Or for short, Harry Chamber Pot. In the second screen adaptation of a J.K. Rowling children's book, our now pubescent hero fumbles his way to a giant, squirming, slithering basilisk (syn., cockatrice) via a concealed orifice in the girls' lavatory, the haunt of a ghost called Moaning Myrtle: "Harry, if …
The epic chronicle ends, after eight films that filled a decade. The over $7 billion in movie lucre it will finally receive is far less important than the many millions of fans who have loved the storytelling abundance, the beautiful splurges of craft, the three growing heroes (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma …
The fourth installment in J.K. Rowling's series of children's books yields a two-and-a-half-hour movie which, for all its furious activity, gets virtually nowhere. It gets, more specifically, through the "legendary" Triwizard Tournament, only to arrive at the dampening admonition, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead." Potterites, under the freedom-of-religion pact, …
Part VI — Pot VI — comes close to a complete cheat. The once child actors, children no more, are developing faster than the story, and indeed the foretold war with the Dark Lord tends here to be crowded out by assorted amorous hankerings among Hogwarts classmates. (Those broomsticks for …
Pot V, if you're counting. War with the Dark Lord, as you might recall from the end of Pot IV, approaches; and after another two-and-a-quarter hours of stretching and padding, it still approaches. At the rate Daniel Radcliffe is aging, Harry looks on course to be the World's Oldest Grad …
Or for short, Pot III. It has a new director — Alfonso Cuarón, of A Little Princess and, less pertinently, Y Tu Mamá También — and a new Dumbledore — Michael Gambon, in place of the late Richard Harris — in addition to new roles for the likes of Gary …
The children's book by J.K. Rowling, now a movie by Chris Columbus — maker of, among others, Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Stepmom, and Bicentennial Man, chief rival of Steven Spielberg for his in-touchness with the Inner Child. No longer applicable, quite plainly, will be the …
A commanding title with a game cast, slugging their hearts out to bring a fascinating, seldom-told story to life. But all first-time writer-director John Krokidas can spoon up is detached melodrama. In 1944, Lucien Carr (Leo DiCaprio’s eerie "evil twin," Dane DeHaan), one of the forgotten members of the "Beat …
Hank (Paul Dano) is about to commit suicide when he discovers a dead body (Daniel Radcliffe) in this comedic fantasy film written directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
Screenwriter Max Landis transfigures the backstory of Mary Shelley’s almighty monster-maker into a set-bound action/adventure/horror/buddy comedy told from the POV of the cutest lil’ hunchback this side of Disney’s bell-ringer. Daniel Radcliffe plays the abscess-backed circus clown (possessed with a surgeon’s steady hand) plucked from under the big top by …
Warning: contents could cause loathing. Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan star as a pair of aimlessly adorable twentysomethings on the rebound and eager to demonstrate the futility of platonic male-female relationships. How did a talented guy like Michael Dowse go from directing the flipped out and intensely moving It’s All …
Daniel Radcliffe takes his first (modest) steps away from Harry Potter. Wisely, he does not stray too far: It’s still England, there are still ghosts to deal with, and the setting is still otherworldly. Only here, it’s a haunted house in Victorian times. Director James Watkins gets the rotting look …