So, there's a lot of disappointment with POA, and I understand where it's coming from. I've seen it twice (with bluejeanbaby, and then again with Blue and Lylian Mae), and I'm glad I did. The first time I saw the movie, I'd waited for over five hours to see it, had dutifully applied my Slytherin tattos, and my Weasley Is Our King buttons, and my Slytherin house scarf, and I'd even recently re-read POA. I had high hopes, because this is my favorite book.

I left the theater at 3 AM, disappointed and confused. I felt cheated - where was mention of the Marauders? Where was Oliver Wood? Why the Firebolt at the end? Why elimate the scene where Snape is returned from under the tree? I had a day to think and grouse before I saw it again, and the second time, I promised to put all thought of the books out of my head and see the movie as a standalone piece. When I did that, I was amazed.

The excellent casting continues in this movie. I'd seen pictures of David Thewlis (Lupin) before the movie and I wanted to duct-tape that ratty little moustache right off his face. He didn't look sweet and world-weary like my Lupin was supposed to, so I was predjudiced against him from the get-go. Seeing him on-screen, though, was a completely different story. His chemistry with Harry is what makes the movie believable. It's a sweet, loving, but also distant feel that he exudes with Harry. He acts like an uncle to him, but he forever has the aura of someone who believes he's talking to a dead person, because he sees James. Then there's Gary Oldman, who I was violently set against. My image of Sirius is informed by fanfiction and fanart, so when I didn't see beautiful long hair and sparkles, I was instantly let down (you Sirius fans should know what I'm talking about - he was sexy once!). But the casting, again, was spot-on - his longing for family, for normalcy, for his friend James alive again as Harry, for any speck of happiness to come into his heart, is so wrenching and believable I'll never be able to picture Siruis in any other way. He and David Thewlis are amazing together - you can see it in Lupin's transformation scene. When Sirius is gripping Remus, begging for him to stay human, knowing it isn't possible but unwilling to lose anyone else he loves, they feel to us like desparate, doomed brothers, or, as Snape put it, like "an old married couple." I wasn't the only girl in the theater who squealed when he said that, by the way - the connection between S&R is so obvious that even non-slash readers candidly accept the pairing.
Then there's the matter of the new Dumbledore. Richard Harris, may he rest in peace, was the sort of man you can't just replace, so they didn't. In keeping with the darker, stranger new theme of the third movie, they simply casted a different kind of Dumbledore, rather than looking for a carbon-copy. He's wonky and strange and capitavting and powerful, and I can't wait to see more of him.

The look and feel of the film is what sets it apart as a standalone movie rather than as simply an aside to the book. It feels very art-house, with overexposed frames, metal-plate tinting, and sepia-toned projection-style scene cuts. There's no happy Disneyland Hogwarts anymore - Columbus' happy-fun brightly-colored sunny Quidditch pitch is gone, in favor of Cuaron's dingy, grimy, frightening institution, which isn't even as important as the woodlands around it and the skies above it. The movie style parallels the growing complexity and darkness of Harry's world - as he's growing older, he understands that everything here at Hogwarts is not as it seems. There were a couple of other nice pieces of eyecandy - Cuaron's way of showing the change in seasons - the Whomping Willow shedding leaves or thwapping a bird, Hedwig flying from an autumn forest to a snowy Hogwarts - they were subtle, beautiful hints at the vastness of Harry's world. Then, of course, there was the lake scene with Buckbeak, which could have been a cheesy Jar-Jar CG moment for the ads, but was instead beautifully liberating. The whole theater went silent there. The way the Dementors were portrayed in this movie gives the Ringwraiths a run for their money - the pullback pan-out scenes where we see the dementors simply floating, facing the castle, spread a chill through the theater like ice.

Okay, now, the story. This is Steve Klovis' domain, and I'll admit, he failed in some respects. Not telling us about the Marauders saved twenty minutes of screen time, but it disappointed those of us who wanted to see young James, Remus, Sirius, Peter, and Lily. It will be hard for them to incorporate that into the fourth movie, without the backstory in the third, but it can be done. That said, the shuffling of the timeline and the omission of Crookshanks - they're important, yeah, because we've read the books, but overall, they're not that big a deal. The story goes on, and probably more smoothly, without them.

Overall, I'm pleased. I think that some things were omitted that could have been left in, but as with the LotR movies, having multiple tellings of one story is the first step in the transformation of a novel by a writer into a mythology that becomes part of our culture. Think about Beauty and the Beast - it's a story that's been told so many times, nobody can even remember the original authors (the Brothers Grimm didn't make it up - they only collected it and wrote it down). When Disney decided to make a movie about it, it wasn't important to talk about the fact that her father was actually a merchant who'd lost his money to a shipwreck that claimed his goods, or that Belle had seven brothers. When we read it later, we say "oh! what an interesting detail!" but it's no more than that. The story flows, and becomes a part of us, even with the level of artistic license that the writers and directors took. Bottom line is: it's okay. Movies are not visual representations of books, they're separate, inspired stories all their own, and that what makes them powerful.
I know in my heart that POA will stand the test of time to emerge as the most beautiful, complex, and ultimately descriptive movie in the entire series, and I urge everyone who hates it now to see it one more time, just as a movie, all by itself. It's worth it.

Random stuff I loved...

* Ron - wow. The writing has unfortunately turned him into a funny sidekick rather than a loyal and brave best friend, but Rupert Grint's comic timing and facial expressions are just superb. And when did ickle Ronniekins get so frickin' hot? After that "lion candy" scene, I felt like I had to smoke a cigarette and sleep for an hour.

* Lupin's transformation scene - not only was the pull-back when we see his panting, inhuman face after his eyes change totally creepy, but Sirius gripping him and yelling about his heart and flesh and stuff - how much more slashy could you be?

* Tom Felton - ggguuhhh, gorgeous. And so very brave for playing a role that every little kid already hates him for, and then whimpering on top of it.

* The Dursleys - This time around, it wasn't red-faced screaming. It was a passive desire for Harry simply to not be there. It was a dingy, yellow, pedestrian, middle class stuggle to even barely exist, where the status quo is so important that even after Dudley sees his aunt float off into the distance, he walks back inside to watch TV, eating pudding off his sweater. It's so hideous and normal and flickering-yellow-kitchen-bulb that we want to get out of the scene worse than Harry does.

* the Leaky Cauldron - in the other two movies, whenever there was going to be MAGIC!! the music crescendoed, wands were drawn, the goblin war drums were beat, whatever. The Leaky Cauldron scene showed how effortlessly magic was a part of everyday life. It's everywhere, like electricity. Spoons are stirred with a wave of the fingers, car alarms are flipped off with the flick of a wand. And we got to see all the adorable Weasleys in one place... I'm especially happy that Forge and Gred and getting more screen time - they're very much matching the books now. And did you notice that the guy stirring his coffee in the Leaky Cauldron was reading A Brief History of Time? That cracked me up.