Holy Hallows!! Get Thee To An IMAX

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2010)

This film was made for IMAX. It is at times visually breathtaking, emotionally excoriating, sublimely beautiful, majestic in scope and ambition, subtle as silk, and acutely funny. Most of all the emotional and visual experience in IMAX is often hair-raisingly and deeply visceral.
Rickman, Fiennes, Watson, Radcliffe, Bonham-Carter, Isaacs, Felton, Ifans, all have scenes in which within the space of no more than a few seconds you go on an emotional roller coaster involving anything from anxiety, fear, self-pity, psychotic outburst, to resignation and back again.
Once more Emma Watson is the emotional centre of the film, in one scene with Radcliffe her emotional range is genuinely awe inspiring, with only the big screen doing it, and the torture scene, and so many others, justice. Rupert Grint is at long last allowed to be three dimensional, and Radcliffe proves just how subtle an actor he is, dominating the screen in the best all-round performance to date.
Yates has got the best performances out of all the vast array of characters, but special mention has to go to newcomers Peter Mullan as Yaxley (raw intensity), Andy Linden as Mundungus (likeable rogue), Nick Moran (attractive predator), and David O'Hara, Sophie Thompson, and Steffan Rhodri as perfect polyjuiced potioneers playing Harry, Hermione, and Ron respectively.
The Ministry of Magic scenes are awesome in their scale and richness, the 7 Potters scene hilarious, and a sense of dread is sustained throughout the film. But in the end, for all its David Lean-like epic and visual qualities, it is the trio that give this film its heart and soul. Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe, are formidable actors who can now be genuinely given proper credit for carrying this mind-boggling franchise to its conclusion.