Wolf Awareness Week - Day 7

 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

2004

D: Alfonso Cuaron

**********

Pros: Visual Style , Characters, Humor, Music

Cons: Some Plot Holes, Especially the Time Turner

      After reviewing a bunch of bad films, I’m going to wrap up Wolf Awareness Week with a good one.  I believe Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to be the first great film of the series.  While the first two movies were adequate family entertainment, they suffered from lackluster execution.  This was improved with the following sequels, but Azkaban is arguably the best directed.  Alfonso Cuaron, who would later go on to make the excellent Children of Men, did a wonderful job on this movie.  The effect is evident in the cinematography, action and acting.

     One of the first things I notice about the movie is its visual style.  I don’t agree with the people who prefer the “colorful” look of the first two movies.  I thought they looked relatively bland, and I generally like genre movies that look different from real life.  There are movies like Avatar, Ultraviolet, Speed Racer and Scott Pilgrim that do use various bright colors in a way that’s memorable, though.  I tend to like the movies that use color that look distinctive.  I believe genre movies should go for their stylized visuals, and the muted colors actually added atmosphere to Azkaban.  This, in addition to superior cinematography and the first good use of CGI in the series (despite having a similar budget to the first movie’s), made the thrills of this movie more effective.

     This really helps with the Dementors, the creatures who provide security at Azkaban prison.  While they seemed to be described in the books as looking like tall Grim Reapers, the movie has a frightening and distinctive design for them.  The direction makes sure that they are shown to the best possible effect.  They’ve been sent to Hogwarts to look for the escaped convict Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), and they’re described as foul demons who feed off positive emotions.  Harry is in particular danger from them because he’s had horrors in his past that would make him more vulnerable their attacks.  What has always confused me is that they have this fixation on Harry.  If they feed on positive emotions, why do they home in on the unhappiest kid in the school?  Now I suppose one could explain this by speculating that they were secretly in league with the Death Eaters before Order of the Phoenix, but then again Voldemort wants to kill Harry himself, and none of the adults in the movie seem the least bit perplexed by the fact that these monsters are doing the exact opposite of what makes sense for them.

     The movie’s plot revolves around the escape of Sirius Black.  Harry and his friends seek him out, but at the end of the movie, it turns out that he’s a good guy.  An old friend of his parents’ who was framed for their murder, he connects with Harry effectively.  The twist is milked out to an absurd degree in its reveal.  When Harry finally finds Sirius, he keeps talking vaguely about killing “him” and taking his sweet time telling Harry that he’s referring to the real villain.  Gary Oldman is great in this movie.  As a stereotypically villainous actor who’s also great at sympathetic roles, he makes an effective Red Herring.  The true culprit is Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall), who has been hiding in plain sight by posing as Ron’s rat, Scabbers.  Although people don’t give him much credit in-universe and out, I think he’s an effective and clever, albeit cowardly villain.  

      Now, since every Harry Potter movie must have a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who eventually succumbs to the curse of that position, we have the seemingly friendly Remus Lupin (David Thewlis).  Thewlis fits well and does a great job in the movie.  I’ve heard assertions that he was miscast, but I tend to assume it’s just fangirls’ not thinking he’s hot enough.  Then again, I watched this movie before I read the book.   As a friend of Harry’s late parents, he connects with him and they have some effective poignant moments as they talk about James and Lily.  Of course with a first name that’s on obvious reference to this and a last name that means “wolf,” it’s almost like this guy’s a werewolf or something.

A werewolf with a really bad combover.

Eventually, during the climax, he transforms into a werewolf during the full moon (and in the process accidentally exposing himself to Harry, Ron and Hermione).  Because he neglected to take the Wolfsbane Potion (a potion which would have prevented him from losing his mind and was briefly mentioned in the movie without actually being explained) for some reason, he attacks them and has to be fended off by Sirius.  Snape scores some points here for actually attempting to shield the children from the attack.  At the end of the movie, the occurrence forces him to resign in disgrace, making him the first DADA teacher in the series to be a sympathetic character.  One wonders why Dumbledore keeps this position open considering its curse.  Later on in the series, Lupin marries Tonks and has a child with her, although neither she nor the child become werewolves.  I always assumed that lycanthropy would be spread through intercourse, so I thought they would be.  I guess it was thinking in materialistic terms.  Magic is the same as science so the rules are different.  After all, I'm pretty sure lycanthropy is an allegory for pedophilia (Fenrir, or example likes to bite them when they're young).  The ugly act of a werewolf attack spreads it like child molestation can scar victims to the point where they become pedophiles themselves (also, Lupin a child victim of Fenrir, erroneously blames himself).  However, consensual sex with a werewolf doesn't spread the curse.        

     The werewolf transformation in the movie is very good.  I like the directing and editing in this scene, and the final form looks good.  It has the basic look of a good werewolf, but has a slightly pathetic appeal to it.  Oddly enough, I don’t see it on many online lists for best werewolf transformations.  I guess it’s due to bias against CGI (although I’m not the biggest fan of it, this effect is above average) a franchise that’s not straight horror.

       Since it’s Harry Potter, the movie has its share of plot holes, or arguably more. Despite being one of the better films in the series, Prisoner of Azkaban has one of the worst: second only to Goblet of Fire’s “we have to make Harry compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament” excuse/idiot plot.  The time turner introduces a logical flaw that everyone has complained about.  I know it sounds funny that I forgive this movie for using time travel to solve a problem while I was less merciful on Superman and Superman II.  I guess it’s because in those movies it wasn’t so much a plot hole so much as a copout that rendered the whole movie pointless.  I also wonder why they let Hagrid be the Professor of Care of Magical Creatures when he constantly exposes the children to dangerous animals.  A friend put it well when he said, “You need a permission slip from your legal guardians to visit Hogsmeade, but you don’t need one to ride a Hippogriff.”  When the creature attacks Draco (Tom Felton), it’s sentenced to death while the distraught Hagrid received little to no punishment outside of that.  The magic world is weird. 

     Despite these gripes, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban has it where it counts.  Although many potentially interesting and informative subplots are dropped (such as the entirety of the Marauders’ backstory), that’s the price you sometimes pay in a movie adaptation.  The characters are funny and interesting.  The dialogue is alternately touching and snappy.  Even though the movie delivers on thrills and serious emotion far better than the previous two, it does a great job balancing the darkness with whimsy.  Unfortunately, this does not apply to the shrunken head in the Knight Bus, an annoying and baffling addition to the movie adaptation.  John Williams gives the score a more serious tone than the previous ones and there are some very good selections from the soundtrack.  Visuals and design are marked improvement, and so is the acting quality.  The actors look more comfortable in their roles.  Daniel Radcliffe starts to come into his own as a deadpan character.  Overall, the movie is very enjoyable.    

                          

          

QUOTES

CORNELIUS FUDGE: Come on now, Harry.  The Ministry doesn’t send people to Azkaban for blowing up their aunts.

HARRY: I didn’t mean to blow her up.  I just lost control.

RON: Brilliant!

HERMIONE: Honestly, Ron, it’s not funny!  Harry was lucky not to get expelled!

HARRY: I think I was lucky not to have been arrested, actually.

HERMIONE: But they’ll catch Black, won’t they?  I mean, everyone’s looking for him.

RON: Sure.  Except no one’s ever broken out of Azkaban before, and he’s a murderous, raving lunatic.

HARRY: Thanks, Ron.

HERMIONE: I think you owe someone an apology.

RON: Right.  Next time I see Crookshanks, I’ll let him know.

SNAPE: Which one of you can tell me the difference between an animagus and a werewolf? [Hermione raises her hand]  No one?  How disappointing. 

RON: Spiders….the spiders….they want me to tap dance.  And I don’t want to tap dance!

HARRY: You tell those spiders, Ron.

LUPIN: The very first time I saw you Harry, I recognized you immediately. Not by your scar, by your eyes. They're your mother, Lily's. Yes, I knew her. You mother was there for me at a time when no one else was. Not only was she a singularly gifted witch, she was also an uncommonly kind woman. She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn't see it in themselves. Your father, James, however, had a certain, shall we say, talent for trouble. A talent, rumor has it, he passed onto you. You're more like them then you know, Harry. In time you'll come to see just how much.

LUPIN: I expect you're tired of hearing this, but you look so like your father. Except your eyes. You have...

HARRY: My mother’s eyes.

LUPIN: It's cruel that I got to spend so much time with James and Lily, and you so little.

LUPIN: Listen, dementors are among the foulest creatures to walk this earth. They feed on every good feeling, every happy memory until a person is left with nothing but his worst experiences. The dementors affect you more than others because there are true horrors in your past, horrors your classmates can scarcely imagine. You are not weak, Harry. You have nothing to be ashamed of.

HARRY: I’m scared, Professor.

LUPIN: Well, I’d consider you a fool if you weren’t.

SNAPE: Expelliarmus!  Ah, vengeance is sweet.  How I hoped I’d be the one to catch you.  I told Dumbledore yo were helping an old friend enter the castle, and now here’s the proof.

SIRIUS: Brilliant, Snape, once again you’ve put your keen and penetrating mind the task and as usual come to the wrong conclusion!  Now if you’ll excuse us, Remus and I have some unfinished business to attend to.

SNAPE: Give me a reason, I beg you.

LUPIN: Severus, don’t be a fool…

SIRIUS: He can’t help it.  It’s habit by now.

LUPIN: Sirius, be quiet!

SIRIUS: Be quiet yourself, Remus!

SNAPE: Listen to you two, quarrelling like an old married couple.

SIRIUS: Why don’t you run along and play with your chemistry set? 

SNAPE: I could do it, you know, but why deny the Dementors?  They’re so longing to see you.  Do I detect a flicker of fear?  Ah, yes.  The Dementor’s Kiss.  One can only imagine what that must be like to endure.  It’s said to be nearly unbearable to witness, but I’ll do my best.

Wolf Awareness Week - Day 6

 

The Company of Wolves

1984

D: Neil Jordan

**********

Pros: Some interesting scenery, Interesting symbolism, Great werewolf transformations

Cons: Dull Story, Soapy atmosphere, Bland dialogue and characters, Pacing

     What attracted me to watching this movie was seeing some really inventive and memorable werewolf transformations from it.  As a whole, it turned out to be surprisingly dull and soapy.  Although I found the movie mostly unwatchable and hard to follow, I’ll try to interpret it to the best of my abilities since I don’t think “confusing” is a legitimate criticism for a film.

      In this movie, a modern day girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is dreaming about a fairy tale universe that’s a twist on “Little Red Ring Hood.”  Her sister is sent to wake up, but to no avail.  It would probably help if she did more than just sneak up to her door and whisper, “Wake up, pest.”  I don’t know anyone who calls their sibling “pest.”  My brother called me “white trash” and “Ugmo,” but never “pest.”  In the dream, this sister is promptly killed by wolves.  How come my dreams never involve wish fulfillment?  I’ve never gotten to be a dragon in them, and yet my family has disowned me multiple times.  My subconscious really sucks at its job.

     As the dream continues, Rosaleen goes to the house of her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), who tells her some tales.  Her first story involves a woman whose husband (Stephen Rea) leaves without explanation.  She remarries and has children, but the first husband returns and, jealous about her new marriage, turns into a werewolf.  The transformation is inventive and quite gory.  Her new husband saves her and the children but hates her for having been married before.  I suppose the meaning of the story is that men can take advantage of women sexually and the women get blamed.     Another tale she tells is that of a young man walking through the forest when he meets the Devil (Terence Stamp) who rides in a Rolls Royce.  I’m going to give this anachronism a pass because it makes perfect sense.  It is the dream of a modern day girl, so of course a vehicle can show up in an odd setting.  Although I would contend that the girl must be a car enthusiast of some kind in order to visualize a vintage model car in her subconscious.  There are other stories within the story, such as a sorceress turning a groom and an entire wedding party into wolves.  I have some trouble interpreting them though. 

     When Rosaleen makes another trip to Granny’s, she meets a handsome huntsman (Micha Bergese) who is heavily suggested to be a werewolf.  They have an extremely long and dull conversation that ends with their betting over who would reach Granny’s house first.  The huntsman does and, when he sees her, he transforms into a wolf in one of the more clever transformations I’ve seen. 

He smacks her head off, which reveals that her insides seem to be a white, chalky substance.

      When Rosaleen arrives, she wounds him with his gun, but he turns into a wolf again, which makes her feel sorry for him.  When Rosaleen’s father (David Warner) and the other villagers come to save the day, they watch the two join the pack as wolves.  The movie ends with the real life Rosaleen waking up and being attacked by a wolf, which breaks through her window like a lupine bed intruder.  The closing quote makes the message clear: the dangerous man of your dreams may seem appealing, but in real life he’ll destroy you.

       The visuals of this movie are a mixed bag.  On one hand, the movie has some interesting scenery for the village and the woods which enhances the movie’s atmosphere.  Lighting is great, too.  On the other hand, the cinematography and camerawork seem clumsy and make the movie feel like a cheap soap opera.  The highlight of the movie is its werewolf transformations, among the most original I’ve seen.  Although the transformations scenes are great, I wish they turned into half-men/half-wolves, and not just wolves.  An odd flaw is that the movie sometimes attempts to pass off Belgian Tervurens as wolves.  I know that wolves can be difficult to work with, though.  I just thought that they would have used breeds that more closely resemble them, but then again the Great Husky Drought of ’83 was before my time. 

       The Company of Wolves has some interesting and sometimes challenging symbolism.  It deals with adult fear that one's daughter might be taken by a man, even if the relationship is consensual.  It also explores the predator-prey relationship between man and woman.  The use of the dream setting is inventive.  Unfortunately, I did not find it very watchable.  I would have preferred the movie have less dialogue in order to create a sense of ambiguity or, failing at that, dialogue that was more engaging.  Instead, the movie compromises its atmosphere with excessive and dry exposition.  The characters are flat, and their conversations drag on tediously.  This, of course, is my subjective opinion.  I'm sure some people may like it, and that's fine.  My distaste for it was somewhat subjective.  I admit this wasn't an ideal movie for me to critique, but I felt I wanted to do it for this Wolf Week gimmick.    

Wolf Awareness Week - Day 5

 

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

2009

D: Patrick Tatopoulos

**********

Pros: Some Good Lines, Bill Nighy

Cons: Bland Characters, Lack of Suspense from Foregone Conclusion

     Cracked.com has a good article about why most prequels don’t work.  One of the main points is that prequels usually don’t have much suspense because we know the conclusion.  Well, one could argue that learning how something happened is still interesting.  Say what you will about the Star Wars prequels, but the Original Trilogy did leave a lot to the imagination.  Underworld, however, didn’t just show us a story of its own, it also showed us flashbacks which had the essentials of what would eventually become this movie.  Not only do we know that its female lead, Sonja (Rhona Mitra), dies, we know exactly how and and why she died.  That’s not exactly a good case for spending $35,000,000 to make a movie.

     The story revolves around a typical forbidden love story between Sonja, a vampire princess, and Lucian (Michael Sheen).  Lucian is born to a werewolf mother and was the first “Lycan,” a descendent of the werewolves that could maintain his human mind and turn into something that doesn’t look like a wolf at all.  At first I hoped that this movie might be more effective than the previous ones because the protagonist would be more moral.  While Lucian did lose points in Underworld by experimenting on humans to find the Heir of Corvinus, this movie takes place 600 years before pulled that stunt.  While his motivation is understandable, he invokes one of the prequel flaws described in the aforementioned Cracked article.  Lucian had a sardonic charm in the first movie which was bolstered by Sheen’s performance.  This makes sense after 600 years of fighting a war, but here he is a young, hot-headed idealist.  The movie had to make him bland to make sense.   

     Meanwhile, Sonja is a typical fairy tale heroine.  She’d rather go out hunting real werewolves (which look like William in the previous movie), than tend to her responsibilities as a member of the high council.  She makes a vague claim at some point in the movie that she “saved the Cullen” numerous times over, but she needs to get saved by Lucian almost every time she fights.  She and Lucian meet in secret to make love, and when her father Viktor (Bill Nighy) finds out that they’ve conceived an unborn child, he doesn’t hesitate to have her executed in front of Lucian, who escapes with her amulet.  I must say that Sonja’s death is not as effectively sad as I expected.  I was fully expecting her to be painfully burned by the sunlight for a good minute, but she just goes up in CGI burns in a second.  I know I already saw random vampires going out that fast, but I thought they’d ignore that to draw out a sad death scene. 

     The movie makes some small attempts to make Viktor seem like he loves his daughter and is sad for the events, but he’s simply to crazy and evil to be believable in that respect.  As the ruler of the vampires, he simply does what’s evil, not what actually makes sense.  He brushes off the concerns of the humans with which his coven is in a symbiotic relationship.  When they confront him over failing to defend them from werewolves as per their agreement, he straight up murders them.  Nothing he does is remotely intelligent and pragmatic.  He’s just nuts.  He even has Lucian tortured when the latter rescues his daughter, just because he broke some minor rule in doing so.  When the devious Andreas Tanis (Steven Mackintosh) finds out about the relationship between Lucian and Sonja, he avoids telling Viktor because he knows he’s the shoot-the-messenger type.  One thing I can say for Viktor is that Bill Nighy gives a very funny performance.  We’re not talking effective scenery-chewing ham, we’re talking hilariously over-the-top ham.  There are people who actually think that his performance as this character is genuinely good, and that astounds me.  It also helps that he has a couple good, snarky lines when he’s talking to vampire advisor Coloman (David Aston).

        Another effect of Viktor’s evil-over-logic approach is the vampires’ treatment of the “Lycans” (I’ll just call them Diamond Dogs from now on).  Rise of the Lycans seems to contradict some exposition in Underworld by showing the vampires treating the Diamond Dogs worse than pack animals.  And then they chain them up at the castle walls during the day time and expect them to defend it from no-doubt pissed humans who can attack during the day.  Lucian is often chained and treated with scorn.  He clearly does not like his plight and feels bad for the Diamond Dogs who get it worse than he does.  Yet in the first movie, he exposits that he always felt loyal to the vampires and served them happily until he fell in love with one.  That line suggested to me that the vampires treated the Diamond Dogs with dignity and respect.  They recognized their dependence on a loyal group who could defend them during the day.  This is something I failed to mention in the first review: why are the Diamond Dogs, who can walk freely during the daytime, losing a battle against the vampires in the first place?  Once they learned to control their transformation, they can blend in with the humans, whereas the vampires are helpless during the day.  That’s a huge tactical advantage!

          This plot hole is even more apparent at the end of this movie, when Lucian leads an army of Diamond Dogs and werewolves to successfully take out the vampires’ stronghold.  They kill almost everyone (while also murdering a great deal of noncombatants), leaving a few survivors slink off on a ship.  So how, after such a decisive victory, did the Diamond Dogs start losing the war afterwards, and what happened to those werewolves who were helping them?  This movie raises more questions than it answers, and it didn’t even answer anything because everything was already answered in the first movie.  At the end of the battle Lucian “kills” Viktor by ramming a sword up his mouth and leaving him for dead.  It would be a very well executed and satisfying takedown, except we know that he survives it because we’ve seen him in Underworld.   And to make matters worse, his real death in that movie was pretty damn goofy. 

          And that’s what defines this movie: utter lack of suspense.  Virtually every character that matters has a fate that we already know before we start watching.  We know Sonja dies.  We know Lucian lives.  We know Viktor, Tanis and Raze (Kevin Grevioux) live.  We know that Sonja’s amulet will end up in Lucian’s possession and be used as a MacGuffin in the series.  The movie adds nothing to the story of this series.  This all makes Underworld: Rise of the Lycans one of the most pointless prequels that come to mind.  I do, however, like the effective use of dialogue by Kraven (Shane Brolly) and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) from the first movie used as a closing voiceover.                   

          

    

    

MEMORABLE QUOTES

COLOMAN: The nobles are upset, My Lord.  William’s pestilence has not been checked.  Werewolves have killed their slaves.

VIKTOR: Humans upset.  Tanis, please.  Take a note of what pain that brings me. 

COLOMAN: He is much of a disease as William’s pestilence.  You need to bring your pet back.

VIKTOR: Thank you, Coloman!  The obvious escaped me!

VIKTOR: I should have crushed you under my heel the day you were born.

LUCIAN: Yes, you should have.  [rams a sword into his mouth] But you didn’t.

[final lines, used from Underworld]

KRAVEN: I kept the secrets, and cleaned up the mess. But he's the one who crept room to room that night, dispatching everyone close to your heart. But when he got to you, he just couldn't bear the thought of draining you dry. You, who reminded him so much of his precious Sonja, the daughter he condemned to death.

SELENE: Lies.