Maleficent (2014)

Without Angelina Jolie, would there have been any reason to make, much less watch, “Maleficent,” the new, live-action take on the “Sleeping Beauty” evil lady turned dragon? Likely not. The star of “Tomb Raider” lords over this movie with absolute ease, dressed in black leather and horns, and makeup that makes her already sharp cheek bones seem as if razors. We’re quickly told the fairy tale story we all know is bunk, up is down, down is up, and Maleficent is the wronged and wounded fairy that is our hero, and villain, justified in her anger. She begins a graceful child with wings and love of nature who befriends a young human boy who will years later –- and after a grievous deed -– become a crazed Macbeth-type king (Sharlto Copley) with … well, honesty not much of a motive. Yeah, there’s the curse the baby Aurora thing, but it’s iffy up ’til then. Despite lots of busy useless narration. Script issue? I digress. Is anyone here for the script? Does it matter the climactic “true love’s kiss” is easily known and blasé? No. This is all for Jolie. Period. She’s breathing fire, and happily laughing evil. (Psst, Aurora is a side dish here.) B

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)

The God Boy Wonder returns in “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,” a dead-in-the-water sequel to 2010’s “The Lightning Thief.” Directed by a fella named Thor Freudenthal -– how quaint -– “Percy” again strives to be “Harry Potter: The Second Coming.” It is not. That series popped with magic of the fantastic and discovery and love. Fake from the start, “Monsters” makes its cast of interchangeable hunks and babes shout crap like “This is so cool!” as if they were children in a flashy toy ad. Who are they trying to convince? Plot: Percy (Logan Lerman) and his two godly BFFs must find the Golden Fleece -- recalling “Jason and the Argonauts” -– to save their campground school, all against much nonsense about a mysterious Half Prince. (Can Harry Potter sue?) The crushing failure of “Sea”: The entire adult cast of the film one -– Pierce Brosnan and Sean Bean among them -– are gone. Did they smartly ditch? Were they dumped to save money? Poor Stanley Tucci appears, looking as if wondered in from “Hunger Games” by error. Look, if one wishes to rip-off a top-notch franchise, fine. But give it effort. Try. This is just laziness. D-

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

“The Wizard of Oz” is the absolute Hollywood classic. Every fantasy film starts here. The story is simple: A Kansas farm girl is knocked unconscious during a storm and -– it’s a dream -- but let’s say she is taken by a twister to a Technicolor land of witches, scarecrows, tin men, wizards, and Munchkins, far from her sepia-toned world of dirt. To get back home, the girl must steal the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West, played in the greatest villain turn ever by Margaret Hamilton. Judy Garland is the girl, Dorothy, who within 10 minutes sings “Over the Rainbow” and makes us forget the world’s problems. Check the date on this post and deny thinking this week we all wanted to be someplace else, escape our world. It’s the childhood film that gets better watching as an adult. At 70+ years, this is go-to film of optimism, not a drop of cynicism or snark, where everything can go right if you have friends, and you can be home again if only you click your heels thrice. Yes, it’s wishful thinking. Garland OD’d. But we need a bit of “Oz” and often, even the Flying Monkeys. A+

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011)

And then there were none. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” closes out 10 years of eight (7.5?) blockbuster films, and some 15 years of beloved books that will forever mark a new timeline in the world of fantasy. Call it, “B.R.” Before J.K. Rowling, the mother, creator and god of Harry Potter and his world of a school of magic, Muggles and a force of evil known as You Know Who, Voldermort. Without her, Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” likely would never have been filmed. That’s a fact. And while this doesn’t have Peter Jackson leading the charge to The End, it’s a blast of a film, a movie that finally boils down to Harry Potter taking on Lord Voldermort. Wand against wand, nothing else matters. I dug it. Not fully, but well enough.

Praising this film makes me a bit of a hypocrite. I harrumphed loudly when it was announced Rowling’s doorstopper “Deathly Hallows” book would be split into two films. If “East of Eden” could be cut down to one film so can this, I said. I compared “Part 1” to an overlong Set-Up Episode of “LOST” that cut the build-up off “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

And, now, here I am wishing there was more to this film: Major characters die off screen and any impact from their demises is shredded with a “When did that happen?” gasp, and veteran characters, and the actors playing the roles, are reduced to mere sideways glances from the camera. Emma Thompson, as a wildly odd teacher, may have just kept her car running during her split-second scene. Jim Broadbent, as a guy named Slughorn who was at the center of “Half-Blood” barely does more. I’m still not certain how Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) ended up where he does. I may never know.

“Part 2” picks up directly after “Part 1” as our trio of young magical heroes – Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) – continue to track down and destroy a series of Horcruxes, objects that hold chunks of the soul of evil Lord Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes). Kill the soul bits, kill the Evil Lord, as the Potter logic goes. They mourn the death of house elf Dudley, and set on their next tasks: A daring break-in to a magical bank – with Hermione in disguise as the wretched witch Bellatrix Lestrange. Helena Bonham Carter could be should be up for an Oscar just by playing Watson playing Hermione playing Lestrange, the whole scene is a standout among the series’ 1,000-odd massive minutes. Seriously.

From there, on the back of a dragon and a few side detours, we end where all the magic began, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The final confrontation plays out for an hour as Voldermort and his million minions bust in to kill Harry Potter, and take over Magicland and Muggleland alike. (The latter is the not-so-nice word people here use for regular folks such as me and you.) The pace is fast, walls crash down, fires rage, and, yes, people fall. (I did not weep, sorry.) There’s also great helpings of Rowling’s humor, such as when Ron and Hermione share a fast hot kiss after a dramatic moment, then giggle like school kids.

It’s an amazing trek the child actors have taken, from awkward little cherubs (all the more adorable for it) in “…The Sorcerer’s Stone” in 2001 to young adults here, standing in control against film gods such as Fiennes, Carter, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis and Gary Oldman. Fiennes walks away with the film, snarly and eyes flaming, he digs into Voldermort with all the power of a great actor kept backstage until the final blowout. The man loved this part, one can tell. He’s every bad guy George Lucas ever created, rolled into one gnarly bald-headed freak, and without repentance. And Radcliffe throws back, giving it his all, just as Harry does in the book. How cool is that?

Is “Part 2” the best one could help for? Maybe. So much happens off screen, you can’t help but notice the missing scenes, and I wish director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves had cut more from the previous film to give this last segment more life. Certainly more Snape, and less blah blah blah about Snape. But that’s a complaint of the Rowling book, more likely. Catch up on your Potters, and jump fast into this film in theaters. For some of us, they are mostly ace fantasy films with great actors, for others, college students, it’s their entire lives. The “Star Wars” of their lifetimes. (Quick poll: The epilogue: Eh or Yah? Me, I can't decide.) B+

The Illusionist (2010)

The animated “The Illusionist” is nearly wordless except for garbled French, Gaelic and English, opens in black-and-white, is covered in bleakness and sketched emotion, and is hand-drawn. This is old-school animation in line with Hayao Miyazaki, deep and dark, always beautiful, written and directed by Sylvain Chomet. Here a French stage magician (Jean-Claude Donda) finds his life marginalized in 1959 by television, the first wave of British pop and increasingly popular movies. The man heads to the United Kingdom, searching for an audience. He eventually finds one admirer: A young chambermaid (Eilidh Rankin) who thinks magic is real. He likens her to a daughter, trying to buy her clothes and shoes. It’s all a bit “The Professional,” with no guns, and apparently inspired by a script from French filmmaker Jacques Tati, who had a tumultuous relationship with a daughter. The story floats by, but there’s undeniable magic here. Some scenes – the opening act, the painting of a billboard – are mini-epics. Fact: A human-drawn line of a desperate facial expression is far more alive than the best CGI. A-

‘The Illusionist’ and ‘The Prestige’ (Both 2006)

I saw the magic-themed “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige” back-to-back in 2006, on purpose. Just recently, I re-watched them within a week of each other by mere coincidence. My reactions remain just about the same.

“Illusionist” is a star-crossed love story about a wildly imaginative magician and the love of his life. Magic man Eisenheim (Edward Norton) and princess-to-be Sophie (Jessica Biel) loved each other as children, but life shit happened. They split. Decades later Eisenheim arrives in Vienna, ready to woo Sophie from the cruel prick Crown Price Leopold (eternal bad guy Rufus Sewell). To grind Eisenheim down, the prince has a lapdog policeman (Paul Giamatti) who is corrupt, but yet a fan of showmanship and art. This is Giamatti’s film. He outclasses everyone, without raising his voice or getting all puppy-eyed. Norton and Biel provide kennels full of puppy eyes. The film tosses out a “gotchya” plot that’s not nearly as clever as it wishes to be. Norton’s stage presence as Eisenheim is winning, even if the magic is too CGI-heavy. The much-praised cinematography is a pitch too arty even for me. B

“Prestige” is based on a favorite book, so it has a lot to live up to. The plot concerns two rival magicians in London who start as friends, but soon enter a game of one-upmanship and then deadly, bloody games on and off stage. The instigation: An on-stage death of one’s beloved. Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a stage natural, but needs help pushing the core of his trade. Borden (Christian Bale) is the opposite: He is genius at magic design, but a boorish stage presence. Merged in one body and soul, the men would make one hell of a talent. Director Christopher Nolan has a long obsession with what forms a person’s identity, or breaks it. The reveals of “Prestige” allow Nolan to play large. But this isn’t “Memento” or “Inception.” It’s too cold and calculated, and in need of magic dust. So to speak. Nolan avoids supernatural themes that ruled the book, and some acts don’t come off justified: When a major character commits suicide, it seems only blasé inevitable. B+

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

It’s no real shocker that “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” ties with the third film of the Harry Potter film franchise (“The Prisoner of Azkaban”) as my favorite. When Book 6 – as fans calls it – came out in 2005, I found it to be the giddiest read I had in ages. It was stocked with magic, suspense, action and a tragic finale. It’s my favorite book of the series, a hallmark by author J.K. Rowling, and I’ll get to why in just a minute.

So even if the film version lacks the book’s overall power -- a final attack by the villainous Death Easters on the beloved Hogwarts School of Magic was excised -- it’s still damn fine cinema. If you don’t know the characters or the main plot thread of the unimaginably successful series of imaginative books, chances are you’re not reading this review. So you won’t get a lot of background here.

As the film opens, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and best friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) are reeling from the events of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” The evil Lord Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes, seen only in a flashback) has returned to again rid the world of human kind. Dumbledore, the head master of Hogwarts and Harry’s grandfather figure, takes our young hero to a home occupied by retired school teacher Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), a fumbling, haunted man who clings to fame with dug in fingernails. Harry’s famous, so Slughorn latches on fast. Dumbledore knows this. He wants a memory from Slughorn that can spell out unknown mysteries of Voldermort. Harry’s the man for the task.

Meanwhile, the previously under-utilized bad apple Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) is sent on a dark mission of his own. Unlike Harry, if Malfoy fails in his task, it spells his certain doom. Seemingly helping him is Severus Snape, the greasy black mop-headed professor of dark arts played by Alan Rickman (“Die Hard”). Rickman is so good it gives. One. Goosebumps. Every. Time. He’s. On. Screen. (Rickman clips his words like William Shatner only wishes he could.)

Yet the giddy, side-busting genius of Rowling’s book -- and the film -- is the whole dark, brooding drama is a sideshow to the real trauma of the moment – teen love. In the slyest satire since “Independence Day” (it’s a comedy people, end of discussion), Rowling has her teen heroes act as true high schoolers. Nothing, not life, or death, or the end of existence is as important as finding your soul mate for life. At 16. Snogging is heaven, not snogging (or not snogging with the girl/guy of your dreams) is worse than death. The film is a laugh riot, especially when you watch real teens get caught up in the action, as if it matters. The comedy highlight of the film is Jessie Cave as Lavender Brown, a girl so in love with love, it’s dizzying. Frightening girls like this exist the world over, and I know some in their twenties. Scary.

Director David Yates, in his second film after “Order,” mostly avoids special effects here. The focus instead is on the acting and characters - between Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore as he reluctantly puts Harry in harm’s way, and Rickman’s Snape as he follows the orders of dark and good. All of the teens keep getting better from film to film. But it’s Broadbent who steals the show as a man whose soul has nothing left but regret. The film too, looks like no other in the series. It looks magical, a found relic. Even the lighting is other worldly, some of coming from impossible angles. The credit here belongs to cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who has shot mostly French art hose films such as “Amelie.” That was a magical film, and it carries over here.

If there’s any negative here, besides that missing attack scene at the end, it’s the fact that the film’s studio, Warner Bros., has decided to split the final Harry Potter book, “The Deathly Hollows,” into two films. “Half-Blood Prince” the book was a brilliant pause before the big finale. The film also should have been just that. But now it’s relegated, almost tossed off, as just one more kink in the chain. It hurts the film. We have, what, four more hours, maybe five, to go before the end? It’s time to wrap this up.

If Warner can make “East of Eden” (1955) into a two-hour film, they sure as heck can boil Book 7 into a 2 hour, 30 minute, film. Rowling is brilliant, bloody brilliant, but she is no Steinbeck. Nonetheless, this installment gets an B+