Horror Movies I Secretly Kind Of Like

In the spirit of the impending holiday, I thought I might do another top ten list.  Everyone likes lists, right?

Despite my almost pathological aversion to horror movies, I have managed to see a handful in my movie-loving life.  I present to you: The Top Ten Horror Movies I Could Bring Myself To Watch, And Also Kind Of Really Liked (But Don't Tell Anyone).  These are in alphabetical order, rather than ranked in any sort of fashion.

American Psycho

I've heard mixed reviews about the book, but this film is phenomenal.  Christian Bale is just so GOOD in this role: you feel like you're being personally invited by Patrick Bateman to watch his mental unraveling, and as the things he does escalate up the horror scale Bale manages to preserve that smooth, shiny edge which makes the whole film surreal in addition to terrifying.  Bateman's shark-toothed grin will haunt you while you ponder the movie's messages of social emptiness (preferably while listening to Huey Lewis and the News).

Cthulhu (2007)

NIGHTMARES, you guys. Legitimate nightmares, made all the more insidious by the fact that while I was watching this one I wasn't all that scared.  In this little indie jewel, a history professor returns to his birthplace in a little seaside town in Oregon for a funeral, and discovers that his family (and the whole town) is deeply involved in an Elder Gods cult.  The movie is filmed in a very amateur, hand-held camera style, but it adds to the creepy atmosphere.  Dan Gildark, the director, is sparing with his jumpy moments and horror images, which makes them all the more effective - the film's stark style will give you chills during the last beach scene.

The Dark Crystal

More frightening than Labyrinth and Willow rolled into one, if you ask me (that scene were the witch turns everyone into pigs?  Scared the HELL out of me as a child).  The lack of human faces makes the dark fantasy setting even more eerie, playing up the alien nature of the gelflings and skeksis and of the environment itself.  The scene where Kira, one of our gelfling heroes, is being drained of life by the vicious, vulture-like skeksis, has pretty much haunted me since I first saw this as a child.

In The Mouth Of Madness

If Stephen King had written Cthulhu, the result would have been In The Mouth Of Madness.  The story of Sutter Cane, a horror writer who molds reality with his macabre stories, is like a batshit Neil Gaiman; one fabulous sequence has him banging on a typewriter in a church while a thick wooden door pulsates malevolently behind him.  A wonderfully nihilistic horror film that blithely plays with your sense of reality, and laughs the whole time: some of the things in this film are so completely absurd that, like Sam Neill's John Trent, you can't help but laugh helplessly.

Jennifer's Body

At this point, you might have guessed that I appreciate my horror balanced with a nice dose of sarcasm or tongue-in-cheek, and this particular film has a heaping share of both. Megan Fox is COMPLETELY believable as a man-eating demon (gee, I wonder why...?), but she also clearly is not taking the movie too seriously, and neither is anyone else.  They're having fun with it, which is good, because shit is ridiculous and the movie totally owns it; the indie punk Satanic band members are just icing on the demonic cake.  It's kind of like Buffy, if the script had been more self-conscious and less tasteful.

Let Me In

What I didn't know about this before I saw it is that it's actually a love story.  The relationship between Abby the vampire and Owen the outcast kid is sweet and awkward, even after you see Abby flip out like a ninja to snack on some hobo.  Low lighting and fantastic sound editing are used to great effect, and Chloe Moretz-as-monster brings some much needed excitement to a movie that could have ended up over-wrought and moodily dull.  The tender moments and the scary bits add to the tension, and the ending is both touching and depressingly inevitable.

The Ruins

The Ruins should have been a dumb creature feature, but it actually has a lot going for it that makes it quite effective.  A group of co-eds goes hiking in Mexico and ends up on a Mayan pyramid covered in a parasitic, man-eating plant; native people surround them to keep them on the pyramid or kill them so as not to spread the growth of the plant.  The plant itself is a surprisingly fantastic villain; it creeps under the skin like an alien parasite, mimics human voices to separate the co-eds, and eats away at them, driving them insane. It almost feels like a medical horror, featuring sequences where the plant gets under the skin like some kind of bug, threads its way into injuries, and one particularly imaginative amputation scene that ends with cauterization by frying pan (these kids are nothing if not resourceful).  Not for the faint of heart.

Saw

They go way downhill after number two, but before they descend into tasteless torture porn the Saw franchise was more about psychological horror than spilling blood.  Asking that all important question, "how far would you go to save your own life?" Saw the first is all yellow lighting, fast-paced editing, and clever film shots that don't quite show you all the gore it hints at.  Where the subsequent films lose their restraint in favor of cheap shock value, this first film reaches in and grabs your brain right in its survival center. Plus, that ENDING.  Whatever criticisms you have about the sequels, you have to acknowledge that, at least for the first outing, someone on the scriptwriting staff was really being clever.

Silence of the Lambs

Will we ever have another villain as charismatic as Hannibal Lecter?  I rather hope not.  Anthony Hopkins is a complete scene stealer in this classy slasher flick, dominating the background with his panoramas of intestines while Buffalo Bill skins his victims in the main plotline.  A film that's become iconic for a reason; the scene where Jodie Foster bumbles around in pitch black while being stalked by the night vision goggles-wearing Bill still gives me chills.

A Tale of Two Sisters

Unlike the other films on this list, I never re-watched this Korean horror film and have no desire to - but that doesn't mean that, while I was watching it, I didn't appreciate its construction and effect.  Equal parts mental exercise and ghost story, the family elements and the relationship between the young sisters are surprising spots of warmth in an otherwise chilling movie.  It's also a kind of fairytale, a play on the Cinderella story, and rather beautiful - the camera work finds beauty in an imposing wardrobe as well as a shot of a dead bird.  Even when it's being poetic, though, the tension still pulls you thin, and waiting to find out what's inside that wardrobe made my knuckles go white.

The Avengers

I wanted to write about my reaction to The Avengers trailer about a week ago, but I had trouble because there aren't all that many interesting ways for me to say I AM EXCITE, MAY SHOULD GET HERE FASTER.  So, there you go: it's a fabulous trailer, and I have high expectations for the films.

I think it's both interesting and worth mentioning that Marvel has basically taken a backwards approach to The Avengers franchise; usually, you get the ensemble film and THEN the spin-offs.  Do to necessity, perhaps, Marvel gave us the spin-offs first, and now has the herculean task of bringing together half a dozen disparate, egotistical, arrogant and powerful characters.  Some things we should note that Marvel did particularly well in preparing for this task, which are also all reasons why The Avengers has more potential to be wonderful than to fall on its face:

- Giving the characters worth caring about their own films.  Let's be honest: Black Widow, Hawkeye, Agent Coulson and Nick Fury are pretty awesome characters, but none of them are strong enough to carry their own films.  And Marvel wisely didn't try; instead, they built them up through other, more interesting movies.  The Thor movie is sort of the exception, and I think it suffered because Thor himself isn't a very interesting character, but the argument can be made that that film was more about Loki than Thor anyway. 

- Hiring fabulous writers that (most importantly) have experience with ensemble casts.  Joss Whedon writes really good dialogue, and he has shown in multiple venues that he writes distinctive voices for multiple characters really well.  Zak Penn, the other credited script writer, worked on one of the best comic book movies of the last ten years (X2), and fabricated two sequels that, compared to their originals, were veritable works of genius (Norton's Hulk and Elektra, the latter of which I will defend until I die because I actually thought it was fun).  He also wrote X-Men: The Last Stand, and regardless of what you thought of that particular film (I liked it), the dialogue was as solid as its predecessors.  These guys know what they're doing.

- The casting is perfection.  I've already written about how impressed I am with Chris Evans' Captain America (read my review here), and at this point it pretty much goes without saying that Robert Downey Jr. = Tony Stark (similarly to how Patrick Stewart = Professor X).  Chris Hemsworth as Thor was one of the only interesting things about that movie, and Mark Ruffalo certainly can't do worse at being Bruce Banner than anyone already has.  And if I need to mention Sam Jackson's Nick Fury here, you really haven't been paying attention.

- Not introducing a new villain.  I've just convinced myself that the purpose of Thor was actually to introduce Loki, rather than Thor himself, and all of his daddy issues, which means that The Avengers won't have to dedicate valuable time to introducing a brand new villain.  What I hope this means is that we'll get to spend more time seeing how all these egos learn to play nice together, which is honestly more interesting to me than villain backstory.  Which leads me to my last point:

- We're essentially done with backstory.  All of the establishing is done.  We know everything about these people that we need to, so we can get right into the meat of the story.  It really, really bugs me when filmmakers waste time, or spin out a movie longer than it should be; hopefully, with The Avengers we'll get no wasted space.

Drive, or Ryan Gosling's Official Oscar Bid

I knew precisely three things about Drive before I walked into the theater:

1. Ryan Gosling plays a stunt driver, who
2. Moonlights as a criminal getaway driver, and
3. May or may not curb stomp someone.

Turns out that this was exactly the way to experience this slow-like-honey action film.
I don't actually want to say a whole lot about this movie, because I loved it and I want you to experience it the way that I did.  So, first off, I'm going to say officially: I loved Drive and you should PROBABLY go see it immediately.

Drive is a strange, strange little action movie that does not behave at all like an action movie should.  Oh, in some respects it's all there: car chases, fight scenes, high stakes, a variety of guns and shivs.  But the tension is constant; there are no adrenaline spikes because you're nervous all the time.   Nicolas Winding Refn pulls his shots out like taffy, stretching every moment until you're ready to jump out of your skin.  Everything pulls in Drive, from the repetitive refrains in the soundtrack numbers to the long stretches of artificial light.  Flickering lights in the elevator, streetlight passing over Gosling's face, the yellowed glow of shoddy apartment light; Gosling and Carey Mulligan (playing, quite effectively, Gosling's rundown neighbor with a young son and a husband in prison) are frequently bathed in artificial light.  Instead of looking cliche, it ends up feeling very dreamlike and warm.

It's the Ryan Gosling show from start to finish, commanded not only by the force of Gosling's performance but also in the very composition of the film.  Gosling mirrors Refn's pacing, reveling in the pauses and joyfully taunting you with every bated breath you're forced to take until he finally, FINALLY delivers his lines.  It's in those pauses that Gosling's performance really shines; Gosling does most eloquent acting in the pauses before he speaks, and in the way he clenches the steering wheel, and in the way that he drives.  It reminded me of Heath Ledger's performance in Brokeback Mountain, in that Gosling delivers a full body performance without actually needing to say anything at all.

Drive keeps you simmering without ever quite bringing on the boil; it has moments with more actions than others, sure, but the filming style and lighting and music act together to give even the most violent sequences an ethereal, almost sleepy quality.  It's a demanding movie that requires a lot from its audience, but if you can have some patience and revel in the silences with Gosling and Refn, the payoff is totally worth it. 

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: NSFW

I'm deeply excited about David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

On the one hand, I get that Hollywood is kind of jumping the shark by remaking foreign films less than a decade after the original film comes out.  Especially considering the international film market in America.  But I look at it this way: sometimes a story is just TOO GOOD to be left alone.  Which is probably the case with TGWTDT - the books are so popular, and the story is so good, that the American film industry couldn't leave that golden egg untouched, even if the Swedish films are barely out of the projection rooms.

I get that a lot of people are upset, considering the acclaim that Noomi Rapace has gotten from her portrayal of the problematic anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander.  I get that many people see this film as unnecessary.  Y'all know that personally, I did not enjoy the Swedish film and I did not enjoy Rapace in the role - my entry discussing that little skeleton in my cinema-loving closet can be read here.  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I'm deeply excited about Fincher's version and I'm deeply excited about Rooney Mara as Salander.  Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about today: that controversial movie poster.  (This is also why this particular entry is NSFW - nipples are about to be unleashed.)

(Side note: all of Mara's piercings are authentic.  She got them done as part of the job.  I kinda hope she keeps them, not because I find them particularly attractive but because I'm pretty tickled by the idea of that kind of method acting.  Plus fake piercings typically don't look as good as the real thing.)

Can you hear the movie audiences of America complaining about this image?  However I feel about it, it's not hard to understand - we are not used to bare breasts hanging out in our advertising.  Or in public at all, really.  Fincher is obviously making a statement with this poster about how prepared he is to "bare it all," so to speak, and I support that - not to mention that the image itself is starkly beautiful.  But I get the objections people have to it.

Well, almost all the objections.  Here's a quote from an Entertainment Weekly forum about this image:

"Lisbeth Salander is fighting back from being a victim. To have her posed in such a vulnerable state (and yes, when you’re nude, you’re vulnerable, whether you’re “strong” or not) really negates the power that the Lisbeth character has earned. She is supposed to be the protector, not Blomquist. I doubt that Stieg Larsson would have approved this campaign."

There's a lot of this going around.  That the problem with the image is that it cuts down how strong Salander is, how it misogynistically shows Craig as Blomkvist protecting her, restraining her, and how it negates a powerful female protagonist.

The problem with this view is that it's wrong.  If you haven't read the book and plan to, no worries, I'm not going to let fly any spoilers.  But suffice to say (and you've probably gotten a hint of this just in all the talking about this movie that's going on) Salander ISN'T strong, and that's the point.  The entire third book is about all the people she's managed to get in her corner banding together to save her.  I'm not saying she's a damsel in distress, but Salander is a broken, prickly character whose story arc is about learning how to share her problems with people she learns to trust, and how ultimately her problems are SO big she can't save herself on her own.  Blomkvist is protecting her in the poster in the same way he does through every single book.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Salander.  She's incredibly resilient, resourceful, and intelligent, but she only ever projects the appearance of strength to other people.  Inside, she's crumbling, and it's up to Blomkvist (and eventually others) to catch her pieces and put her back together.  This is what her story is about.

Trailer Talk: The Woman In Black

I don't like horror movies.  Maybe I've mentioned that here?  Well, to amend that: I don't like supernatural horror movies.  Saw?  Halloween?  Whatev, I'll watch those all day.  But ten minutes of The Ring, or The Grudge, or any of that ghost shit, and I'll avoid the basement like the plague and make my sister sit outside the bathroom while I'm showering, JUST IN CASE PHANTOM HANDS GROPE MY HEAD (note: this actually happened.  Not the head groping, the making-my-sister-sit-outside-the-bathroom.  The Grudge wrecked my shit for a LONG time.).

Do you know who I do like?  Daniel Radcliffe.  Which is what makes this practically an EMOTIONAL dilemma.

I'm sure that everyone is aware by now that his next big feature film, his first one post-HP, is a Victorian-esque GHOST STORY called The Woman In Black.  When I first heard about it, and saw some set photos, I was excited - the summary sounded interesting, the pics were intriguing.  What was being presented at that time was an emotional drama about a widower and a father (played by Radcliffe, who looks surprisingly grave and age-appropriate in the high-collared jacket, wan makeup, and 5 o'clock shadow) who goes to this desolate English town to try and sort out the estate of a dead woman.  I was led to believe that it would be about him dealing with his grief, and maybe learning how to get along with his kid(s?), and that it would be srs bsnss but not, you know, fucking TERRIFYING.

HOW NAIVE I WAS.

Maybe two weeks ago (because I am a terrible entertainment blogger and don't keep up very well with movie news, apparently) I started to hear...things.  About the trailer.  And the actual story of the movie.  I began to get concerned.  So I watched the trailer.  And the trailer?  Is pretty much horrifying (if you're like me, and are actually terrified by stuff that doesn't scare 16 year olds.  I'm not ashamed.).

It was like if someone set out to push all of my horror movie buttons.  There are creepy dolls and attics, and a passel of children who chant a creepy rhyme, and REFLECTIONS IN THE WINDOWS (this is a big one for me, reflections in mirrors/windows of things that aren't there or suddenly turn out to be there wig me out and make me not want to use the bathroom alone for like a month) and freaky writing on the walls and I just...I can't.  It's a really well put together trailer and you all should go watch it, but it is basically a warning label: MARTHA.  DO NOT SEE THIS.  YOU WILL REGRET IT.

I KNOW this is not a movie I should see.  I know this for a fact.  But part of me still wants to because I'm so interested to see Radcliffe in a different role, and see what he can do as an actor.  Maybe I'll wait for the DVD, so I can be scared out of my wits in my own house.  Or see a matinee, because sometimes all I need to exorcise the ghosts is a heavy dose of afternoon sunlight (and a margarita).

We'll see.  Until then, have a trailer:

Captain America, also I'm really sorry

Google is telling me I haven't posted sine July 19, and I'm really sorry about that (to all 12 people who read this).  The truth is that the last movie I saw in the theaters was Captain America, and it was probably the best movie I've seen this year so far, but then all the newspaper and magazine and "official" reviewers also really liked it and I didn't feel like I had anything unique to say about it.  But I realized I do, so here it it:

One of the biggest reasons this movie succeeds so profoundly is because Captain America is kind of a silly hero, especially considering the position of cynicism most people have in regards to patriotism.  But this movie is utterly unapologetic about this; it owns the Cap, in all his patriotic red-white-and-blue glory, and somehow never manages to make him feel silly or unrealistic.  It's not making fun of him, it's celebrating the ideals someone can have and the heights those ideals can aspire you to.  Literally the only reason Steve Rogers can BE the Captain is because he believes in duty, honor, and always doing what you can to do what's right.  Chris Evans shines here because he's earnest and boyishly idealistic, even after his transformation from Uncanny Valley lightweight into hulking muscle (which, despite what Ebert may think, is 100% real Evans).  I was skeptical when I first heard about the casting, but Evans really owns it.

(Side note: God bless Atwell and whoever wrote her part, because bitch is AWESOME.  She handles a gun as well as anyone, and she has a spine of steel.  She may be in a skirt the whole time, but you never forget that here is a woman who can punch you in the face just as hard as Tommy Lee Jones.  She ROCKS.)

Not to say that there aren't humor moments in the film; there totally are, and they work.  Hayley Atwell especially has marvelous comedic timing and one of the best deadpans I've seen.  She and Evans bounce off each other in a romantic but not sickening way, which brings me to the next thing I think makes this movie great.

It is a period piece set during World War II, and the filmmakers have embraced this past just the aesthetics.  The sensibilities are there, too - no one gets naked in this movie.  People have Heroic Kisses, but there's no sex, and I appreciated the stream-lined quality this gave the film; the Cap is here to do a job, y'all, and that job is SAVING YOUR ASS.  The effects are great on this score, also, as the filmmakers had a tricky job to do with the tech in the movie.  Hydra and the Red Skull are dealing with some pretty advanced stuff, but it keeps a measure of that 50's quality - yes, it's science fiction, but it doesn't look like it's from space or 2,000 years from now.  It's all Tesla coils and blue lightning (a neat callback to the future Iron Man thrusters, but that's a discussion for another day) and even the machinery works.  It's very Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and I mean that with the most sincere flattery.

Which brings me to Hugo Weaving, who I pretty much want to play bad guys all the time.  As the Red Skull he's skulking, whiplash smart, and utterly terrifying...despite having a candy apple colored face.  The facial effects are kind of silly, and it's a testament to how well Weaving plays the articulate gentleman bad guy that he can overcome the visual and still be a chillingly sociopathic Nazi science genius.

So that's why I liked Captain America.  Well, that and all the REALLY COOL action sequences.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

I'm sure this makes me unbearably old, but I don't think I'll be attending any more midnight premiers of movies.  Yes, the excitement and anticipation is super fun, but the fact of the matter is that I am simply not suited to staying up that late.  This happened to me when I saw Watchmen for the first time, and again this past Thursday when I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, which is why I'm bringing it up.  I am apparently incapable of appreciating the editing or pacing of a film and become completely biased in a negative way towards whatever I am watching, even if I really want to like it.

Which is why I'm super glad I got a second chance to see HP again last night; even though it was SO SOON after the first viewing, it gave me a second chance to really appreciate what I was seeing.  And despite its flaws, there are a lot of great things happening in that movie to appreciate.

I kind of want to write you a dissertation on the way I felt about the book, and how that effected the way I felt about the film, but keeping in mind that this is a film review and I would like to stick to that theme (read: no spoilers included), I'm going to make that a separate entry with a big SPOILERS tag on the front end.  Even though I'm an advocate for book-to-movie adaptations, and have written pretty extensively about them (even in regards to the Harry Potter franchise), it's hard for me to separate my feelings about this particular adaptation from how I felt about the book, since it's, you know, the end of the most important cultural touchstone of my generation.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was a better movie than it had any right to be.  The portion of the book that it's covering is largely our heroes wandering around blindly in the woods; it is very similar to the ENDLESS RUNNING that occurs in The Two Towers.  But David Yates managed to make it poignant and bleak, with a few key moments of excitement that sky-rocketed my expectations for this final film.  If Yates could do this with the interminable camping scenes, what could he do with the thrilling battle of Hogwarts?  It's better material and more cinematically written.  I was ready to love this movie; I knew I would cry, but I also expected to be left emotionally satisfied by the conclusion.

Well...

Coming out of the midnight show, I was pissed.  There were things I expected to see, things that were fairly integral to my love for the book, that weren't included.  The movie did not take the opportunities I thought it had to improve some of the shortfalls of the book.  There was not enough Alan Rickman.  I was disappointed, and I was angry, because it was the last chance of the franchise.  It wasn't the ending I wanted.  I thought the pacing was choppy and the editing poor (remember what I said about being cranky at midnight?).  I spent most of Friday stewing about the fact that I had to go see it AGAIN, which I had agreed to do when I anticipating loving the film.

Now, after having that second viewing, I'm so glad that I did.  Some of the issues I had (those missing scenes, mainly.  And there still wasn't enough Alan Rickman) remained, but the film is not actually poorly paced OR edited.  It wastes no time, picking up precisely where Part 1 left off, and plunges us into action pretty much from the get-go.  Our trio is fine form here, bringing their best to the table - and reminding us that even though we met them as babies, they've grown into capable and talented actors.  Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint rage and cry and fight and if there is a bit of scenery-chewing, it can be excused because they're holding their own against such formidable talents as Rickman, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham-Carter and Ralph Fiennes, all of whom also bring their A-game.

I could probably write an essay on each of our veteran actors here, so I'm going to leave it at this: when Voldemort awkwardly hugs Draco, it looks exactly like someone who has never given a hug before but only seen other people do it.  It's squirmingly uncomfortable and also kind of awesome.

The other thing I'd like to heap praise on is the visual tone.  Yates has pretty consistently given us a chillingly bleak setting, in cold greys and blues and deep haunting blacks; Deathly Hallows serves that up in spades.  One of the opening scenes looks ominously down at Hogwarts while a ring of Dementors hang, robes fluttering, in the air; it's the creepiest thing I have ever seen.  And, I think, the best thing about the 3D version (which was surprisingly clear and well-deployed), as it gives the Dementors another dimension of ethereal whispiness.

There are definitely still flaws.  These movies have always suffered (some more than others) from poor vetting; here, Harry brings up Lupin's new-born son, who has actually never been mentioned in either Deathly Hallows film.  Sure, I know about Teddy, but at this point the films have an audience that hasn't read the books, and forgetting to edit little things like this is pretty much unforgivably sloppy.  (We all might recall Snape's vehement proclamation, "I am the half-blood prince!" from movie #6, which should have been a revelation...if we'd known at all what that even meant.)  I would argue that understanding Snape's relationship with James Potter is just as important to the story as his relationship with Lily: those two people define Snape's actions and motivations through the whole series, and this should have been our chance to finally get his whole story, and we just...don't.  This is the shortest of the Harry Potter movies, and it didn't have to  be - at the very least, I hate that this pivotal sequence got slashed at the expense of added material.

Alan Rickman has always been good in these movies - here he is FANTASTIC.  His performance is subtle and layered and the amount of emotion he relays in one well-deployed eyebrow is astounding.  His only flaw is that this should have been the Snape-Show: his backstory, told in a beautifully composed flashback sequence, should have been at LEAST twice as long, and as this was the shortest film in the whole franchise, Yates could have easily doubled the time devoted to Snape without denting the audience's patience.  What is there is amazing.  There just should have been more of it.

There should have been more of a lot of things.  More backstory, more Deatheater deaths, more victorious good guy battle sequences.  Maybe fewer inspirational speeches?  Certainly more fact-checking by Voldemort (although that's a hold-over from the book, so perhaps Yates is not to blame for that one).

What the movie lacks in accuracy or dedication to the source material, it starts to make up for with powerhouse performances and jaw-dropping visuals (the dragon break-out from Gringotts is my personal favorite).  I missed the more personal moments from Rowling's battle scene, where she focuses in on small groups of people; but I loved the sweeping views of the cinematic battle, and the destruction of Hogwarts is nearly as heartbreaking as any character death.  It's not my favorite of the Potter films, not even my favorite of the Deathly Hallows halves; as a whole, I'm still a shade disappointed with what I wanted to be the most emotional, jaw-dropping, heart-wrenching film of the series, and it just...wasn't.  But it had its moments, and what it did well, it did VERY well.

I just wish it had done more.