sincere | I loff Harry Potter, I do.

There are spoilers in here, but, um, you've read the books, right? I can't understand these wacky people like my sister, who are all, "Don't spoil the movie," despite the fact that the only way they could remain unspoiled at this point would be to slam their heads against the wall until they develop amnesia. "You read 350 pages of book telling you what happened at the end, you dork." If you're not a wuss, here's my
Overall Opinion: By far the best of the three movies so far. I *heart* Cuaron.

So now that that's out of the way, things I wanted to improve:

The significance of the dementors. Harry heard a scream, passed out, felt bad. Every time after that, it was just like, whooooo, they so scary. But their true scariness isn't in the fact that they make things go cold: it's that they drag out your worst memories and force you to relive it. And we heard that, clinically, but the reason it was so compelling in the book is because every time he remembered a little more of the single most important event in the Harry Potter series: the murders of the Potters, and the downfall of Voldemort. That was totally removed in the movie. "Whoo scary" replaced the screams, the bravery, the whole miracle of it. Likewise the Patronus -- it would've been easy to show us a two-second flash of the memory he was recalling, his first ride on the broomstick, God, how moving would it have been to see a flashback to Sirius awkwardly asking him if he wanted to live together, right before he summoned up that big ol' Patronus, as opposed to just, "hyah. I DO it. because!"?

Speaking of memories, almost everything regarding Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs was totally removed? No mention of them being Animagi together. No mention of the horror of Sirius and James' friendship and how it was theoretically abused; more was made out of his fictional murder of Peter than the fictional betrayal of his best friend. No mention of even the fact that they WERE Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, or the significance of Harry's Patronus being a stag. They were just a bunch of people who knew each other. As a matter of fact, a LOT of stuff about James was removed. I guess I can see why, but... It's important. It's not just setting. That stuff is important.

Lupin's casting bothered me from the beginning. Lupin is scruffy, malnourished, and tired, old before his years. The man they casted to be him was tall, well-fed, and neat. But he acted well, so I got into it and didn't mind. Until the part where he found the Marauder's Map: he was almost yelling at Harry, and I seem to recall that in the actual book, Lupin was very even and controlled when he told Harry that he was disappointed in him for behaving so irresponsibly, which is why Lupin's lecture hurt a lot, and Snape's condescending "OBEY you little PUNK" just made him mad. Also, obviously, his connection to James-tachi is so thin... Plus, um, is it just me, or did he spontaneously develop an inexplicable crush on Lily?

He spoke more about Lily............. than about James and Sirius combined.

On a final note, this movie was very nearly Snape-less. They removed his hysterical bout with insanity at the end, too. XD "POTTER DID IT! YOU DID IT, DIDN'T YOU, POTTER! HE'S RESPONSIBLE!"

Later addendums: It is a fact that Sirius and Remus are under the age of 35 in Prisoner of Azkaban.

And the things I loved:

Sirius' casting. Gary Oldman is the MAN, although they seem to have told him that in order to be In Character, he must have his mouth open as wide as possible. He does semi-insane, semi-awkward down pretty impressive once he's encountered in person, and I absolutely love him. Also, I love the fact that he and Lupin are just about officially engaged, even though a lot of their interaction was minimized. Snape, in one of his eight lines, accused them of being a married couple, which I had totally been thinking for the last five minutes. Lupin would try to be reasonable and Sirius would insist on not being reasonable at the top of his lungs in the height of his semi-insanity manner, and Lupin would spin off to get out of his way exasperatedly, all, "Oh, fine, be that way."

Their bizarre wrestling as Lupin was changing, and Sirius' touching but somewhat strained rambling about feeling his heart his home etc? So. Gay. I spent the entire ending sequence (which was, of course, missing the incredibly beautiful touching discussion of Harry's patronus, whyyyy?) laughing at Lupin's "discreet" turn of phrase. "They wouldn't want... someone like me teaching their children." "People like me... Well, I'm used to [persecution]." People like you werewolves, or people like you gay gay gay gay gay people?

Speaking of the werewolf, wasn't it weird? Not even remotely accurate to the story, because in the actual book the werewolf is a, um, wolf. (Snape asked, "How do you tell a werewolf from the true wolf?" Hermione said there weren't many, and they were small.) The hybrid was very cool-looking, though, and I loved watching him move.

Speaking of cool-looking CGI, Buckbeak the Hippogriff was too damn cool for words. Wow, that thing was a masterpiece. The Dementors themselves were really creepy, too, from the frost effect to the fluttering intangibility to the hideous, hideous mouths you could just see under their hoods.

Later Addendums: A) The Awkwardly Romancing!Ron and Hermione. It sort of replaced the moments where Scabbers was supposed to be ruining their friendship; instead of being tense and ANGRY, they were tense and NERVOUS, and it was sodamncute. B) The Steadily Evolving!Harry. He didn't take any nonsense from the Dursleys in the beginning, and none from Draco later. He's done being uncomfortable with confrontations; he's being an adolescent now. He's tangibly darker, with his fury at Aunt Marge and his violent "I WANT TO KILL HIM" towards Sirius... and it's a beautiful segue to what he'll be like later, in the fifth book.

What else was cool? The Fat Lady had the best entrance ever... Neville was so adorable for the twenty seconds he was on-screen... The new Dumbledore is much, much better than the late Dumbledore, no disrespect intended. He sounds lively, fun-loving, more the kind to joke around and enjoy himself, although he was just as capable of pontificating with the best of them. His goofy robes...! *heart* And Harry's hair was messy, Pie-chan, it was great.

But most importantly, I loved the directing. The other two movies weren't even remotely... movie-like, to me. It was just "this happened and this happened, then this happened..." whereas this story had actual story-telling to it. Even though it's less accurate to the books than the other two, the discrepancies made it more like a coherent flow of its OWN. There were several elements that bothered me, of course; I'm nitpicky. But I didn't mind them so much in this movie as in the others, because I could get into the movie, as its own experience, and not as a sequel of a representation of the book. It even had symbolism, there was meaning in things, and the camerawork -- it was notably less cartoony, more gritty and faded and dark. HOGWARTS seemed more real, more solid, because you could see the physical toll of years on it.

Yes, changes were made. Very obvious, serious changes, changes that can't be fixed with "deleted scenes" on the DVD release, the way the complete absence of MWPP stuff can be. But I liked them. It shows that Cuaron wasn't just trying to copy the scenes from the book -- he wanted to make them his own without taking away what we loved about them. I think he did that, sort of. The part about Harry seeing Peter Pettigrew on the map... It was very interesting. (Although the loss of Snape's quiet, brilliant, "What was your head doing in Hogsmeade, Potter? Your head is not allowed in Hogsmeade. No part of your body has permission to be in Hogsmeade," was painful. XD )

But I enjoyed them. I enjoyed this movie, very much.

I hope Lupin shaves off his Nazi moustache for later, though.

So? Who agrees with me? Who has others to contribute? C'mon, step right up!

I loff Harry Potter, I do.

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