Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is like living through a melancholy dream. Even more than The Order of the Phoenix, this film is nearly devoid of bright color, reflecting the dreary mood of the story. This is actually rather strange, as Order of the Phoenix ended on a slightly upbeat and hopeful note. However, as a mostly melancholic, subdued film, The Half-Blood Prince is wonderful.

Right from the start, it's obvious that this is one of the most visually-impressive fantasy films ever created. The cinematography never ceases to amaze, and the extreme level of detail and realism that accompanies the already-striking artistic style rivals that of the Lord of the Rings films. It's especially satisfying to watch the perfectly-rendered Quidditch match in this film and realize just how far the visual effects have come since The Sorcerer's Stone. Each magical spell, gust of snow-filled wind, and billow of black smoke looks perfectly realistic.

Despite the dark tone of the overall plot, this actually may be the most genuinely humorous Potter film. For a good 80% of the movie, the main characters have little more to do than simply live their lives. It might sound boring or pointless, but there's so much character development and genuine humor that it's completely entertaining the whole way through.

One surprising—but not unwelcome—aspect of the story is the heavy emphasis on the close, loving relationship between Harry and Hermione. It's touching in an unexpected way, and goes to show just how strong their friendship really is.

Even Draco Malfoy is given more depth, as we see for the first time that he is a conflicted character, rather than a one-dimensional bigoted bully.

The Half-Blood Prince is not entirely without disappointments, however. While the dark seriousness of the story is not necessarily a bad thing, it does take away some of the "punch" that The Order of the Phoenix excelled at.

Another problem with the film is the fact that it lacks a real ending. While The Order of the Phoenix managed to create a conclusion where one really didn't exist, here we don't even have any sort of closure at all. Although we are told exactly where the characters are going and what's happened at the end, we still don't have the emotional closure that is necessary for the film to work on a purely emotional level. This very well may have been the intent of the filmmakers, as Dumbledore's death is meant to be an emotional blow, but the simple fact is that the ending is not satisfying. It feels as though we are given an invisible "to be continued" message when we shouldn't have needed one.

However, for all of its narrative flaws, the film is far from crippled because of them. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has a wonderful script, well-executed humor, stunning visuals, and great characterization.

Eight points for Gryffindor.

8/10

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

At the end of The Goblet of Fire, Hermione remarks, "everything's going to change now, isn't it?" Truer words were never spoken. After the shocking ending of the last film, The Order of the Phoenix takes an extremely serious turn.

The entire world of Harry Potter feels very different this time. The wizarding world is still exactly the same as it always was, but it feels much more grounded. Before, Harry Potter was a fictional universe with entirely different rules from reality, only seeking to be the same as our world through the genuineness of its characters. Now, new director David Yates takes the series in a different direction by approaching the story from a very real-world angle and adding the more unrealistic layers of magic on top like icing on a cake.

The re-working of the universe works, and it's not so different that it's not immediately recognizable. All the characters are better-written and acted here than they ever have been before. Ron seems to have finally gotten past being stereotyped as "the one who's afraid of everything," and has become a brave, fierce friend. Hermione has recovered from her bout of overemotional panic from last year, and is back to her brilliant and sharp-witted self from years 1-3.

Gary Oldman puts in a brilliant performance as Sirius Black. We haven't gotten to know him much at all in the films, but here he makes us feel the familial connection between Harry and Sirius within minutes.

Dark-Arts-teacher-of-the-year and villain of the film, Dolores Umbridge, is somewhere between entertaining, frustrating, and horrifying. She's as stubborn and bigoted as the Dursleys, as senseless and bureaucratic as the most evil politician, and as heartless as any dark wizard. She really does an amazing job of making you hate her.

New student Luna Lovegood is a total joy to watch. She has little-to-nothing to do with the overall plot, but she's so funny that it doesn't really matter.

Perhaps most striking of all is Helena Bonham-Carter's performance as Bellatrix Lestrange. She's the very definition of demented, and totally captivating.

The visual effects are mostly excellent, partially because they (for the most part) merely enhance the visual action, rather than dominating it as previous films did. Grawp the giant unfortunately looks a bit cartoonish, but he's not around long enough for it to be a serious problem.

The visual style of The Order of the Phoenix is rather desaturated. The Prisoner of Azkaban was similarly devoid of bright color, but somehow still felt vivid. Order of the Phoenix doesn't quite manage to do that, however. It seems to be somewhat more detail-focused, with less dramatic flourish. Still, though, there's something to be said for creating a realistic Hogwarts; it makes the drama feel all the more real.

The music here is very good in certain ways, but doesn't make use of strong themes. The main theme of the series ("Hedwig's Theme") is barely heard at all. The music perfectly supports the on-screen drama, but that's all it does. It doesn't stand out in any particular way. Whereas some of the themes from the first four were breathtaking and worthy of being listened to separately from the movies, the music here is so subdued that it's not really worth listening to on its own. Of notable exception is the theme for the Order of the Phoenix itself, but that's literally one track out of the eighteen on the soundtrack.

One of the best things about this movie are the wizard battles. For the first time, we get actual wizard battles. We've always heard hints about the great war against Voldemort in the past, but never quite knew what that might have looked like. We learned a little about dueling in The Chamber of Secrets and The Goblet of Fire, but this is the first time that we really see fully-trained wizards in all-out battle—fighting alongside our teenage heroes, who've become rather skilled themselves. It's great to finally have what can really be called a fight scene in Harry Potter.

The one-on-one duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore is beyond jaw-dropping. It's clever, imaginative, and epic.

Overall, this is a very good movie. It's got its problems, but none of them make the film anything less than great.

8/10

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is a very weird movie. On one hand, the Harry Potter series has never been more epic. On the other hand, it's never been this pointless.

A huge portion of The Goblet of Fire is dedicated to the "sillier" nature of Harry Potter: the sports, the melodrama between the kids, and the general ridiculousness of the magical world itself. The remainder of the film is dominated by the darkest and most powerful events we've seen yet. On one hand, the sillier stuff works. The kids are teenagers now, and a fair amount of humorously awkward melodrama makes sense. It's largely funny, and works surprisingly well.

There's some weird stuff going on with the cast this year. For one thing, every teenage male main character has extremely long hair for no apparent reason. It's really distracting.

Hermione seems emotionally unstable the entire time. All she does is worry about Harry or get angry at Ron. While her emotional reactions aren't unwarranted, the fact that we get little of the sharp-witted and brilliant Hermione from previous films is disappointing.

Ron seemed to pick this year to act like a suspicious unbelieving jerk towards Harry, without any real reason. Why is Ron suddenly so jealous of Harry? Eleven-year-old Ron was quick to sacrifice himself in the Wizards' Chess game for Harry's sake, but here he suddenly doesn't give his best friend the benefit of a doubt? A normal teenager would probably respond with this type of jealousy and suspicion, but Ron has proven himself to be better than this in the past. It doesn't really make sense, and it's not compelling drama nor humorous comedy. It's just an annoying distraction that could (and perhaps should) have been replaced by the same great trust and friendship that we've seen between Ron and Harry in the past.

Character problems aside, most of the teenagers' acting is slightly questionable this year. It seems like the director was actually encouraging the kids to overact. In a way, it works, since the awkwardness of the situation comes across perfectly. On the other hand, it's a bit distracting.

One notable change from the first three films is a new composer. John Williams' replacement, Patrick Doyle, takes cues from Williams in the tone and style of the music, but crafts a strong score that feels slightly different, yet totally fitting. Harry himself is given a specific musical theme that's woven into the score at various moments of personal drama. Without a doubt, it's one of the most emotionally powerful themes of the entire series.

As in the first two films, much of the story feels like it's jumping through a list of fantastical life-threatening situations. This can be a problem, as it means that the entire movie is basically a highlight reel of the most important events from the books.

The Quidditch World Cup is really fun to see. Prior to this, we've barely seen the magical world outside of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley. Here we finally get to see a bigger picture of the entire wizarding community. It really helps fill in some of the gigantic gaps in Harry Potter lore and paint a better picture of the world we're seeing.

The Yule Ball is a wonderfully funny chance to delve into the teenage angst of the Harry Potter world. With all we see of the trio dealing with grave threats to the school, it's refreshing and fun to see them sit back and just act like humorously awkward teenagers. As if that weren't enough, there's a wizard rock band. Singing such songs as "Magic Works" and "Do the Hippogriff." I mean, seriously. It gets no more ridiculous awesome than that.

The Triwizard Cup challenges are mostly nothing more than action scenes. They are, however, visually stunning and extremely well-directed. Harry's battle with the dragon is so amazingly real-looking that you can't help but feel totally enraptured by the tension of it all. The mermaid scene is perhaps less impressive, but it's still got good elements of fantasy horror and a healthy amount of imagination. The final challenge, the maze, is practically pointless. The danger within the maze is never revealed (aside from a few cantankerous bushes), leaving only a vague undefined threat that doesn't really catch the audience.

The ending battle with Voldemort, however, is so shocking and powerful that it elevates the film far above the level of "decent"-ness that it would have been at otherwise. It brings the story back to the Harry's personal journey and his lifelong fight against Voldemort. Perhaps more importantly, it transitions the Harry Potter series out of the more fun-loving initial four years and throws it abruptly into a much darker and deadly place.

When The Goblet of Fire gets it right, it really gets it right. The return of Voldemort is terrifying, horrific, and powerful. It's also a hugely important event that isn't resolved by the end of the film, thus finally breaking the general rule of self-containment held by prior films. On the other hand, when The Goblet of Fire gets it wrong, it just feels stupid. After dealing with the super-important events of the last film, why are we supposed to care about something as pointless as the Triwizard Tournament? This is a problem in the original book as well, but that doesn't excuse it.

The saving grace of the "pointless" events—the Quidditch World Cup, the Tournament, and the Yule Ball—is that, at the very least, they're entertaining to watch. They get a bit boring on repeat viewings, but they're still reasonably fun. The comedy is highly ridiculous at times, but not quite stupid. It works for the most part.

The filmmakers can't entirely be blamed for the problems with Goblet of Fire; they did just about the best they could with the source material. And, in the end, what's there is still good. It's not as good as Prisoner of Azkaban, but it's definitely a fun movie with a shockingly dark and game-changing ending.

7/10

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Here, Harry Potter takes a turn for the dark. Harry runs away from home in a fit of anger, discovers that a murderous madman is hunting him, and learns a terrible truth about his parents' murder.

The levity of The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets is mostly exchanged for a kind of shadowy fantasy. New director Alfonso Cuarón manages to craft a much more organic-feeling fantasy world, making the prior two films feel jumbled and almost silly by comparison.

The characters are all a bit better this time around. The kids seem to have all gone through puberty at once, and are about twice as mature as they were last time. Harry in particular gets a rather large dose of grow-up potion, as he is finally forced to realize his potential as a powerful wizard. In the past, Hermione was the only one out of the trio who could effectively use magic of any sort, with Ron and Harry being virtually useless in that regard. Here, Harry is clearly shown to be the most powerful of the three, and it's very cool.

Before the making of this film, the actor who portrayed Dumbledore, Richard Harris, died, and is replaced here by Michael Gambon. The old Dumbledore will be terribly missed, but the new one, while different, is also very compelling. He's perhaps a bit too similar to Gandalf the White from Lord of the Rings, but not to a terribly distracting degree. He's got that certain playfulness that Gandalf lacked, but the old Dumbledore always had plenty of.

Some of the best scenes in the film are the quiet moments between Harry and new teacher Remus Lupin. They have a very strong master/student relationship, and it does a lot to ground the story in real, relatable emotion.

The visual style of Harry Potter is reworked in a darker, more cohesive fashion. While the first two films sometimes felt like a jumble of bright colors, this one has a much more uniform and precise look. Much of the imagery looks as though it's taken out of the absolute best of dark fantasy art.

Many of the horror elements of the film are genuinely scary. The dementors are textbook death monsters, and Remus' transformation into a werewolf is horribly twisted—in a good way.

The visual effects get one notch better. The extremely brief Quidditch scene appears to be entirely made of live-action footage rather than CGI. The CGI creatures seen here are still not entirely perfect, but move realistically enough that it's easy to let it slide. Of special note is the extremely lifelike quality of Buckbeak the hippogriff. He moves and acts like a real animal, complete with all the bird-like quirks that you'd expect.

The music here is truly remarkable. John Williams' score feels far different from the first two films, utilizing an entirely new set of themes and a darker, less bombastic tone. There's still a few places where similarities to the Star Wars prequel scores seem to pop up, but it's likely not the kind of thing that anyone other than soundtrack buffs will recognize.

There are a few problems with the way the story is presented. Sirius Black's entrance portrays him as a madman, but he somehow becomes a likable, rather gentlemanly person in less than ten minutes. Harry is shown to completely change his opinion of Sirius in an instant, going from utter contempt and hate to regarding him as close family. It all happens entirely too fast.
Another confusing point is the final confrontation with the dementors and Harry's Patronus Charm. The animal identities of individual Patronus charms are never explained in the film, thus Harry's belief that his father summoned the stag-shaped Patronus doesn't make any sense. It's not plot-breaking, but it does create a mental stumbling block.
Finally, the last real problem with the film is the fact that it doesn't have a definitive ending. The villain escapes and Sirius' name isn't cleared. The kids discover the truth behind the the Potters' betrayer, but very little comes of it. All in all, Prisoner of Azkaban is more of an in-between chapter than a fully-realized story on its own, and comes off slightly as required viewing for future stories. It's no different than the book, but that doesn't necessarily help it much. At the same time, even if this is no more than an in-between chapter, it's still good enough that it's hardly a chore to get through—and the events of this film, while rather minor in the larger scope of things—do definitely become vastly more important in the sequels.

This really is the best Potter film yet. True, it's not as lighthearted and childishly fun as the initial two, but it's overall more enjoyable and feels every bit as magical as it did before.

8/10

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The Chamber of Secrets takes what was in The Sorcerer's Stone and makes it a bit deeper, darker, and ultimately better.

The story here flows much, much better than last time. Whereas The Sorcerer's Stone was jumpy and jumbled as it flowed from start to finish, this movie feels more appropriately suited for film, and is much easier to sink into.

While The Sorcerer's Stone had some very dark moments, it retained a somewhat lighthearted tone that didn't always match the action.  The Chamber of Secrets, however, manages to blend its tone and subject matter much better.  While death was often mentioned in the previous film, here we actually see a bit of bloody on-screen violence.

The visual effects in this film are much better than in the last, but are still far from perfect.  The Quidditch match is less embarassing to watch, but it's not great either.  The spiders go back and forth from looking obviously fake to rather impressively realistic.  The Basilisk itself looks near-perfect, but the difference between the CG model and the real-life animatronic model is very obvious.  I'm actually not sure which model is inferior; it could be that the CG model doesn't correctly reflect light, or it could be that the fake skin on the animatronic model isn't as realistic as it should be.  Either way, both models look amazing on their own; they're just distractingly different.

The set design is amazing. The Chamber of Secrets itself looks completely real; it simultaneously scares the audience and piques their curiosity.

The acting in this film has also improved over the last one.  The child actors are less awkward, and it helps a bit.  Jason Isaacs' portrayal of Lucius Malfoy is masterful; he's the very model of a great villain.

John Williams' musical score is catchy to be sure, but it also feels extremely similar to his other works.  The Quidditch match's score sounds almost identical to the generic action music heard in the Star Wars prequels, and many of the themes that are meant to evoke "the majesty and wonder" of Harry's magical world sound very much like themes from Jurassic Park and E.T. While there's nothing wrong with The Chamber of Secrets's musical score when examined on its own, it sounds so similar to other soundtracks that it's distracting for a fantasy-genre soundtrack geek like myself.

This chapter in the Harry Potter series initially seems to be a self-contained adventure, where nothing is lost or gained, and everything merely returns to the status quo at the end. A singular evil rose, and Harry defeated it. Were someone to judge the entire series based on the first two books/films, they might assume that it was nothing more than a series of magical mystery stories for children, rather than what it truly is: a deeply-woven mythology filled with realistically developing characters and wonderful storytelling.

However, future Potter books/films refer back to The Chamber of Secrets, revealing how the specific events here are, in fact, of immense importance. Repeat viewings, in light of the sequels, are much more entertaining.

Honestly, there's not much to say about this film that wasn't already said about the first.  The acting is better, the special effects are better, and the story gets a tad darker. Certain elements work extremely well in film form, notably the Basilisk battle and certain lines of well-said dialogue.  These little bits of fun elevate the film above its predecessor, and set the bar just a bit higher for the series as a whole.

7/10

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

This film is the very definition of a straight book-to-screen translation, for better or for worse.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone follows the original children’s novel very closely, perhaps to a fault. The film covers nearly every single aspect of the book, leaving very little out. Unfortunately, this means that the movie is crammed full at two and a half hours, but still feels as though it's rushing in order to cover everything. The dramatic pace of the movie is a bit off because of this, sometimes making the film feel a little bit like a childrens' roller coaster rather than a well-rounded story.

However, the casting here is completely flawless. Good child actors are seemingly non-existent, yet the lead three characters are played perfectly by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint.

The visual effects go back and forth between astounding and disgusting. All of the “solid” objects look amazing. Hogwarts castle looks completely real, as do all of the other environments. The makeup on the goblins is particularly good; they look like evil, pale-faced Yodas. The attention to detail in the film's visuals overall is practically unmatched. When it comes to the CGI, however, it's an entirely different matter. Almost every time a CG monster or human is shown, it looks obviously fake and cartoonish. Because CG creatures are the focus of many important scenes in the film, this can be extremely distracting.
On the other hand, the whimsical and kid-friendly tone of the movie counters this somewhat. After all, when you have eleven-year-old wizards using tiny wands to battle a slimy mountain troll, realism takes a slight dive. It would have been nice to have real-looking CG effects, but the movie isn't ruined because of the bad ones.

The music is almost astoundingly good. John Williams has apparently not yet lost his touch, managing to craft musical themes that reflect the mystery, wonder, and excitement of Harry’s strange magical world.

An odd thing about the film is its constantly contrasting tone and subject matter. While the film has the whimsical quality of a five-year-old’s brain, the events in the story are far more mature. Voldemort is said to have murdered Harry’s parents, and drinks a slain unicorn’s blood on-screen. Later, Harry purposely uses powerful magic to defend himself, burning his attacker down to ashes. As if that wasn’t enough, Ron occasionally throws out a “damn” or “hell.” While it’s nice to see the film not dodge the book’s more mature content, it does make one occasionally wonder who the target audience is.

The most important part of this film, however, is the manner in which it uses the character of Harry to bring us into this new magical world. He, like Luke Skywalker before him, is the young, ordinary hero who is transported from his grounded reality into a fantastical adventure. There's a sense of wish fulfillment in The Sorcerer's Stone: that dream of taking the Hogwarts Express and being swept way to a land of wonder and excitement.

All in all, this film has a slightly jumpy narrative structure and sometimes-shoddy visual effects, but everything else is of the highest quality. The entire experience is slightly shallow, but it works well enough as an audiovisual spectacle that it's absolutely worth watching. While The Sorcerer’s Stone definitely works better as a book, it functions just fine as a film.

6/10