Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Alfonso Cuarón
Directed by:
2004


Harry Potter is one of my favorite movie series ever, and almost every single movie in the series is pretty good. On their own, these movies are fine, but obviously they all build upon the previous stories. They can also feel a bit weird due to the fact that these kids have been going to the same school for three years and still haven't had a dark arts teacher last even one full year. While the characters for all of the movies are good, the story for this particular one is not amazing, but it's still pretty solid. I love how the stories and settings continously get more and more dangerous as the movies progress, and the whole deatheater shtick of this movie is a perfect example of that. One of the best aspects of this series is the ability for the movies to have tons of entertaining short stories that are fun on their own and also somehow build up to the climax in some way or another. Prisoner of Azkaban does this perhaps the best, with the final sequencial climax being the culmination of literally almost every single scene before it. While this method of storytelling totally works for this style of movie, it doesn't really allow for strong story or character moments early on in each film (especially the early movies), because it more feels like a bunch of shorts rather than one continous story. I also think the villain reveal was kinda lame honestly, I of course will not spoil anything but it kinda defeats the purpose of the movie? Anyway, a perfectly solid entry in the series.
