From a sorcerer's student to his master... followed by a try to describe what magic is....

Rating: 9/10 (11 May 2005)

Well, it's difficult to find any words for the film Alfonso Cuarón made of Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. I had so many many expectations to this adaptation from  for me the best of JK Rowlings novels  that book so i feared it would become as boring as his predecessors are.
But....Cuarón made it! Absolutely real magic from beginning to end. This film breathes the spirit of it's model, although shortened and changes in many ways, but I don't care...
Cuarón eliminates all of the sticky American sugar icing from Harry's film-life. Shown already in the very first scene with the Dursleys. Nothing is multi-coloured anymore, instead we see a typical depressing English suburb-family, not better or worse than any other suburb-family.
Even to Hogwarts some locations-updates are made. Somehow it looks like in the predecessors but it's surely different, within the hilly Scottish landscape, with staggering new settings (this bridge from the castle to Hagrid Hut  really great). The Kids are changed to modern typical teens, like you will find in every school in Great Britain. A lax funny atmosphere at the beginning, the boys hangin' around together, happy to be back at school, that all seems like a really normal school day.
Radcliffe will never be one of the greatest actors of the lifetime, but here he made some good tries to mediate Harry's feelings....even Emma Watson & Rupert Grint did a good job, hopefully they will do the remaining films together....
Completed by old and new adults: Snape (Rickman) nasty good as ever with a lot more scenes as in HP 2, Coltrane lives Hagrid but Maggie Smith leaves it only to a few Cameos... Michal Gambon as Dumbledore fills in the vacancy leaving by Richard Harris terrific, the Schoolmaster is no longer only a wise great wizard, he's also lax and funny .
David Thewlis as Remus Lupin is great. Though i was a little bit disappointed with the casting-news, because my Lupin looks very very different in my mind, i must say: Great - Thewlis evolves his figure fantastically, those scenes between him and Harry are the strongest of the whole film.
Well and Oldman......NOBODY could have been better to play Sirius Black. This unbelievable ambivalently figure comes to life with Oldman.....i can't find words for this. Only one thing disturbed me....his appearance is too short. Really too short. But he has definitely the greatest scene in the film with Harry......let me nearly burst out in tears....*sniff*...(well because i know how the story will go one....)
There are so many beautiful scenes in the film: The lesson with the Boggart, the Quidditch-Match through the rain and the attack of the dementors, Harry's Patronus, the time-travel, the flight with Buckbeak.....and so on....
Well, all of this is Harry Potter like i have it in mind from the very beginning. Cuarón knows like no other before him how to bring Harry up to film-life. A magician of pictures, lights, & scenes  a sorcerer bringing Harry Potter up to LIFE!