Catching Up With Doctor Who

It's so easy to get addicted to some form of media, especially these days. I can imagine that 10, 20, or 30 years ago, there were fewer pop-culture obsessions to latch onto, and fewer yet more fervent people latching on to begin with. But these days, we have a consistent, constant entertainment overload and I'm just as guilty of letting myself get too inundated with every kind of obsession. As I type this, I'm watching the previews in front of the Cedar Rapids Blu-ray and have Twitter, Gmail, Netflix, and Wikipedia open on my Google Chrome browser. I don't mean to, here or anywhere else, decry how we're losing our focus; I've found that I leapfrog from addiction to addiction within media and this is just another one of those examples.

I'm a moderate fan of science fiction TV and movies. I say "moderate" because while I've enjoyed some of the Star Trek movies and TV series, I've never gone to a convention or considered dressing up like Spock. The same goes for Star Wars: the closest I ever got to true fanaticism there was lining up a few days before The Phantom Menace opened to get tickets for opening day. But I've never been against genre fiction in television, I've just never gotten so sucked in that it dominates my life. That's still the case, but I've crossed another show off my to-do list: BBC's Doctor Who. I never had much interest in Doctor Who, seeing as the old incarnation of the program ended when I was five, and the fact that there was a TV-movie on Fox in the mid-1990s was news to me when I started looking into the show's history a few months back. Even though I enjoy British comedy and a lot of modern sci-fi shows like Fringe and Battlestar Galactica, when the new Doctor Who began airing in 2005, it just sailed right past me. Six years later, enter Netflix Instant.

There's been a lot of heated discussion lately about Netflix, its positives, and its negatives. What with the company upping its prices--a move that sucks for the average consumer, but isn't really that surprising when you think about it--people are reevaluating what they actually use on Netflix. Do people need to have a 2-at-a-time DVD plan plus streaming? (That's my plan, and after some initial hemming and hawing, that's going to remain my plan for the indefinite future.) While Netflix is certainly nudging its consumers to all-streaming, all the time (something that will work only when they have a lot more current material on streaming, and when the quality of the video is far closer to what's available on even a 2-year-old DVD), the streaming plan does work and work well depending on what you find. My wife found the USA show Psych through Netflix Instant, and we've both watched plenty of movies and TV shows that are just easier to get through without having to wait a couple of days for the DVD or Blu-ray to arrive in the mail. One constant with Netflix Instant is that a lot of similar movies or TV shows are there, if they're there at all.

So it is with Doctor Who, which I added a few months ago mostly out of curiosity. I'd read from a few critics I respect that the new version of the show was worth the time, and once the fifth season, which began airing in April of 2010, kicked off, the critical praise was at an all-time high, or so I thought. I added the show to my Instant Queue and, a few months later, watched the first couple of episodes. (You know how it goes: you add something to the queue and, unless it's an immediate must-see, you let it linger, sometimes until Netflix takes it off Instant.) I really didn't know what to expect, so I was mostly bemused by what happened in the first few episodes. Christopher Eccleston, as the enigmatic Doctor, and Billie Piper, as his companion, Rose, were both a lot of fun in what seemed to be mostly just sci-fi as camp, as cheese. Though I'd heard of it, Doctor Who is one of those British shows that was just too British for me to get. "He's an alien...who can regenerate...and travels around space and time in a police box called the TARDIS. O....k." Still, the show was watchable enough in the first few episodes that it kept me engaged, mostly due to Eccleston and Piper, who managed to take themselves seriously enough without losing their humor when fending off threats such as the Daleks.

As it usually goes, there was a moment when I knew I was all in with Doctor Who. I've mentioned it in the past, but with shows like Deadwood, Lost, and others, there's that one ineffable moment when you know you're sticking with a show until the bitter end. There were a few moments close to that in the first season of Doctor Who, such as parts of "The Empty Child," one of the first two-parters in the series, but it came to the second season and a brand new Doctor to cement my love for the show. The episode is "The Girl in the Fireplace," and the concept is deliciously clever: the Doctor is able to interact with Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV, through a fireplace in her room. Somehow, he can enter at one time and then, in what feels like minutes to him, see her once again years in the future. The lovely Madame is being hunted by creepy clockwork androids who want her brain for seemingly nefarious purposes, but what grabbed me was how moving and emotional the episode became. The Doctor, as played then by David Tennant, feels so much and is so devastated by losing this woman even though he spent a few short minutes with her. It's hard enough to make the audience feel for a character throughout a long-running TV series, but it's harder still to do so for a relationship that is created solely for one story. That it happens, courtesy of Tennant, Sophia Myles, and writer Steven Moffat, made me sit up and truly pay attention at the show.

Something that concerned me, and still does--I'm just about to finish up season four and the specials that closed out Tennant's time as the Doctor--is that switching actors as the Doctor or as companions would be detrimental for a simple reason: what happens if I don't like the new person? I got concerned with it when Eccleston's Doctor regenerated into Tennant's Doctor (and having seen not a single second of the last two seasons, I'm concerned still about the change from Tennant to Matt Smith), and I felt the same when Piper left and Freema Agyeman took the role of the Doctor's companion. Change and transition can be good, but I always worry that a show like this can only change so many times before it steps wrong. Concern trolling aside (yeah, I hate doing it, too), none of the changes have turned me off the show. If anything, I've become more and more compelled by the last two seasons of the show, even as the stories get more and more tense, more and more wild, and more and more epic. (The third season's three-part finale was particularly wild and over-the-top, but never in a way that turned me off.)

The second half of the sixth season begins in 3 weeks; by that point, I hope to be caught up. At worst, I'll be caught up with all of season six by the time the finale airs, on October 1. (Quick rant: I really, truly hate when networks split up a show's full season of episodes. It happened with TNT's Men of a Certain Age, which has recently left TV for good, and it's happening with Doctor Who, both on BBC America and BBC One. On the one hand, sure, the show is coming back for another season and remains wildly popular. But on the other hand, are networks that hard up for content that they'd rather stretch a show's season out interminably as opposed to let it run its natural course? Grumble.) I don't know that I'm going to be decking myself like the Doctor anytime soon or putting the TARDIS all over my computer or desk, but I have to admit: mostly due to its charm and emotion, I've become truly hooked on Doctor Who.

Enduring Love in John Adams

I don't expect to cry at movies, or TV shows, or books. Even the ones that are tagged as tearjerkers don't get me. Frankly, those are more likely to leave me with a stone face, if only for being slightly more manipulative, slightly more shameless in trying to get its audience to show emotion. Though I've teared up a few times at entertainment over the past few years, notably the last 20 minutes of Toy Story 3 and the last scene of the Lost series finale (yes, I am a nerd), I don't do it often, and I don't ever have any inkling of when it will happen, or what will get me. So getting teary at the end of the seven-part HBO miniseries John Adams, which was reaired on July 4, was not something I planned on.

Circumstances always get us in unexpected places, and so it was with John Adams. I began watching this gargantuan project the night after the seven parts aired back to back, but only the first few minutes. I rarely have enough time to set aside from an hour or 90 minutes of television (at least, when it's not something I already consider to be appointment TV), so I figured I'd watch as often as I could, for as long as I could. I was initially struck and mildly surprised at how much of the miniseries, directed by now-Oscar winner Tom Hooper (and I will get to him in a bit), is a love story between a happily married couple, John and Abigail Adams, both played magnificently by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. I've never read the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by David McCullough, so I really didn't know what to expect going in.

Because of timing issues, I ended up watching the bulk of the miniseries over a two-day period where I was all by myself in my house, unless you count our cats. My wife was staying over at her sister's, keeping her company and helping out with her two kids as her husband traveled to the Grand Canyon with a friend. This left me at home, mostly to tend to our cats and to have wild parties. Or watch John Adams. Now, mind you, a lot of this series, written by Kirk Ellis and Michelle Ashford, is about Adams' march through history, from defending Redcoats against his fellow citizens to nearly willing the Declaration of Independence into existence to becoming the second President of the United States. But the most constant story throughout the series, which encompasses over 50 years, is John's love for his wife, and hers for him. He treats her as his equal, and she often guides him in his decision-making. When he leaves for France as an American dignitary, she excoriates him (and he lets her) for leaving her to help their children grow up, making her responsibility even greater by also having to tend to their Massachusetts farm. When they reunite in the fourth installment, it's nothing short of a catharsis, partly because the previous episode left Adams extremely sick. While there is, of course, a medical reason for the illness, you have to wonder if it's a sickness of the heart.

There's too much to cover, really, when talking about John Adams, which didn't seem to get a massive amount of critical love despite winning every possible award it could. (Seriously, when this came up for awards during the fall of 2008 and winter of 2009, I thought Paul Giamatti was winning awards he wasn't even eligible for.) I'm sure plenty more could be dramatized from John Adams' relationships with such revolutionaries as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton, and I crave for even more. But what there is on the screen is truly incredible and powerful. My biggest complaint with the entire series is something that I'm always going to push back against, as long as the man has a career: Tom Hooper can't direct himself out of a paper bag. It's impressive to me that I watched all seven parts and want to watch it again, despite his flat-footed "style," which amounts to taking a normal shot and having the camera present it at a wacky angle. (The worst offender is in the final hour, when we watch a grizzled and aged John Adams walk through the fields of his farm. Simple enough, except the camera is turned upside down. Literally.) This is a case of every other element, especially the acting and subtle yet powerful writing, elevating itself from the man behind the camera.

While there's plenty to praise from in front of the camera (I feel like I could take up an entire post just listing each actor and character in this damn thing), Giamatti, Linney, Tom Wilkinson as Ben Franklin, Stephen Dillane as Jefferson, and Zeljko Ivanek as John Dickson all deliver standout performances. Giamatti has been one of my favorite actors for the last decade or so, and watching him in John Adams is watching the performance of a lifetime. He may not be in every single scene, but he dominates the entire series from the first minute. But what got me emotional at the very end was the romance between John and Abigail. Though they ended up spending most of their married lives together (something Abigail comments on in the final chapter), I felt the absence between John and Abigail in the third episode as much as I was about to feel the two-day gap when my wife wasn't in the house. Who knows what that says about me (and don't tell me, I'd rather not know), but there you go.

But what got me was that final chapter, titled "Peacefield," where John and Abigail live out their final days, he rightly concerned that he'd be condemned by historians to obscurity and she trying to encourage him to peacefully enjoy the time he had left on this Earth. When Abigail falls deathly ill, instantly looking as if she's nodded off, it comes as a shock (and honestly, I was glad that her death scene wasn't just looking like she fell asleep, which is the opposite of good drama). When she wakes up once more, half-delirious, and then dies in her husband's arms, it's hard not to be overcome with emotion. It was almost certainly just me being affected by being alone for a couple of days (last week was the first time since I've been married that I didn't sleep in the same bed as my wife), but Paul Giamatti's acting here is titanic and painfully realistic. In this scene and the few that follow, with him alone except for his memories and then, near the end of his life, correspondences with Thomas Jefferson, Giamatti's loneliness just rang so true to me.

Yes, this element of John Adams is clearly manipulation on the filmmakers' parts. I don't care; it worked on me. I was more than mildly beset by the emotion of love lost, though I didn't get as worked up as I did at the end of, say, Toy Story 3. But considering that I had few expectations for John Adams, I came away pleasantly surprised for having been so moved. As a historical adaptation, I was fascinated. As a treatise on why history should look kindly upon John Adams the man, if not John Adams the president, I was convinced. As a story of two people whose love crosses everything including geographical boundaries, I was deeply shaken.

Diamond In The Rough: Season 2.5 of Men of a Certain Age

I imagine that, when TNT looks at its typical demographics and who it's hoping to target with its programming, I don't fit the profile for watching Men of a Certain Age. One could argue, very easily, that the dramedy, having just finished its second season (the sophomore season was split into two halves, with six episodes each), isn't really a good fit for TNT or really any network. It doesn't fit the common themes expressed by the more popular TNT shows, or the shows on USA, FX, AMC, Showtime, or HBO. The show doesn't have a high concept--it's about the trials and tribulations of three middle-aged best friends approaching or passing the age of 50--and it's not outrageously salacious or profane.

That doesn't, of course, mean that Men of a Certain Age isn't entertaining, intelligent, funny, and surprisingly moving. The show--created by one of its stars, Ray Romano, and one of the writers from Romano's successful CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Mike Royce--is possibly the most realistic show on TV, now that Friday Night Lights has gone gracefully into the night. While it's never as dark or bleak as that show, it's had its moments in the past season and none come as a shock. Though the writing has always been a strong suit, to the point that when the show ever hits a false note (it's rare, but the finale had one minor character whose appearance was uncharacteristic for the show and unwelcome), I cringe. I know that Men of a Certain Age, easily the most underrated show on TV, is better than these few moments.

One of the reasons why Men of a Certain Age is such a strong show, one of the best of the year, is its three leads. Romano, Scott Bakula, and Andre Braugher, week after week, knock their material out of the park. The writing is so equally compelling for each performer; there's never been a dull moment or storyline, no matter who's the main player on screen. I could easily have seen this kind of show, with either weaker writing or weaker actors, being two-thirds or one-thirds as satisfying. However, Romano, Bakula, and Braugher bring unique qualities to their characters to make them all contenders, in a perfect world, for Emmys when the nominations are announced this coming Thursday.

Romano plays Joe, a divorced father of two who owns a party store. The two things that have defined him (or that he's let define himself) over the series are his gambling addiction and his passion for playing golf. As the show has progressed, Joe's managed to mostly curb his addiction, though his closer-than-he'd-like relationship with his bookie, Manfro, has gotten him in a lot of trouble. One of the final moments of this past half-season, a truly chilling scene in a show that usually has none, was when Manfro confronted Joe, who had been pretending to take bets for his bookie while just vicariously gambling through these unknowing bettors. Joe's friendship with Manfro has always been tenuous; the latter has wanted to be friends, while Joe wants nothing of the sort so he can make a clean break from his addiction. Their face-off was both unexpected and exactly what should have happened. It'd be unrealistic to assume the season would've ended without us getting something final from this skewered relationship, but the way that it panned out (with Manfro destroying one of Joe's teeth, mixing his fury with a bit of concern) was true in its disquieting nature. Joe's love for golf has kept him afloat in the last few episodes, as he barely makes it through to the PGA senior tour. His talent is there, but his determination has faltered in the past. I only hope that, should the show return for a third season, Joe will get more opportunities to excel in the sport.

Scott Bakula plays Terry, a man who seems only passionate to a point, unable to focus on one thing, on one area of his life. As soon as he finds one tangible commitment, he moves onto something else, while trying to make it sound like he's not dropping out of his prior job or romance. He's now entangled with Erin, a schoolteacher who initially saw her time with Terry as some sort of fling. Whatever the case, Terry is firmly with Erin; it was with her that he first felt heartache, clearly. When it comes to his job, though, he's chosen to switch professions at exactly the wrong time. He began this half-season as arguably the best salesman at Thoreau Chevrolet, currently run by his and Joe's other best friend, Owen. By the end of the finale, Terry has decided to give up selling cars to become a commercial director based on his daylong experience as something of the helmer of an uber-cheesy Thoreau Chevrolet ad that is as obnoxious, memorable and likely ubiquitous as a real TV commercial for a local car salesman. Though Erin agrees to give him a year at this new job, she's clearly concerned that as she's moving in with Terry, she's thrown her lot in with someone who's bound to disappoint her.

As mentioned above, Terry's just left a job as a car salesman at Thoreau Chevrolet, run by Owen Thoreau, played by Braugher in a role originally written for Treme star Wendell Pierce. While one can easily see how Pierce would have fit into the role of the passive son of a former pro basketball player who doesn't seem to have the strong will to run a car dealership, Braugher has been his typically excellent self through the series' two seasons. Braugher's frequent head-to-heads with Richard Gant, who plays his father, are emotionally charged and always believable. Their relationship seems to have come to a boiling point in the last minutes of the finale, as Owen's dad sells the dealership, which he'd long ago put into financial ruin, without telling anyone, including his son. When Owen accuses him of doing so and then labels him a "pathetic old man," it's not only true to life but it cuts to the core. Romano, Bakula, and Braugher each have had monumental moments of acting on the series (yes, I'm sure there's at least one skeptic out there who doubts Romano's acting prowess, but believe it, folks).

Getting into a discussion of why no one's watching the damn show (relatively speaking) is fodder for another post entirely. Suffice to say, the ratings for the show aren't nearly as impressive as they are for other TNT series like Falling Skies, Franklin and Bash, or Memphis Beat. That said, one would hope that the executives at TNT have been watching Men of a Certain Age and taking note of its creative growth over the last couple of years. I would also hope that, should the show return, the TNT execs rightly don't split it up into two half-seasons like this past year, with 12 episodes spread out over nearly 9 months. Some shows can tell their stories like that, but they have to be far more serialized, I'd argue. While Men of a Certain Age certainly isn't a series chock full of standalone episodes, its storytelling isn't as feverishly serialized as some other cable dramas. In many ways, Men of a Certain Age is on its own island, probably unable to be compatible with most other series. I only hope that TNT realizes what a diamond in the rough this show is and how foolish it would be to let it go to waste.

Do Watcha Wanna: Season 2 of Treme

Sometimes, shows sneak up on you. That's all there is to it. I've been watching TV seriously--as opposed to just watching it because, you know, it's there--for just over a decade. While I certainly don't have as much contextual experience as older, wiser critics like Alan Sepinwall, Matt Zoller Seitz, or Mo Ryan, I've watched long enough to know that, nine times out of ten, it only takes a certain amount of episodes for me to know that I'm on board with a show or if it's time to jump ship. As an example of the latter, I watched the first four episodes of the recently renewed TNT science-fiction drama Falling Skies and, though I was somewhat impressed with the performance from Noah Wyle and the show's serviceable special effects, the show wasn't grabbing me as I hoped it would.

What's more, I watch plenty of TV as it is; even though I now have two DVRs with 1 terabyte of recording space between them, I can't double the amount of time I have in a day, a week, or a month. Falling Skies isn't a bad show, but it's not particularly remarkable. I knew that, 40 percent of the way through the show's inaugural season, I wasn't suddenly going to be switched around. Maybe down the line, should the show have a creative upturn, I'll go back to the beginning, but I'm not holding my breath. My basic point, though, is this: more often than not, I know if a show's going to hold my interest well enough to merit a season pass. But sometimes, I'm gradually compelled to keep watching a show, not immediately. Such is the case with HBO's Treme, which concluded its second season this past Sunday. The show, from David Simon, creator of the esteemed HBO drama The Wire, is not as critically beloved, but it's no less satisfying or immersive than that Baltimore-set program.

I ended up catching up with both seasons of the show over roughly six months, as the first season was being rerun over the first few months of this year. I've done the same thing with another HBO drama, the far more popular and far less dramatically cohesive True Blood. I wonder if prolonging my exposure to the first season of Treme while having read a little bit about the show via critics such as Mr. Sepinwall and Mr. Seitz has made me appreciate it more. I knew, even before the show premiered, that I shouldn't go in expecting a New Orleans version of The Wire. The shows do have obvious and subtle similarities, from shared cast members (notably Wendell Pierce, formerly Bunk, currently Antoine, a raffish trombonist) to a shared dissertation into how a modern American city thrives and survives. But Treme is a celebration of New Orleans, where The Wire was detailing the demise of a city that should be far greater than it is. The most important difference is that Treme is a show about atmosphere and The Wire is a show with plot oozing from every pore.

For that reason alone, I didn't get immediately pulled into Treme, initially being far more interested in stories focused on characters played by Pierce, Kim Dickens, Oscar winner Melissa Leo, John Goodman, and Steve Zahn, mostly because I knew these actors better. But Treme, which began its first season mere months after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, can suck in any viewer, whether you've been to New Orleans or if you've only dreamed of walking down the French Quarter. Eventually, the actors melt away and their characters shine through. We're no longer watching Wendell Pierce, but Antoine, a trombonist who starts out the series trying to make it from day to day with any gig he can get and ends up the second season leading a group of high school musicians in a triumphant performance on the street. We're not watching Kim Dickens, but Janette, a chef who's great at what she does but still doesn't know what she really wants (aside from living in the Big Easy).

The list goes on, extending quickly to plenty of actors whose faces aren't nearly as recognizable. There's Lucia Micarelli, as the sweet and charming fiddler Annie, starting out the series in a damaging relationship with Sonny, a would-be musician who doesn't appreciate that his talents lie far from the music scene. Annie is now with Davis, a brash DJ portrayed by Zahn, someone who desperately wants to prove his New Orleans cred, or to prove that he's right, even at the detriment of his own career. Sonny has skipped out on music and the crippling addiction that screwed him over, and is now making time on a Vietnamese fishing boat that, in one of the second season finale's final scenes, ominously passes by some oil platforms that are beginning to leak...just a bit. Another actor from The Wire, Clarke Peters (who, quick note, will be playing Othello opposite Dominic West, as Iago, in England soon; wouldn't you love to see Lester Freamon and Jimmy McNulty go head to head?), plays Albert Lambreaux, the Big Chief of the Mardi Gras Indians. His son, Delmond (Rob Brown), has come to appreciate and embrace his heritage and build a relationship with his strident, stubborn father. Their back-and-forths have been among the most pleasing and entertaining moments of either season. Finally, in the truly haunting storyline of the season, LaDonna (Khandi Alexander), a bartender, is gang-raped outside her establishment, and has to go through the harrowing process of accepting what's happened to her and fighting back. Alexander has been excellent on both seasons, but her work this year (especially in the season finale, where she confronts one of her attackers) is jaw-dropping in its brilliance.

Something that critics of the show have mentioned is how little plot seems to matter. You're more likely to watch 15 minutes of nearly unbroken musical performances than to get major dumps of information. Even if you weren't a fan of The Wire (which would render you insane or lacking in taste, but that's neither here nor there), you may not dig the show's languid pace. I'll admit that the first season was something I admired more than loved, partly because there wasn't a moment for me to jump into the action; instead, I felt like someone standing outside the window, watching the fun go by without as much context as I'd have liked. I don't know what changed this season, but I've gone from admiring this show to flat-out loving it. There wasn't a specific scene that hooked me completely, or even a character. What Treme has become, in its sophomore session, is a great hang-out show. In short, I've learned enough about these characters that I'm fine with just hanging out with them each week. I no longer feel like a voyeur, but like I'm there right next to these people. Every time there's a musical performance, I'm standing right there with the rest of the crowd, taking in the sweaty, smoky, exciting vibe. Each time food is on screen, I'm looking at it, drooling, wanting to dig in. Each character, diverse as they are, is a reward to the viewer.

Now, mind you, Treme is not perfect. While I though David Morse and Jon Seda were fine additions to the cast, their performances didn't match the often weightless storylines they were placed into. Morse, I hope, will return next season; Seda, though I liked him, seems to have no purpose in the future of the show. Despite some storytelling flaws, I've come to love Treme as much as I ever did The Wire, even if the latter show is clearly superior in terms of its overall scope. That aside, I found it fitting that the show's second season finale came on the eve of Independence Day. That holiday is, of course, the most blatant celebration of America we have; watching Treme, a show about the ups and downs of life for the creative and the driven in one of the jewels of this country, is a weekly look into the triumph of the human spirit, an hourly commemoration of this flawed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes transcendent country.

Looking Back: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

How much responsibility does a director bear on a movie? I guess that question's answer depends on whether or not you subscribe to the auteur theory. I don't know that the auteur theory can be applied to every director; for every director whose style is unmistakable, from Paul Thomas Anderson to Michael Bay--yes, both are auteurs, quality be damned--there are journeyman helmers like Martin Campbell or Joe Johnston. Arguably, Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies belongs in the latter camp.

Something that is going to be very stark as I go through each Harry Potter movie is the schizophrenic nature of the directorial styles, or lack thereof. Chris Columbus did a very capable job of hiding his lack of style or flair by having skilled production designer Stuart Craig create the world of Hogwarts over the first two films, but his inability to grasp anything beyond basic directing skills is more on display in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, not 2002's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Columbus used different cinematographers for the movies; John Seale was behind the camera for the first film, but frequent Terry Gilliam collaborator Roger Pratt took the reins for Chamber of Secrets, which really shows. Even though a lot of the tricks Pratt uses to heighten suspense and menace are kind of rudimentary in style (odd camera angles, lots of panning, and so on), it's more than what's on display in the first movie.

What I remember from first seeing this movie in November of 2002 is that everything was improved. There aren't any vast changes, but what happens on screen is clearly the result of people knowing what they can and can't do with the story, though there are still moments of stilted dialogue or unnecessarily over-the-top performances. While Columbus's skill as a director didn't really improve much from the first to the second movies, the movie doesn't feel as elementary. Having said that, there are plenty of flaws on display. Something I had forgotten is this: Chamber of Secrets is 161 minutes long; the extended edition is nearly 3 hours long. For those fans of the book series who were infuriated when future cinematic adaptations didn't feature, you know, every little subplot, this movie is likely manna from heaven. I'm not sure if this is a case of the structure of J.K. Rowling's book being unwieldy, or Columbus and writer Steve Kloves not knowing how to tell the story on film correctly, but the first fourth of this film doesn't even hint at the title location. What's more, the final fourth takes place almost entirely inside said location. In between, there's a fun yet obviously wasteful Quidditch scene and a spider attack. But it really doesn't need to be 160 minutes long.

Either intentionally or otherwise, this movie is the most male-centric, I think, in the entire series. I'd forgotten that Hermione is taken out of the equation with just over an hour to go; she, like a few other supporting characters, is petrified by the monstrous basilisk that's been unleashed on the school by a hypnotized Ginny Weasley. Thus, the final hour is basically Harry and Ron fighting off various creepy-crawlies, followed by Harry facing off against a young Tom Riddle, who'd soon turn himself into Lord Voldemort. The first half of the movie is mostly dominated by Harry's rivalry with Draco Malfoy, which hits a fever pitch that none of the other movies even attempt to match. (While Harry presumes the worst of Draco in future installments, he never figures Malfoy is being tasked with killing Dumbledore.) That rivalry culminates in the Quidditch scene; for being mostly special effects, it's well-shot, but in the greater context of the film and book series, Quidditch seems like an unnecessary diversion.

Chamber of Secrets also introduces us to one new, somewhat important character (Lucius Malfoy, hammily played by Jason Isaacs) and one recurring theme, in the form of a consistently new Defense of the Dark Arts teacher. This time, it's shameless celebrity Gilderoy Lockhart, as portrayed delightfully by Kenneth Branagh. I'll admit that I'd love to know what Hugh Grant, who was apparently originally cast but couldn't do it for scheduling reasons, would have done with the character. Still, Branagh is possibly the first person in the entire series, with the exception of the reliably entertaining Alan Rickman, who is enjoying himself with goofy material. That alone is infectious enough to make this movie enjoyable. Lockhart was, with the exception of a quick cameo in Order of the Phoenix (the book, not the movie), only in this one, but the sense of self-aware fun and charm is welcome here. Branagh may not have had much substance to his character, but he's appropriately fun.

I mentioned Terry Gilliam earlier, and it's worth bringing up to wonder what might have been with other directors working on the first two films. Gilliam was one of the notable directors who was up for the job but either didn't get it or refused. The most well-known director to never officially work on the series is Steven Spielberg; it's said that he wanted Haley Joel Osment to star as Harry. Since Rowling always nixed any American actors in the films, he was out pretty quickly. But anyone who knows about 1980s movies probably knows that Chris Columbus came to prominence thanks mostly to Steven Spielberg's influence. He wrote Gremlins (though, based on his other films, you'd barely know it), which was produced by Spielberg back in 1984. Though he had nothing to do with the movie, watching Chamber of Secrets is like watching something akin to Super 8, the recent JJ Abrams movie that wore its Spielbergian influences on its sleeve.

From the scene where Lockhart introduces Cornish pixies to his Defense Against the Dark Arts class (said creatures look like a CGI version of the Gremlins) to Harry facing Tom Riddle in the Chamber to Harry and Ron being beset upon by large spiders, a lot of this movie just seems like a stew of Spielberg movies from the mid-1980s, those movies that were darker, meaner, more menacing than E.T.. Now, obviously a lot of this is because it's what J.K. Rowling wrote. But I wonder if a different director would've interpreted the plot differently, or if this movie would remind me of Steven Spielberg productions no matter who was behind the camera. Though there aren't any father-son issues on display here, a lot of the themes and action sequences are extremely reminiscent to the point of distraction.

Still, a lot has improved here. I know that what's to come will be a major shift in the series' production value, but the seeds were being planted here. Though not every one of the actors acquits themselves well enough (Rupert Grint and Tom Felton are as cartoonish here as they ever will be, and I can only blame Columbus for not reeling them in), Daniel Radcliffe clearly got better tips or just applied himself better here. I can't say that the dialogue is very naturalistic, but he and Emma Watson seem a bit less forced, a bit less actor-y here. The lead three kids would soon all seem less like actors and more like their characters, but it starts for two of them here. But there are problems here that are just as apparent in the books now that I think about them for more than a few seconds.

While Robbie Coltrane is just as rustic and charming here as Hagrid, the character's time to shine pretty much stopped after the third story. The most drama revolving the character is in this story, and aside from introducing us to Azkaban, we don't have much in terms of suspense to chew on. Hagrid gets the final burst of applause at the end of this movie, and the congratulations don't feel earned, in the same way that they would be if I actually went to Hogwarts. What's more, by the time the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments in this series come around, Hagrid and Coltrane have very little to do, aside from standing around in some shots to remind us that yes, the big guy is still here. Mostly, watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is like watching the end of a prologue to the other five--OK, six--movies in the Harry Potter series. Play time is over; it's high time that we got a little more serious, and right quick.

Larry Crowne

The best thing I can say about Larry Crowne is that I ought to hate it, but I don't have the coldness to do so. Don't get me wrong: there are so many things wrong with this movie, it's hard to figure out where to start. If anyone's at fault, it has to be Tom Hanks, who's almost too charming, too decent, too Tom Hanks-ish here. But he's not just playing the title character, he's the producer, director, and co-writer (with Oscar nominee Nia Vardalos--yes, everyone, she got an Oscar nod for her My Big Fat Greek Wedding script); since he wore the most hats, he's the first target. But Larry Crowne is so sunny, so cheery, and so forced in maintaining its good-time attitude that it's both infuriating and mildly charming.

The lack of a conflict, or even of an antagonistic character, is the main culprit here. Hanks plays Larry, an eternally nice guy who gets fired from his job at a Wal-Mart-esque store because he doesn't have a college education. (I can't help but thinking, as other critics have pointed out, that Larry could have easily sued the store and won a lot of money, had he wanted to.) Larry decides to go to community college, so he can have an education and get a better job. While in his speech class, he meets and falls for his teacher, Julia Roberts. Now, she plays a character whose name looks kind of like, but not really at all, the words "tie knot." But she's Julia Roberts. And he's Tom Hanks. 15 years ago, this movie would've been huge. Now, it's almost something of a relic. But that's the movie in a nutshell. A guy learns to change his outlook in life while being the same upbeat person, gets a scooter, and falls in love.

With so little plot to dispense with, you'd think the movie would have plenty of time to fill in its main characters, but there's barely any development. We're told that Larry is divorced, but never meet his ex-wife or even get an idea of what happened in their marriage. Seeing as the economy plays something of a role in the story (Larry's deep in the hole with his mortgage, partly bought out from his ex), it makes no sense for the movie to gloss over this major part of the main character's life. We know from the cartoonish depiction that Julia Roberts is in a loveless, hateful marriage (to Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, no less), but we know nothing of what brought them together. From the very first scene, it's clear that Roberts hates her husband, or that she should. He calls himself a blogger, but he's really just into looking at porn. (Speaking of, I highly await the part of Bryan Cranston's AFI highlight reel that includes the clip from this movie where he shouts, seriously, "I like BIG knockers!")

Roberts and her character are also central to the film's failings. It's no spoiler, I hope, to tell you that she and Hanks get together at the end of the movie. But you knew that, because OF COURSE they get together. Why would you see this movie expecting anything else? As it was pointed out by a few others who saw the movie with me, she and Hanks have no chemistry. At all. We know they'll get together because they're supposed to, but there's nothing on screen to make us interested in the coupling. What's worse is that we have no sense of Roberts playing a character outside of...well, Julia Roberts. Hanks has the same problem. The image that Hollywood has given us of Tom Hanks (and I think most everyone buys it, myself included) is that he's the late-20th-century version of Jimmy Stewart: ultra-nice, ultra-decent, ultra-good. That is the way Larry Crowne himself is written, so most of the movie plays as "young people" giving Tom Hanks a strange makeover that only makes him look cool to the other characters in the script, not anyone in the real world. Crowne is apparently a dope for not driving a scooter (granted, the mileage is great and cheap), and for not wearing scarves to college, and for myriad other weird things that no one in real life would get on a guy for. In essence, the biggest problem this movie has is that its view of the world is so skewed, you wonder when people like Hanks, Roberts, and Vardalos last entered it.

The way the younger characters and new media in general are portrayed is equally baffling. As I mentioned, Cranston's character is a self-proclaimed blogger, but this movie defines that vocation as looking at porn. Facebook and Twitter are name-dropped at the beginning of the movie by a fellow community college professor for being the main cause of short attention spans. It's nice to know that we never had ADD issues before 2004. When characters text, they do so with a rudimentary knowledge of how people communicate; maybe my frustration regarding the media aspect of this movie is that every single time the word "blog" is uttered, the contempt oozes off the screen. The young people are equally obnoxious here, even though they're played by relatively game actors. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a lovely young actress and acquitted herself well enough on the failed NBC series "Undercovers," but her character, Talia, is a frightening insight into how Hanks and Vardalos see people under the age of 30. She's yet another Manic Pixie Dream Girl (that term is, of course, copyrighted by Nathan Rabin of the A.V. Club), someone who exists to change another character, someone who is filled with forced whimsy, unnatural and beaming the entire time.

See, it's Talia who changes Larry's life, redoing his house with feng shui, getting him to join her scooter gang (which is led by Wilmer Valderrama, trying so very hard to make us all forget that he was Fez once), changing his hairstyle, changing his clothes, and on and on and on. Not that Larry is presented as being so much of a schlub that he needs a makeover, but this platitude-spouting cipher says so, thus it happens. So why don't I hate this movie? The cast, aside from Roberts, who I think is the real weak link here, does their very best with really shoddy material. Hanks is always going to be a charming screen presence, even though his characterization of Crowne is weak. There are plenty of actors I like in other projects here, from Cranston to Malcolm Barrett of the late, lamented "Better Off Ted," to Rami Malek from "The Pacific." They, and the film's standout, George Takei (yes, that one), are having a lot of fun here, and make for the sparse moment of humor.

But I'll be honest: this movie is a spectacular mess, at best. I was watching this and honestly asking, "Is this movie real?" When Valderrama and his scooter group starts to snap, a la West Side Story, I couldn't help but bug my eyes out in shock. That such a scene is meant to be funny just made it more galling, honestly. This movie has its heart in the right place, I know, but it's such a miss from Hanks and company that I want to know what they thought they were accomplishing. For the most part, this is a piece of fluff, and I wonder if Hanks was aiming for anything more than a pleasant diversion. But on the other hand, when the economy is mentioned as being a weary burden on Crowne, I figure that, maybe, Hanks and Vardalos were aiming high and undershot it so much. What a strange, odd, and somewhat awful movie this is.

Looking Back: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

How many of us are doing this, I wonder? Come November, it will have been ten years since the first Harry Potter film, directed by Chris Columbus, was released around the world. It's already been more than 10 years since we all entered the age of breathless cynicism surrounding major entertainment projects. These days, oohing, aahing, and tsking about the latest casting announcement for the new Twilight movie, or the impending Hunger Games series is old hat, but it started (at least, for me) in 2000, when the world was first introduced to Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. They were all pretty much unknown, yet these days, they've turned into an earnest Broadway performer, a budding fashion icon, and a happy oddball character actor.

So, as I said, with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 less than 3 weeks away, I wonder how many of us are going back to the early films or watching everything up to and including the final installment. Because I'm married to someone who's always been far more fanatical about the Harry Potter film series than the books (we've both read them all, but I was way more amped up for the releases of the last two books), I've seen all of the movies countless times. The only difference in watching 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher everywhere else in the world, but you know us Amurricans think philosophy is a snooze, so Sorcerer it is) was watching the Blu-ray version.

Watching HDTV is as old hat to me as is reading about casting announcements, but every now and then, I'm reminded of one of the negative aspects of high-definition content. On the one hand, with HD quality, you can see every pore, every color, and every element of an image. On the other hand...well, you can see every pore, every color, and every element of an image. I'm sure it registered with me in the past, but when I watched one of the major action sequences of this chapter of the series--Harry, Ron, and Hermione taking on an escaped troll--I was presented with some truly awful special effects. I suppose that Columbus and his special-effects crew was able to get away with Harry astride the large troll being, literally, a cartoon, because of how rapidly both characters are moving, but 10 years down the line, it's almost cringe-inducing to watch. There are a couple of other moments where the special effects show their seams, but that's something I can forgive more than the troll scene.

In some ways, I bet the folks who've been involved in making each Harry Potter movie look at the first one as a mulligan, creatively speaking. The fever pitch surrounding the book series hit its highest initial peak in the summer of 2000, when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released to the worldwide public. Everyone read every word of each book. We all knew the series in and out, and some people went much further with their fandom, as we all do depending on the story. The producers of the film knew that they had a seriously hot property on their hands, but it could blow up in their faces very quickly if they made one step wrong. I can understand that from a business standpoint, mind you. The Harry Potter series has proven, predictably, to be one of the biggest cash cows Warner Bros. Pictures (or any film studio) has ever had. We all know that the first reason why there's even a Part 2 to the final installment is to make more money. Yes, I can delude myself into thinking that the final book just had too much for one movie to cover (unless said movie was six hours long). But we all know money is the biggest draw for Warner Bros. If they could do what The Onion joked about last month--splitting the last five minutes into five separate movies--they would.

My point is, Warner Bros. didn't want to screw up any Harry Potter movie, so the producers and Columbus had to tread carefully. Very, very, very carefully. They may have figured that as long as they stayed faithful to the first book, audiences wouldn't charge at them with torches and pitchforks. The problem, creatively, is that by the time the first movie came out, the fourth book had been read, and re-read, countless times by the devoted fans. What's more, we all knew that the first book from J.K. Rowling was so vastly smaller in scope to even the fourth one--gasp! a Hogwarts student gets killed, and that's just when Lord Voldemort makes a massive return--that it's almost quaint to watch the first movie and think of its minor-league aspirations. So, yeah, I can understand the producers' wariness to make one wrong step with Sorcerer's Stone, but no amount of concessions can eliminate one fact: Chris Columbus is not a great director, and for these movies, you either need a great director or a director who can fool us into thinking they're great. Columbus isn't a woeful helmer; he can point and shoot just like most filmmakers. But giving this man the keys to a massive franchise was too safe a choice, especially when you consider that Warner Bros. wanted Steven Spielberg (which makes sense, more for the first two films, honestly) and would have been fine with Terry Gilliam. (I want to see the alternate-universe version of the Harry Potter film series, where Gilliam directed the same cast. Can you imagine what that would've looked like?) Columbus, while an 80s-era protege of Spielberg, was too bland, too simple, too American. In a series where no American characters even existed, it's at odds for Columbus to direct the first two chapters.

When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released in theaters, a good portion of critics went nuts for it. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, I remember, were over the moon, the latter comparing it to The Wizard of Oz. While it's probably true that, 50 years from now, the Harry Potter series will be remembered fondly, I don't think that, even in 2001, I knew why the comparison made any sense, qualitatively. On the one hand, bringing so precisely to life the world that Rowling began creating works out well. Each performer was cast well, because they exactly fit the character they were playing. The evocation of Hogwarts looks, mostly, accurate. It fails, though, in the same way that the first two films in the series fail: it looks fake. I recoil when I see a movie or a TV show wherein characters walk around a clearly fake environment. Sometimes, it can't be helped, but here's a movie where money was thrown around willy-nilly. As the series has progressed, that money has been well-spent, but in looking at the Hogwarts of the first film, it reminds me of the climax of Blazing Saddles, where the good guys build a facade of the town that the villains want to ransack, hoping to divert them. That's what Hogwarts looks like in this movie: a facade, ready to tip over when it's attacked by a stiff breeze.

20 years from now, I wonder if Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint will wince when watching footage from this movie. None of the kids are bad, mind you; all are given monumental tasks just in becoming these beloved characters, and acquit themselves well enough for child actors. But a lot of the tics that have haunted each of them (Grint's cartoonish mugging, Watson's propensity for acting with her constantly moving eyebrows, and Radcliffe's apparent insistence, early on, in almost baring his teeth in every shot) show up here and don't leave. To be honest, there's nothing too notable from the actors here. The only person who really sticks out is Ian Hart, who gets probably the most thankless major role in the entire franchise. Does anyone remember Professor Quirrell? The villains in the subsequent films usually have more substance or more connection to the overall mythology, but Quirrell gets one big scene and Hart overplays it as much as he can. The other adult performers don't go too far out of their comfort zones, which means they're almost underplaying; Alan Rickman, an inspired choice for Severus Snape, in particular, recites his lines at the lowest possible boil. (My favorite delivery of his comes much later in the series, though: "You....just....know.") Hart's over-the-top style wouldn't be matched until Helena Bonham Carter showed up in the franchise.

Every time I watch the first two films in the Harry Potter franchise, though, I forget that someone other than Michael Gambon played Albus Dumbledore. It's not that Gambon was so indelible as Dumbledore, but he's had a lot longer to work with the character, and the material he's had is a lot more substantial than what Harris had. Harris was a very talented actor in his time, but either because Columbus told him to do so or because he chose it, he plays Dumbledore solely as a grandfatherly figure. While that's not a bad decision--certainly, the complexities that defined Dumbledore don't rear their head early on in the books--I always wondered if Harris would be able to convincingly change on a dime once the third film came around. He's fine here, delivering his dialogue in a twinkly manner, but he's treated as an afterthought, as is Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall. Only Robbie Coltrane, as Hagrid, makes a serious mark here, but that's because Hagrid has a lot more to do early on in the series.

These days, I don't watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that much, nor Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which almost seem like British versions of The Goonies. Part of this is because so much of what made this series of books become so classic came after the first two books. Don't forget, the hype grew bigger once Prisoner of Azkaban hit the bookshelves. I eagerly await revisiting the other films in this series, but my hopes are only marginally higher for the second installment, in large part because it's better known as The Kenneth Branagh Show. Branagh gets a delightfully hammy part to play and does so marvelously, but at least he's actually having fun. The first film doesn't have a lot of fun in it, to the point where even transitions--such as when Nearly Headless Nick, portrayed by John Cleese, all but announces to the audience that Harry's become the Gryffindor Seeker--seem rote and lifeless. Lifeless is the worst thing any of these movies could be.