Chen G.

I don't mean cohesive in the sense that there are or aren't plot inconsistencies (for instance, the use of magic) or continuity issues. I mean cohesive in a dramatic sense - i.e. that it kind of works like one huge screenplay told in multiple installments. To me, that's the whole point of a film series: telling a story you could never hope to tell in one film.

The thing for me is that the eight Harry Potter films form a nice unified story. In spite of changing directors and aesthetics, the way in which Rowling (who claims to have outlined the major plot points in advance) has shaped the story gives it a nice flow. If you were writing the entire Harry Potter series as one screenplay, you would have made Voldemort manifest himself in the end of the first act, and reveal the nature of the Horcruxes just before the beginning of Act three, with Dumbeldore's death ushering the characters into their lowest point and into the third act proper. Well, as it turns out, that's just what happened in the series, but on a much larger scale, and I think that's something that is to be commended. If Fantastic Beasts can sit side-by-side with the Potter films, without making this kind of "meta-structure" too lopsided, It'd be great. Of course it wouldn't really work for new audiences, because the whole charm of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is predicated upon the idea that the audience is revealed to this wizarding world just as Harry is. But still... I was thinking more along the lines of a throughline with regards to the central conflict of the series (that being, the Wizarding World versus Voldemort). Recurring characters or settings are fine, but not enough to form one overarching story, like the Potter films put together do.

Is that in any way setting the stage for Voldemort's rise? Because otherwise I don't understand what's the throughline from this into Harry Potter.

If that's the case, why not just stage a mockumentary in Hogwarts about its architecture? People don't really come for movies to see the setting - they come to see a story set in that setting.

How are people actually still taking film titles at face value? They're just supposed to be pretty names to get you to look into the film. That's it.

I still think saying that its a study of Bilbo and Thorin's relationship is a wrong asesment. Its much more about Thorin as a solo character, and of his and his compatriots' yearning for their homeland, and of Thorin's personal tragedy. I find that aspect fascinating, deftly handled, worthy of a trilogy and refreshingly different to anything in The Lord of the Rings. I also don't see the Dol Guldur subplot as so extraneous. Undercooked? Yes. At times mishandled? Absolutely. But redundant? No. It is part of the Tolkien canon, it explains Gandalf's absence (which is imperative) and its actually woven quite tightly into the narrative, by making both Azog and the Orc armies attacking Erebor subservient to Sauron. She very quickly went on some tangent regarding some contractual stuff with Warner Bros that I couldn't care less about. Just as much as we need to separate the art from the artist, I think we need to separate art from the process. I generally find Lindsay's essays (and really the whole concept of a full-length essay delivered in video format) overwrought and overly pedantic and petty, and of course when it came to discussing matters such as Tauriel, she infused it with her own brand of social agenda - which I found distasteful. For comparison, she once said that the closing line of King Kong - "It was beauty killed the beast" - should be "colonialism killed the beast". Or her notions of racism in Tolkien's works. I mean, gimmie a break, lady. Also, Lindsay's much more of a screenwriter than Chris, and her analyses are much more script-oriented - making her reviews and essays much less well-rounded than those of Chris Hartwell or the blokes at 3byThree, who make prudent comments on both the way films are written and directed. I'm saying this not necessarily as someone who agrees with Chris all too often, but I appreciate the way he articulates what he likes and why.

Thank you!

Hate? Hardly. I rarely hate films: its counterproductive. But I don't think they're good movies, especially the second one.

I believe the first film was rushed: you can really see it in some of the effects shots. To me, the issue with films 1-2 isn't with Rowling producing the film, or even Chris Columbus' directing (although his work with the actors is very subpar). Its main weakness is Steve Kloves' screenwriting, and way its presented in the final edit: whether he lacked the confidence to make changes and only gathered it as he progressed with the series, or whether he was coarced to write a "faithful" screenplay by Columbus or one of the producers. You can't in good conscience call it a screenplay: its just an abridged version of the novel, formatted as a screenplay. The first one's charming enough, though. As for being "cash cows" - to me, that's irrelevant if you enjoy the movie. All blockbusters are cash cows in that they're designed to make lots of money.

Whenever you dabble in nationalistic themes in western cinema (which Braveheart certainly does), you have to ground it in something more personal and immediate. In this case, a personal revenge story. I think it does that sort of thing very well. Well enough, that an un-nationalistic man such as myself, can still empathize with it. You can almost look at the movie as a thematic anthology: the first twenty minutes are a domestic drama, The next twenty minutes are a romance film. From there to the one hour mark it is a personal revenge flick, but afterwards it becomes an epic of nationalistic fight for freedom, until the two hour mark where it turns into a tragedy. That's part of what I look for in epics: not just a scope of scenery, the setpieces or the cast, but of disparate genre elements.

I enjoy certain Marvel films very much (mostly as comedies), but in some ways the MCU is kind of the death of cinema. I'm all for serialized cinema, but in a classic, focused "prequels and sequels" way - and only to a point, too. The multi-pronged, excruciatingly long-winded anthology route taken by Marvel and its copycats (Star Wars spinoffs, DCEU, etcetra) is just overkill.

Good grief, its entertainment! You grossly overstate the suggestive capabilities of narrative cinema, I'm afraid. To the best of my knowledge, its been proven to be entirely negligible: people don't see a violent film and go out looking for a brawl. I find the comparison to Goebbels (whose efforts trafficed more in advertisment and mockumentaries, if I'm not mistaken) to be wildly demagogic. So the cinematic medium can be abused for nefarious purposes - what can't?

Fair. Simplistic isn't a bad thing when it comes to cinema. Its an emotional medium first, and a cerebral one - second.

No. But the fact that this form of entertainment is the dominant one for over four decades now - that says something. Its all too easy to make an intelligent film on a small, arthouse scale. Its much harder to do the same on a blockbuster.

The Lord of the Rings. Moments in all three entries get me going, but where Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers have only a handful of those, Return of the King has like twenty of them. Some moments in The Desolation of Smaug (the beholding of the mountain, the hidden door opening, the dead refugees revealed) and The Battle of the Five Armies (Thorin’s death) also get me. Braveheart. Schindler’s List. Titanic. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises, in a few moments. The Lion King - possibly when I was younger, I don’t remember. Same goes for E.T.

I’m a historian. But when it comes to narrative films, I don’t need historical accuracy in the slightest: that’s what documentaries are for. I can see how someone will find the film sappy, but in other times I think it sidesteps that style, especially compared to the pre-production script. Whether it’s through killing the dialogue (the betrayal of The Bruce, completely wordless in the film, is very melodramatic and talky on the page) or throwing in some irreverent humor and/or violence.

Imporant landmark? Hardly. Its been done before, and done since. It wasn't terribly influential, either, namly because it wasn't much of a blockbuster and turned out a relatively small profit. But it is one of the films that does this sort of thing best. At any rate, I was raving about 1995 in jest, anyway. And really, my enjoyment of film is rarely effected by how influential that film is. I distinguish between liking a film (on the basis of personal preference, sometimes in spite of its flaws), revering a film (on the basis of its more objective parameters), and appreciating a film (for its influence on the artform or the industry). Of the three criteria, appreciation is by far the least important. And, again, it is this film's appearant shallowness that is the source of its effectiveness, as it is with so many archetypal stories. Its by no means a run-by-the-mill film, either: its long, violent, grim, and very unusually structured - with a plot that doesn't kick-in until the one-hour mark, and - after the Battle of Falkirk - goes on-hold until Wallace goes to Edinborough. The subject-matter wasn't terribly appealing for 90s audiences, either, and the genre has been dead for three decades at the time. That it worked at all is a miracle. Need I remind you that I'm not a patriotic person, so that I like this film as much as I do speaks volumes for its quality.

I have a saying about storytelling: The emotional impact of a film is the exact inverse of the intellectual complexity of its themes. After all, cinema, more than any other artform, is the one that evokes the most emotion in us. Therefore, to me, its an artform that works best when it seeks to stimulate our emotion, rather than our intellect: for cerebral stuff, I'll read books and articles, thank you very much. That doesn't make film a lesser art, as some would contend: it just operates on a different level. Therefore, the simplest themes - and yes, that includes revenge, romance, friendship and sacrifice - are the most inherently cinematic, and work best in that format. So much of contemporary cinema is emotionally sanitzed, either for cerebral aspirations or for fear of being labeled histrionic. So when a film has the courage to dial such simple themes to the max - as Braveheart does - it deserves commeding, if only for its earnestness.

Do you have that in a more condescending size? There's a reason blockbusters are block-busters, y'know.

I'd say its the best of the genre. I get that some people have an issue with the black-and-white nature of the conflict or the characters. But honestly, I don't think this kind of mythicism is so simplistic to the human condition: History has proven time and again that it isn't. And while Wallace's motivations are never questioned by the film, at least his detractors are given sound reasoning rather than strawmen arguments. For instance, The Bruce senior: "Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage, so does a dog; but it is exactly the ability to compromise that makes a man noble". Certain aspects of the film - both in the script and the way its shot - read to me as attempts at unpacking the epic genre, with its archaic dialogue, romanticism and sanitized violence. I came to the conclusion that great films are potentially-terrible films that aren't actually terrible. Just about every turn that Bravheart takes could have led downhil, right to the realm of cinematic excrement. And every time it sidesteps that traejectory and rises to new heights. And because its themes are so simple, they can engage the audience not on an intellectual level, but on a visceral one. And ultimately, that's what cinema does best.

No.

Right you are! Rather, It was an outstanding year for film, for Braveheart alone.😉

1995 had Braveheart, Se7en, Toy Story, The Usual Suspects, Before Sunrise and GoldenEye.

A very good example of what I look for in a movie. It was a big blockbuster, with fantastical elements, and one of a particularly large scale, but at its heart it was first and foremost a drama. Or, more specifically, a tragedy. As overly-long and at-times cluttered as the journey to the film's climax was, the fact that I was sobbing at the end of it (and still am, upon revisiting it) meant that it did work.

I don't watch too many films, nor too often: I think that constantly rushing to the cinema in the name of one's cinephillia is the surest way to make the filmgoing experience feel like a chore or a routine. Rather, I choose to savour the exeprience. The films I do see are mostly tentpole blockbusters: I enjoy the spectacle and action like any other guy. But I do want explorations of humanity in my blockbusters. I think its all too easy to explore human themes in a traditional drama - the real trick is to do that in a blockbuster, without letting it be lost amidst the genre elements or the scale of the picture. Its not just a balancing act, either: I find that the best blockbusters are ones that use those narrative elements to prop the drama higher and higher. Ideally, a film would either make me laugh (if its a comedy) or cry, or both. I also have a fascination with serialized cinema. Crafting the story for a film is one thing, crafting a story told over multiple entries - now that's the real deal. By this I don't refer to series that rely on a shared setting, recurring characters or iconography - but of a unified story that's simply too big to be told within the confines of one film.