Reeling Backward: "Sleepy Hollow" (1999)

 

One of the greatest disappointments of my cinematic lifetime is the devolution of Tim Burton. 

Along with the Coen brothers, he was at the very top of my list of favorite filmmakers during the 1980s and '90s. Burton made breathtakingly original movies, often combining existing stories or mythologies with elements of horror and twisted comedy to create something that felt at once new and very old: "Beetlejuice," "Batman" and its sequel, "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and on.

1999's "Sleepy Hollow" seemed to represent the apex, or at least the median, of his career. It was an R-rated, big-budget spectacle that took the legend of the Headless Horseman as a mere jumping-off point for something that was singularly Burtonian. It's hardly his best film but perhaps one closest to the essence of his filmmaking ethos.

And then, disaster.

Beginning with his next film, 2001's awful "Planet of the Apes," Burton dove over the edge of some boundless abyss. He went from being arguably Hollywood's most original voice to the King of the Crappy Remakes. 

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Dark Shadows," "Dumbo," "Alice in Wonderland," "Dark Shadows," "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" -- it seems there was no moldy intellectual property knocking about that Burton was unwilling to sign onto for a cynical, opportunistic reboot. Most of them made a lot of money, and so we've gotten more of the same.

Meanwhile, on the rare occasion Burton returned briefly to his outsider roots -- "Big Eyes," "Big Fish" -- it's been less of a commercial success. 

(Oddly, I split with the Coen boys the same time as Burton, beginning with 2001's "The Man Who Wasn't There." Just as they achieved mainstream success both commercially and with the respect of their peers as expressed through prestigious awards, I've found them afflicted with a case of the dread Serious Filmmakers disease. Only their Westerns, "True Grit" and "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs," have truly pleased me since.)

I haven't watched "Sleepy Hollow" in at least a decade, so given the season I thought it would be a nice visit down pleasant memory lane. Don't think ill of of me, but joining the trip was my youngest, who seems to share my taste for scary movies that the oldest son lacks. Other than one or two fingers-over-eyes moments, he did just fine and enjoyed the movie as much as me, and possibly more. 

I must say that today the film's R rating seems rather overburdensome, as it's no bloodier than the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy of the same period. Though I suppose a few lingering closeups of severed necks, along with a general theme that's heavy on the occult, likely tipped the scales toward the harsher rating from the MPAA. 

The script by Andrew Kevin Walker -- known for films dallying with perversion, "8MM" and "Se7en" -- combines the Gothic horror aspects of the original story by Washington Irving with a sort of Sherlock Holmes-esque murder-mystery, with a dash of the moralistic musings of "The Scarlet Letter." Here, Irving's fable of a love triangle mixed with local legends of hauntings gives way to a much more complex conspiracy involving most of the town's key figures.

Apologies: just one spoiler warning after more than two decades, so turn back now if you wish to keep the film's secrets to discover yourself.

One last brief aside before we continue: Sleepy Hollow was not actually a town, but merely a glen (neighborhood) of Tarry Town in upstate New York, today called Tarrytown. It originally incorporated in the 19th century as North Tarrytown, but owing to the lingering notoriety and tourist appeal from the story and various cinematic adaptations, changed its name to Sleepy Hollow in 1996. 

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery has remained throughout, however, along with the Old Dutch Church referenced in the story. My father-in-law, who grew up in Tarrytown, is buried there (along with Irving) and his service was held at the church.

"Sleepy Hollow" is a magnificent-looking film, shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki so as to seem leeched of nearly all color, except for some vibrant blood reds and other dashes of hue that stand out in stark relief. The costumes and production design are also sumptuous -- by Colleen Atwood, and Peter Young and Rick Heinrichs, respectively -- and all three received well-deserved Oscar nominations, with the latter winning.

The big joke of the movie is that Ichabod Crane, played by Burton muse Johnny Depp, is not your typical action hero but a squeamish sort prone to fainting and being repelled by blood and dead bodies -- which, of course, he encounters in abundant frequency. Rather than being a visiting schoolmaster vying for the hand of the town rich man's daughter, he is a constable sent from New York City (banished, really) to investigate three recent murders using newfangled scientific techniques and contraptions. 

With his milk-pale skin, foppy hair and persnickety mannerisms, Depp's Crane seems like a deliberate rejection of stereotypical Hollywood manhood, and for one I could not be more pleased by it. This more or less began Depp's penchant for highly stylized performances, epitomized by his Willy Wonka and Captain Jack Sparrow from the (seemingly endless) "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. 

Christina Ricci plays Katrina Van Tassel, the aforementioned daughter of Sleepy Hollow's most propserous citizen, Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon). At one point she becomes Crane's prime suspect behind the Headless Horseman, played with great effect in a wordless performance by Christopher Walken. 

At first Crane believes the Horseman to be a mere myth, and indeed there's some play on this by local strongman Brom (Casper Van Dien), his chief rival for Katrina's affections, who at one point dresses up as the Horseman and frightens Crane half to death, knocking him out with a flaming pumpkin smashed to the head. (I'd forgotten, but this is actually the event that mostly directly recalls Irving's story.)

Soon Crane becomes convinced the Horseman is real, but being controlled by some local party who possesses his skull and uses this power to assassinate their enemies.

I must confess I'd quite forgotten about all the contretemps with the townsfolk, and even who the true villain turns out to be. It's a messy bit of exposition that never is really clearly spelled out, other than it centers around a local widow who has been impregnated and the various parties -- midwife, doctor, magistrate, notary and several witnesses -- who became embroiled in the scandal.

Katrina is soon revealed to be a witch, though eventually shown to be a good one. In fact, she is just one of a bevy of witches to be revealed in the story. Others include Baltus' second wife, Mary, and her twin sister (both played by Miranda Richardson), and Crane's own mother, seen in flashback by Lisa Marie, who was tortured and murdered by his religious father. 

Katrina was presumably taught her craft by her late mother (apparently murdered by Mary), so Baltus had the distinction of wedding not one but two witches.

Other players include Ian McDiarmid as Thomas Lancaster, the town doctor, who is sleeping with the Van Tassel servant, Sarah; James Hardenbrook (Michael Gough), the cowardly banker and keeper of documents; Jeffrey Jones as Rev. Steenwyck, who is secretly dallying with Mary Van Tassel; Samuel Philipse (Richard Griffiths), the local magistrate who buries his guilty conscience in drink; and Marc Pickering as Masbath, a boy whose father is murdered by the Horseman for bearing witness and becomes Crane's stalwart servant. 

In perhaps the film's most genuinely terrifying sequence, the horseman is sent to slay the midwife, Killian (Claire Skinner), and ends up killing her husband (Steven Waddington) and young son (Sean Stephens), too. The boy watches his parents murdered through the slats of the floorboards under which he is hiding, and then gets his own axe treatment, too.

(And if there's one part likely to wind up giving my kid nightmares, that's probably it.)

Like a classic Agatha Christie whodunit, the movie is surprisingly loaded with movements of the plot. We soon lose track of which of the townsfolk are doing ill and to whom, and bide our time until the next occasion the Horseman shows up to do some death-dealing.

Done up in all black, variously wielding swords and axes and riding his massive steed Daredevil (apparently undead as well), the Headless Horseman is quite unnerving. He whips about with surprising speed and pinpoint precision, as if able to see perfectly well despite not having a head. 

Stuntman-turned-actor Ray Park, best known for playing Darth Maul in the Star Wars franchise, takes over the Horseman for the combat and riding scenes. Rather than doing the usual built-up rig worn up on the shoulders, he performed the entire role wearing a blue ski mask that was digitally removed by Industrial Light & Magic. It's a terrifically effective presence.

Seeing the movie again, I'm reminded that the pacing of "Sleepy Hollow" is not the soundest -- terrific, horrifying action scenes giving way to some rather dull talkie parts in between. But it's the mood that makes it such a spectacular success.

We variously find ourselves laughing, or cringing, or being completely befuddled by what's going on. Some scenes land as straight-up horror, like when Crane and his companions track the Horseman down to his grave at the Tree of the Dead, where he springs forth from the grasping roots, and returns the same way, as if through the dripping gate of Hell itself.

Then we'll have parts, like the Horseman's assault on the Old Dutch Church with the townsfolk trapped in side, where he spears Van Tassel through the heart using a post of the sanctuary fence, which plays more for laughs than cries of fear. 

Or both, or one and then the other, or the other way around. I can imagine being in the theater when this film first came out, and I'd bet when this scene came round half the audience was shrieking and the other chortling.

That's the Tim Burton I remember and cherish. Maybe we'll get him back again someday, for good.

 

Video review: "Judy"

"What’s ‘Judy’ about?” someone asked me when the film was hitting theaters.

“It’s about Renée Zellweger making her big comeback and giving an Oscar-bait performance,” I responded.

“No, no, I mean the story. What’s the movie about?” they said.

“It’s a movie about getting Renée Zellweger her big comeback performance and maybe winning an Oscar.”

A bit flip, but true. “Judy” is one of those movies that isn’t just built around a leading performance, it is the film in its entirety. Zellweger plays Judy Garland during her last bitter years, her star faded but her voice still strong.

It’s a great role for an actress whose career hit a slump around age 40, as so many sadly do. Hollywood loves the ingénue and seems to have little room for women in their middle years. It happened to Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep, too.

They managed to turn it around and cruise into their “grand dame” years, and that’s what Zellweger’s turn here is trying to do.

I liked the film without really falling in love. I often find that biopics containing a single overpowering performance – “Ray,” “Capote,” etc. – tend to have an innate ceiling below greatness. Stories and secondary characters are shunted aside in the bid to keep the spotlight burning bright on the star.

Set in the late 1960s, the story follows Garland when she was booked to play an extended engagement at a London theater. She was long sick of showbiz, but with bills to pay and an ongoing custody battle for kids, Garland didn’t have much choice.

Jessie Buckley plays Rosalyn, the handler assigned to watch over Garland and make sure she shows up for her performances and not get too drunk. Some flashback scenes feature Darci Shaw as a teen Garland first getting a harsh introduction to Hollywood via a creepy Louis B. Mayer.

“Judy” is a solid biopic, but once you get past Zellweger’s snappy performance as a self-loathing faded star, there’s not much fairy dust to speak of.

Bonus features are fairly skimpy. There’s just an image gallery from the set and a documentary, “From the Heart: The Making of Judy.”

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Judy"

“I still believe in it, y’know -- the love you find with an audience.”

Judy Garland was known for having more career comebacks than you could count. Really, her entire adult career was one long comeback from the Golden Age stardom of her child/ingenue years. She was the studio’s hand-picked “America’s sweetheart” -- until she become a grown woman who stumbled through addiction, financial instability and one bad marriage after another.

Renée Zellweger hasn’t been the star of a mainstream movie since 2009’s “New in Town,” so people are calling “Judy” her comeback picture. She’s 50 now, an age when many Hollywood many actresses find themselves lonely for projects. So there’s a certain synergy in her playing an over-the-hill flameout trying to make one last go at stardom.

(It should be noted, she’s already older than Garland was at her death, though they have to use aging makeup to make her sufficiently haggard.)

She is indeed a knockout playing Garland during the last months of her life, a faded star who’s sick of showbiz but is forced to suck at the only teat available to her. Unable to get booked anywhere else, she just wants the financial means to support her two younger children, over whose custody she is fighting a long-game war with ex-hubby Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell).

Zellweger nails the mannerisms and singing of Garland, including that strange head-shaking, humped-posture thing she acquired later in her career. The looks aren’t exactly spot-on, but the hair, makeup and lighting are close enough that after a while you don’t think about it much.

The actress will almost certainly get an Academy Award nomination out of this, and deserves to.
But I can’t help but put “Judy” in a pile with other similar Oscar-bait biopics like “Ray” and “Capote.” The central performance so dominates the film as to overpower the narrative function. The acting is the story.

So side characters are not given space to live and breathe, and the narrative tends to hover in place rather than go anywhere.

It’s quite literally all Judy, Judy, Judy.

I confess the iconography Garland holds in certain communities, particularly among gay men, is bewildering to me. Garland was a talented singer, though more as a crooner-for-hire than as someone who made indelible music of her own. By my lights she was a middling actress at best.

The screenplay by Tom Edge, based on a play by Peter Quilter, focuses on a period of a few months in the late 1960s when Garland sang at a big London theater. Director Rupert Goold (“True Story”) stages the many musical numbers with appreciable skill and flair, and they are the highlight of the experience.

The wonderful Jessie Buckley is largely wasted as Rosalyn, the British handler assigned to take care of her during her London stay. This mostly involves making sure she shows up in the right places at the right times at an acceptable level of inebriation.

I kept hoping the two characters would forge some kind of bond or even an All-About-Eve-ish antagonism, but their interactions skim the surface.

Michael Gambon plays the theater owner, standing in the wings and fretting about Judy’s erratic performances on his stage. Royce Pierreson is Burt, the band leader who craves collaboration but is dismissed to the background.

Darci Shaw plays Judy as a teen in flashback scenes, where she is controlled by Louis B. Mayer, who sees her as his personal creation, and pet. (I can’t find a credit for the actor who plays Mayer, but he’s terrific.) Their insistence that she starve herself began a lifelong habit of pill-popping and insomnia.

Finn Wittrock plays Mickey Deans, an agreeably scruffy young admirer who presses himself upon Garland at a party thrown by her daughter, Liza Minnelli, already a big star on her own. That mother-daughter relationship is left almost completely unexplored, though we traipse through the tiresome infatuation/ingratiation/dissolution journey with Mickey.

The time elapse from their marriage to breakup scene must set some kind of filmmaking record.

I enjoyed a lot of things about “Judy,” but it’s one of those movies that is good bordering on very good without ever finding true greatness. People will go see it to witness one Hollywood legend playing the hell out of another bygone one.

That’s fine, but I wish there was more story to tell beyond the spotlight.

Review: "Victoria & Abdul"

“Victoria & Abdul” is one of those beautiful true stories that sounds too fantastical to have actually happened. Indeed, many people deliberately tried to hide the tale and succeeded in doing so, until the truth came out many decades after the principles were dead.

Directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Lee Hall, it’s a tale of love and friendship between a powerful monarch and a lowly servant from across the globe. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of “Driving Miss Daisy,” in that it shows how people from different backgrounds and stations can grow very close without romantic love -- and how that sort of bond threatens other folks.

During the last 15 years of her life, Queen Victoria of England had an Indian Muslim man as her attendant. He waited upon her as a servant, but the relationship developed into friendship as he taught her about his homeland, of which she was the Empress, as well as the Urdu language. She called him “the Munshi,” or teacher.

The entire British court was scandalized by this, including her heir, the Prince of Wales, who worked actively to undermine the man, Abdul Karim. When his mother finally died, the Munshi and his family was essentially thrown out of the castle as soon as the funeral was over, and the new king ordered all photographs and correspondence between and Abdul and Victoria seized and burned.

Essentially, his legacy was swept clean from the history books.

It’s another powerhouse performance from Judi Dench as Victoria. It’s certainly a warts-and-all portrayal of the queen, showing her as an old, addled and bored woman who wears her royal mantle as a burden rather than a responsibility. Her entire life is an unceasing litany of dinners, presentations, signing of documents, etc. The crown is her cage.

There’s one terrific scene where Victoria recites all her own faults with stark honesty, showing a sharp mind and strong soul underneath the layers of time and the trappings of office. The longest-reigning English monarch (until the current one), Victoria is depicted as someone who has loss the zest for life, and regains it in her friendship with Abdul.

Played by Ali Fazal, Abdul is shown as a young, idealistic man plucked from obscurity and picked by fate for his role. A low-level clerk in a jail near Agra, he is selected to present a ceremonial coin to the empress simply because he is 1) tall, and 2) chose some carpets a functionary liked.  Fazal plays him as earnest, good-hearted and rather naïve.

He and another man, Mohammed, spend two months traveling by ship to England for a ceremony that lasts 30 seconds. Such was the state of the royal court, where tuxedos are considered daywear and each course of every meal is preceded by a trumpet blast. It’s an amazingly gorgeous film, with period sets and costumes to catch your breath.

Frears, Hall and their cast carefully craft the growing relationship between the pair, with hints of romantic passion that give way to a deeper connection. Shocked upon learning Abdul is married, she orders his wife and mother-in-law brought to live with them at court.

The cast is uniformly excellent, including Tim Pigott-Smith as the head of her majesty’s court; Eddie Izzard as the bombastic heir apparent; Michael Gambon as the befuddled prime minster; Paul Higgins as the pig-headed royal doctor; and Olivia Williams and Fenella Woolgar as the chief ladies-in-waiting.

Though some might dismiss the story as a historical footnote, “Victoria & Abdul” is a delightful look at the surprising things that bring us together, and the not so surprising things that drive us apart.

Video Review: "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

I have not always been Harry Potter's best friend. I liked the first two movies in the series well enough. But by the third -- when most observers believed the 10-year, eight-film epic journey really took things to another level -- I felt like I'd seen this movie too many times already. The saga of the boy wizard and Voldemort, his mortal enemy, had become episodic and repetitive to these eyes.

But the last film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" was the grand payoff that I had been waiting for. No more exposition, no more new characters cluttering up the storyline, no more sense of the filmmakers dawdling -- just the logical, satisfying and sweeping culmination of a long voyage.

The story picks up with Harry, Ron and Hermione returning from exile to challenge Voldemort, who's tightened his death's grasp on the entire wizarding world. There's a climactic assault on Hogwarts School by Death Eaters and their minions, a terrifying chase through a maze of dragons, and of course the epic final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.

The stakes are high, and many people die. There's a sense of grandiose finality to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." This is the end -- and what a glorious one.

Videos extras are decent, though not quite magical. The lack of a commentary track is rather galling.

The DVD has a making-of documentary, deleted scenes, a tour of the Warner Bros. London studio where most of the films were shot, plus three featurettes: "The Goblins of Gringotts with Warwick Davis," "The Women of Harry Potter," and "When Harry Left Hogwarts."

The Blu-ray edition has all those, plus two juicy additions. There's an interactive pop-up collection of behind-the-scenes videos, and a conversation between author J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

Harry Potter's epic journey ends with power and majesty. For 10 years and seven previous films, we've waded through oceans of exposition and endured ever-burgeoning layers of new characters and mythology to absorb. All building to: This.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" does not disappoint. It is easily the best film of the series, mainly because we no longer feel the filmmakers stringing us along to set up yet another movie. People die, many of them central characters, and the audience recognizes the finality of these events.

In the final showdown with the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in still-creepy bone-white makeup) there are several sequences that will last with me.

A terrifying chase through a maze with serpents of fire in pursuit. An assault on Hogwarts School by an army of Voldemort's Death Eaters, complete with lumbering trolls and wraith-like Dementors, that approaches the battles of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. A sad but illuminating journey through the mind of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the Hogwarts professor of shifting loyalties.

And, of course, Harry's final toe-to-toe magical battle with Voldemort. Daniel Radcliffe has grown so much in this role, and he brings it all together in this last movie, showing us the character's bravery and contradictions, his rage and grief. The Harry Potter of "Deathly Hallows" is no longer a young boy excited by magic, but has turned out much like LoTR's Frodo, aged before his time and regretful of the events in which he's been chosen by fate to play a pivotal role.

There's also an element we haven't seen out of Voldemort before -- fear. Early in the story he realizes that Harry, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) have stumbled upon the secret to his forbidding dark power. By splitting his soul into hidden objects called Horcruxes, he's given them a chance to destroy him.

For those like me who have not read the series of books by J.K. Rowling, it can be a little difficult at times to keep up with the spinning narrative. At one point Harry pulls out some little golden doohickey that acquired somewhere in his travels, which I could summon no memory of. And then the thing it contains, which we had been told was the secret to Voldemort's downfall, ends up playing no role in their confrontation.

Contrastingly, diehard fans may complain about the film not containing every morsel of detail from the books. Such a thing is impossible -- even when director Peter Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves split the last book into two movies.

In that sense, this final film may be more satisfying to those who are innocent of Rowling's novels than the untold millions who have voraciously consumed them.

("Part 2" is being released in 3-D, and a more worthless and distracting use of that technology I have never seen. It adds little depth to the action, and dims the movie unnecessarily.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "The King's Speech"

Everybody's bad at something.

Perhaps you can't shoot a basketball, or your spelling is atrocious. I for one have a terrible memory for names. What is universal about these myriad faults is that we all carefully protect our shortcomings by keeping them private, or finding a way to work around them.

(True fact: I keep a chart of my street block so I know what to call neighbors.)

But what if the one thing you were terrible at also happened to be the sole criteria by which everyone judged you? If your inescapable duty was confounded by your greatest disability?

Such was the fate of King George VI of England, who suffered from a crippling stutter. He was helped by an unconventional Australian speech therapist, and was able to serve as an inspiration to his people during the dark days of World War II.

"The King's Speech," the film about his struggle, is straight out of the school of Inspirational Tales from History. What it lacks in novelty it makes up for in executing this type of movie-making about as well as it can be done.

Colin Firth as the king and Geoffrey Rush as his therapist offer a pair of tremendous performances, in roles that pop off the screen notwithstanding the constraints of a slightly staid screenplay (by David Seidler).

Despite being a loving father and husband, dedicated Navy officer and utterly loyal to the monarchy and his nation, Prince Albert (as he was known before his coronation) was belittled by his family simply because he stammered. Public speeches were embarrassing, halting disasters, both for Albert and the people who had to listen to them.

His father (a brief but memorable appearance by Michael Gambon) regrets the new requirements technology forces upon the monarchy, like his annual Christmas speeches over the radio.

"Now we must invade our subjects' home and ingratiate ourselves," the king complains. "We have become actors!"

The second in line for the throne, Albert was safely shunted to minor appearances where he could keep a low profile, which suited him just fine.

It might never have mattered, until his brother Edward (Guy Pearce), after assuming the crown in 1936, abdicated a few months later to marry an American divorcé. It's interesting to see the different portrayals of this event: Americans regard it as a grand romantic gesture, while Albert and his family see it as foolish and mortifying.

At the prodding of his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), the soon-to-be-king seeks help from Lionel Logue (Rush), whose methods are unorthodox, to say the least. He demands the prince come to his office, rather than calling at the palace. On his home turf, Lionel insists they treat each other as equals -- even presuming to call the prince "Bertie," a familial nickname.

There are also strange breathing exercises, tongue twisters, singing his words and, most memorably, spewing a string of expletives that in of itself earned the film an R rating. (It probably would've gotten a G otherwise.)

Lionel's lessons intensify as Albert takes up the crown -- even burrowing into his personal life. It is Lionel's professional opinion that no child is born a stutterer: Some kind of trauma compels them to be afraid of their own voice.

Firth is by turns droll, arrogant and sensitive as Albert/George -- the sort of pampered son who has more grit and wry humor than anyone suspects. Asked by his daughter what Hitler is shouting about in a newsreel, there's no hesitation to his comeback: "I don't know. But he seems to be saying it rather well."

Director Tom Hooper, who helmed last year's excellent "The Damned United," recognizes the material for what it is and emphasizes its obvious strengths. "The King's Speech" knows exactly how to get its point across.

3.5 stars out of four

Bonus video review: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

The Harry Potter saga is wrapping up, so one should think the next-to-last film would feel like it's building toward something monumental. (Well, next-to-next-to-last. They're splitting up the seventh and final book into two movies.)

Instead, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is disjointed and rambling. It finally gathers itself up for a powerful and tragic final act. But it dawdles excruciatingly along the way.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the gang seem to be a in a good place as their sixth year at Hogwarts begins. They fought off a usurpation of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic that Voldemort was secretly behind. Harry's relationship with headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is stronger than ever, and the elder wizard enlists Harry's aid in dealing with Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), the newest Hogwarts professor.

It seems the doddering Slughorn has an important memory regarding Voldemort, who used to be a student of his, but refuses to share it. Harry's assignment is to get him to spill the beans -- or, in this case, the misty magic memories they can pull out of their heads.

Meanwhile, romance blooms unhindered among the student body. I won't belabor all the details -- mostly because I can't grasp them all myself. Suffice to say that Hermione (Emma Watson) loves Ron (Rupert Grint), who's too busy dealing with an overly aggressive admirer to notice. Harry in turn fancies Ron's sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright), but doesn't want to rock the boat with his best friend.

The villainous work is left to Professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), who seems more foul-tempered than ever around Harry, and Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), Harry's schoolyard nemesis since the day he arrived at Hogwarts. For the first time, Felton is given more to do than sneer and bully, and reveals Draco as a more layered character than we've seen before. It's clear that he's doing Voldemort's bidding, and keeps tinkering with a magical contraption in the Hogwarts attic, but his true motives are unclear.

There's a considerable amount of DVD extras, although much of it has the tang of hype rather than enticing fans with behind-the-scenes insights.

I'm thinking mostly of the sneak peek at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a new theme park being built at Universal Orlando. It's basically 11 minutes of sales pitch. Same goes for a sneak preview of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the culmination of the film series.

There are about six minutes worth of deleted scenes, although nothing terribly compelling. And there are some quick-hit features where the actors are asked to describe their characters in a minute or less, or answer some asinine questions posed by cast member Tom Felton.

More substantive is a 28-minute making-of documentary. And there's a 50-minute feature called "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life" that looks at the author over the period while she was writing "Deathly Hallows."

The two-disc DVD package also comes with a digital copy of the film.

In addition to all these materials, the Blu-ray version comes with a 98-minute "Movie Mode" with commentary by directory David Yates, the producers and all the principal cast members. Now that's a pretty special conjuration.

Movie: 2.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars