A little bit of '05 and a little bit of '06

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 4 Stars. Before I begin what will be my best-reviewed film of 2005, I have to preface it by saying that I saw this digitally projected onto the IMAX screen at the National Museum of Natural History. I freely admit that seeing it in that format may have colored my opinion of the film. Having said that, WOW! Most of my friends gave fairly lackluster reviews of this film, and I am frankly wondering if we all saw the same movie. This was the sort of sweeping, grandiose telling of J.K. Rowling's boy wizard that I've been waiting for since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (I refuse to acknowledge the American dumbed-down title...I even bought the Canadian DVD with the proper title. I also only own Brit- or Canadian version of the books without the edited Americanized text). This was a real tale of the magical war pitting good versus evil. This was also mostly an action film, with a little bit of humor (and, of course, classroom time) thrown in. I'd call it fairly Star Wars-esque in tone and tempo. The effects were gorgeous. The acting was spot-on. The heartstring-tugging was effective. An almost unrecognizable Ralph Fiennes was amazing as Voldemort. The only negative I can give this film (and I don't penalize it stars because it's hardly fair) is that Rita Skeeter, Severeus Snape, Fleur Delacoeur, and Viktor Krum really don't get enough screen time. At 2.5 hours, though, I can hardly blame Mike Nichols. I also would've like to have seen Snape's exit to rejoin the Death Eaters at the end of the novel, but that doesn't really affect the flow into the next film. Thanks for finally getting it right, and please release the next in IMAX as well.

Hoodwinked: 2.5 Stars. This was a cute little film with a fun premise. Some folks have complained the animation looked to plasticine, but I'm willing to give the animators the benefit of the doubt and call it a stylistic choice. I really liked the concept of deconstructing Little Red Riding Hood, but it was long on style and short on substance. On the flip side, anything with Patrick Warburton is, by definition, work watching. I'd've loved to have seen him play a Jedi in RotS.