cinephile

Sep 7, 2026 ∞

Speed-Running Harry Potter in Cinema

My oldest started, and finished, Harry Potter this summer. He read the first book in a day and half. Although he slowed down a bit as they got longer, it still took only about seven weeks to read seven books.

So we rewarded him by taking him to see all eight films for the 25th Anniversary re-release in cinema. I had seem them all on DVD/Blu-Ray with my wife about 12 years ago, but not since. (A few we watched after he finished the first couple of books, then we stopped once we knew were going to take him.)

Some random, loosely connected thoughts, on seeing them in theaters.

The big screen really does make a difference. There are so many subtle details in the backgrounds of many scenes.
Chris Columbus is a master of blocking.
All these years I’ve been watching the extended versions. The first time I watched HP was with my wife. I never read the books (except for the first one with a friend in college). I was a bit too old for the first one when it came out and was in the military, deployed after 9/11 and all that when the movies started releasing. So it wasn’t an objection to the films but was just doing different stuff.
Basilisk is much more terrifying on a large screen.
I can’t handle when Amos Diggory “my boy!"—it’s too close. I understand that pain and no one ever wants to feel like that, and I wouldn’t wish that pain on my worse enemy.
Goblet of Fire might be the most interesting of the films because it marks the shift from idilic school boys stories to serious literature
Was Harry looking at Ginny or someone else when Patel said “she’s beautiful” (but was looking at Hermione in the other direction)?
Dobbie’s death might be the most heartbreaking loss in the whole series. He was a free elf.
Speaking of free elf, I missed it the first time but Dobbie has shoes, like sneakers or something, when he’s at Malfoy manner. Loved that detail.
The Christ allusions are so much more obvious after all these years; and though JKR has been open about that intentionality, and her own doubts, I couldn’t help but chuckle at all the concern from Christians circa 1999–2007 when the books were coming out.
Fred Weasley’s death hit my son too hard (see #5 above). My kiddo held my hand and got choked up. We talked about Paco a bit in the theater and on the way home. Much as we loved that boy, we agreed, he would have been a Slytherin—what an ambitious troublemaker Paco was.

Watched (popcorn emoji for the days we ordered concessions):

Aug 14, 2026 ∞

Watched: The Mummy 🍿

Big kid (10.5) thought it was funny. He was scared of the scabbards. Funny how all these years later that’s what scary. I recall the effects being terrifying, but in hindsight they are pretty dated.

Jul 30, 2026 ∞

I can neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have purchased Arrow Video’s 4k remaster of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy, at 50 % off during the sale at Barnes and Noble.

Jul 16, 2026 ∞

Watched: The Odyssey 🍿

It’s happening, folks. No IMAX 70 near me alas. But also, no spoilers at least until Monday or Tuesday.

The theater bar was closed, so we’re getting popcorn.

Jul 14, 2026 ∞

Double header this past weekend in between World Cup matches. 🍿

Watched:

Finished the entire saga with the boys. It holds up as a complete story even as some films fell short.

Jul 1, 2026 ∞

My modest Criterion Collection haul this year

It’s that time of year when Barnes and Nobel has Criterion Collection films at half-off. I ran into one of the local stores today to see what was there. Maybe I’ll run into another one later to take a gander at what’s in stock. But with so much going on and uncertainty in our life right now, I would be happy if this were my full haul for 2026.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Pee-Wee was one of my first films that obsessed over. I was a kid when it came out. And I remember my sister’s chagrin when I would select that from Blockbuster for the millionth time. I didn’t realize it was a Tim Burton film but based on my memory of the film, it totally makes sense in hindsight.
La Bamba. A good friend of mine and I have a theory that there are two types of Mexican-Americans, Selena Chicanos and Richie Valens Chicanos. Naturally, I need this in my collection. (And maybe one day Criterion will Selena as well.)
Flight of the Phoenix. Flight is special. Along with Excalibur, it was one of the first serious movies I remember watching with my dad as a kid. I think I know this whole film by heart as a storyboard. I can see every major scene in my mind as if I saw it yesterday even though it’s been 25-30 years since I last watched it with my dad.

Mar 19, 2026 ∞

Watched: Project Hail Mary 🍿

I nearly cried at the end. What an incredible film and career defining performance by Gosling. The score, cinemetography, and editing were flawless. Easily going to be on a lists to @mwerickson’s request for top 5 films.

Mar 17, 2026 ∞

While working on my post about my top five films, I went to Arrow’s website to link to my recently purchased Excalibur only to discover they’ve remastered Innerspace.

Mar 17, 2026 ∞

Top Five Films

Over on the excellent Micro Blog platform, Matt Erickson asked for folk’s top five movies of all time. The responses from others were quite good and I have some new films to add to my queue. I made a list of my top films something like 15 or 16 years ago. My own list was semi-inspired by either Rob Gordon’s penchant for top five lists in the film High Fidelity, or something Merlin Mann might have written on the now defunct/dormant website 43 Folders.

I had to dig up that original note,

Original List

I will die on this hill but Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight is basically a remake of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Both capture a fundamental tension between two types of people, those who are so corrupt that they cannot be part of civilized society, and those who are so truly self-sufficient that they do not need it. Most of us exist in the spectrum between these two archetypes (see Aristotle’s Politics for more on this). We’re moral agents, but we’re also flawed moral agents.

Gran Torino is deeply underrated. I stopped watching the Oscars when the film was completely snubbed. It was obvious by 2008 that Eastwood’s politics were not consistent with Hollywood’s elite. But I think it was a bridge too far for Academy voters to acknowledge that of all people, Eastwood would be the one to make to make arguably the greatest film about the immigrant experience and the challenges of a community to blend in while holding on to one’s home culture. And Eastwood did that while also remaining sensitive to the experience of the “native” Americans coming to grips with a changing ethnic landscape in their communities. (Eastwood’s Kowalski implies that he’s of Polish decent; the Poles immigrated to the US when Poland didn’t exist as a country and often faced suspicion that they could be adequately assimilated into American society in the 19th and early 20th centuries.) Gran Torino is such a serious and seriously deep film.

I once spent an entire day running around Montmarte and Sacre Coeur in Paris with a buddy looking for the cafe and stairs at the beginning of Ronin. The dialogue is first class, and the action sequences are a reference by which all others should be measured. When I first watched this film, I hadn’t seen the car chases of Bullit and The French Connection. Only later would I see and appreciate the influences of those films on John Frankenheimer.

I traveled a lot in my late-teens and 20s, both on my own and during my deployments with the Air National Guard. A friend and I even did a working holiday in Australia in 2003. Lost in Translation spoke to me as I left that itinerant period of my life. It still holds up I think even if the film isn’t for everyone.

New List

I am tempted to leave several originals on the updated list but that makes this exercise too easy. So here’s a new list, considering what else I’ve seen and what else I’ve come to appreciate since my original list circa 2010–2011. An updated list is actually quite hard. I started my PhD in the fall of 2011 and by the time I finished, I had a wife and two kids. I didn’t go back to see films regularly for some time and even now, I rarely see new movies as frequently as I’d prefer.

If you’re not into Shakespeare, I suspect it is because you were subjected to a lot of Romeo and Juliet in high school and Jet Li was a little out of his depth as a star crossed lover, and Leo was a bit too saturated after Titanic for re-watching. The political plays are phenomenal. Ralph Fiennes adaptation of Coriolanus, imagines ancient Rome as a military dictatorship in Eastern Europe. The language remains Shakespearean but the cinematography is contemporary. The chief advantage here is that we get to see Shakespeare on film in a way that makes sense for film, but we get to hear Shakespeare in all his gloriously dramatic wit.

All of Wes Anderson’s films are fundamentally about friendship. The Life Aquatic might be the best. Zissou’s transformation is only a part of it. Everyone is affected by the mission and partly redeemed by his coming to terms with himself and his crew. I’m a sucker for films taking place in Los Angeles. 500 Days stole my heart with the location shooting. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have great chemistry. They both deserve to be in more top billing films.

Honorable Mention

I just bought Excalibur on a remastered 4k Blu-ray by Arrow Films. It was the first serious film I remember watching with my dad. In fact, I had it saved in my Amazon list when he got sick and after he died on Ash Wednesday, I needed to pick it up while I could.

The first film that really stuck with me as a kid was Coming to America. I was way too young to have seen it, but I had older cousins who spoiled me. It too presents the immigrant experience and captures the feeling of the late 1980s better than just about anything from that period. It was the first film I ever wore out on VHS and needed to purchase another copy. Once Upon A Time In The West might be the greatest Western ever made. The opening sequence alone is a masterclass in filmmaking. Three Kings as well is underrated and does not get enough credit for how good it is. The moral transformation of the main characters works. And the short discussion on courage between the characters Major Archie Gates and Private Conrad Vig cuts to the heart of how the virtues actually work—you have to do the hard thing first, then you get the virtue afterward. Groundhog Day of course needs to apologia from me. It’s well regarded and deserves all the praise it gets. But I’m surprised how many folks still haven’t seen it.

Finally, Recount tells the story of the 2000 election and treats both parties sympathetically. It’s really good and worth a watch. Never Let Me Go hits hard once you realize what the big reveal is. What an incredible way to raise the ethical issues and get audiences thinking it over. My wife cried at the end, and she doesn’t even like films particularly. Frequencies is clever. It has an interesting premise to raise the idea of fate and free will. It might not hold up well in the years ahead but I liked it. And speaking of films that don’t hold up but have an interesting premise, I could not fail to mention In Time.