I was jus thinking earlier today, or was it yesterday, that I have not seen a 2011 movie yet of any impact. Impact along the lines of INCEPTION last year or THE DARK KNIGHT or even THE ILLUSIONIST. Then tonight I watched MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and 2011 is saved, I have seen at least one masterpiece movie that I will remember for a long time this year. If you have ever been to Paris, as I have, it will make you think you need to go back, soon. If you have never been, and you saw this movie, you are probably already on a plane there. I could not have watched a more appropriate movie for my own current situation right now. Thank you Woody Allen.

I am not a fan of Woody Allen’s more famous works. ANNIE HALL was the only movie I have ever watched that I literally stopped watching ten minutes in. I could not stand another second of whatever gimmick that was. However, I really liked MATCH POINT and now I love MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, so it seems I am becoming a fan of Allen’s late career work.

It was obvious to me from the very first scene of Owen Wilson (Gil) with his fiancee that they totally should not be together. Wilson plays a Hollywood screenwriter who is sick of being a hack and wants to write a novel. His fiancee does not support him in this endeavor at all. That’s when I knew, from personal experience, that he should not be with her. Anyone who does not support your dreams should be discarded with haste.

The fiancee runs into a pompous friend and his wife and prefers to listen to him be a know-it-all rather than do what Gil longs to do, walk the Paris streets at night, preferably in the rain. Finally he frees himself from those fools and has his own time in Paris. Lost and tipsy, he is sitting on some steps when people from inside an old car beckon for him to join them. I did not know the premise of the movie so I did not catch on right away that Gil slipped into 1920s paris, the time of Picasso, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. You know this because Gil meets them. He also meets a muse for all of them and is himself enthralled.

The rest of the movie is just cinema magic that is an utter joy to watch. I cannot imagine a more fantastical imagination of Paris. Shall I move there?

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES [2011] is a great movie, and the best theater experience since last year’s INCEPTION.  APES is a powerful story from opening frame, to closing.  It is a very cerebral movie and a positive use of CGI to visually tell a story that would otherwise not be possible.  The movie reinforces two of my strongest beliefs:  animals should not be experimented on; animals should not be in cages.
APES was much better than the trailers made it out to look.  If not for the buzz surrounding the movie after its release, I might have missed out on experiencing it with an audience on the big screen.  Thankfully, I did not.

I am a big fan of origin stories, and thus the first film of movie franchises are the ones I usually like best.  Even though, maybe only the first third or first half shows the origin of the main character (hero).  The entire running time of APES shows Caesar’s origin story.  I enjoyed every single second of it.

The fact that Caesar could not speak was a huge benefit to the character.  The director had to focus on showing his thoughts and emotions visually.  CGI used in combination with Andy Serkis’ motion capture action yielded a fully formed character in Caesar, displaying more emotional range, more command of the screen, than 90% of human characters in all the rest of the movies made this year.  I would have no problem at all seeing Caesar/Serkis nominated for a best actor Oscar.

Watching Caesar think and work through his emotions made for riveting, intellectual movie watching.  Caesar first only yearns to be back with the only family he knows, but then is taken over by the more powerful drive for Freedom.  I could not root for a character more than I did for Caesar.

APES is refreshingly intelligent, exciting, dramatic science fiction.  How it setup the mechanics for the eventual reality seen in the original PLANET OF THE APES is extremely clever and makes me anxious to see what comes next in this franchise.

Over the past ten years all my favorites of the genre world have come to a conclusion in both film and TV.  HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS:  PART 2 is the last of all of them.  Of course finishing the book was far more significant, after which I declared to myself the Harry Potter franchise to be the greatest of all genre franchises.  The movies to me have been merely a means of visually sharing the Harry Potter story with friends sitting next to me.  Still, in my mind DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 was a major genre event, perhaps the last of my lifetime.

DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 is very Harry-centric.  The hunt for the remaining horcruxes is still on, but that storyline is accelerated and quickly overshadowed by the looming final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort.  I really liked the early scene with Ollivander, the wand maker.  I only now realize it brings the story full circle with an early scene in the first movie/book also featuring a conversation between Harry and Ollivander.  I really like the times the lore of the wizarding world is delved into.

Most of the movie takes place on the Hogwarts grounds and did not include as many grand battles scenes as I expected.  Perhaps wisely, director David Yates chooses to just follow Harry’s battle as he weaves around all the other major characters meeting their own fates.  This is not really all that different from the book actually.  Also as in the book, all major deaths happen off screen so there is little emotional impact from them.

Snape’s memory scene is handled pretty well and I was especially impressed with the King’s Cross scene which I thought was perhaps the one flaw in the book as it made little sense and was not clear at all, at least not after a single read.

After that DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 really picks up the action building up to Voldemort’s final boasts very well.  For me that was the most anticipated scene.  Neville’s act of defiance in the face of overwhelming force is perhaps the single most honorable and brave act in the entire series.

The trailers for DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 gave sneak peaks at the staging of the ultimate dual between Harry and Voldemort.  The wide shot of them standing in the ruins of the Hogwarts’ courtyard with spells colliding from their wands is truly an epic staging of a scene.

And then it is done.  Twenty+ years of Voldemort threatening the world.  Ten+ great years of genre entertainment.  What is there now?

• REVIEW:  DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1

First, does SUPER 8 succeed at recreating that early 1980s Spielberg feeling?  Yes.  Is it as good as E.T.?  No, but nothing ever will be and SUPER 8 stands on its own as a modern movie throwback to 1979.

Somehow SUPER 8 went pretty much under my radar until yesterday.  I had distantly heard of it, but it was not on my calendar at all and all of the story that I knew was that a group of kids from the 1980s make a movie on their own.  I figured there was some kind of sci-fi element thrown in as well.  It was a real plus going into the movie with this little knowledge.

Let me also state definitively:  see SUPER 8 in a theater, see SUPER 8 in a theater with the best sound system around

I do not remember a physical assault by sound (meant in a good way) like in SUPER 8 since seeing JURASSIC PARK in 1993.  The entire theater shook to its foundations as a train derailed early in the movie.  It was impressive and a very immersive experience.

However, I was already impressed with SUPER 8.  All the child actors did an outstanding job, with perhaps Charles the young director standing out the most, at first.  Soon all the other characters are blown away by Alice’s “acting” ability during a rehearsal.  J.J. Abrams did an outstanding job getting these performances out of these kids.  Equally, the dialogue Abrams wrote was very natural, it felt like we really were peaking into some suburban family’s 1979 kitchen.

The 1979 world is well fleshed out and has that Spielberg realism and sense of nostalgia for a time when you could ride your bike to any part of town, where kids explored their world finding astonishing mysteries always ending up crowded into a booth in a diner looking back on it all.

The humor of the dialogue was great as well.  Several “ha’s” were sent echoing out into the theater as not everyone found lines like, “Asshole, no one develops film overnight,” quite as funny as I did.  This was a movie with old school PG-13 swearing like you do not hear anymore.

The low camera angles put you at eye level with the kids, into their world as they make a zombie movie that gets interrupted by a mysterious train crash that the air force at first seems non-plussed about.  As stranger and stranger things start to happen in their small town, the adventure for the kids making the zombie movie only increases.  The pacing is great, with just enough quiet moments to let the characters develop some real emotion and connection with the audience, in particular Alice and Joe watching an old family movie of his.

Then there are the thrills, which were also highly effective.  The letting of all sound fall to perfect silence, which the audience followed suit with holding its collective breath, was used extremely effectively to build tension in several scenes.  You could feel the characters’ fear in that situation.

The major sci-fi elements are actually mostly minor to the story until the final act, though they are secretly driving all the action from the get-go.  A movie based on the sci-fi story could be a whole movie unto itself, and one I would be interested in seeing.

Ultimately SUPER 8 is a proper movie-movie, a throwback, a near ideal balance of story and special effects.  See it in a theater.