Still the best of the movies!

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2004)

Chamber of Secrets is definitely the best Harry Potter movie. It improved upon Philosopher's Stone, and had better film-making aspects in it. It is adapted extraordinarily well to the screen from the book, and it's enjoyable from beginning to end. Prisoner of Azkaban was a very bad film, and a horrible adaptation. Chamber of Secrets was great, and still stands strong. Chris Columbus made this movie great, and I wish he would have continued filming.
Dobby was a great character!
I think what made this movie so great was the cast. This movie had the best cast of all three movies so far. Kenneth Branagh as Lockhart was perfect. He was hilarious, a good actor, and fit the part. He really got into the personality of Lockhart. Jason Issacs as Lucius Malfoy was a stroke of genius as well. And, of course, this movie featured Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore. The third movie suffered greatly from lack of a good Dumbledore, but Harris' performance in Chamber of Secrets is nothing short of perfection. And of course, everybody else was pretty good as well.
Chamber of Secrets really hit upon something. It was a perfect film adaptation of Harry Potter. It's almost indescribable. It didn't leave out anything from the book (except the Deathday Party), it was filmed perfectly, the story was told extremely well, the visual effects are amazingly great (yes, better than the visual effects in PoA, which were pretty bad IMO), and this movie has the best acting of the series (Daniel Radcliffe is the only one that gives a good performance in PoA!). Daniel gives a good performance in CoS. Better than in Philosopher's Stone, at least. He's not quite as good as he is in PoA, but he still does pretty good. Everybody else though, most of the adults, and Rupert Grint, give very good performances in CoS. Rupert Grint was grossly underused in PoA, and what we DID see of him was just his comic relief. In CoS, he is used for a bit of comic relief at times, but he's also a very prominent character who is acted wonderfully.
Chamber of Secrets is no doubt that best Potter film to date, and I can only hope that Goblet of Fire is going to be more along the lines of this movie, than of Prisoner of Azkaban (which is the worst Potter film to date!). And I really hope Columbus directs more Potter films in the future!
10/10