Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone - 2001

 Just as it was sad reading the first book again after all these years, it was also sad watching this movie again, especially the beginning. The actors were quite right, first of all Maggie Smith, perfect. The kids were ok too, but Snape... I really really loved Alan Rickman, but Snape was supposed to be like 30 or something... it's a huge difference...

They obviously had to cut a lot, and so they put here and there little bits of conversations to connect you with the books. Very few little things.

It starts with Dumbledore putting off the light, waiting for Hagrid to bring little Harry and then leaving him on the Dursley's doorstep in the middle of the night with just a letter, despite McGonagall telling him they were the worst sort of muggles.

We see him again all grown up, sleeping in his cupboard, woken up by Perunia so he can serve them breakfast, with Dudley treating him like a bully and throwing a tantrum because he only has 46 birthday presents while the year before he had 47...

They leave for the zoo and Vernon warns him that if any 'funny business' occurs he won't have any food for a week. Once there, he talks to a snake and somehow removes the glass so the snakes escapes after thanking him, while Dudley is prisoner inside the cage in his place. At home, Vernon takes him by the hair, hurting him, and throws him inside the cupboard. 

Next we see him finding a letter addressed to himself, but he stares at it long enough to allow Dudley to steal it. Vernon throws it away. New letters arrive, and Vernon destroys them or burns them all, until the house is full of them so a crazy Vernon decides to leave.

In the middle of the sea, Harry sleeps on the floor, wishing himself a happy birthday, when someone breaks the door: Hagrid. He tells him he's a wizard and takes him away. 

Through the Leaky cauldron they reach Diagon alley where he gets his wand and Hagrid buys him an owl. No robe-buying here.

Hagrid takes him to the station and just leaves him there with his ticket, luckily Harry hears a woman saying the word 'muggles' quite loudly and follows her. First Percy, then Fred, then George pass through the barrier, then Harry (and I was like, move away, before someone smashes into you while passing through :lol but of course I knew it wouldn't happen).

On the train, Ron joins him saying everywhere else is full, and is awed at learning his name and seeing his scar. Harry buys lots of candy showing he's got lots of money and Ron eats it all. Hermione comes looking for Trevor the toad, mocks Ron about non doing a real spell trying to make Scabbers the rat yellow, then she repairs Harry's glasses just to show off that she can do spells. She's not very pleasant.

Hagrid leads them to the boats: we see lots of (Griffindor) faces, then McGonagall greets them and explains about the houses. Malfoy introduces himself and does his famous speech after Ron silently laughs at his name, and Harry refuses to shake his hand.

Dumbledore warns them that the "Dark" forest is forbidden and the third floor is off limits if they don't want to die a most painful death...

The sorting is not alphabetical and we only see: Hermione, Draco, Ron and of course Harry, with Susan Bones the Hufflepuff throws in there for a bit of variety (rolling eyes...).

Percy takes them to the common room and Harry stays awake with his owl thinking... and with no socks, poor child.

To McGonagall's lesson Harry and Ron are late, and she's there as a cat to catch them. In potions, Harry is writing down what Snape says instead of looking at him... 

Seamus wants to change water into rum, the mail talks about the break into Gringotts, and then it's their first flying lesson, when the producer went quite overboard with incident, it made the broken wrist look ridiculous, he should be dead after all that. Harry then catches the remembrall and all that stuff. 

The three of them get lost on the third floor and to escape Filch's cat they enter a locked room where there's a three-headed dog.

Oliver Wood teaches Harry about Quidditch, the cutest two of the movie. Flitwick teaches them Wingardium leviosa; Ron says she's a nightmare and therefore has no friends and she cries. It's Halloween judging by all the floating pumpkins; Harry asks after Hermione, so when Quirrell runs in to inform them about the troll in the dungeon, Harry knows where she's been all afternoon. They save her and all that, but this is just another example of the children not trusting the adults, I mean, the truth would have worked just as well.

Harry gets his broom then it's Gryffindor vs Slytherin first Quidditch game. Angelina Johnson is name, also Marcul Flint, but no more. The Slytherin play a very very foul game, but since nobody calls them on it it's really no surprise they do it, imagine our football games if there were no referees...    Harry's broom is jinxed and the silly know-it-all burns Snape's robe. Hagrid denies Snape might be after the 'thing' Fluffy is guarding.  

At Christmas Hermione leaves, Ron stays. Harry has presents! and immediately uses the invisibility cloak to go look into the restricted section like Hermione told him. Escaping Filch and also Snape intimidating Quirrell, he finds the mirror of Erised where he sees himself with his parents. Ron sees himself successfull. Harry goes again and Dumbledore catches him and explains. 

Hermione finds out who Flamel is, and about the philosopher's stone. The three tell Hagrid about it and see his dragon egg hatching. Malfoy sees it too and tells McGonagall, and the 'four' of them get detention, going into the forbidden forest at night looking for whatever kills unicorn... of course...  Harry is left alone with Malfoy, calls his Draco, and they see a floating thing sucking unicorn blood. Malfoy screams and runs away with Fang, while Harry is saved by a centaur; even the centaur tells him to go out, that the forest isn't safe for him... 

Now Harry thinks Snape wants the stone for Voldemort, and they're scared, but Hermione tells him that as long as Dumbledore is around, he can't be touched... yeah right. End of year exams are over, they talk to Hagrid and run to McGonagall to see Dumbledore, but she doesn't believe them and sends them back to bed. At night they sneak out and Hermione petrifies poor Neville. 

They move Fluffy's paw to open the trapdoor, then Fluffy wakes up so they all jump down. Ron panicks with the Devil's snair, but to be fair he's eleven and they could have told him something more than just relax and trust me, something like we're ok down here...    Then Harry flies after the key, Ron directs them into a chess game, and 'sscrifices' the piece is on to win the game. He's hurt, so Hermione stays with him, but Harry says he has to go on. Hermione tells him he's a great wizard, that there are more important things than books and cleverness, like friendship and bravery... showing why she's in Griffindor. 

Harry walks on and finds Quirrell in front of the Mirror. He's very confused, can't believe it's not Snape; it's Quirrell that explains how Snape tried to save Harry... After Quirrell takes his turnan off, Harry can see Voldemort at the back of his head, and looking in the mirror he can see the stone in his own pocket... Voldemort tries to convince Harry to join him... stupid, I know, so after that he orders Quirrell to kill him, but Harry's hands touching him hurt him and turn him to dust, and Voldemort's spirit escapes.

Harry wakes up in the infirmary, smiling at all the get-well cards, when Dumbledore comes in to tell him that everybody knows what happened, that his friends are fine, that the stone has been destroyed, and that it was his mother's love that saved him...

Gryffindor is in fourth place for the House Cup, but then Dumbledore awards the trio lots of points and they win... and Harry never thought of thanking Snape for trying to save him, or of apologising for thinking he was the bad guy...

Of course it was totally unfair towards Slytherin, it so looks like every single person in the castle is against them, and Dumbledore gives 50 points to Hermione, 50 yo Ron, 60 to Harry, and 10 to Neville, then has the face to say "IF my calculations are correct" when he declares that Gryffindor wins... as if he didn't give the points with that outcome in mind.

Next scene, they are boarding the train. Hagrid comes to say goodbye to Harry, gives him a book of pictures of his parents, and tells him to threaten Dudley with magic because after all Dudley doesn't know Harry's not allowed to do magic outside school...

Hermione says that it's weird now to be going back home, or something, and Harry says that he's not going home, "not really", with a look back, indicating that he kinda thinks of Hogwarts as his home ( which makes you wonder about the wards around the Dursley's house, can they really work if Harry doesn't think of that place as Home?)

One can also wonder why Snape was the only one mouthing the countercurse when everyone could see Harry's broom... maybe he was the only teacher, other than Quirrell... 

Glass Onion - Knives out - 2022

 Good ^_^ Funny and interesting and with a good plot. Of course you'd want to throttle the characters, by their throats, for being assholes, but that's a given. They were very well played though. I thought this movie wad very well made, from the first to the last character.

Sure, there's a few "come on!" when someone unexpectedly survives, but that's nothing new. Every Bond movie would end quite quickly if the villains would just kill him instead of playing stupid games with him. Some characters need to survive in these movies, and that's how it is. Still, even that here was not as annoying as in the Bond movies or such. 

It starts with four characters stopping whatever they were doing when a box arrives, sent by famous Miles Bron, a famous man supposedly a genius.

It's a box full of riddles that they solve together: Claire, in the middle of a campaign to be elected for something (was it governor? or was ahe already one? don't remember...); Lionel, a young but brilliant scientist; Birdie, a silly and vain woman; and Duke, a chauvinist with a youtube channel with lots of views, apparently. He doesn't seem to bright, but his mother does. Maybe he took after his father...

They all receive an invitation to Miles personal island for the entire weekend, and they leave without question. 

Two more people got the invitation: Andy and of course Benoit Blanc, so bored and verging on madness due to the pandemic that he accepted immediately, it seems...

Once on the boat, Blanc learns that Andy co-founded the company that made Miles rich, until he took everything away from her, cheating her out of everything. 

When they arrive, Miles looks a bit taken aback by her presence, and also by Blanc's. He later asks him what's he doing there, since he did not send a box to him.

The story of how it all started and why they're all such "good friends" is recounted for Blanc's benefit: they all met when they were nobodies, so to speak, then Miles had a brilliant idea that he wrote on a napkin, nd he founded a company with Andy. Suddenly, not quite sure how, the other four started having success, and they attributed it all on Miles. Well, Birdie was a model at first, then she started selling clothes.

These people think that everything they have is because of Miles, so they suck up to him without shame.

A matter arises that causes the first trouble. Miles is fixated on something he firmly believes will be revolutionary , a new power source that everyone else is afraid of. Lionel is strongly opposed, it is too dangerous without doing all the necessary tests beforehand, and Miles reveals that everything on the island is powered by that thing.

It seems they're not as alright and good good friends as they pretended to be. Claire is worried for her future because she signed something in favour of Miles' project, Duke sees his partner Whiskie in bed with Miles, and Birdie is about to be framed for slavery labour... her assistant Peg tries to reason with her but there is one thing she didn't know. Fact is, Birdie's clothings were made in a 'sweat factory', and Miles wants her to sign something where she admits it's all her fault, which would not only end all prospects for Birdie, but for Peg too.  Peg hopes to find a way out of it, but Birdie confesses that she keeps a secret phone ( she is prone to write dumb things because she is dumb and offend everyone on the planet, so Peg took away her phone, not knowing of the other one, because it was her "secret phone...).  Two years ago, or something, Birdie got an email informing her of these sweat factories, and she kind of complimented them on their good work, thinking that the term only meant that they worked hard...

Miles wanted to play a whodunnit game all weekend, and has barely finished introducing the game and its rules that Blanc resolves it immediately, frustrating him no end. It turns out he had hired a famous writer to come up with an elaborate plot, and now it's all ruined.

Miles insists that they stay anyway, and have fun drinking and dancing, when suddenly Duke starts choking and falls down, dead. Miles yells that Duke was drinking from his glass, which means someone wanted to kill HIM, and chaos ensues. 

Blanc meets Andy running towards him, but calls her Helen right before someone shoots her...

and now we learn Blanc's side of the story. It was Andy who delivered the box to him, only she's not Andy but her twin sister Helen. Andy is dead, apparently suicide but Helen does not believe that at all, and wants Blanc to find out the truth, and in turn he convinces her to play her sister's part to spy on the others. Helen had sent an email that she had finally found the original napkin, where SHE wrote the idea for their company, and when they heard of it all the four 'friends' went to her house to 'readon' with her, but nobody opened the door... all four had reason and opportunity, but there is still the matter of the red envelop with the napkin... 

Blanc tells Helen to search everywhere for it, while he keeps the others occupied, a thing that he accomplishes by telling everyone the truth on what an idiot Miles really is, who never got an idea for himself, not once, even for the murder he took inspiration from something Blanc himself had said to him. Blanc makes the others think, really think, without a thought to what Miles said to them, and yes, it was Miles that handed his glass to Duke, a glass in which he had added... pineapple juice, I think it was, and Duke was terribly allergic to that! He killed him because Duke saw him driving away from Andy's house that night, and he just now saw on his phone about Andy's death. Duke didn't tell the others because he didn't care about her, but only on Miles investing on him. That was also why he had asked Whiskie to try and seduce him into doing just that, but Miles refused.

After Blanc's throrough explanation on Miles stupidity, Helen arrives wih the napkin, that she (admittedly rather stupidly) thrusts right under Miles nose to show him that it is the original, with the club's logo that his own napkin does not have since the club closed down and he couldn't get his hands on one. Miles sets it on fire, their only proof...

Blanc tells her they have no proof now, but she should remember why everything started, which was because Andy refused to bet everything they had on Miles obsession for that dangerous power source, so Helen starts smashing everything around her, and for a bit Claire, Lionel and Birdie join in the fun, but are no more amused when she starts a fire as well, and throws a piece of that crystal-ly thing that powers the island in the fire, which resulted in the glass dome upstairs to shatter and, well, I don't know, everything exploded, and Helen made sure that the Gioconda that Miles was so obsessed with burned with the rest. 

Miles tries to blame it all on Helen, wants the others, his 'team', to lie for him like they did at Andy's trial, until she points out that his beloved power source just burned the Gioconda, the famous MonnaLisa, and finally the others turn against him. About time.

I think I said everything... oh yeah, Helen didn't die because he shot her precisely where she kept Andy's diary (under her jacket) so the little diary took the bullet for her. Whiskie cared about Duke, on some level, but did not like his channel or that kind of attitude, but stayed with him to have exposure for her future prospects.

 And there was another man on the island, one that you occasionally saw in the background, but as he always said, never mind him lol 

So, I really liked it, it was funny, and entertaining from beginning to end, and all the actors were really good. I didn't care for Claire at all, but then she was the politician, so maybe that is alright, as things should be, politicians in my experience are not to be liked so: well done.

Birdie and Peg's actresses: great. Edward Norton was just as slimy and un-likable as Miles should be.

Birdie was Kate Hudson 

Blanc was Daniel Craig 

Miles was Edward Norton

Duke was Dave Bautista 

Blanc's home partner was Hugh Grant (he opened the door to Helen when she went to Blanc with her case) 

The man on the island was Ethan Hawke