Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; a Beautiful Epitome of a Perfect Summer Movie

Playfully mixing several genres such as comedy, horror, romance, action, adventure and even a bit of a detective story, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth Harry Potter film and the second from director David Yates, is a fun and thrilling summer movie dealing with fear and tremors --of teenage love -- and the battle between good and evil.


In this sixth instalment of the Harry Potter series, Harry begins his sixth year at Hogwarts knowing that the world is now in serious threat because the Dark Lord Voldemort and his fellow Death Eaters are on the loose, causing havoc, death and destruction to the wizarding and the muggle world. He then finds an old potion book mysteriously marked “This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince” and, with Dumbledore’s help, begins to uncover Lord Voldemort’s dark history.

First and foremost, this is undeniably the most gorgeous-looking movie this year. Thanks to the graceful directing of director David Yates and the genius of the director of photography, newcomer Bruno Delbonnel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gives us an outstanding visual effect and cinematography. With much control of the CGI and special effect, David Yates shows us a whole exceptionally new atmospheric world using bigger set pieces that actually help the flow of the movie without really showing too much that it was edited by computers and thus making it a total eye-candy. And the choices of camera angles, extreme close-ups and the editing were very impressive. Furthermore, the score, consisting of orchestra and choir, really complements the movie and give each scene more emotion and a sense of nostalgia with the hint of the memorable sounds from The Order of the Phoenix.

Next, we can definitely see that the three main actors had grown up, not only physically but emotionally and also in the sense of acting skills. The story has to follow JK Rowling’s increasingly mature and darker books, and so have the actors. The sense of longing and raging hormones, plus the tense feeling towards danger and death makes this a more adult movie in the Harry Potter series thus far. But the PG rating seems fair. In The Goblet of Fire, Cedric Diggory’s death was shocking, but in The Half-Blood Prince, Voldemort is at full power, making us feel the constant presence of danger and evil and that anyone on screen could die at any moment (but do not fret, body count: 1).

But the thing is, this movie does not only deal with the three actors like the films before it. They are a few outstanding performances. One, by the amazing Tom Felton (who plays Draco Malfoy) who shows true emotion and sadness in what he was forced to do. And then there’s Jim Broadbent (who plays the new Prof. Slughorn) who could actually received an Oscar Buzz for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. He plays the old yet loved professor effortlessly and did the best with his time on screen without having to drown the other actors around him. A natural.

As for the action: yes, some action scenes were omitted from the movie, but those that were left behind are astoundingly thrilling. The most outstanding and chilling sequence is perhaps the cave scene. It is layered with horror, sadness and suspense and not to mention top notch special effect. The extra 7-month post production did the movie good!

Despite its long running time, over 2 hours and 30 minutes, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince seems adequate as David Yates pushes the movie to a running pace and some of us might even crave for more. But after entering the first two hours, you might already forget about the titular Half-Blood Prince. The mystery of the owner of the book is gone and drowned by some needless fillers (hint: too much romance is never good). The storyline itself missed some key points that made the book such a masterpiece.

If you see this movie as an adaptation, then, yeah, it’s not that good. But as a movie on its own, then Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a beautiful epitome of a true summer movie. Epic is definitely the word for it.

Public Enemies is an epic story told in a slow manner.

Public Enemies tells the story of John Dillinger, the 1930’s public enemy number one and how the Feds tried to take him down along with his friends. Or better yet, it just tells the story of how Dillinger was taken down. The story didn’t start at the beginning nor did it tells us about John Dillinger, it just skipped to the middle of his ‘career’ and showed us how he escaped from prison and went on a bank-robbery-spree. So, in a way, the story was not in depth and, of course, it didn’t really follow the real history with some changes made. But the storyline is gripping nonetheless.

The acting is brilliant. You can expect nothing less from the casts of Johnny Depp, who played public enemy number one convincingly; Christian Bale, who is obsessed to take Dillinger down; and of course the lovely Marion Cotillard, who played Dillinger’s girlfriends. Cotillard however didn’t get a very long screentime but she used every second of it to give us her best, and one of the best stand out scene is the interrogation scene.

The movie is shot with a shaky “hand-held” camera. It feels like we are chasing the action as it happens. And the tone of the movie is bright making it look like a documentary without the use of CGI or such. Everything about this movie looks realistic from the costumes to the buildings and cars in the background.

The soundtrack really fits the movie and I love the shooting scene, which most of the time is just silence with only gunshot ringing in the theatre hall. The gunshot sounds realistic. Not the usual "BANG BANG!!" sound. And not surprising since this movie is made by Michael Mann, the director of Heat (1995). It's like a symphony to the ear in a form of bullets.

All in all, the emotional ride that is Public Enemies is not for everyone and the 140 minutes long run does not help either. But if you want realistic drama and sweet shooting scene, plus great acting from a cast of brilliant actors and maybe a bit of history lesson, then this movie is for you.