Just got back from a late afternoon showing of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Five word summary: Uneven but mostly satisfying nonetheless.

One thing you'll notice as you proceed through the film is the high number of small but delicious details. I don't want to give away any plot points, so it will have to suffice to say that, in addition to lavishing attention on visual tricks, director Alfonso Cuaron has also taken the visual and thematic craftmanship of the series to a whole new level. Tiny details that foreshadow the plot abound, Prof. Lupin's worst fear - which you could easily miss if you don't already know the story - and the recurrent visual leitmotif of the belltower's clock being my favourites. This is evidence of some very fine moviemaking.

All of which makes the rushed feel and lack of truly compelling acting that mars the first 2/3 of the film all the more disappointing. The movie ends very, very well but one feels that the director was in just a bit too much of a hurry to get to the climax. I suspect this feeling would be there even if one didn't know how many non-essential plot points had been elided over or dropped altogether.

The result is that, while the movie is lush beyond expectation, when the climax arrives, one is not as invested in it as one should be. They can tell us several times how scared Harry is of Sirius or, later, how intent he is on killing him, but that's no substitute for showing us. The addition of even 15-20 minutes would not have made the film seem overlong but would have done wonders for securing the necessary emotional investment in the plot.

The dramatic changes to the landscape of Hogworts take some getting used to. I have a notion as to why the choice was made to have the characters don their robes only for classes and meals - I don't agree with it, but I think it was done for justifiable technical reasons related to the criss-crossing that makes up the ending [SPOILER*] - but I'm less clear on why Hagrid's cabin is suddenly way off in the bottom of a valley by itself, instead of just across the grounds from a castle entrance. Especially jarring, though obviously unavoidable, is the simple fact that this movie just took too damned long to get made. The actors are too old for their roles by a very obvious couple of years of puberty. This is especially true of Ron and Draco (who is easily a foot taller than he was "a year ago," a far more dramatic change than the substitution of Michael Gambon for the late Richard Harris).