Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Penayangan film box office Harry Potter telah memasuki musim keenam. Tahun ini, seri keenam Harry Potter dirilis bertepatan dengan liburan musim semi. Tidak heran, kemunculan film ini sangat dinanti para pecintanya yang kebanyakan anak-anak dan remaja.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince masih mengisahkan petualangan tiga orang sahabat, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), dan Hermione Granger (Emma Watson). Ketiga sahabat yang telah beranjak remaja ini kembali harus melewati hari-hari mereka di tingkat enam di sekolah sihir Hogwarts.

Kebangkitan penyihir hitam Lord Voldemort membuat para penyihir di Inggris was-was dan ketakutan. Pihak kementrian sihir pun kewalahan menghadapi aksi para Pelahap Maut (Death Eater) yang melakukan penyerangan secara brutal dan terang-terangan. Penyerangan tersebut membuat para muggle dapat merasakan keberadaan mereka.

Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), kepala sekolah sihir Hogwarts, semakin berusaha melindungi Harry Potter dari kejaran Pelahap Maut. Ia juga meningkatkan penjagaan di Hogwarts dengan menempatkan banyak Auror di setiap sudut sekolah. Ia juga sedang dalam misi pencarian sesuatu yang menurutnya dapat digunakan untuk menghancurkan Voldemort.

Untuk menjalani misinya, Dumbledore mengandalkan Harry Potter untuk membantunya. Ia meminta Harry untuk menarik perhatian guru baru ilmu ramuan, Profesor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). Sesuatu di diri guru tersebut dapat digunakan untuk menjatuhkan Voldemort.

Di sisi lain, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) menghadapi keadaan yang sangat sulit. Dia mendapat tugas penting dari Lord Voldemort. Jika ia tidak bisa menjalankan tugasnya dengan baik, ia akan dibunuh. Narcissa Malfoy (Helen McCrory), ibu Draco, sangat ketakutan. Ia pergi menemui Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) untuk meminta bantuan. Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), adik Narcissa, memaksa Snape melakukan sumpah mati untuk menjaga Draco.

Petualangan Harry Potter dan Dumbledore dimulai saat mereka pergi ke sebuah tempat yang dikelilingi lautan luas untuk mencari harta berharga milik Voldemort. Harry Potter harus melawan rasa kemanusiaannya ketika dengan terpaksa memaksa Dumbledore meminum racun sampai habis—walaupun Dumbledore terus menangis kesakitan.

Sekembalinya di Hogwarts, Harry Potter mendapatkan kejutan besar ketika melihat Draco Malfoy mengacungkan tongkat sihirnya ke arah Dumbledore. Ia juga melihat Snape dan beberapa pelahap maut mengerumuni Dumbledore. Apa yang akan ia lakukan ketika melihat sosok idolanya terpojok?

Cinta Segitiga

Tahun sebelumnya, Harry Potter sempat mempunyai hubungan khusus dengan Cho Cang, murid dari asrama Ravenclaw. Namun, hubungan tersebut tidak berjalan mulus karena Cho masih terbayang-bayang kenangan Cedric Diggory, anak yang dibunuh Lord Voldemort pada saat turnamen Triwizard di tahun keempat.

Kali ini, Harry mencoba mendekati Ginny Weasley (Bonny Wright), adik perempuan sahabatnya, Ron. Beberapa kali Harry mencoba mendekati Ginny, namun ia menjaga jarak ketika mengetahui kalau Ginny memiliki kekasih, Dean Thomas (Alfred Enoch).

Kisak klasik antara Ron dan Hermione juga masih berlangsung. Ron yang tidak pernah menyadari kalau Hermione menyukainya, malah asyik bersenang-senang dengan Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave), fans sejatinya. Beberapa kali Hermione menangis kesal dan berusaha membalas dendam dengan mengencani Cormac McLaggen (Freddie Stroma). Apakah Ron dan Hermione berhasil menghentikan kesalahpahaman tersebut dan menyatukan hati mereka?

Semakin Dewasa

Seri-seri Harry Potter memang selalu menarik untuk ditunggu. Setiap tahun, cerita tentang penyihir berkacamata bulat ini mengalami perkembangan. Ketika Harry Potter beranjak dewasa, maka kisah dan pengalaman hidupnya pun semakin kompleks.

Inilah yang terlihat pada Harry Potter seri keenam ini. Jika pada seri pertama sampai ketiga film ini masih diperuntukkan untuk anak-anak, seri keempat sampai keenam diperuntukkan untuk remaja. Seiring perkembangannya, film Harry Potter tidak lagi aman untuk anak-anak karena dianggap terlalu menakutkan karena terdapat adegan kekerasan, pembunuhan, dan konspirasi.

Dalam Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, terdapat perbedaan yang cukup signifikan dari film-film sebelumnya. Karakter setiap tokohnya tergali lebih dalam. Di sini, kita dapat mendalami sifat masing-masing tokoh. Selain itu, sentuhan humor dan kisah percintaan juga cukup kental dalam film ini. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, dan Hermione Granger tampil lebih “hidup” dan lebih “memiliki perasaan”.

Berita gembira untuk para penggila Harry Potter. Film yang resmi ditayangkan serempak di seluruh bioskop di Indonesia pada 16 Juli 2009 ini akan tampil dalam format IMAX 3D pada 29 Juli 2009. film dalam format IMAX 3D ini dapat Anda nikmati di studio-studio IMAX terdekat. Dengan begitu, Anda seakan langsung merasakan petualangan seru Harry Potter dan kawan-kawan melawan kekejian raja kegelapan Lord Voldemort.(LUQ)

Tanggal rilis: Kamis, 16 Juli 2009
Genre : adventure/mistery/romance/fantasy
Durasi : 153 menit
Sutradara : David Yates
Produser : David Hayman
Pemain : Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Tom Felton.
Produksi : Warner Bros Pictures

Bruno

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest alter ego, Austrian fashionista Bruno, arrived for the premiere of his film to a trumpet fanfare of disco classic I Will Survive.

Dressed in a bearskin and his own take on the Queen's guardsman's uniform - including a sleeveless jacket and frighteningly tight hot pants - he told the crowd: "This is the most important movie starring a gay Austrian since Terminator 2."

Inside the cinema, he greeted the audience and said he hoped the film would undo "all the negative stereotyping of the gay community done by Milk" - referring to Sean Penn's Oscar-winning turn as gay rights activist Harvey Milk earlier this year.

His controversy-baiting comments set the tone for the film, which is clearly intended to shock and amuse in equal measure.

Like Cohen's previous hit, Borat, the film shows Bruno interacting with "real" people, unaware they are the stars of the show - a feat which must be difficult considering how well-known the comedian is now.

In pictures: Bruno premiere

Bruno finds himself shunned in Austria when, reporting from a fashion show, the character's Velcro suit becomes stuck to a rail of clothes and he falls on to the stage wrapped in a curtain.

So in a bid to turn himself around, he goes to Los Angeles to try to become the "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler".

And that is it, as far as plot is concerned. The rest of the film goes from one stunt to the next, following all of Bruno's failed attempts at trying to get famous.

Among other things, we see him try his hand at acting; adopting an African baby; becoming a chat show host (complete with unsuspecting celebrities); trying to get kidnapped by terrorists; becoming heterosexual and going to a swingers party.

There are some very funny moments, including a brilliant scene where, while trying to bring about peace in the Middle East, two rival camps have to explain to Bruno that Hamas and hummus are not the same thing - but both agree at the same time that hummus is a good thing.

Elsewhere, the reaction of a test-screen audience to the pilot of his US TV show will have you watching through your fingers if you feel uncomfortable about full-frontal male nudity - or conversations about bleaching your intimate areas.

Sacha Baron Cohen as Bruno in London's Leicester Square

Throughout, Cohen is almost heroically reckless with regard to his own personal safety. In one scene, he is chased down the street by a crowd of people in the Middle East after dressing like a Hassidic Jew in hot pants.

And, at an anti-gay cage fight in Arkansas, he ends up in an all-male love scene performed to an increasingly angry mob who end up throwing metal chairs at him.

The comedian has obviously come away unscathed from all of these incidents, although producer Dan Mazer says Cohen was arrested in three continents while making the film and saw "some things no heterosexual male should ever have to see".

Bruno pushes the boundaries further than Borat ever did.

Sometimes you question whether he has finally crossed the line into offensive bad taste - and, latterly, whether you were right to laugh at it - but the audience all seemed to guffaw and groan in the right places. They even gasped in horror when they were supposed to.

It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea and if you are easily shocked this certainly won't be for you, but some will find it outrageously hilarious.

Public Enemies

My Sister's Keeper

Bottom Line: A thinking man and woman's weepy.

If you're going to make a weepy, there's no reason you can't make it with intelligence and insight as the makers of "My Sister's Keeper" have done. The audience manipulation -- if one wants to call it that -- comes from your understanding of these people and how this particular family operates in an atmosphere of love and mutual concern. The tragedy that forces its way into their midst is fought with tenacity, and the conflicts within the family are portrayed in such a manner that no one is a bad guy.

A film about a child with leukemia understandably has a small theatrical audience. Indeed, Jodi Picoult's novel, on which Jeremy Leven and director Nick Cassavetes' screenplay is based, might seem more at home on television, where illness, doctors and hospitals somehow feel less alarming. But "My Sister's Keeper" does benefit from a sagacious big-screen treatment: It allows for nuances and takes time to focus this story of an illness on all the people it affects.

The movie begins with a bit of misdirection when 11-year-old Anna (Abigail Breslin) sues her parents. It looks like you're headed into a fascinating legal drama dealing with a thorny ethical issue.

Anna has always known she is a "donor child." When her parents, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), discover their first daughter, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), has leukemia, they choose to conceive another child through genetic engineering who would be a perfect genetic match with Kate. Thus, Anna can donate blood or whatever else is necessary to keep her elder sister alive.

The two girls love each other dearly, so Anna never complains. Then, 11 years into this routine, Kate's kidneys are failing and she'll need one of Anna's. Anna finally says no. She hires a big-shot lawyer (Alec Baldwin), whose face adorns billboards and buses all over Los Angeles, and goes to court seeking her "medical emancipation." But her mom, who gave up a law practice to care for her ailing daughter, will make a ferocious opponent.

The movie isn't about a court battle. The film moves back and forth in time to show how decisions were made and how this illness impacts everyone, including older brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson), who at times feels overlooked because of his sisters' relay team in body parts. The movie reflects back on the joys and sorrows of a family and how love can be just as strong whether the answer is yes ... or no.

The film takes time giving you the background on everyone, and that includes the judge (Joan Cusack) who will decide the issue and a fellow cancer patient (Thomas Dekker) who becomes Kate's love interest.

OK, maybe everything is a little too neat, too perfect. If you're going to be in a hospital, you would want David Thornton's Dr. Chance for your doctor. He's compassionate, honest, smart and -- this element veering into science fiction -- always available for consultation.

You would want your mom to be running over everyone else's feelings in fighting for your life. You'd want a dad who continues to do his job -- as a fireman, no less! -- even though the illness marginalizes him within his own family. You'd want a brother and sister this loving, but would that ever happen?

The ugliness of the illness also is not depicted in detail. Even the vomiting is mostly offscreen. And the ending is dragged out unnecessarily. It is the one occasion where you might legitimately complain about manipulation.

Nevertheless, the actors work with a beguiling earnestness. Diaz goes without any discernible makeup and even shaves her head at one point (so her daughter won't feel "ugly" following chemotherapy.) All the work pays off: This family feels like a family and not an ensemble thrown together in the casting process. When they gather around Kate's hospital bed, the whole things seems very real. Thus, the tears.

Opens: Friday, June 26 (Warner Bros.)

Review: Year One

by Jeffrey M. Anderson Jun 19th 2009 // 9:02AM

Harold Ramis has worked in comedy a long time, and his career has taken many directions. With his work on the Ghostbusters (1984) script and his straight-man performance in the film, he managed to allow Bill Murray room to move and riff within the confines of a visual effects-heavy summer blockbuster. As for the meticulously crafted classic Groundhog Day (1993), I hesitate to call any movie "perfect," but it comes close. But then there were phoned-in hits like Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That (2002) that seemed too tightly wound and too slavishly dependent on plot to be very funny.

Ramis' new film Year One, on the other hand, comes closer to the spirit of his directorial debut Caddyshack (1980). I'm not saying it's quite as funny or as brilliant, but it's in the same spirit. It cares thankfully little about its plot or its character arcs, or historical accuracy; it's a bit flabby and careless, but it's also gleefully stupid, and it has the ability to knock you off guard and make you giggle helplessly.

Jack Black stars as Zed, an inept hunter in a primitive tribe of hunter-gatherers. His best friend is Oh (Michael Cera), a gatherer who forever endures jokes about his girlishness. Zed is in love with Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Oh with Eema (Juno Temple), but neither loser has enough going for him to promise them much. So when Zed eats from the tree of forbidden fruit, he is forced to leave and Oh tags along. (Subsequently, Zed believes he has been "chosen.") On their first stop, they meet arguing brothers Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd), and watch slack-jawed as Cain bludgeons his brother to death. Now more or less fugitives, they continue on, becoming slaves, escaping, meeting Abraham and stopping him from sacrificing his son, and finally venturing into the sin-ridden city of Sodom to rescue their girls.

Year One starts out with a couple minutes of ultra-serious Apocalypto-type footage, with tribal hunters stalking some prey in the jungle, before Zed bungles out and establishes the tone for the entire film. Basically, everyone speaks English, and modern-day vernacular and slang are allowed, even if references to modern-day inventions and developments are not. The eventual goal is for the two boys to become men and earn the hands of their beloved women, but the movie doesn't mind occasionally stopping for laughs in the pursuit of this goal. Unfortunately, if the gags don't work in these stopping places, the stop just feels like a lag, like a bit of fat that didn't get trimmed out. And indeed, we get the usual share of penis jokes, pee jokes and poo jokes that rarely work. (There are few sex jokes; they were reportedly cut out during an appeal to change the rating from 'R' to 'PG-13.') I laughed at one pee joke, but not because of the joke itself; rather, I laughed at Black's follow-up line: "I'm peeing on my own face, too... on the inside."

Black is a good reason why most of this works. (Back in 2000, I was convinced that Black deserved an Oscar nomination for High Fidelity.) Like Murray in Ghostbusters or Will Ferrell in his best films, Black has discovered a way to make it seem as if he's improvising all his lines in his own style. And his style is awfully hard to define; he's cocky and confident, yet not arrogant or overbearing. He's incompetent, but not useless. He's verbose but not obnoxious. His funniest lines can sometimes seem like the creation of an enthusiastic ten year-old or like the creation of a clever and witty playwright. It seems as if many up-and-coming comedians are trying in various ways to copy Black's brand of tubby energy, and failing (Dan Fogler comes to mind).

However, Black is surrounded in Year One by many other able comedians; Cera has a similar, rambly type of comic delivery, but sweeter and quieter, and he's a perfect match for Black. Ramis appears as Cain and Abel's father Adam, and Hank Azaria -- apparently capable of any voice or accent -- is Abraham, who is obsessed with circumcising every male within earshot. Oliver Platt is very funny as the lusty, effeminate high priest, and Cross makes an appealing maniacal Cain. And the great Vinnie Jones (The Midnight Meat Train), with his psychotic, soccer hooligan stare, plays a violent guard. To round out the comedy pedigree, we have screenwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, from the American version of TV's "The Office" (on which Ramis also worked), and of course, producer Judd Apatow, who seems to collect a stable of comedians like a nobleman might collect prize steeds.

In the end, we get a reel of hilarious bloopers, which indicates how much fun the shoot must have been. It reminded me of a few other comedies, specifically things like Three Amigos, The Golden Child and Spaceballs, that critics aren't supposed to like, but somehow provide some guilty laughs anyway, mainly because of the comic energy that radiates from the screen. With all these different types of funny people butting heads all day long every day, something good was bound to come out of it.

Review: The Proposal

I love watching Sandra Bullock, who is enjoyable even in the lamest of films. And sadly, there are so many lame movies starring Bullock, and so few that I would enjoy watching more than once -- Infamous is a rare exception. After I saw Speed, I said that I thought Bullock could be this generation's Carole Lombard, but unfortunately the actress has not yet found her Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch. The Proposal is yet another Bullock-starring formulaic romantic comedy with little to offer except sparkling performances, and not just from Bullock.

Margaret Tate (Bullock) is the terror of the Manhattan publishing office where she's editor-in-chief, and even her charming assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is scared of her. Her Achilles heel turns out to be that she's ... Canadian, and she's about to be deported for a year due to some visa problems. So Margaret hurriedly declares that she's engaged to Andrew, who's American. You don't have to have seen Green Card to guess the rest of the story.

The "happy couple" meets with skepticism from INS, so to prove their love, they travel to Andrew's family home in small-town Alaska to celebrate his Granny Annie's (Betty White) 90th birthday. Since Bullock is starring and it's a romantic comedy, we know her character will be humbled and tumbled about, away from her native habitat of New York. If only we could vanquish all our power-crazed bosses this way ...

Admittedly, I am so pleased to see Bullock -- or any actress, for that matter -- playing a romantic comedy heroine who isn't "adorably" klutzy or awkward that I'm almost willing to love The Proposal on that strength alone. However, I don't care for the stereotype of the Evil Female Witch-Boss either, especially when you know a comeuppance is forthcoming. At least this character doesn't need an adorable child to become acceptably feminine.

In addition, I don't like humiliation comedy, which is in abundance during the first half of The Proposal. I don't laugh when a character is taken down a peg by being blackmailed onto her knees in public (as in the above photo), or when a male character is embarrassed about being portrayed as a "sensitive guy" around his manly friends. I feel sorry for them, even if they're fictional. I never could watch even "America's Funniest Home Videos" because I always pitied the stumbling bride or clumsy child. I realize I'm in the minority -- a lot of audience members nearly laughed themselves sick over one character being mean to another, or being harassed by Mother Nature -- so use your judgment here about your own sense of humor.

The Proposal does have some inspired comic moments -- I love the waves of instant messaging that flow through the publishing office, signaling that Margaret is stalking the floor or spreading gossip. And being a geek, one bit involving a sound in an Internet cafe made me giggle. Many of the gags, however, were old and tired when Granny Annie was a mere slip of a girl.

Despite the tired and sometimes mean-spirited jokes, Bullock is still delightful to watch. She knows how to portray this type of character and her transformation, and hits every note perfectly. Reynolds doesn't have a strongly written character to work with, but he's charming enough to pull it off anyway. For the most part, the supporting cast has little to do: Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson are typically parental, Malin Akerman smiles a lot as the cute hometown ex-flame, Michael Nouri sits behind a desk. Oscar Nunez (The Office) and Betty White provide the film's broadest comedy, but I feel like we got a little too much of their forcefully, fitfully wacky humor, which dilutes their genuinely funny moments.

Nights in Rodanthe

Movies like Nights in Rodanthe are beyond reviewing, because intellectually analyzing them cancels out their intended effect. This is a weepie, pure and simple. If you're the type that likes crying at the movies, you'll love it. If you loved Richard Gere and Diane Lane together in a thriller like Unfaithful (2002) but you don't like to cry, you probably won't like it. Me, I found a few things to like and much to loathe.

Diane Lane stars in Nights in Rodanthe as Adrienne Willis, a frazzled single mother with a young son and a teenage daughter; the latter has just begun talking back and expressing her universal disdain for everything her mother does. Adrienne's no-good husband (Christopher Meloni), who, we learn, has had an affair, arrives to pick up the kids so that Adrienne can go help her happy-go-lucky pal Jean (Viola Davis, playing a typical movie "best friend") look after a sexy, beach-side North Carolina hotel during its off-season. Unfortunately, the husband now wants to get back together.

Confused Adrienne arrives at the hotel, which is decorated head-to-foot in all kinds of colored, tinkly bric-a-brac and prepares for its one and only guest. Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) is a doctor struggling with a dark secret, and who has arrived for an equally mysterious errand. The attractive duo eventually warm up to one another and talk, but their dark secrets get in the way. Meanwhile, a huge storm threatens to blow away everything that isn't nailed down. I guess it's not too hard to guess what happens next. (Trivia hounds: this is Gere and Lane's third movie together. Besides Unfaithful, they were in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club together way back in 1984.)

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the new movie is how rare this genre is these days. Lately, weepies come attached to some important message so that the picture can rise up to earn accolades and Oscar nominations; they're set during a war, or have something to do with disease (think Atonement or Love in the Time of Cholera). Nights in Rodanthe doesn't require any such pretense. It's about a man and a woman who fall in love, and because we're talking Nicholas Sparks, we're talking tragic results rather than happy ones. And that's it.

Because Nights in Rodanthe is such a pure weepie, it made me recall an influential study done by film scholar Linda Williams, who helped define the "body genres." She named porno, horror films and weepies as the three main genres that elicit physical reactions from audiences. I never agreed with her on the weepie categorization until now. This is exactly the type of movie she was talking about. Like a porno film or a horror film, it has one goal and only one goal. If it affects you intellectually, then it has failed. If it doesn't jerk your tears, then it has failed.

Diane Lane goes a long way toward making the film work. She's perfectly at home inside this material (as she usually is in any material, bless her), and her emotional openness and ease carry us through some of the clunkier passages. However, rookie director George C. Wolfe, who comes from television, fails to direct Gere with the same touch; Gere seems to overshoot his lines, always aiming too high, as if unsure of his character's responses. This split continues across the film; the music selection is good (Dinah Washington!) and the set design seems right, but the tone, the editing and the pacing fall far short of their potential. One scene at a town fish-fry earned unintentional laughs from the audience at my screening.

Then there's the story by Nicholas Sparks, which is what it is. It's pure hokum, totally ridiculous, but the trick is to treat it as if it weren't. And because Wolfe fails half the time, the story begins to show through, more and more frequently calling attention to itself. The greatest weepies ever made are the ones by Douglas Sirk in the 1950s (Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, etc.). Sirk was an artist, and he could shape and design an absolutely brilliant scene around the most hysterical plot; his films almost play more like films noir than weepies. I don't feel ashamed watching them. But perhaps that's the key. As with horror films and porno films, much of the joy of weepies comes from the stupid, guilty pleasure we feel at having been so crassly manipulated.

Which leads me to the major problem of Nights in Rodanthe: the fact that Gere is in his fifties and Lane is in her forties. It's much harder to fool audiences in that age group; they've seen more movies and know more tricks. Younger audiences have greedily indulged in the previous two Sparks films The Notebook (2004) and A Walk to Remember (2002), mainly because they were based on characters in their teens and twenties and the stories probably seemed new. The first Sparks film, Message in a Bottle (1999), was also based on the older generation, and it failed. Nights in Rodanthe exists in a similar void. Younger viewers are not going to want to see an icky romance about (eww!) people their parents' age, while older viewers are going to want to stay home and rent Atonement.