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Film Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Bottom Line: A bit of the magic is gone, but the enchantment lives on.

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Opens: Friday, May 16 (Walt Disney Pictures)

The lion is back, the witch puts in an appearance, but that musty old wardrobe has been put out of commission in "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," a worthy if somewhat less wondrous successor to that 2005 phenomenon.

Several shades darker in tone than the previous edition -- which, to be fair, didn't carry the burden of expectation that a sequel must bear -- the return to Narnia still casts a transporting spell that should nicely build on that $745 million worldwide foundation.

The second installment in C.S. Lewis' seven-part fantasy series, "Prince Caspian" finds the four Pevensie siblings (Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell) a year older and quite a bit wiser when they're summoned back to Narnia.

But 1,300 years have passed in their beloved home away from home, which has become a more savage place under the tyrannical reign of the evil King Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), who plots to ensure that the rightful heir to the throne will no longer be his nephew, Prince Caspian (British stage actor Ben Barnes), but his own newborn son.


Having fled his would-be killers, Caspian joins forces with Narnia's youthful kings and queens to take down Miraz, with a little help from Trumpkin the Red Dwarf (a heavily disguised Peter Dinklage) and Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard), a valiant mouse rather reminiscent of "Shrek's" Puss in Boots.

Given that the sequel is again directed by Andrew Adamson, who also was behind those first two "Shrek" movies, that shouldn't come as a complete surprise, but the more somber "Caspian" also shares elements with the second "Lord of the Rings" installment, "The Two Towers," as well as the later, moodier "Harry Potter" editions.

The loss-of-innocence theme of the first "Narnia" is significantly deepened in the script, written again by Adamson along with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, lending itself to that darker look.

But there's still much to appreciate in those gorgeous special effects and grand-scale battle sequences, not to mention Dinklage's terrific turn as the curmudgeonly Red Dwarf who handily manages to outmaneuver the title character as Narnia's most colorful new inhabitant.

Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, Mark Johnson/Silverbell Films

Cast: Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Ben Barnes, Peter Dinklage.

Director: Andrew Adamson; Screenwriters: Andrew Adamson & Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely; Executive producer: Perry Moore; Producers: Mark Johnson, Andrew Adamson, Philip Steuer; Director of Photography: Karl Walter Lindenlaub ; Production Designer: Roger Ford; Music: Harry Gregson-Williams; Costume Designer: Isis Mussenden; Editor: Sim Evan Jones.

Sex and the City



Bottom Line: Not enough sex; too much city.

By Michael Rechtshaffen

OPENS: Friday, May 30 (New Line).

The veil officially comes off the highly anticipated "Sex and the City" movie at the end of the month, and while the HBO series' ardent fans are certain to come out in droves, the end product is a case of bigger not necessarily being better.

When making a successful transition from TV show to motion picture, the trick always is to retain the essence of what made the series so watchable while at the same time addressing the demands of that larger canvas without feeling like a super-sized episode.

But while staying faithful to the former -- Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and the girls remain energetically true to form -- the nearly 2 1/2-hour feature tends to resemble the latter.

Not that the bloated result will deter the show's fiercely loyal audience, which should make the New Line release a potent girls night out destination, but it is unlikely to build on that fan base.
Essentially picking up four years later from where the Emmy-winning series left off in 2004 (after six seasons), the movie efficiency brings everybody up to speed.

Carrie, no longer writing that weekly column, is working on her fourth book and is still in a stable relationship with Mr. Big (Chris Noth).

Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is living her fairy tale existence on Park Avenue with her hubby, Harry (Evan Handler), and the little girl they adopted from China.

The considerably more-stressed Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is living in Brooklyn, struggling to balance a high-pressure job with marriage to her husband Steve (David Eigenberg) and motherhood.

Meanwhile, over on the other coast, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) appears to have settled down with her actor-client Smith (Jason Lewis) in their sunny Malibu beach house.

But when Big pops the big question, a whole mess of change is set into gear.

With that jumping-off point, the movie certainly was capable of standing on its own two Blahniks.

Unfortunately, where episodes of the series used to take their cue from a question posed by one of Carrie's columns, writer-director Michael Patrick King never finds that focus, and "Sex and the City" loses its tart edge in the process.
In need of some serious tightening up, the flabby picture does what the old Samantha would have never done: It keeps hanging around, pushing for a long-term relationship.

There's still much to enjoy here, especially from the nicely honed performances of its four colorful leads (the more explicit stuff is carried out by secondary characters). And a trio of costume designers ensure that there's no stinting on all the equally important label action.


Production companies: New Line Cinema in association with Home Box Office.
CAST: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth.DIRECTOR-SCREENWRITER: Michael Patrick King. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Kathryn Busby, Jonathan Filley.
PRODUCERS: Darren Star, John Melfi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael Patrick King.
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: John Thomas. PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Jeremy Conway.MUSIC: Aaron Zigman.COSTUME DESIGNER: Patricia Field.EDITOR: Michael Berenbaum. Rated R, 142 minutes.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix



by Robert Fontenot

Harry Potter is dead.
Okay, as you know by now, that’s not true. (That’s my somewhat educated guess, anyway.) But his universe is certainly on its last legs: with history’s most cleverly integrated book/movie scheme finally reaching the end of its source material, audiences will soon be faced with two final movies whose every twist and turn they already know. Making this the perfect time for the film version of this franchise to break out and actually start interpreting, not just filming, the novels—which seems to have already begun with film 5, …Order of the Phoenix. (Or, for simplicity’s sake, HPatOotP.)
Director David Yates, to begin with, has taken a scythe to the nearly-900-page novel and boiled it down to two straightforward, streamlined hours even a muggle could follow, proving the recent theory that as author J.K.Rowling gets dizzier, the HP films get more compact. To be similarly concise: Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry, now an adolescent and brimming with all sorts of weird feelings he can’t control, has run afoul of the entire Hogwarts institution with his insistence that he battled the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) at the end of the last episode; now sweetly demonic headmistress Dolores Umbridge has played some pointedly Bushian cards in order to introduce a new era of rigid, suspiciously defensive magic. As portrayed by Imelda Staunton with a note-perfect brio that threatens, at moments, to steal the entire franchise, she defines the place where piety meets contempt and concern begins to harden into Authority. Wrapped in dead-salmon pink, she’s the kind of unapologetically institutional villainess not seen since Nurse Ratchet. And this in what is ostensibly a kid’s movie.

That brand of darkness is pervasive in this fifth installment; the handful of new characters — paraded, in the Rowling fashion, like chocolates in a kid-Goth assortment – have all seen or are diligently working for the dark side, including Helena Bonham Carter’s smokin’ sibyl Bellatrix Lestrange or Evanna Lynch’s ditzy flower-girl creepster Luna Lovegood, or whatever that thing is calling itself Hagrid’s brother. And although that leaves most of the established side characters with little more than cameos this time out, Yates does an expert job of appropriation, streamlining the ever-denser politics of this world while deepening some major characters (i.e., Severus Snape) in preparation for the hellishness to come. Sort of like what Lucas wished he’d actually done with Star Wars, although Rowling, unlike the old fraud, has known how the pieces fit for some time. As do we, now. Rank this among the series’ best — and if you’ve been avoiding this cultural juggernaut so far, use Phoenix as an excuse to give in.
But hurry up!