Paranormal Activity

Just as Blair Witch did, this movie gave me a headache with all the shaking and blurry close-ups. The woman who played Katie annoyed me. She tried too hard to make her emotions seem real, and I wasn't sold on her really being stressed out about her demon/ghost thing. The way Micha and Katie spoke to each other mostly in comlpete sentences kept reminding me that this was all fake.

Even though I did jump and get a little tense at the "scary" parts, I got over those moments in a matter of minutes instead of being left with that spine-tingling feeling I expected to have long after the movie's end. The ending ruined the movie for me with the weird face-morphing. I think it should have just ended with a long stare into the camera for and then a slow face-morph as the screen faded to black.

Even though most of this movie was annoying, I do think the special effects were fairly decent. I give it 3 stars out of 5, meaning it was OK, and I could tolerate another viewing. This could have been so much better, though.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I'm so ready for the adventures that Harry, Hermione and Ron are about to have, finally, away from the school of Hogwarts in the seventh movie (so my sister tells me...I haven't read the book series so I don't know). In this sixth movie of the series, there was key information about how to actually kill Lord Voldemort, Dumbledore's traumatic exit, and Hermione finally reveals to us and to Harry her true feelings for Ron. Those are the three things I remember most. There were great special effects, as usual, and the story moved along at a steady pace, but it just seems that there was a lot of filler in this installment. Honestly, I don't remember most of it, and I'm sure that's not what the producers of this film intended. I'm patiently awaiting the last HP movie, and I hope it's just as memorable as the first five films and ten times more exciting than all the rest in the series.