Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

The first Urban Legend film ended with the death of the serial killer shrouded in mystery clearly pointing at a sequel. Urban Legends: Final Cut completely ignores that scenario (except until the very end) and comes up with a new one that is a rehash of the original film, but arguably executed slightly better.

In this film, Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) is a film student at Alpine University trying to come up with a thesis project. Given that her father is a famous director, there are heavy expectations placed on her. She finally decides on a project featuring a serial killer whose modus operandi is based on urban legends, myths where young college students are killed in hideous and gruesome ways.

Needless to say, this idea takes on a life of its own as people around Amy start dying. As in the Scream films, there are a lot of red herrings as to the identity of the real killer. In this film, the ending was one of the more surprising ones for me (though not completely a shock).

The suspense level in the film is fairly high (thanks in part of the surreal visual effects) and perhaps the cleverest aspect of the movie is that it dismisses the events in the first one as an urban legend (also the multiple choice involving guns at the end is amusing). The acting is passable. Urban Legends: Final Cut is a decent time killer and worth the matinee fare on the big screen. I don't recommend renting it though, unless you're a fan of the self-referential slash/gore horror genre.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to translate a book into a movie. The problem has to do with one's imagination: words in a book conjure up images that are highly personal and subjective, and any attempt by a third party to lend form to them ends up disappointing. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is no exception in this regard, but fortunately, the imagery presented is awesome and wondrous in its own right.

The film is made strictly by the book: Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), a young boy mistreated by his foster family, learns that he is special and comes of age... in the Hogwart's School of Magic (!) where he learns wizardry, plays Quidditch and fights an evil despotic wizard (who does not turn out to be his father).

While the movie stays fastidiously true to Joanne Rowling's book, perhaps one of the best adaptations ever, the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words doesn't hold true here. For the most part, from the initial victory of the baby Harry Potter upto the Quidditch match, a lot of the details are skipped. What we're presented with is a jump from one scene to another (sometimes too quickly) that illustrates with painstaking effort the magical realm that Rowling has constructed in her series. For example, while the opening sequence shows Professor Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris) turning out the lights in a street, Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) changing to her true form from being a cat, and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) bringing Harry on his flying motorcycle, we're not really shown the celebration of Lord Voldemort's fall. This isn't criticism but just an observation; in fact, I think doing this is especially okay if one is familiar with the Harry Potter books, but it does impart a sense of urgency in the beginning portions of the film.

I marvelled at how technology enabled the film makers to make possible the wonders of Harry's world, including Diagon Alley and Gringotts Bank, the moving pictures, Hogwarts Castle, the Sorting Hat (Leslie Phillips), the ghosts in the Castle (including a cameo by John Cleese), Fluffy the three-headed dog, the ugly troll, and so on. I believe that it is technology that makes the Harry Potter film authentic, in the same way as in the X-Men or the How the Grinch Stole Christmas movies, by letting at least the imagination of a few people come to life as vibrantly as possible. Most of what I imagined and what was projected on the screen weren't really colinear, but it was still cool, incredibly so at times, to watch.

The movie, however, picked up with the first Quidditch match where Harry, on a broomstick, plays the position of a Seeker after the Golden Snitch, a particularly hard-to-catch ball, which is key to winning a game. The inspired depiction of the game meshed with my imagination extremely well, and from there on, the story of Harry's second encounter with the dark Lord Voldemort (Richard Bremmer) enfolded in a less fragmented and more cohesive manner. The final confrontation, and what Harry and his friends have to do get there, is a delight to watch.

For those paying attention, the main change from the book has to do with how Hagrid's dragon is disposed of and the resulting consequences. The ghosts also play a smaller role here though given the movie's running time, I'm not surprised parts like those were omitted.

The actors playing the young leads give decent performances, with Emma Watson as the know-it-all Hermione Granger standing out. The adult actors aren't given much time but they all present solid performances. The score by John Williams is simple but effective. The set design, cinematography, and visuals are impressive. Director Chris Columbus does a great job of bringing to the big screen the Enid Blyton-like atmosphere that Rowling's books exude.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a great movie to watch. I viewed it from the perspective of someone who is intimately familiar with the books, and I believe there is strong merit to watching it being completely unfamiliar with the story, a choice I do not have given that I've read the four books a few times. Definitely check it out on the big screen and make sure you goto the bathroom before.

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Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World

Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World is essentially a rehash of the original. Man messes with nature. Things go wrong. People get eaten. The major difference is in the last part which is quite sophomoric and not at all fitting of Steven Spielberg.

It is four years after the horrific disaster that happened at Jurassic Park. Again, we meet the good doctor, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), no longer at the head of his company but still pulling a few strings behind the back of his son, Peter (Arliss Howard). The original base camp of operations set up by Hammond on Isla Sorna, Site B, still exists and there are living colonies of dinosaurs there. Hammond, who has gone from capitalist to naturalist, wants to observe the creatures in their natural habitat and put to rest years of speculation about the lives of the great animals.

Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is asked to come on board the team sent to scout the island where the dinosaurs live. He refuses until he learns that his girlfriend, paleontologist Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is already alone on the island. He then becomes part of a rescue mission including himself, photographer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), equipment specialist Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff), and his daughter Kelly Curtis (Vanessa Lee Chester) who stowed away in the back of the van.

Besides the animals who would like to have humans for din-din, Malcolm's team has to cope with Peter Hammond and Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite). Tembo's goal is to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex to prove man is the greatest hunter. Peter wants to capture the animals and bring them to the mainland to create "Jurassic Park, San Diego". Bad idea.

Spielberg and company, clearly realising they had a winning formula the last time around, don't deviate very much from it. By the time the Tyrannosaurus Rex gets to San Diego, I couldn't help but thinking I had just seen Jurassic Park again.

What is missing in this movie compared to the original is the intellectual aspect. There's no talk of chaos, no background about how the animals were bred and raised, no delving into evolution about how the animals could overcome their lysine deficiency, and no "this is Unix, I know this stuff!" Viewers are simply expected to have this knowledge, and this means more time for bone crunching effects. As a result, we have a movie that is darker and gorier than the original.

The movie is entertaining and has some interesting messages about cruelty to animals and leaving nature alone to do as it will. See it for the matinee price but don't spend the big bucks on this one.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

There are few roles in which I like Johnny Depp, but every time he plays an off-beat character, I really enjoy his performance. The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is one such occasion.

Here Depp stars as Jack Sparrow, the famous pirate captain of the Black Pearl who was abandoned on an island by his first mate Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). Through luck, Jack manages to survive and ends up on Port Royal in the Caribbean where he encounters an ongoing soap opera featuring Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) the governor's daughter; Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), the son of a former pirate but taken in by the governor, and Norrington (Jack Davenport), the commander in charge of the armed forces on the island who is set to marry the governor's daughter. Jack not only has to deal with the governor and the commander who consider him a thieving pirate, but also with Barbossa and his crew who have now acquired the infamous curse of the Black Pearl.

One of the best aspects of the film is Depp's walk, which people say I mimicked when I was in Thailand and handed a drink which I just took a sip from but made me feel really woozy (there are stories of people drugging foreigners to take their money but fortunately I was with friends). It completely dominates the film. There's also a clever, but predictable, way out of the situation that Jack ends up being thrust in (namely, how does one kill things that can't die). In general the movie is characterised by situations where at first Jack appears to be doing something stupid but in reality is doing something very smart. This leads to some comic relief.

The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a surprisingly good movie, much better than I expected. I highly recommend checking it out on the big screen.

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