Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!
Siren Music Festival 2009
Search by...

Movie Keyword

Movie Title

—OR—

Neighborhood

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of New York's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & Village Voice
  • Genre: Documentary
  • Release Date: 11/14/2008
  • Running Time: 79 mins
  • Director: Josh Koury
  • Cast: Melissa Anelli, Moochka the Cat, Harry and The Potters, The Hungarian Horntails, Heather Lawver, Moochka, Brad Neely
  • Producer: Gerald Lewis
  • Writer:
  • Distributor: Brooklyn Underground
  • Buy Tickets

Box Office

  1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 42.3 mil, 293.4 mil
  2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, 41.7 mil, 66.7 mil
  3. Public Enemies, 25.3 mil, 40.1 mil
  4. The Proposal, 12.9 mil, 94.3 mil
  5. The Hangover, 11.3 mil, 205.0 mil
  6. Up, 6.5 mil, 264.8 mil
  7. My Sister's Keeper, 5.8 mil, 26.5 mil
  8. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, 2.5 mil, 58.5 mil
  9. Year One, 2.3 mil, 38.3 mil
  10. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, 2.0 mil, 167.7 mil
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

We are Wizards

Pop eats itself with gusto, but it’s a meal only partially digested in this amiably rambling documentary on Harry Potter fandom. Director Josh Koury piles a bit of everything onto our plate, from riffing on the Potter mythos to describing tribute bands that proliferate like crazy while generating legions of fans all their own. The bulk of the movie is given over to the musicians, an engagingly geeky cross-section ranging from seven-year-old hellions to aging Gen-X-ers with kids of their own, who expound on the glories of the boy wizard or pound out Potter-obsessed power-pop (loosely modeled after the sweetly naive anthems of Jonathan Richman). Much of the music is surprisingly clever and the players’ enthusiasm is infectious, but the film lacks focus and often sacrifices depth for breadth, flitting from fans butting heads with intellectual copyright issues to Christian fundamentalists being miffed at J.K. Rowling’s “glorification” of witchcraft. (At one point, there’s even a brief but jarring turn toward melodrama as a young fan describes her battle with a life-threatening illness.) Ignore the scattershot approach, however, and there’s considerable pleasure to be had in spending time with these bizarre enthusiasts and watching the creative ways they find to express their obsessions. Even if the Potter books don’t represent the “great time in literary history” claimed by one of the movie’s more hyperbolic interviewees, We Are Wizards is nothing if not an amusing reminder that Rowling’s creation remains an absurdly malleable source of inspiration. — Lance Goldenberg

Site Search «


Advanced Archive Search >>
  • Weekly
  • Music
  • Promotions
  • Offstage Voice
  • Dining
  • NY Movie Club
  • Events

Copyright © 2009 Village Voice LLC • 36 Cooper Square • New York NY 10003

The Village Voice and Voice are registered trademarks of Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC. All rights reserved. View our privacy policy.