Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

IMDb Listing
After a decade, the Harry Potter film franchise finally winds up, and to its credit, it goes out on a strong note, with compelling action and a terrific villianous performance by Ralph Fiennes. It picks up where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 left off, with Voldemort (played by Fiennes) intent on murdering Harry (still Daniel Radcliffe), and I was surprised that the various story elements (e.g., Voldemort having a wand that makes him seemingly invincible, or Harry being one of Voldemort’s horcruxes, meaning that Harry would have to die before Voldemort could) worked out as well as they did. I assume the plot was taken directly from the novel, and that being the case, I have to credit J.K. Rowling for cleverly figuring out how to resolve the story without transparently resorting to deus ex machina miracles. That said, the film lumbers a bit to include all the characters from the previous stories, leaving little room for Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), Harry’s two most loyal and intrepid friends. Those who have been keeping up with the movies have come a long way with these characters, and it doesn’t seem fitting – in fact, it seems to work against the themes previous installments have worked to build – to relegate them to the sidelines just as Harry is at his darkest hour. 7/10

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

IMDb Listing
I feel like I’ve spent most of the Harry Potter series impatient with the pace of story advancement. Each movie, it seems, spends the first half hour setting up new developments and the last half hour actually making things happen, while the middle sections are comprised of distractions and wheel-spinning. This installment, though, finds the kids on the run, with little time for any of the minutiae that bogged them down during their time at Hogwarts. So, with my complaints mostly addressed, I found myself fairly content. Plus, I like Ralph Fiennes’s Voldemort, who has much more time in this movie than he had in the last one, and there’s a terrific animated sequence to illustrate a wizard’s fable that came as quite a surprise. All in all, this is as compelling as any Potter film in a good while. 7/10