Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Michael, Jess, Matt, Kim, Paul, Jim, Tyler

YAY this one is my favourite. This film just opens everything out.

I remember seeing this in the theatre and the first shot after the titles I knew immediately I was going to love it. All of a sudden the camera was rough and handheld, and character talked over each other, which after the very stately classical approach of the first two quite literally shook things up. And that's what this whole film does. The location shooting, the wardrobe and hair change, the freer camera movement, all the added details in the background just make this film take off when compared to the first two chapters. It also looks remarkably clearer on bluray than the first two, probably because this was the first to be entirely digitally graded so they would have had a digital master instead of having to scan a negative. Just a hunch but it is much cleaner.

I love all the little vignettes with the whomping willow showing the passage of time. Little touches like that make this one stand out from the others. Time is also prominently featured throughout, for reasons that become apparent at the end. I've said many times before I'm very particular about how my time travel works and surprisingly this is one of the few that adheres to my more non-paradoxical notion of how it should work out.

Lupin is one of my favourite characters too, and the scenes with him and Harry in this film have more heart than the entire first two films combined. Those and the scenes with Buckbeak, which is one of the coolest things in the series, especially coming just after Dobby in part 2.

Loads of people I know didn't like the adaptation because of how much it cut from the book. It was my favourite book but also my favourite film because I appreciate that this film stands on its own and totally works as a film. It doesn't try to cram as much stuff in as the first two and consequently is much more succinct. It has one of the shortest running times of any of the films.

And one of the coolest and unique looking werewolfs onscreen. Awesome.