David Elliott on movies: ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘500 Days’

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

“You need a shave, Harry,” says old Prof. Dumbledore, the Hogwarts School headmaster whose beard is so grand he needs a special ring to keep it under control. Yes, Harry Potter is growing up, but in the latest (sixth) film our hero (Daniel Radcliffe) seems the most juvenile of the star trio. Though maturing, he remains compact and boyish, while formerly goofy-looking Ron (Rupert Grint) looms above him, and prim, studious Hermione (Emma Watson) is already a beautiful young woman.

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which takes time to savor their adolescence, would otherwise be a hard campaign even for devout Potterites. Ron’s funny response to a girl’s crush on him rattles Hermione, and even Harry feels cupid’s tickle. But no love potion can cancel the storm of grim news, as Harry seeks to protect Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) from the “dark lord.” And there is morbid work for pale, gothic Prof. Snape (Alan Rickman, his voice like polished thunder in “Take …out… your wand”).

No first-timer should enter the series at this point, as there is just too much back-story for the virginal viewer. This is a run-up to the closure that will require two films. Once more, big effects do not rule the story but serve it, and again the crammed but elegantly designed details make novelist J.K. Rowling (Steve Kloves adapted again) seem a fiercely vital descendent of Dickens. Speaking of relations, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as young Tom (the future Voldemort) is the nephew of Ralph Fiennes, who has been the adult “dark lord.”

High British craft and pride of showmanship have rescued the series from a certain excess of gee-wizardry. The epic advances, and this film’s cave of slimey creeps is not for young kids (nor will they fathom much else). Silly Prof. Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) and maturing Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) are padded-out as significant plot figures. But Potter passion runs deep, and fans will favor No. 6 despite its having one of the saddest character exits (a big one) in the entire series. (Rated PG) ★★★

“500 Days of Summer”

Zooey Deschanel has often been adorable, as any girl named Zooey should be. She is so fetching as Summer in “500 Days of Summer” that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as Tom, is correctly besotted. The title hints that the romance might not be meant to last, and the movie stretches and teases the idea. It is a little bit daring when it is not being a commercial goodie bag.

Director Marc Webb and two male writers favor the man’s point of view. Tom has put off his wish to be an architect (Eric Steelberg’s photography sharply salutes downtown L.A., including the great Bradbury Building). Instead, he writes greeting cards, and falls like a Valentine’s Day greeting for the boss’s new secretary, Summer. Much of the story seems to flip through script cards: meet-cutes, ups and downs of intimacy, sex plus musical fantasy, Tom’s buddies tossing guy

quips, a flip young girl whose advice Tom oddly needs, and even a quaint nod to the ’60s French New Wave.

Gordon-Levitt is credibly fine. Deschanel has aspects of Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton and Debra Winger, and deserves their kind of breakthrough success. But Summer often has a glint or slant of mood suggesting inner resistance (which, of course, drives Tom crazy). The many forward jumps remind us that the affair has a shadow side, and that might be gutsy except that both Tom and us viewers are left too far in the dark.

Deschanel is both dream dish and that old male anxiety, the fickle woman as mysterious Other. She is too gifted an actor, and too much the story’s magnetic center, to be left coyly inarticulate. She never quite opens, and this opacity fuzzes the intelligence crucial to her appeal. Tom realizes that life is not a greeting card, but the film resorts to a card-like clincher, perhaps a sop to the coveted chick audience. Deschanel remains the best thing in a movie that sells her short. (Opens on Friday; rated PG-13) ★★

“The Stoning of Soraya M”

Based on a 1986 tragedy in an Iranian village, “The Stoning of Soraya M” tells of a mother of four whose vile husband decides to replace her with a young heiress. In league with a gutless mayor and a corrupt mullah, he smears her reputation and gets cowed yokels to stone her to death. This village has many idiots, and as for justice, well, “When a man accuses a woman she must prove her innocence.”

Cyrus Nowrasteh’s protest film (scripted with his wife) is not for aesthetes, despite rooted images and good performances by Mozan Marno as the victim and Shoreh Aghdashloo (Iran’s Irene Pappas) as her protective aunt. The villains have virtual horns, some story tactics were creaky back when Warner Bros. made movies “hot from the headlines,” and reporter Jim Caviezel arrives one day too late. (Having piously acted Jesus in the goriest Christ film, must Caviezel appear in a movie attacking the brutal side of Islam?)

Despite such aesthetic stones hurled at viewers, I won’t toss back. “Soraya” has the power of a feminist Bible lesson. Its agony is so rooted and visceral that if the movie strikes a blow against the lunatic oppression of women, not only in Islamic lands, its tactical flaws matter little. (Opens Friday; rated R). ★★★

“$9.99″

“$9.99″ combines Australian and Israeli talent to fill a charming niche. An old apartment building in the curvilinear, Mediterranean Moderne style is the hub of this elegantly whimsical animation from Israeli-born, New York director Tatia Rosenthal. Source stories by Israel’s Etgar Keret have a distinctly Jewish itch of philosophical and moral concern, yet the movie is primarily eye candy.

This film could be the byproduct of a fixation on edge comics (Harvey Pekar, etc.) and on James Stewart’s neighbors in “Rear Window.” Occupants include a lonely dad, a sexy couple, a dreamy child and, as cynical visitor, a scruffy angel (voiced by Geoffrey Rush). Using stop-motion shots of painted puppets (not Claymation), the fabricated coziness is so richly detailed and designed (kudo to Melinda Doring) that the dovetailing stories seem less important than the expressive layers and derivations. (Opens Friday at Landmark Ken Cinema; rated R) ★★

STARS: FOUR (excellent), THREE (worthy), TWO (involving), ONE (dud), ZERO (nil)

NEWS Etc.

Raise a glass…: “Tetro” opens July 24 at a local theater, and I am looking forward to Francis Ford Coppola’s latest art effort, a story of two brothers. I was a fan of his last, daring, beautiful gamble, “Youth Without Youth.” Still, I wonder about that big newspaper ad in L.A. which, along with early blurbs, featured a prominent bottle of Coppola claret. That went so snugly with a Village Voice pundit calling “Tetro” as “intoxicating as a bottle of the director’s finest red.” Maybe this was necessary synergy (on Coppola’s tab?), yet I don’t recall Paul Newman’s later movies being hawked with his salad dressing and spaghetti sauce. Let us hope for a good vintage.

Two for the patio: Cinema Under the Stars, the outdoor theater (not a drive-in), offers two famous pleasures this weekend. “From Russia With Love,” one of the classic and classy Connery Bonds, also has Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya, Pedro Armendariz and even a wall-sized Istanbul poster for Bob Hope’s “Call Me Bwana.” That’s Thursday and Friday, followed on Saturday and Sunday nights by “Strangers on a Train,” the absorbingly devious Hitchcock murder thriller starring naughty Farley Granger and Robert Walker. Shows start at 8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6), and the theater is at 4040 Goldfinch in Mission Hills. For more, visit www.topspresents.com

A QUOTE (not a blurb!)

“I’ve had a particularly fascinating life. Would you like to hear about it?” —- Pedro Armendariz as Ali Kerim Bey in “From Russia With Love.” The charming Mexican actor did have a fascinating life, but it ended at 51 soon after this final role.

David Elliott is the SDNN movie critic.

Tags: $9.99 review, Cinema Under the Stars, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince review, Mozan Marno review, review 500 Days of Summer, review Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, SDNN, Tetro Francis Ford Coppola, The Stoning of Soraya M review, Zooey Deschanel

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