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The production team for the Harry Potter films has it rough. They're sitting on the rights to the best selling book series of all time, and they've made a series of highly successful adaptations of the first books in the series. But each book keeps getting longer, darker and more adult in tone. Meanwhile, their actors are ALSO getting more adult. That's the first thing that struck me when watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix . As the credits finish, the camera swoops down to eventually find Harry sitting on a swing in the park and the first thing I thought was "look how freaking OLD he's gotten!" Not that he's old, of course. But he's certainly not the fifteen year old you're expecting. He's too tall, too mature, for the role. Fortunately, within minutes you forget about it. Partly, it's because all the REST of the 'kids' in the movie have grown up as well, so there's a consistency that makes it easier to accept t

A kind of obvious title for any post talking about a Michael Bay film, but let me reiterate… Transformers is one big, dumb, loud movie. With a healthy emphasis on dumb. I guess I should acknowledge that I've never been a Transformers fan. They came along too late for my childhood cartoon watching, and too early for my adult appreciation of all things animated, so they got lumped into that "my god, another cartoon designed to shill toys" category. And it's never really left that category for me. So my excitement level over this would have been hard to find, let alone measure. Suffice it to say, I had an afternoon to kill, I'd heard it was a fun time at the movies and I figured, if I'm GOING to watch the damn thing, I'd better do it in a theatre where I can get the full effect of all those exploding robots. I'm going to opine, first off, that the "fun time at the movies" comment is really one of those "all a matter of taste" moments