One Movie to See and Another to Skip (No. 73)

Movie to See: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1)

I think I can sum this one up pretty well for my tastes: Long, mostly uneventful, and kind of dreary. I understand that this movie is generally the 'build up' portion of the bigger conclusion to the entire series that you have to endure before the good stuff gets started. I get it, but it would have felt better if I could have watched the two movies back to back... I think. I do think that this latest Potter flick is more complex, emotionally, than the previous movies, which saves it for me. While there is still that silly element where one of the best friends is mad at another for the entire movie due to some completely overblown incident, which is always kind of tiresome (but so are teenagers), I don't feel as though the reasoning for the tiff was quite as trite as usual. That helped, despite the urge to roll my eyes. I felt that way when I read the series too, so it didn't surprise me. While I have to say that these folks spent a surprising amount of time in a tent, which I don't believe ever makes for great cinema, it is still a decent movie. Not the best in the series, but hopefully Part 2 will make up for it.

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Movie to Skip: Tokyo Gore Police

I don't think I could say with a straight face that I was "surprised" by the sheer amount of carnage in a film called Tokyo Gore Police, but WOW is there a lot of it! Basically this is a super bloody live-action anime film. Because of that, and probably thankfully because of that, it's kind of hard to take this one too seriously. Now The Passion on the other hand... Anyway, the sheer morbid absurdity that surrounds this flick will make this one pretty hard to swallow for most. I mean, if you like to watch over-the-top movies about hot samurai sword wielding, mini-skirt sporting, police women fighting deadly genetic mutants in the silliest and bloodiest ways possible, then this may be your cup of tea... For the rest of us, we can just skip it. I will say that there are some inexplicable starship trooper "ad" elements - all disturbing - that I didn't quite get. It probably says a LOT about this film that there is an homage to Paul Verhoeven...