Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I will repeat myself again, I know that as an ordinary Muggle I have no say in this, but fire Radcliffe for God's sake! Although there are slight signs of improvement, he is still very weak and unconvincing especially in details, for example his acting while crying is a tragedy in itself. Moreover, his awful acting stands out in comparison with, say, the talented Emma Watson. But now to the better bits. I'm not going to join the rest with the notorious opinion of what a loser Columbus is (I wouldn't see him as that bad, just an honest craftsman) and how Cuarón, on the other hand, is amazing; they are just two different concepts. Cuarón strikes a darker chord (also thanks to an increasingly dense source material?), the dementors bring a needed light touch of horror and some scenes can give little kids a case of the creeps (keep it up). The Whomping Willow is awesome, Michael Gambon is an excellent replacement for Richard Harris, the visual effects are fine, the werewolf is sad. That’s it. Well, there’s something else. My desire for the Nimbus 2000 has passed, now I'm lusting after a hypogryph, model Klofan. (2005-01-15)

The third Harry Potter didn't charm me either... But it was close. From a filmmaking point of view, it is definitely the best contribution to the trilogy so far – Cuarón works very well with the characters, has less cheesy color compositions and is more attached to the suggestiveness and impressiveness of the environment. From my point of view, however, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is brought down by an overly sparse and flimsy plot that somewhat dissolves in a number of episodes and bon mots. From this point of view, I considered The Chamber of Secrets a much more impressive piece. On the other hand, it is necessary to praise the excellent and variable music of John Williams, the acting of everyone except Michael Gabon (Dumbledore) and to highlight the fact that Harry Potter has ceased to be a shaggy child apprentice and is becoming quite a solid and interesting character. The literal and pandering children's film is turning into something quite impressive and dark... Cuarón did excellent job, but for me, The Prisoner of Azkaban is just a "solid" fantasy film that I would give 70%. (2004-06-13)

It must be excruciating to film a year-long story from the disjointed, ever-changing Harry Potter universe, no matter what the filmmakers prattle on about in the BluRay bonus features. Cuarón has thus proven himself a messiah, whose ability to maintain a unified storyline and focus on the details, particularly in individual scenes whose careful selection is the only saving grace keeping the entire adaptation from disintegrating into a series of clumsily pasted together visual sequences. It can be seen that script editing and pre-production played a significant role here. The individual episodes, then, not only make sense to readers of the book, who, in short, want to at least see some of the things they read, but are capable of assembly into a coherent story on their own. Each scene therefore has purpose and moves the plot forward. It was thanks to this meticulous preparation that it was even possible to focus particularly on the filmmaking aspects, and that's why the third installment of all the Potter films has the most interesting cinematography, mise-en-scene, and various small quirks and elements in the second and subsequent layers. (2016-04-03)

Alfonso Cuarón managed to mix exactly the right amount of tension, emotion, fairy tale, and thriller to create a film that is suitable for essentially all generations, captures attention with its story and characters, and is also skillfully directed. Although the last two films were not bad, "Prisoner of Azkaban" simply could not be surpassed by any other. (2014-01-29)

I read in many comments that only now, thanks to the change in director, Harry Potter has got the true Potter atmosphere, that it has finally gone dark, and so on. Well, I think those are pretty misleading statements. After all, how could the previous two films have the atmosphere of Prisoner of Azkaban when they (like their predecessors) had basically nothing going in them that would require it? So in terms of atmosphere, I wouldn't say it's that much to Alfonso Cuarón's credit - he was just lucky to get this part. What is already to his merit, of course, is the film's thrilling pace, the omnipresent playfulness (the scene with the boogeyman, when the camera flies back and forth through the mirror, for example), the suspenseful, even horror scenes with the dementors, and the sensitive direction of the actors, whose heroes start to get beaten up by adolescence, but we don't stop liking them even for a moment. And then, of course, there are the new characters. Both Gary Oldman and David Thewlis are a joy to watch, and when they are joined by Alan Rickman in the Shrieking Shack, the film's best scene is taken care of. Finally, I'd like to mention John Williams' score - Prisoner of Azkaban is the last installment of the series for which he composed it, and he did an absolutely wonderful job. (2015-09-07)