Tags: Movies   Reviews


I saw the newest Harry Potter movie last night. As I've mentioned before, I haven't read the books, so each film is brand new for me. I enjoyed most of the previous movies, with the third film, Prisoner of Azkaban (directed by Alfonso Cuarón), being my favorite.

This chapter is much less a schoolyard story, thankfully. The bright gold and red colours of quidditch teams from the first two movies are gone here, replaced instead with black and white, and blue and green, and a hilarious touch of pink (played brilliantly by Imelda Staunton), resulting in a gritty visual feast. The movie is more focused on fewer characters and a more concise plot, with a sense of urgency throughout. There is a huge cast of characters which could have overburdened the movie. Instead, the film chose to give many of them brief cameos, which were effective and sufficient to support the story, which remained focused mostly on Harry. If any of the plot from the book was missing, I didn't notice.


Overall, I found that Phoenix was a much better wizard movie than the previous movies. All the magic was more powerful, and the locations were more fantastical and wondrous. I especially liked the locations of the wizards' headquarters, all done up with marble and lit by magical light and green flames. Now that's what I want to see in a Harry Potter movie! The film is well paced, leading to a great climax with powerful magic that I've always thought was lacking in earlier films. Battles between wizards should be powerful and epic, and finally we see the clash of mighty wizards dueling.

Go see it. There aren't very many fantasy movies that portray magic like this, so it's a rare treat. Good times.