Reel Critics:Harry Potter confronts adult situations

We have watched gifted actor Daniel Radcliffe grow up as Harry Potter in this blockbuster film series. Thankfully, the screenplays for these movies have matured along with Harry.

The first film was kid-stuff fluff. But following the lead of subsequent efforts, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” reflects the growing adult situations the young upstart wizard confronts.

A new headmistress from hell takes over Hogwart’s School and banishes Harry’s benefactor, Professor Dumbledore. Harry and his friends have to deal with her strange new policies while confronting the evil Lord Voldemort on their own.

In the midst of sinister attacks and complex decisions, Harry finds time for his first serious kiss on screen. A touch of teenage angst pervades all the proceedings and will ring true with the target audience that has been growing up with Harry.

The special effects are the best yet and used in all the right spots. This screenplay is darker and more mysterious than the previous films. But the actions of Harry and his allies demonstrate the value of courage and integrity without being cliché.

This could be a hopeful harbinger for the rest of the series.

‘Rescue’ doesn’t succumb to wartime platitudes

In “Rescue Dawn” we get a summer movie that’s not only a gripping action picture, but an intense portrait of the human spirit.

Writer-director Werner Herzog has taken his 1997 documentary and expanded it into a feature-length American film about the harrowing true escape of a German-American Navy pilot from a prisoner of war camp in Laos.

Dieter Dengler (played by Christian Bale) was shot down over Laos in 1966 on his first assignment, a secret mission, before the official outbreak of war in that region. Captured, tortured and sent to a tiny remote camp, Dieter maintains his optimistic charm and tells the five other prisoners that he will soon be making his escape.

But he quickly learns that “the jungle is the real prison,” and the greatest challenges are to get through the day without being shot, losing one’s mind or starving to death. Even the guards are going hungry and long to return to their families.

Bale gives a bravura performance in a film that refuses to succumb to wartime platitudes or gung-ho heroics (except at the very end). Steve Zahn — who usually plays a slacker — is quite poignant as fellow POW Duane.

Both men, along with actor Jeremy Davies, dropped a scary amount of weight for their roles.

The jungle (shot in Thailand) is a major star of this movie. It is lush and green, but cruel and claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to get out into the fresh night air, even as the images of those gaunt faces continued to follow me.