Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Harry Potter's life is in danger once more as dangerous wizard Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban Prison and is heading to Hogwarts.
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What critics say influenced Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
And I believe my displeasure with the Harry Potter movies thus far are rooted in the same place where many feel the new prequel "Star Wars" trilogy have betrayed them.
Deathless composer John Williams seems to thrive, too, under the new director's hand; his Azkaban melodies abandon the Star Wars-in-mothballs stuff he passed in for the early outings and really get under the skin of this newer, testier, more hormonal Harry.
He builds on his already memorable Harry Potter theme with a dark tune called "Something Wicked This Way Comes".
"Something wicked this way comes," chants the Hogwart's choir in a number that foreshadows a darker, more precarious future for Harry and his friends.
These techniques do suffer from overuse, however, as thus the clich�d freeze-frame, an obvious reference to Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Y Tu Mama Tambien , and Thirteen -- also about troubled youth -- end in a very similar way.
He directed maybe the most evocative live-action kids movie since The Black Stallion (1979), A Little Princess (1995), and his failed modern 1998 Great Expectations (set in Florida and New York's SoHo) was a worthy stab at re-energizing a classic.
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Seresin's point of reference comes from his grim perspective on "Angela's Ashes."
Cuaron makes us view the familiar with fresh eyes as he and new-to-the-series cinematographer Michael Seresin (best known for work on Alan Parker films such as "Angela's Ashes") abandon the verging-on-Disneyland colorfulness of the first two movies for more muted tones and film grain you practically can scrape your hand on.
The Dementors, shrouded figures of doom, look exactly like the Ringwraiths from the Lord of the Rings pictures, while a winged creature known as Buckbeak bears a strong resemblance to a couple of Ray Harryhausen concoctions (including the griffin from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad).
The choice of Cuarón was as inspired as it was logical in films as varied as 1995s A Little Princess (a reinvention of the classic childrens story about an orphan at a boarding school who finds solace in her imagination) and 2001s Y tu mamá también (a muy caliente road picture about two teenage boys and their romp with an older woman), his main themes have been the death of innocence and sexual awakening.
The Mexican director (whose credits range from the luminous children's film "A Little Princess" to the erotic road movie "Y Tu Mama También") is more willing than Chris Columbus , who directed the first two movies with a slavish devotion to J.K. Rowling 's text, to pare away the extraneous bits of the book -- c'mon, how many Quidditch matches do we really need?
Nearly ten years past the commanding success of Cuarón's rather drastic re-conceiving of the material, it's hard to remember how bold this was at the time: the director of a wildly well-received travelogue about sex and politics in Mexico (though it's a matter of record that the reason he got the job was his sparkling A Little Princess ) being given the keys to the biggest moneymaking machine in the world, what with Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy having wrapped up the prior year, and instead of copying the model of his predecessor, pulling at damn near everything and starting from scratch with all of it.
Although the director's critically acclaimed feature A Little Princess was a box office flop for Warner Bros. in 1995, the studio was so impressed with his work it did all it could to garner audience support, including re-releasing the film.
And many more forgot that Cuaron also directed the wonderful fairy tale A Little Princess back in 1995.
The Dementors, the keepers of Azkaban Prison who look like they were borrowed from Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners," are quite possibly the most realistic CG created characters to be created thus far, while the Pegasus with a Pigeon Face called Hippogriff looks about as realistic as a winged horse with a bird face can look.
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The choice of Cuarón was as inspired as it was logical in films as varied as 1995s A Little Princess (a reinvention of the classic childrens story about an orphan at a boarding school who finds solace in her imagination) and 2001s Y tu mamá también (a muy caliente road picture about two teenage boys and their romp with an older woman), his main themes have been the death of innocence and sexual awakening.
He seemed like a bit of an odd choice to direct a family film such as this for his follow-up to Y Tu Mama Tambien but the coming-of-age themes are strikingly similar.
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, has passed the wand to Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien), and in contrast to Columbus's bloated theme-park rides, this third installment (2004) more closely approximates the character-driven storytelling of J.K. Rowling's beloved children's books.
The Mexican director (whose credits range from the luminous children's film "A Little Princess" to the erotic road movie "Y Tu Mama También") is more willing than Chris Columbus , who directed the first two movies with a slavish devotion to J.K. Rowling 's text, to pare away the extraneous bits of the book -- c'mon, how many Quidditch matches do we really need?
Cuaron, best known for his award-winning film "Y Tu Mama Tambien," makes wonderful fluid use of the camera, darting through clocks and mirrors, as he guides his characters from childhood into their more serious teenage years.
Director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamà También), new to the series, tightens the focus on characters and relationships.
Aided by Sue Brooks's statuesque direction, Ian Baker's stately photography (constantly hinting at unseen worlds beneath the surface) and a melancholy soundtrack, Japanese Story emerges as a strangely affecting affair, occasion- ally reminiscent of Christine Jeffs's Antipodean weirdie Rain in its emotional shifts, and a world away from the pre-packaged predictability of most mainstream Hollywood fare.