"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002)

Well, it only took five months, but we finally got the next Harry Potter movie out of the library.  I'd also only seen this one on DVD one time, ten whole years ago, and Cowboy hadn't seen it at all, so this was quite fun for both of us.

Except for the spiders.  As Ron said, "Why spiders?  Why couldn't it be follow the butterflies?"  What is it with giant spiders?  Enough with them already.  Why doesn't anyone do giant butterflies?  I think they'd be quite menacing too, with their giant wings causing huge winds and such.  Please, someone write a fantasy book involving giant butterflies!  I would totally read it.  They could be like dragons, only not meat-eating.

So, once again, the best part of this movie for me was the casting.  Specifically, Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart.  The returning cast were lovely again, but the bright spot in this movie for me is Branagh.  He made me grin every single time he was on screen, and he made me laugh aloud with glee more than once.

One of the things I enjoy most about Branagh is how he always looks like he's so tickled to be acting in a movie, like he can hardly believe his good luck to be taking part in such an adventure.  That is never more evident than in this movie, where he smirks and flourishes with relish.  My favorite scene in the whole movie is his wizarding duel with Severus Snape, which goes so magnificently badly for Lockhart.

Another great casting addition was Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy.  He's so sneeringly superior, and also clearly enjoying the chance to be menacing and snide.

As for the rest of the movie, I'm happy to say the special effects are much improved over Sorcerer's Stone (2001), particularly in the Quidditch game.  The green screen was no longer so painfully obvious there.  I did feel like the flying car sequences went on too long, and the need to re-introduce people to the wizarding world made the beginning a bit draggy.

So anyway, fun movie, but again nothing stellar.  It's better than the first movie, just like the second book is better than the first.

"His Last Vow" (2014)

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Wow.  I actually don't have a lot to say about this episode.  I disliked it intensely.  We watched it Friday evening, and I had anxiety dreams all night long afterward.  I kept waking up with either Moriarty or Mycroft laughing at me.  I was uneasy all day yesterday, with scenes and images haunting my mind.  I wrote most of this review last night, which at least helped me sleep better (instead I kept dreaming about Armie Hammer.  Odd-but-cheerful change).

(Spoilers from here until you see a list.)

It's not that I mind Mary being a rogue ex-CIA assassin.  It's not that I mind Sherlock killing someone.  It's not that I mind they changed Charles Augustus Milverton's last name.  I think mostly it's that there were too many things going on this episode.  If we'd only had the reveal about Mary, or only had the supposed return of Moriarty, or only had Sherlock killing someone, I could have dealt okay, I think.  But this episode was like getting punched repeatedly in the solar plexus, to the point that I wanted it to just please be over already when there was still twenty minutes left.

Honestly, I don't have a coherent review for this ep.  I've spent a lot of yesterday and today thinking about it and wishing I wasn't, and... feeling kind of cheated.  Because Sherlock shot someone in the head, and yes, that someone was evil, but Sherlock did it knowing full well what the consequences would be.  He did this magnificent thing, basically threw away his own life to save Mary and John and a lot of strangers from lifetimes of fear and grief.  And then, hey, guess what!  Doesn't have to go into exile after all!  Ha ha, just a 4-minute slap on the wrist and you can come save us from the supposed return of Moriarty.  No consequences.  And so this sacrificial act of Sherlock's becomes... inconsequential.  And that angers me.

I guess I'll just end by saying that here's how I rank all 9 episodes of Sherlock, from favorite to least, just in case you wondered:

1.  "The Empty Hearse"
2.  "A Scandal in Belgravia"
3.  "The Hounds of Baskerville"
4.  "The Great Game"
5.  "A Study in Pink"
6.  "The Sign of Three"
7.  "The Reichenbach Fall"
8.  "The Blind Banker"
9.  "His Last Vow"

Overall, I do still love this show.  I just hate one episode, and honestly, there's at least one episode of every show that I could do without, or hate outright.  It happens.

"The Sign of Three" (2014)

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The truth is, I don't know if I could possibly like a Sherlock ep as well as I love "The Empty Hearse."  So my appreciation of "The Sign of Three" may have suffered from the lingering glow I still feel from the season premiere.

Here, there be spoilers, just FYI.

To me, "The Sign of Three" felt kind of patchy.  I really liked some parts, but others I quite disliked.  I mean, do they really mean to imply that Sherlock makes all his brilliant deductions under imaginary orders from Mycroft?  I liked the idea of seeing inside Sherlock's Mind Court, as it were -- that was quite cool, especially when it flipped back and forth to the reality of him online-chatting with the real people.  But did we need the overly Freudian addition of Mycroft elevated above him on the judge's bench, the older and smarter brother Sherlock both reveres and fears?  No.  Totally could do without that.

Now, that part where Sherlock was interrogating Mary's guy friend and laying down rules for his future interaction with Mary?  Could.  Not.  Stop.  Laughing!

And I went off into giggle fits over him folding like a dozen napkin sculptures in three minutes and saying, "This just happened."

I think mostly, though, this ep felt unfocused.  (You kinda knew that was coming, didn'tcha.)  It popped back and forth between heartfelt (Sherlock staring at John in shocked silence when John asks him to be best man) to silly (drunk people aren't all that funny) to unnecessarily stupid (puking on a crime scene?  Don't do that again!!!).  Things that I think were supposed to be funny, like Lestrade rushing over to Sherlock's flat with guns blazing... I felt so bad for Lestrade that I didn't think it was funny at all.  And I felt Sherlock's worry over being best man much too keenly to laugh at a lot of other scenes.  Unlike my husband, I don't feel embarrassed with characters, but I do feel worried or afraid with them, and find it hard to laugh at characters in distress.

The mystery was quite cool.  As were the allusions to the canon novel The Sign of the Four, like the snippet of Sherlock and John chasing a blowdart-wielding Pygmy and the fact that it's a locked-room murder mystery.

And Mary Morstan Watson -- can she be more wonderful?  I can't imagine so, but we shall see!  I'm hoping to watch "His Last Vow" tonight :-D

Happy Birthday, Vic Morrow!

Today would have been Vic Morrow's 85th birthday.  This year, instead of posting someone's fanvid or just a nice picture of him, I'm embedding the two halves of one of my favorite Combat! episodes:  "The Long Way Home."  This is a two-part episode, each part being about 45 minutes long, so together they basically make an hour-and-a-half-long movie.  And if you've never watched Combat! before, that's okay -- this is a really good introduction episode.  All the regular characters get screen time, and you can get a good feel of who they are and what the show is like from just this one adventure.

In "The Long Way Home," Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) and his squad are captured by the Nazis (who they call Krauts most of the time) and interred in a POW camp run by the vicious Captain Steiner (Richard Basehart).  Saunders and his men are determined to escape, of course, and the bulk of the episode revolves around that.  But it's also a wonderful portrait of the different ways people cope with extreme situations.  Do they become apathetic?  Lose control of themselves in their fear?  Fill with determination?  It's really, really well-written and well-acted.

In case you aren't familiar with my favorite show, Combat! ran from 1962 to 1967 and centered on a handful of American soldiers during WWII, fighting the "Krauts" in Normandy following the D-DAY invasion in June of 1944.  This episode is from season two, and it's my second-favorite ep from the whole show!  If you enjoy war movies, movies about prison escapes, things set during WWII, or just movies that delve into human nature, you will probably enjoy this.





Vic Morrow is magnificent here, digging into a role he was familiar with and bringing out new nuances and depths.  The game of wits between his American sergeant and the German captain is superb.

Is this family-friendly?  No bad language, nothing suggestive, and most of the violence is implied or very old-style, with people getting shot and just falling over, no gore.  But there are some beatings and the implication of torture, and general war-related violence.

Giveaway of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1982)

I'm giving away my copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982). While I did enjoy it, I think others might enjoy it more, so I'm giving them their chance to win it. That means you! Enter using the widget below for your chance to win this nearly-new DVD. It was brand-new when I bought it, and I've only watched it once.  It is a Region 1 DVD, but this giveaway is open world-wide.

As I mentioned in my review here, this movie is mostly family-friendly. There are a couple of bad words, low-cut dresses, very brief scenes of people kissing in bed, and some minor violence of the swashbuckling sort (swords and pistols). You never see people's heads cut off, that's all implied. They do hold up a head now and then, but you only see it from behind and it looks like a hairy ball. I'd say this is either a mild PG-13 or a serious PG. Not for little kids, but I would not be uncomfortable watching it with my own mother. 

This giveaway runs from today through the end of Friday, February 28, 2014. I'll draw a winner on Saturday, March 1. PLEASE be sure you've provided a CURRENT email address to this Rafflecopter widget so that, when I email the winner, they actually get the notification that they've won! This is open world-wide, but if the winner doesn't respond to my notification within one week (by Saturday, March 8, 2014, in other words), I will draw a different winner and they will be out of luck.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is part of the Anthony Andrews Blog Hop hosted by Carissa at Musings of an Introvert. Click below to read other bloggers' posts about this charming actor.


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"The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1982) -- Initial Thoughts

I have finally seen this!  After reading people's rapturous allusions to it in the blogosphere for the last year or so (since I came out of my internet shell and started reading more blogs, basically), I've been wanting to see what all the fuss is about.  Especially since... Ian McKellen!  Jane Seymour!  Intrigue and costumes and bits of dialog that have been quoted so often I knew them already even though I'd never seen the movie!

So my dear friend DKoren and I got copies and watched it together over three nights.  Despite a few technical difficulties, we had a jolly time laughing at Sir Percy's (Anthony Andrews) affected foppishness, exclaiming over Marguerite's (Jane Seymour) loveliness, and marveling at Chauvelin's (Ian McKellen) dark good looks.

I know Chauvelin is supposed to be the bad guy and all, but wow... even 20 years ago, Ian McKellen was an amazing actor.  The nuances he could add with a cheek twitch or a lowering of his eyebrows, and the way he could switch his voice from calm to brusque or angry in one breath -- I was agog.

Not to mention that the man is gorgeous here!  Look at those eyes!  Look at those cheekbones!  Look at that wonderful hair!  Hello, salty goodness.  And does anyone else say, "You idiot!" with quite such disdainful vehemence?

By comparison, I'm afraid that even when Sir Percy wasn't making up the most horrible poetry or taking excessive snuff, I wasn't particularly interested in Anthony Andrews or his character.  Except when he would look very sad and pensive once in a while, that was quite nice.

And definitely except when, toward the end, he got all scruffy and manly looking for one of his disguises.

Bare forearms with those awesome gauntlets, a gorgeous shadow on his face, and that wonderfully tousled hair.  If he had looked like that during the whole movie, I would have been reduced to a puddle of drool within the first twenty minutes.  Ten, if he and Ian McKellen had had more scenes together.  So, Anthony Andrews fans, point me to some movies where he looks more like that!

And I cannot neglect to discuss Jane Seymour's flawless beauty.  I've seen her at about this age before in Somewhere in Time (1980), and almost a decade younger in Live and Let Die (1973), but I have never seen her quite this beautiful.

Perfect nose and eyes as always (and you could really see here that she has mismatched eyes, which is so mysterious and alluring), but the fancy hair and clothes really set off her face so perfectly here.  Breathtaking.  Not to mention she had a pretty difficult role -- Marguerite has to be intelligent enough to see the man behind the mask at the beginning, but not so swift that she figures out who her husband really is right away.  How she didn't recognize his whispers in that library scene is beyond me.

Speaking of library scenes -- what wonderful sets!  I kept remarking to my friend about how I wished for all those built-in bookcases that kept appearing in various shots.  And there's a ball where they're dancing on such a wonderful black-and-white checkered floor.  Some day I'm going to have a floor like that in my kitchen.

I suppose I should really make a brief mention of what this movie is actually about, in case anyone reading this doesn't already know.  The French Revolution is in full swing, heads rolling everywhere, and this mysterious guy known as the Scarlet Pimpernel keeps rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine.  He's called that because a pimpernel is a little flower (not a squash, a dark bread, or a facial blemish), and he signs his notes with a red one.  So anyway, Citizen Chauvelin is hunting this guy, but no one knows who he really is because he always has such clever disguises.  We the audience know right away that he's actually Sir Percy Blakeney, who pretends to be the most air-headed British aristocrat you have ever imagined.  Cowboy refers to him as "that annoying little English dude" and kept insisting the French should chop his head off for being so irritating.  But he wasn't actually watching the movie, he was just using the computer in the same room and supposedly not paying attention, so we'll let that slide.

Anyway, naturally Sir Percy falls in love with Marguerite, who happens to be the same woman that Chauvelin is in love with already.  And that's why I feel horribly bad for Chauvelin through the whole movie.  He really does seem to love Marguerite, but he doesn't have the money or power or mysteriousness of Sir Percy, so he loses her.  Even though he's way more interesting and attractive than Sir Percy's pretended persona.

And then it's all daring rescues and misunderstandings and sword fights and fun.

So.  Did I enjoy this movie?  Yes.  But I didn't actually love it, so I am going to give away my copy!  It was brand-new when I bought it, and I've only watched it once.  Click here for the giveaway post.

Is this movie family-friendly?  Mostly.  There are a couple of bad words, low-cut dresses, very brief scenes of people kissing in bed, and some minor violence of the swashbuckling sort (swords and pistols).  You never see people's heads cut off, that's all implied.  They do hold up a head now and then, but you only see it from behind and it looks like a hairy ball.  I'd say this is either a mild PG-13 or a serious PG.

This post is part of the Anthony Andrews Blog Hop hosted by Carissa of Musings of an Introvert.  Click below to visit other peoples' blog posts about him and his movies.

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My Ten Favorite Romantic Comedies

I have all my comedies shelved together, but I decided that since Valentine's Day is only a week away, I would make an extra list from that section, one of movies that revolve around boy-meets-girl.  

You'll notice there are no Classic Hollywood movies here.  I kind of feel like rom-coms are a genre that began in the '80s.  Before, you had romantic dramas, and you had comedies that happened to involve romance, but you didn't really have funny movies that focused entirely on people falling in love.  There are of course a few exceptions -- the original Sabrina has a lot of humorous moments, and I almost put How to Steal a Million on here, except that its focus is really the art thievery, and the romance happens because of that.  Hmm.  Maybe I'm splitting hairs here.  Oh well.

And yes, While You Were Sleeping is on my list of Ten Favorite Christmas Movies too.  Overlaps happen, especially with movies I love very much.

1. While You Were Sleeping (1995)

When a lonely train fare collector (Sandra Bullock) rescues a handsome stranger (Peter Gallagher) from being hit by a train, his family thinks she's his fiancee. I love the entire cast, from Sandra Bullock to Glynis Johns, and it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

2. Sabrina (1995)

When Sabrina (Julia Ormond) returns from Paris, suddenly dazzling instead of dowdy, her father's employer (Harrison Ford) pretends to woo her to prevent his younger brother (Greg Kinnear) from having a fling with her.  A lot sweeter than it sounds, and I much prefer it to the 1954 original because the cast has better chemistry and the whole thing works better.

3. You've Got Mail (1998)

Kathleen (Meg Ryan) and Joe (Tom Hanks) are online penpals and real-life bookstore-owning rivals, and they don't realize who each other is until they've started falling in love.  Another remake, this time of a Jimmy Stewart movie called The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and another Greg Kinnear movie where he doesn't get the girl.  Sensing a trend here!

4. French Kiss (1995)

Kate (Meg Ryan) chases her fiance (Timothy Hutton) to Paris to win him back, and enlists the help of impossible Frenchman Luc (Kevin Kline) on the way.  Another Meg Ryan movie -- yeah, I'm a fan, especially of her '90s work.  Also, this is the only rom-com I've ever seen that involves smuggling and chase scenes.

5. Someone Like You (2001)

Jane (Ashley Judd) gets dumped and develops a theory that she thinks explains why men leave women, but her co-worker Eddie (Hugh Jackman) thinks she's both adorable and wrong.  The trend is official!  Greg Kinnear loses the girl again.  This time he's a a bit of a jerk, though, so I don't care.  

6. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

Widowed Sam (Tom Hanks) and complete stranger Annie (Meg Ryan) are clearly M.F.E.O (made for each other) even though they don't meet until the end of the movie.  Far-fetched, implausible, and delicious.

7. Mrs. Winterbourne (1996)

Single, homeless, and pregnant, Connie (Ricki Lake) is mistaken for a dead man's wife and taken in by his wealthy mother (Shirley MacLaine), though his brother (Brendan Fraser) remains skeptical of her.  Also far-fetched and implausible, but very sweet anyway.  Especially the tango scene!

8. Runaway Bride (1999)

Maggie (Julia Roberts) has been to the altar three times, but never married, and newspaper columnist Ike (Richard Gere) stakes his career on her running away from her fourth fiance too.  I like this way better than the first Roberts/Gere movie, Pretty Woman (1990).

9. Moonstruck (1987)

Loretta (Cher) falls for her fiance's weird brother Ronny (Nicholas Cage), which throws her Italian family into turmoil.  More turmoil than usual, anyway.  This has all the big-ethnic-family charm that My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) needed more of.

10. A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

Robert (Ewan MacGregor) kind of accidentally kidnaps his employer's daughter (Cameron Diaz), and two wacky angels have to get them to fall in love or lose their jobs.  Yes, it's a very odd, very quirky movie.  But worth seeing for Ewan's rendition of "Beyond the Sea" alone.  Rated R for violence an profanity, though, just FYI.

Also, the soundtracks for While You Were Sleeping, Sabrina, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and Runaway Bride are some of my favorite soundtracks of all time.  In fact, Sabrina was one of the first soundtracks I ever bought.