Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a movie I feel is best reviewed through comparing it to the previous film, Order of the Phoenix.  

Overall it was a beautifully directed film, conveying a constant sense of forward motion. We saw the change in seasons, Harry performing his schoolwork while threatened by the dangers of the outside world. There was a sense of the weeks and months passing, as the new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher tightened her grip on the running of the school while Harry and his friends resisted her as best they could. Harry Potter's classes, Harry's conversations, Harry's friendships and Harry's explorations all built and rose to a titanic clash of wills where bloodthirsty wizards surrounded six teenaged amateurs. 

However for me it was a collection of seemingly random scenes, where Harry witnesses various events take place, observing without taking action. He mostly sees various romances between his supporting cast members, which serve to fill in the time until the conclusion. There is almost no sense of temporal progression, no visual sense of advancing classes, progress in relationships or any visual sense of constant development. Harry passes through an entire year and attends only one class. The school year feels like a couple weeks at best. In taking the approach of killing time until the climax, the film destroys any sense of time. 

The film was a well -shot and sharply edited film, featuring gorgeous direction and well-arranged scene transitions that slowly cranked up the tension and suspense. Thinking of this film brings to mind Hermione imploring Harry to teach the students self-defense, which was followed by pulling back through the windows of the dorm and streaking back to the village, where Harry gave his call to arms. Or the exhilarating broomstick flight. And the atmospheric, haunting confrontation in the rain-soaked tunnel where Harry faced two ghostly apparitions who had come to take his soul. Or the sequence where the euphoria of the students successfully rebelling against Professor Umbridge was contrasted with the horror of Harry seeing his godfather tortured. 

Half-Blood Prince is devoid of proper scene transitions; every cut is rough, confusing, and scenes begin abruptly and conclude awkwardly. The cutting from Harry at Ron's house to the Hogwarts Express is offputting and clumsy. The shortcuts taken in editing are obvious and disruptive to the sense of progression; the editing in sequences like Harry filling the goblet and pouring the contents down Dumbledore's mouth are positively amateurish. One of the worst scene transitions is cutting from Dumbledore in his office informing Harry of their mission to Dumbledore and Harry preparing to teleport from the tower. There is no sense of the pair having moved in space or any passage of time; they're just abruptly in a different location for no clear reason. And while there are a few standout shots, from the lake of fire to Ginny's kiss, overall, the direction is astonishingly artless and dull. The central action sequence is a handful of actors huddled together in the middle of a swamp pointing wooden sticks in random directions. The villains inexplicably fail to focus their fire on this one location. It's astonishing to believe Half-Blood Prince and Order of the Phoenix are the work of the same director. It is a well-scripted film that understood how to let Harry, Ron and Hermione bounce off each other with their conflicting approaches, conversational styles and personalities. It however has awkward scenes of forced comedy that have the characters making silly faces at each other rather than interacting genuinely. 

The film was thoughtfully structured able to distill the complex details of J.K. Rowling's novel to a tightly-paced plot. It accomplished this because the script chose to focus on one specific theme of the novel; the film set its attention on Harry's isolation. The movie centered on Harry being alienated and cast out from the wizarding community, hostile towards his friends, and thinking he faced the world alone, only to eventually learn to unite his allies to defy their enemies and vanquish their demons. Almost every scene, every shot, every conversation in Order of the Phoenix is about Harry's position relative to his friends and his classmates. Almost every scene shows Harry either isolating himself, then struggling to move closer another individual or a group, only to be repelled or driven off or taken away. The opening shot of Order of the Phoenix was Harry sitting alone in a playground. The closing shot was Harry walking amongst his classmates. 

Half-Blood Prince has no theme beyond fulfilling the necessity of having a movie between the fifth and seventh installment. The novel was all about exploring the two fixtures of good and evil in the Harry Potter universe; the malevolent Lord Voldemort's origins are revealed as loveless and cold, while the seemingly omniscient, always wise Dumbledore is exposed as vulnerable, flawed and only human. The film fails to even touch upon these character arcs. Voldemort's childhood is barely featured. Dumbledore isn't the charming, suave, compassionate, knowing man of the novels, but simply a bearded authority figure just like every other bearded authority figure in fantasy fiction.

Watching this movie made me realize how the Harry Potter team at Warner Bros. really goes from zero to clueless the second talents like Alfonso Cuaron and Michael Goldenberg aren't behind the wheel. With regret, I am finished seeing Harry Potter films unless it's a slow night and I feel up for a rental. David Yates seemed to really understand the characters and significance of the series in the previous film, but Half-Blood Prince has him doing a very convincing impression of someone who doesn't, and the Yates/Kloves pairing will be behind the next two films.

Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix

Director David Yates does a fine job of moving past the travesty that was Goblet of Fire. Yates' work on this film recalls the strengths of Alfonso Cuaron's film, while taking a darkly psychological approach to the fifth installment in the series. The opening shot with the camera streaking past the grass and showing a lonely Harry looking longingly on a mother with her children is almost reassuring; we're in the hands of a director who has some sense of style. There are also pleasing nods to the third film; like in Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry finds himself retreating to his room in anger, slamming the walls furiously, and then mildly soothed by the photograph of his parents. And, like in Azkaban, the freedom of magic is realized as Harry flies into the skies and away from the Dursleys. The flight sequence where the Order members and Harry ride brooms from Privet Drive to Sirius Black's house is grandly joyous and magnificently contrasted against the depression and ennui Harry felt trapped with his uncle and aunt.

While Yates doesn't give magic the same motifs as Cuaron, where magic allowed wizards to control their environment remotely, Yates still provides us with some striking images. The sight of a normal, everyday set of townhouses, between which 12 Grimmauld Place springs into existence nicely frames the Wizarding World as being a hidden part of the everyday and commonplace. The shot of Harry and Mr. Weasley stepping into a phone booth and descending into the Ministry of Magic is also amusing and understated. Like Cuaron, Yates takes the time to lead us from the mundane to the extraordinary.

The true strength of this film is that director Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg do a spectacular job of finding a central theme and journey for the film and making sure that every single scene is relevant. The entire film is focused on Harry's isolation and alienation following Goblet of Fire. Clips of the Newell travesty haunt Harry's dreams, and the opening scene shows Harry longing at children and a mother playing in a park. Radcliffe seems to effortlessly convey Harry's sense of loss; there's almost a sense of hunger in his eyes as he looks at the life he's never known.

Harry's sense of isolation deepens with each progressive scene. We learn that Ron and Hermione left him without news at the Dursleys. And then we see Harry pass through the halls and rooms of the Ministry of Magic; the splendor of the magical decorations and the masses of wizards is undercut by newspaper headlines showing that Harry and his hero Dumbledore are regarded as dangerous troublemakers by the Wizarding World. This point is further hammered home when Harry is put on trial for a misdemeanor and is stunned to learn the Wizarding World is against him and eager to see him locked up on trumped up charges. Harry is seen as dangerous and disturbed. This is the movie Chamber of Secrets failed to be.

As the film progresses, the scenes continue highlight Harry's segregation from the other students, and the sense that Harry even wants to be alone. He runs from Ron and Hermione when they try to comfort him, he escapes to Hagrid's hut, even though he knows Hagrid isn't there. He runs into the Forbidden Forest, and finds another outcast, Luna Lovegood, who tells him that his sense of loneliness is precisely what Lord Voldemort wants him to feel. And Harry returns to join his friends at breakfast, only to learn of various restrictive school regulations that will separate Harry from the wisdom of his teachers. Yates and Goldenberg do a marvellous job of showing how the Wizarding World is making Harry run from his classmates, away from his friends, and end up abandoned and alone. These scenes in the film make fantastic use of cinematic space, showing wide open frames by Hagrid's hut and in the forest, occupied only by Harry, until Luna appears.

And then the film executes an almost perfect sequence of scenes where Harry chooses to fight back. He follows Hermione's suggestion that he teach the students how to fight Dark Magic; he chooses to act in the interests of finding what allies and comrades he can, and seeing them united under the flag of Dumbledore's Army. He fights desperately to try to convince himself that he isn't on his own, trying to bring together the strength and goodwill of all his friends. And he's almost crushed entirely, as the Ministry's lapdog, Professor Umbridge, posted at Hogwarts, shows that her regime and resources are able to tear apart Dumbledore's Army, expel Dumbledore from the campus, and make it too dangerous for the students to continue their little school club any longer.

The film has to be selective with what it can fit from the book into its running length, and Yates and Goldenberg achieve what Newell and Columbus failed to do. Yates and Goldenberg find an emotional journey for Harry and follow him for the duration. At this point, Harry's journey seems to have ended in defeat, and then immediately after Harry expresses the bitter desire to forsake friendship and go it alone, he's confronted with Hagrid, having returned with his half-brother in tow. Hagrid's brother, Grawp, is a wild giant, uncivilized, barely capable of speech, seemingly impossible to integrate into society.

"It's company he'll be needing," Hagrid says, anticipating being fired from the school now that Dumbledore's gone, looking hopefully at Ron, Hermione and Harry, hoping they'll be there for his half-brother. From that, the film leads into an terrifying battle between a force of dark wizards and six inexperienced teenagers. And in the climax, as Voldemort invades Harry's mind and his memories, Harry finds that his bonds with his comrades and his love for Sirius Black are forces that repel Voldemort and protect Harry's mind, body and soul from Voldemort's evil.

"You're the weak one," Harry whispers, expelling Voldemort from his mind. "And you'll never know love -- or friendship -- and I feel sorry for you." And with this, Harry sets aside his desire for isolation and segregation, and embraces the knowledge that it is through solidarity and true and loyal friends that he will defeat Voldemort. The script does a marvellous job of creating a sequence of scenes that end in this triumphant victory of self, and the final image of the film is Harry surrounded by his classmates. Order of the Phoenix is the only film in the series to be scripted by Michael Goldenberg, and Goldenberg's grasp of characterization, progressing tension and payoff is perfectly matched with David Yates' moody direction.

At this point, the best films of the Harry Potter series were the third and fifth films, because both of these films had creative forces behind them who appreciated the strengths of the source material and grasped how to render these strengths on film. While Prisoner of Azkaban was scripted by Steve Kloves, the script was clearly reworked to suit Alfonso Cuaron's preferences for visual splendor, character chemistry and fast-paced action as opposed to exposition and dialogue. While Kloves' lackluster talents as a screenwriter remain in evidence, they were mostly swept away thanks to Cuaron's ability to play up the appeal of his Trio of actors, along with Cuaron's skill in rendering a world of magic. 

Cuaron also remains the only director who understood Dumbledore, giving us a funny, mysterious, wise and deeply caring schoolmaster who gave advice in oblique terms. Cuaron's influence in Michael Gambon's performance is clear. Gambon, under Mike Newell, made the character ridiculously irritable and aggressive in the fourth movie, and under David Yates, Gambon delivered a Dumbledore with authority and presence, but devoid of warmth, wit or humour. I haven't read Goldenberg's script, but nothing seen onscreen makes it necessary for Gambon to read his lines without the mischief or fun he exhibited in the third film. Clearly, Yates' grasp of the characters was weak. However, Michael Goldenberg's excellent scripting and sense of drama made up for Yates' failings, and gave Yates the space to create a cinematic world that reflected Harry's emotional turmoil.

At this point, the future once again looked bright. Goldenberg would not be scripting the sixth Harry Potter film, but Yates' presence on the project suggested the same quality of Order of the Phoenix would be retained in Half-Blood Prince. Unfortunately, the next film to follow would quickly reveal how much Goldenberg brought to the series, and how his absence would be immediately obvious...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

After Alfonso Cuaron's fast-paced, charming take on the Harry Potter mythos, the future seemed bright. What the film series needed in its next director was someone who could continue rendering the Wizarding World as wondrous while darkly comic and dangerous. Unfortunately, what the series got was Mike Newell. Under his direction, Goblet of Fire is a sequence of terrible decisions from beginning to end.

Every director tackling a Potter film faces the task of determining what to film and what to omit. With the fourth film, Newell and Kloves have chosen and laid out a sequence of events where every scene in the film seems randomly chosen and only vaguely related to the scenes that preceded it.

The Quidditch World Cup opens the movie, and there's the terrible sense that Newell and Kloves don't seem to understand the plot they're transcribing. In the novel, the World Cup introduced the idea of an international wizarding community, the Dark Mark and the Death Eaters, for later use in the story. However, the primary purpose of the World Cup was that Barty Crouch Jr. seized his chance there to escape from his father's Imperius curse and rejoin Lord Voldemort.

However, in the movie, Barty Crouch Jr. is already free and at large and working with Voldemort. So why, why, WHY is the World Cup still in the movie?

Anything the World Cup might have had to offer the movie has been cut out. The Death Eaters march about but don't do anything threatening to establish their presence. The big Quidditch match is never actually seen. The Dark Mark is skimmed over so quickly it may as well have not been there. Newell and Kloves might as well have omitted the World Cup. Surely an alternate version of Harry's summer days leading up to his fourth year would have been better than the pointless World Cup of this movie.

Newell and Kloves also fail to grasp the point of Harry's involvement in the Triwizard Tournament. In the book, this is suspenseful because Harry is being forced to face dangers and threats against which he is completely outmatched. Harry's never felt he deserved his reputation as a powerful wizard, but now he is challenged as one. The three tasks are deadly, overwhelming, and then followed by Harry being forced to fight Voldemort, an enemy whose power entirely dwarfs Harry's. The appeal of Goblet of Fire's story in the novel was the sense of the unbeatable odds looming over Harry, the risks rising with each task until the climactic final battle.

Unfortunately, Newell and Kloves' fail to provide this sense of impending, inescapable doom. The scenes leading up to each task barely focus on Harry's fear of what he's about to face and touch only briefly on his efforts to prepare. Harry is at risk of being incinerated, shredded and devoured by dragons, but Newell and Kloves spend almost no time showing Harry trying to figure out how to take on a dragon. Instead, the scenes focus on Harry's pariah status with his classmates, Ron in particular. And while that's certainly troubling, surely, given the limited time, Newell and Kloves should have been building up the threat of the dragon. Instead, they waste time with substandard teen drama.

This happens again after the first task. The film should be dealing with Harry struggling to figure out what the next task is and what's in the lake. The film should be showing how overwhelmed and out of his depth Harry is. Instead, the focus is on the Yule Ball. What's especially annoying about this is that Ron and Hermione's issues surrounding the ball are confined between the first and second task. Their conflicts are never touched on again in the film. The result is an entire sequence of scenes that take place in a vacuum and have no relevance to the rest of the movie. They certainly has no bearing on the second task. And then, having wasted so much time, Newell and Kloves devote little attention to the time between the second and third task. This portion of the film focuses on the mysteries of Mr. Crouch, which are passed through hurriedly bafflingly. In one scene, Harry is fretting over Mr. Crouch's murderer and then suddenly he's getting ready to charge through a giant hedge maze.

And it's this meandering, disjointed, episodic film that leads up to Voldemort's return. In the movie, Voldemort's presence has been almost completely forgettable up to this point. In contrast, the book filled its pages with views of the damaged lives Voldemort had left in his wake. The film, however, restricts Voldemort's mention to a few brief scenes before his return. The result is that Voldemort's return seems to have almost nothing to do with anything that came before in this movie, and yet it's made the final action sequence. Once again, Newell and Kloves demonstrate an inability to create a sense of rising drama or to make their movie build to its climax. In the book, the Triwizard Tasks forced Harry into situations where he was outmatched, underpowered and overwhelmed, and the third and hardest is followed by the still-in-school Harry confronting the deadliest wizard in history. But the movie fails to up the stakes progressively. The result is that Harry versus Voldemort is simply the arbitrary conclusion at the end of some episodic misadventures.

Action sequences by themsleves aren't terribly interesting. If the film is going to revolve around Harry in action in the Triwizard Tournament, then the scenes around the action needed to establish what Harry's up against, how serious it is, and what it is he's fighting for. Goblet of Fire fails to do this, instead focusing on the social lives of teenagers, punctuated with some wizard spectator sports.

Populating this clumsy film are some of the worst performances the Harry Potter series has contained to this point, and this is a film series packed with child actors. Pedja Bjelac's Karkaroff is ridiculous with his perpetual bad-comedy sneer replacing any alternative facial expressions. Brendan Gleeson's Mad-Eye Moody is played so appallingly over the top it's impossible to take the character seriously, as he jerks pointlessly with every line of dialogue and growls every sentence, achieving no subtlety or believable menace. Roger Lloyd Pack's Mr. Crouch's pathetic persona is performed without any nuance or subtlety beyond a constantly pathetic smile, which is wince-inducing to watch. David Tennant's overexaggerated facial expressions rival Jim Carrey's. Emma Watson overenunciates every single word of every single line.

It's Albus Dumbledore who gets the worst deal in this movie. For the first two first two movies, poor Dumbledore was played as a wheezing old man who looked ready to drop dead. With the third movie, we finally had the mischievous, clever, subtle, whimsical, playful Dumbledore that had actually appeared in the books, possibly because the third movie was directed by a subtle, whimsical, playful director. But under Mike Newell's sledgehammer-subtle direction, Michael Gambon outdoes his fellow cast members for the worst performance in the entire film. Gambon has maybe four lines he doesn't bellow or growl out. He gesticulates madly with every line, and his eyes blaze with irritation and fury that never seem supported by the dialogue or the scene. It's like Mad-Eye Moody's dialogue was redistributed to Gambon and Dumbledore's actual lines were cut. With Newell behind the camera, our gentle, charismatic headmaster suddenly becomes a man who practically throttles Harry and throws him into walls when questioning him. The charismatic schoolteacher of the previous film seems to have vanished. Given how Dumbledore's role is largely observational, making the character angry and frustrated only makes him seem ineffective and incapable.

This is more damaging to the Harry Potter mythology than a casual viewing would suggest. Dumbledore, in the books, has always embodied the very best of the ideals in the Harry Potter universe. His fondness for childish pleasures like sweets and nonsense games, his patience and enthusiasm for life and his understanding gentleness with his students defined him as the perfect schoolteacher. At the same time, his awareness and remoteness marked him as a manipulator who would see evil vanquished even if it might cause our beloved characters harm, and his willingness to let children like the Trio engage in dangerous battles made the character clearly good but rather mysterious and unpredictable. Dumbledore is a mix of the best of humanity that Rowling can render, matched with immense, seemingly incalculable power. And to render him as a snarling, incapable figure deprives the Harry Potter mythos of its main spokesperson.

Newell doesn't stop there with besmirching the pillars of Harry Potter. While Columbus' approach to the friendship of the Trio was bland and Cuaron gave Hermione all the good lines, Newell does far worse. He renders Harry as a showboating celebrity, as Harry shouts joyously to the crowd while brandishing his Golden Egg, teasing them with opening it. This would be the same Harry Potter who dislikes his fame and assured Ron he didn't want eternal glory. Ron's sullen displeasure with Harry's notoriety is part of the book, but Newell has Ron inexplicably, incomprehensibly taking credit for Harry being warned about the dragons. In another appalling sequence of scenes, Harry laughs at Ron when Ron is sent frayed and out of fashion dress robes, and mocks Ron with Fred and George when Ron receives dancing instructions from McGonagall. The blatant pleasure Harry shows at his friend's discomfort is horrifically out of character; this is nothing like the easy friendship in Cuaron's movie where that joking comments were softened with familiarity and warmth. Even more jarring is to see Harry, Ron and Hermione amused and entertained when Fred and George engage in a fistfight. And the issues between Ron and Hermione are rendered in a few brief scenes of sniping, which instantly disappear and are never referred to again after the Yule Ball. The haphazard nature of the relationships here make the Trio's friendships almost incomprehensible.

And, finally, Newell caps off the film with an ending where Harry, Hermione and Ron are cheerful and upbeat despite the fact that a psychopath wizard with a legion of followers has been restored to physical existence and will surely come gunning for them. One would think we could get some scenes of the characters reacting to this new world they're living in; a hardy readiness for conflict to come, a promise of friendship and unity between the Trio. Instead, we get an all-smiles final scene that seems to be from another movie entirely.

Goblet of Fire is one of those movies where one simply finds ones self picking at minute details. Why is it necessary to constantly show Moody taking lengthy swigs from his flask; couldn't this have been shot in a more subtle fashion? Why does Moody, a shrewd and calculating impostor, fail to keep an adequate supply of Polyjuice Potion on hand in his final scene? Why does Dumbledore have such great difficulty understanding the purpose of entering Harry in the Triwizard Tournament? Why does the film spend so much time building up to a big Quidditch Match that it never intends to show? Why does the film focus on Harry's teen angst issues when the time would have been more profitably spent on the threats to Harry's life? Why are the Durmstrang and Beaubatons students divided into boys for Durmstrang and girls for Beaubatons? Why is Sirius Black in the film when he provides no useful information whatsoever? Why is Rita Skeeter in the film and made the focus of her own scene when her gossip column has no real impact on the rest of the film?

Why in God's name did the producers think a master of style like Alfonso Cuaron ought to be succeeded by a clumsy ham and egger like Mike Newell?

Patrick Doyle's musical score is excellent, but aside from that, Goblet of Fire is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban

One had the impression that Harry Potter movies would never be any more than competent. Perhaps the books were simply too long, too intricate and too layered for a proper treatment. The director, Columbus, seemed to approach the world of Harry Potter like a stageplay with some blue screen work. His direction had been slow, workmanlike, reducing everything to actors standing around talking to each other. And then came Alfonso Cuaron for Prisoner of Azkaban.

Alfonso Cuaron doesn't do standing around and talking; people tend to move and be working and engaged as they converse with each other. Cuaron doesn't do extended exposition, preferring to give enough just enough information to let the scene play and the movie carry forward. Cuaron also doesn't do endlessly congratulatory denouement, preferring to sign off with a quick visual tag-scene. And all of this was precisely what a Harry Potter film needed.

One feels securely out of Columbus' taped stageplay approach with the very first scene, where Vernon Dursley keeps popping into Harry's room, alarmed by the strange bursts of light that keep emerging from it. Harry illuminates his room with his wand, and the light seems to sear into the screen before the title logo pops up. This scene also establishes that Harry's practice of magic is disliked by his relatives and performed covertly. The information is presented visually as opposed to making the actors explain it to the camera.

The scene with Harry inflating Aunt Marge into a giant helium balloon is probably the best gauge of how the individual viewer will respond to the film. If one watches the scene with the Prisoner of Azkaban novel in hand, noting every difference and alteration, then one will find the sequence choppy, far too fast, overly truncated, and shamefully depriving Dudley of his moments. Watching the sequence as a cinematic experience, however, shows Harry labouring away at menial chores while this visitor insults his parents when she knows nothing of them, calls Harry the offspring of scum, treats Harry like a slave -- and Harry and his magic hit a boiling point. Aunt Marge becomes a miniature airship, floating away into the air, and a seething Harry storms out of the Dursley homestead. Cuaron's mischevous approach to visual detail shows Aunt Marge still bobbing about in the sky as Harry walks down the street.

If one looks for every detail from the book to be present in the film, they can only be disappointed. But in mere minutes, Cuaron has made the viewer *feel* what it's like to be Harry Potter; to be degraded, demeaned, disparaged by strangers who know nothing of him, while possessing the power to wreak a hilarious vengeance upon those who hurt him. And doing so forces him to leave the mundane world. Harry departs from the Dursleys, and in boarding the Knight Bus, enters an existence that seems mad. Triple-decker buses wheel about London and squeeze themselves between narrow avenues and shrunken heads jabber suggestions and a mad psychotic face shrieks from within a photograph in a newspaper.

And then Cuaron renders the wizarding world in a more benign light, as the sedate and peaceful atmosphere of the Leaky Cauldron shows a man piling chairs atop a table with a wave of a hand, floating kettles dispensing tea and brooms that sweep without being held by a human hand. And tavern is run by an alarming hunchback with a mad-eyed smile who is nevertheless the epitome of hospitality, offering Harry almonds, toast and pea soup.

Where Columbus felt the need to rest the camera on a pan being scrubbed by a levitating brush and knitting needles that didn't seem to need hands, Cuaron shows this stuff filling the background, with the inhabitants of the wizarding world regarding it as entirely normal. I love it.

In a mere ten minutes, Alfonso Cuaron has immersed the audience in the world of Harry Potter as opposed to drowning viewers in plot details and expository dialogue. Also benefitting tremendously from Cuaron's skilled hand is the relationship between Harry, Hermione and Ron. Instead of staging the scenes as three actors reading lines to each other, Cuaron provides a sense of three children relating, bickering, chattering and talking. The scene of the trio on the train talking about Sirius Black is the first time in the film series where the main cast seem genuinely conversational.

Admittedly, the film simplifies matters from the novel. Ron's moments of defending Hermione have been removed from the story, as have the animosity and breakdown of friendship that was originally present. However, the cameraderie between the three characters is so warm and endearing that having Harry and Ron turn on Hermione for half the film would have diluted the friendship. Hermione's caring, concern and sexless but passionate intimacy with Harry is touching and sweet. While Ron has few standout moments in the film, he gets some good one-liners and his presence is a source of warmth. The scene where Buckbeak's execution seems to take place and a despondent Hermione embraces Ron and Harry touches Hermione's shoulder really demonstrates the ease and comfort between these children. There aren't any grand developments between the trio, but rather a pleasing familiarity that enhances the film's forward motion.

The relationship between Professor Lupin and Harry Potter is another high point, matching the chemistry between the main trio of characters. For the first time in the Harry Potter film series, there's a genuine sense of Harry actually learning lessons at the school. The class in how to fight a Boggart is a visual delight, but there's also a lesson here, as Lupin teaches his students how to face their deepest fears, a lesson for which Harry requires special coaching due to unique circumstances. The later sequences of Harry and Lupin wandering the forest and the outskirts of the Hogwarts grounds have a melancholy beauty as Lupin shares his recollections of Harry's parents. And with that, Lupin is also sharing the belief that Harry's magic will be at its most powerful when it is fueled by his heart. There is truly a sense of Lupin imparting not just exposition and facts the way Dumbledore and McGonagall did in the first two films. Lupin is providing Harry with something more.

The depiction of magic in the third film is also distinct from the first film and far more memorable. A wave of a wand causes windows to open, papers to fold, boxes to close. Magic is someone being able to control and alter environment around them through their will and direction. The Patronus lesson with Harry and Lupin achieves a golden, celestial glory as Harry's happiness is given shape and form. But the film also shows the darkness of magical power thorugh the Dementors.

Cuaron's dynamic camerawork and deft use of visual effects wrings every last drop of terror out of the Dementors. Their influence is horrific, as flowers wilt in their wake and their presence causes water to freeze to ice. The unknowable faces hidden within those black cloaks are a terrifying sight to behold. The sight of the ice forming on the window of the Hogwarts Express compartment is a striking and eerie image that sets the stage for the ghastly monstrosity that creeps onto the train.

The Dementors serve to complete the central theme of the film. Unlike Columbus, Cuaron has been able to sift through the material of the novel and find a point of emotional focus; in this case, Harry's memories of his parents. At times, Harry's memories of his lost parents are a weakness; faced with the Dementors, Harry is consumed by memories of his parents being murdered and the trauma is crippling. And yet, there are points when Harry's thoughts of his parents unleash astonishing magical power that can protect and defend him. There's also the revenge Harry craves when thinking of Sirius Black. The film is very much the story of Harry struggling to reconcile the different ways in which he honours his parents and is haunted by them, and Cuaron wisely puts all the film's relationships and action sequences in the context of Harry's troubles. It's in this context that the relationship between Harry and Lupin shines brightest.

Perhaps the one weakness of the relationship between Lupin and Harry is that it makes Dumbledore redundant in the film. That's especially a shame because of the inspired revitalization of the character. Richard Harris' Dumbledore was feeble, weak, dull, devoid of charisma, and in two movies, he made an impression only in his scene with the Mirror of Erised. Under Cuaron's new direction, Dumbledore is reinvented as an eccentric headmaster with a whimsical imagination and a penchant for oblique advice. Gambon conveys a gentle, relaxed presence for his character, and while Dumbledore has few scenes in the film, every single one shines brightly. His casually extinguishing and relighting a candle is a terrific moment. His contemplating the nature of dreams as he watches over a wide awake Harry is charming scene and also serves as his gently ordering Harry to get some sleep while pretending not to know that Harry isn't sleeping. Gambon's Dumbledore is at his cleverest and most mischievous when advising Hermione and Harry on how to save Sirius. He cheerfully strikes Ron's injury, causing Ron to yelp in pain, which subtly advises Harry and Hermione to leave their hurt friend in the hospital wing. Dumbledore drops the lightheartedness only to tell Harry and Hermione where Sirius is being held and how much time they should need to rescue him, before cheerily wishing them well. At last, Dumbledore comes alive onscreen.

The movie does make a sharp mis-step, however, in the confrontation in the Shrieking Shack. Cuaron and Kloves plow ahead with the approach of minmal dialogue and visual storytelling in this scene. There are several points that need to be firmly established; that Sirius did not betray Harry's parents, that Pettigrew was the traitor, that Lupin is a werewolf, and that Harry must allow his thirst for vengeance to leave him. Unfortunately, Cuaron and Kloves speed-demon through each of these character transitions. Harry is convinced far too quickly of Black's innocence, Snape's appearance distracts from Lupin and Sirius, and Sirius knowing what the Marauder's Map is will seem absolutely inexplicable to anyone who hasn't read the book.

This scene needed to be revised significantly for film. It would have been best for Lupin to establish his past friendship with Sirius during a previous scene with Harry. As for Snape, while his presence in the book is needed to see Sirius accused and held for his apparent crimes, Snape is simply a distraction to the story on film and should have been excised. The film should have slowed, showing Lupin rescue Sirius from Harry, and then have Lupin explain that for years, he had thought Sirius a killer until seeing Pettigrew on the map. Harry's disbelief but eventual understanding could have then been allowed to play out naturally. Later, after the Dementors are defeated and wolf-turned Lupin has gone into the forest, Harry could have awakened in the hospital wing. A line or two about the teachers finding Sirius and Harry unconscious could have covered the Snape's absence.

Many have complained that there was no explanation for the Marauder's Map's. My feeling is that the Map did not need to be explained; there are no origins given for Chocolate Frogs or moving photographs, after all. Some have complained that there is no onscreen explanation for Lupin knowing what the Marauder's Map is -- however, there is a time cut between Lupin receiving the Map in the hallway, and Lupin in the classroom chastising Harry. An unschooled viewer would have likely assumed that Harry confessed the Map's nature to Lupin during the walk to the classroom. Admittedly, this is weakened when Sirius declares, The Map never lies!, as there is no onscreen explanation as to how Sirius knows of the map.

The film does, with its later scenes between Sirius and Harry, amend its rushed progression through the Shrieking Shack climax, but it does weaken the progression of the story rather badly.

While this is not a minor flaw, it does not wholly diminish the film. Cuaron's take on Harry Potter is one that fully immerses the viewer in Harry's world and provides a dynamic, captivating adventure while having the story permeated by Harry's longings for his lost parents. The movie, from the moment Scabbers runs off with the great dog in chase to Sirius escaping on Buckbeak's back, manages to create an unbroken sequence of tension and danger that meshes terrifically with Harry's internal conflicts. And the ending is grandly joyful, freezing on Harry's face as he takes to the skies.

Prisoner of Azkaban is the high point of the Harry Potter film series. And after Cuaron's fast-paced, charming take on the Harry Potter mythos, the future had never seemed brighter. What the film series needed next was a film that would continue Cuaron's approach of meshing Harry's emotional troubles with the ongoing plot, and render both the wonder and black comedy of the Wizarding World. Unfortunately, what we got was...

Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets

The news that a sequel was coming filled me with weariness and wariness. Columbus and Kloves had brought Harry Potter to the screen, but a ten year-old with a video camera and the action figures would have been more entertaining.

Yet, with Chamber of Secrets, Columbus and Kloves reach the dizzying heights of acceptable mediocrity.

Chamber of Secrets is, like Philosopher's Stone, largely a point-by-point adaptation of the book. However, Columbus and Kloves have managed to slightly liven up their approach this time around. While the two of them continue to take the approach of transcribing JK Rowling's dialogue, truncating it as necessary and having the actors read it, the scenes that wouldn't translate too well from page to screen are amplified as needed.

Harry's first meeting with Dobby is reasonably effective and the shots of Harry looking over moving photographs of his friends from Hogwarts are a nice reminder of how much he found in the first film. There's a reasonable sense of enthusiasm when the Weasley brothers break Harry out of the Dursley home. The idea of Uncle Vernon trying to drag Harry back into the house by his ankles is cute. The trip to Hogwarts by flying car is, on paper, a straightforward flight. This is interesting to read and would be boring to watch. Thankfully, Columbus and Kloves add a bit the car almost getting hit by the Hogwarts Express and Harry falling out of the car. It all works much better on film.

Hogwarts still looks like a normal castle, but Columbus' direction adds some much needed shadow and darkness and makes it look a little more foreboding and unknowable instead of a section of Disney World. There's a very effective alternate writing of our introduction to the Mudblood term, where Hermione already knows what it means and explains it to Harry, saving us the prolonged dialogue which wouldn't translate too well to a movie. Likewise, McGonagall explaining the myth of the Chamber of Secrets is far more effective than having a less familiar professor deliver the history lesson. Unlike the previous film, there's a strong amount of tension and danger created by the exposition, something which was hopelessly absent in the first movie.

Columbus and Kloves manage to move us reasonably well from scene to scene, and there's only a minimal sense that we're just seeing random scenes adapted from the books until the next visual effects sequence. And the visuals in this film are glorious. In the first movie, the Quidditch match was looked like camcorder footage of someone playing the video game, while in this movie, the focus is strictly on Harry's efforts as the Seeker and it's a far more riveting event. The film also has much more in terms of striking images than the first movie; the shots of Harry falling into Tom Riddle's diary and being expelled look brilliantly iconic. Also absolutely magnificent are the spiders in the Forbidden Forest, which, matched with Rupert Grint's acting, wring every drop of terror and discomfort from the creatures. And Harry's battle with the Basilisk at the climax is powerfully realized.

The best quality of Chamber of Secrets is that it's efficient. It adheres very strictly to the material, adapts the scenes as necessary to work better on film, and is reasonably watchable and entertaining. And yet, it's still a decidedly superficial film, focused on the surface level thrills. There is no cinematic inspiration here; giant spiders and giant snakes are perfectly common elements of fantasy movies.

What made the book more than just another fantasy adventure with giant spiders and giant snakes was the story of Harry confronting his potential legacy as the descendant of an extremely nasty bloodline. The book really made a meal out of the idea that a good portion of the students suspected Harry of being behind the attacks. The movie, however, barely spares a moment for Harry's being considered the top suspect for the attacks.

The sense of Harry being apart from others, considered separate and even notorious, is set aside by the movie in favour of plowing ahead through Rowling's plotlines. While the movie is certainly more watchable than the first installment, it accomplishes no increased psychological depth and no deeper meaning. It's simply a well-paced, professional piece of children's fantasy.

Also, while Columbus and Kloves have turned up the intensity and volume of their work, they still have trouble with visual adaptation. Harry entering his bedroom at the Dursleys to find an unfamiliar and alien creature should be a jolting shock. Instead, the editing and camerawork present Dobby's appearance as nothing more than a mild surprise. Harry helping Professor Lockhart answer his fanmail should be Harry being blanketed in Lockhart's triteness while executing a tedious task, but Columbus and Kloves depict as Lockhart having a pleasant conversation with him. Harry getting his arm broken by a rogue bludger should be a violent, physical assault, but the camera angles make it little more than a tennis ball glancing off the glancing off his forearm.

In the book, Harry failed to stop Lockhart from curing his broken arm by removing the bones because he was dazed and delirous, while in the film, Harry is perfectly lucid and doesn't stop Lockhart for no apparent reason. The seemingly affable Tom Riddle's exposure as Lord Voldemort is marvellously performed by Christian Coulson but shot as an actor delivering lines, with the camerawork never taking advantage or heightening the sense of how this pleasant student is revealed as the most deadly wizard alive. And Harry being stabbed by a Basilisk fang should be shockingly violent and deadly, but instead we only realize Harry's been stabbed because Harry pulls the fang from his arm and Riddle explains it to us.

While it's not as irritating as before, Columbus and Kloves still see movies as actors delivering dialogue to each other and continually adapt the book to this format, with no thought to physicality, three-dimensional space or visceral reaction. Columbus simply has no talent for creating a tactile environment in which the characters interact. It's a serious problem for a fantasy movie rendering an unfamiliar world.

Perhaps the worst excesses of Columbus and Kloves appear in the overlong, never-ending finale to the film. All the modest improvements the director and writer demonstrated earlier seem to evapourate. Lengthy explanation and exposition between Harry and a bored Richard Harris, who is only present to collect a paycheque and appease his granddaughter. Lengthy explanation and exposition between Harry and Lucius Malfoy. And then an extended congratulations and expression of gratitude from Dobby. And Hagrid returning. And everyone applauding his return and his words of gratitude to Harry despite the fact that given the size of the room, it's unlikely that anyone not in the immediate vicinity could have heard Hagrid speaking. And everyone headlining the credits gets their own shot of applauding! Shot after shot of people clapping, right thorugh to the credits! It hits a level of mawkish sentimentality has no business in Harry Potter's world.

The great strength of Rowling's writing, in my mind, is her ability to depict Harry's relationships without regularly having the characters describe it and act it out for that purpose alone. Rowling doesn't make her characters gush about their caring for each other in order for us to know about it; their actions during the course of the story make it perfectly plain.

Columbus and Kloves, however, feel the need to have everyone applaud Hagrid's return in a manner that drags the audience into feeling happy. It feels sickening.

Philosopher's Stone, while faithful, was unimaginative and uninspired. So is Chamber of Secrets, but it has the virtue of being efficient, and that alone in comparison to the first film makes it seem a near masterpiece.

Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone

Adapting novels can be a tricky business. Films are visual, novels are based in prose. Films are limited by time contraints, budgets, actor availability, while books themselves have word count restrictions and structural considerations. Harry Potter and his stories were designed to be described, expressed and explored in prose; he wasn't built for cinema. Transplanting Harry and his world into film was always going to require conversion.

The films have often been slated by Harry Potter fans. The sins of the movies have often been described as omitting eagerly anticipated scenes, presenting alternate versions of the book's events, putting the kids in Muggle clothing, etc..

I've found that unfair. Film adaptations should evaluated not as an extension of the original novel, but as pieces of cinema in their own right. The novels can be used as a reference point for how effectively the film story was told, and to delve into the spirit of the story as intended by JK Rowling. But at the end of the day, movies aren't books. Movies should be judged by how satisfying the viewing experience is. For me, there is nothing sadder than seeing people call Prisoner of Azkaban a bad movie because Harry gets his Firebolt at the end of the movie as opposed to in the middle. Omitting the Death Day party didn't make Chamber of Secrets a bad film, nor did adding Kreacher make Order of the Phoenix good.

Still, even by these standards, Philosopher's Stone is still a really dull movie. No one can call Philosopher's Stone unfaithful to the source. Yet, whilst the movie slavishly adheres to the letter of JK Rowling's novel, miss many of the nuances, most of the meaning and much of the fun.

The opening scene of McGonagall, Dumbledore and Hagrid really demonstrates a lack of understanding for the medium of film. On paper, this opening scene is a tantalizing hint of a magical world next to a mundane existence, with the three wizards expressing a mix of jubilance, sadness and hope as they deposit baby Harry Potter with his relatives. On screen, it's cold exposition delivered by a boring Richard Harris and a dull Maggie Smith. And that's the driving approach of this film adaptation; scenes from the book are acted out. Harry in a closet! Now you can see it! Hagrid bursting into the room! Now you can see it.

This cinematically illiterate approach can be found in almost every single pivotal scene in the movie. Perhaps the worst point of the film is the scene in the island shack, where Hagrid at last catches up to Harry and the Dursleys. In the book, Hagrid reveals Harry's past to him, and it's very much a scene of validation, where Harry realizes that despite his mistreatment, he has always been able to protect himself and no matter what he's suffered, there is a place in the world where he belongs. It's one of the finest pieces of writing in the series, but it is not a scene that translates well to film. In the book, the turning point is when Harry looks back upon his eleven years of life and realizes his unconscious magical ability has always protected him from harm and injury. It is an internal realization, dependent upon the prose, which means there's very little here for an actor to use for communicating the point to the audience.

A competent screenwriter and film director, in depicting this scene, would find some way of capturing the sense of wonder and a larger world. Maybe through a flashback. Maybe through Harry describing to Hagrid one of Rowling's little anecdotes about Harry's wandless, uncontrolled magic. A competent screenwriter and director would do *anything* other than what Columbus and Kloves did, which was to simply transcribe the dialogue and have the actors deliver it. The movie needed to make this scene a moment of Harry eagerly embracing the world Hagrid is describing. But instead, it's nothing more than dialogue, devoid of the subtext or meaning Rowling created.

Another ghastly example is the flashback to Voldemort's attack on the Potter homestead. It should be the brutal, vicious, horrific night when Harry lost his parents. Instead, it's a clumsy slow motion shot of someone wearing a curtain and two actors screaming at the sight of him. This is emotionally relevant, thematically vital material, but Columbus and Kloves make it nothing more than exposition. And this is all the movie accomplishes, exposition, right to the very end, where Dumbledore reveals to Harry the reason Voldemort was defeated.

When Dumbledore revealed to Harry the nature the magic that protects Harry, there was a sense that magic was more than shouting spells. It was also something beneath Harry's very skin, seared into him by love. But in the movie, this revelation is just dialogue, without the deeper meaning. Columbus and Kloves seem to be content with transcribing the book, filming the line readings and pissing off for a pint.

The only scene in the film that captures the full force of Rowling's writing is when the Mirror of Erised appears. For the first time, Columbus and Kloves convey Harry's loss and longings. This is more Rowling's accomplishment than Columbus and Kloves; the Mirror of Erised is a physical object that is suited to visual representation. The lingering shots of Harry gazing desperately at his family always bring tears to my eyes. It's the one moment during the entire film when I *felt*. Sadly, this scene is the exception, and the majority of the film is a costumed book-reading.

Yes, the movie is faithful to the book and the fact that no one was Americanized and none of the characters were made boy-band members is admirable. But there is no visual vitality, no imagination, and the determinedly literal approach to the material fails the film on multiple occasions. The film is shot with Harry, Ron and Hermione inexplicably always being at the front of any large group of students. All the better for the camera to film them and decidedly illogical. The film provides us with a castle for Hogwarts, a perfectly nice castle, but utterly devoid of the grandeur and labyrinth sprawl that this magical, wonderful place should possess. Harry's closet under the stairs in Privet Drive is not the miserable, restrictive, humiliating prison of the book but a bearable (if cramped) sleeping chamber. Diagon Alley looks like a soundstage.

This film was adored by the fans. Here was the Harry Potter they knew from the books, absolutely recognizable, utterly faithful, rendered with complete devotion to the text. The fact that the movie was more boring than educational videos about traffic safety was apparently a fair trade-off.