Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Directed by Mike Newell
When his name emerges from the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter becomes a competitor in a grueling battle for glory among three wizarding schools. Signs of Voldemort's return emerge as Harry's friends help him prepare for the Triwizard Tournament.
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Instead a slithering snake and portentous music (composer Patrick Doyle, "A Little Princess," working with John Williams's themes) are our entry into Harry's nightmare, which Newell breaks us out of with a bit of aural trickery right out of Hitchcock's "39 Steps."
Watson has an Audrey Hepburn moment out of "Sabrina" when Hermione makes a late appearance at the ball in a violet dress showing a hint of cleavage.
The maze itself becomes the challenge, apparently grafted from Hogwarts' whomping willow after someone watched Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
Producer David Heyman, cinematographer Roger Pratt and new director Mike Newell help flood the screen with the usual technological amazements: incredibly believable phantoms, flying submersible sailing ships, dragons, golden eggs, living paintings and lively stained-glass windows, a rollickingly opulent kids' costume ball and a vast forest maze that suggests a jacked-up version of the climax of "The Shining."
The film’s finale, which involves a shrubbery maze straight out of The Shining and a cemetery showdown with a dark lord (played by Ralph Fiennes) is quite scary.
With its eerie, misty moors, its melancholic tone and its view of derring-do as clumsy, bloody work, this sequel comes as close as we'll get to John Boorman circa Excalibur doing a Potter film.
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About the only teen-movie cliche missing here is Harry getting a pimple, and you wonder why they didn't get John Hughes ("Pretty In Pink," etc.) to direct this.
The tale begins at the start of yet another Hogwarts school year, and the Weasley family brings old Ron (Grint), Hermione (Watson), Harry (Radcliffe) and newbie Cedric "The Entertainer" Diggory (Robert Pattinson) to the mother of all Magical Sporting events (I'll give you a hint, broomsticks and snitches are involved).
But the early skirmishes are repelled, and the students return to Hogwarts, joined by exchange students from two overseas magic academies: From France come the Beauxbaton girls, who march on parade like Bemelmans' maids all in a row, and from Durmstrang school in central Europe come clean-cut Aryan lads who look like extras from " Triumph of the Will ."
If we take Azkaban to be the real beginning of the series, it's the Star Wars to Goblet's The Empire Strikes Back, in terms of relative size and ambition.
In the climax, like Luke Skywalker crossing lightsabers with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, Harry finally goes wand to wand with Voldemort himself.
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He looks like Marty Feldman in "Young Frankenstein."
Seriously, by the time they get to movie six, it’s going to be playing out more like “The Warriors” than “The Goonies” – and this film signifies a definite shift into the bleaker side of the Potter universe.