’ve been part of contemporary culture for decades, certainly in my household. Turning the books into films has been a tricky task, however, and each film has had its own distinctive personality. It’s no coincidence that a number of different directors have been involved too, from…Read More