Harry Potter I – The Sorcerer’s Stone

Drink: apple juice

Can’t remember specifics, but I’m sure I felt the same as I did for the second one, which was “not much.”

Harry Potter II – The Chamber of Secrets

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

I had a brain, five senses (one unique),

But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.

In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps,

But really envied nothing—save perhaps

The miracle of a lemniscate left

Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft

Bicycle tires.

This film is almost tragic. Because it had such potential to be so great, but ultimately is a mixed bag. You have to suffer through so much (and by so much I really mean so much) adolescent pandering it almost makes it not worth seeing—almost. But on the other hand, you are rewarded with some of the most lush eye-candy and fantasy crap, that it actually is worth it—barely.

Good:

The mandrake roots being pulled out of their pots—incredible, really wonderful. The idea of objects being imbued with personality is a real winner: the tree pulverizing Harry (and red-haired friend) in their flying car—the car—finally freed of the predicament—expressing great displeasure at the boys by viciously launching the boys out of itself, followed by their luggage—and then speeding off. Great. And then when [the car] inexplicably returns in the spider cave scene later—that too was the yang (for the early yin). What a great touch. Also, note what a great job they did giving his guardians’ house a sense of smallness and confinement that made it seem like a dollhouse. Funny, London near-suburbs actually are like that. Even lawyers and doctors can’t escape it. That’s quasi-socialism for ya! And that funny cake, like Molly Sugden’s blue hair in Are You Being Served? Just wonderful.

Bad:

So much in the film is great. The fight scene with the Basilisk is not. It’s just lame. I think we should leave the Conan sequences for Conan, and let Harry Potter do what he does (or should do) best, which is have his glasses knocked off, fumble around and then by sheer destiny, save the day. Not by swinging around a little hobbit-sized dagger. It just doesn’t suit him.

The entire Hagred character—conventional, predictable, lame. I understand why we need him, but please, less screen time. Dobby? Some kind of combination of Jar Jar Binks and Golem—extremely painful.

A thread of subtle pain,

Tugged at by playful death, released again,

But always present, ran through me. One day,

When I’d just turned eleven, as I lay

Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy—

A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy—

Bypass chair legs and stray beneath the bed,

There was a sudden sunburst in my head.

Harry Potter III – The Prisoner of Azkaban

OH MY LORD, this is not the same thing. I have nothing negative to say (or at least, that I am going to say) about this film. I’m flabbergasted. I now realize it was a different director. That must be it. The visuals (from set design to action sequences) are some of the most beautiful in modern CGI times. The acting is good. And the story is perfectly adequate. I suspect the quality of the stories is similar in all the books. But just as a film, apart from anything else, this is one of the best fantasy-adventure films ever made at the PG maturity level. It really takes you away.

“The third Harry Potter movie is the first one that actually looks and feels like a movie, rather than a staged reading with special effects.” – A.O. Scott

“The silliest, as well as the most contrived – and confusing – of them all.” – Rex Reed

“[E]ven if you’re never read a word of the Potter books and you haven’t seen the first two films, Azkaban stands alone as a creative triumph.” – Richard Roeper

Rex Reed possesses the brain of a five year-old.

Later (trying to figure out why I liked this film so much):

Or maybe the best part is when they go from the high tension of “I saw Peter Pettigrew” back to silly divining class because it typifies the central tension of the film, They keep going to class like business as usual, when the school is basically in lock-down. It’s so WWII. Okay. The scene where the newspaper is alive! If one object can be alive, then any object can be alive. And we are not alone.

Harry Potter IV – The Goblet of Fire

Sources say not as good as III, but better than I and II. This puts me in a pickle. But since it’s > 2 hrs long, I’ll wait for video.