It is very apparent to all very quick that Voldemort is gaining strength and getting ready for a showdown. Harry, Ron , Hermione and Draco are all grown up. Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley is looking a bit too buffed and grown up to be believable as a teenager. I'm surprised the producers didn't make him trim down.

I have been sidelined and in bed for 2 months.  I actually was so badly injured that for almost 2 months I couldn't even sit through a movie and am glad that Lin carried on and post what reviews she did.  I'll add comments on some of the reviews as well and post a few others as well.

Maybe it was personal, but I really loved Adam. It is a film about a young electronics engineer named Adam who has Asperger's Syndrome. For those of you who don't know, Asperger's is a mental handicap wherein the person is usually very very smart (often they make excellent scientists and engineers) but have no social/emotional skills. Their brains are not wired to sense facial and other physical signs of emotion in other people. They are wired to always tell the truth, which can make for very awkward social situations where white lies are required.

 The movie The Time Traveller's Wife  is just so-so. It left me flat. Acting was B movie.    I'd suggest renting it IF you read the book and must see it. If you never read the book, don't bother with the movie.

The Hurt Locker is excellent and ought to be up for Best Actor for both the leads. It is gripping and difficult to watch at times, also heartbreaking. It is awful what the Iraq war is doing to Iraqis and to soldiers. I highly recommend it. Here is the Yahoo summary.

District 9 is a scifi morality tale from South Africa. A space ship with over a million alien refuges arrived in Johannesburg 20 years ago. The aliens have been sequestered in what is essentially a concentration camp like ghetto. They are despised by all but a few human rights organizations and are derisively called prawns because they resemble them. A government ministry is in cahoots with a private arms company to move the aliens to a concentration camp being built about 200 miles away.

Julie & Julia is just wonderful. Meryl Streep is fantastic as Julia Child. She had to put on weight for the movie. She has Child's mannerisms down just perfectly. Amy Adams does a very good job as a phone agent for the 9/11 recovery commission in NY who has just moved to Queens with her husband and needs to find something to do (just as Julia did as the wife of a diplomat in Paris in 1950's) in order to give her life positive meaning.

Cheri is Michelle Pfieffer's latest. She is a older belle epoche prostitute in Paris....very high end and very wealthy now for all the rich men who've cared for her over the years. Kathy Bates plays an unlikely and unlikable older prostitute with a troubled son. The nineteen year old is a narcissistic party boy. Michelle takes Bates' son under her wing at Bates' instigation. Of course, they become lovers and the relationship lasts for 6 years until Bates pushes her son into a loveless marriage with another older prostitute's daughter.