Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[Penelope]

Well, Damien, I do think there are exceptions, and being a fan of a much-maligned and misunderstood genre (soaps), I can understand where taki is coming from.

I know that I am not a fan of horror films, for example--I don't see what the appeal of gory and graphic death is--I walked out of Hannibal because I couldn't tolerate the graphic violence. But if I hear enough positive comments about a film from that genre, I'll watch it; this past weekend, for example, I saw Dario Argento's Suspiria for the first time--and was literally blown away by the breathtaking artistry of the film--it has to be one of the ten most extraordinary color films ever made. And it was scary as shit, too.

It doesn't make me a convert; I'll take a run-of-the-mill Meg Ryan rom-com over any run-of-the-mill teens in peril horror film any day, but if it's better than most, I'll happily check it out.

[Damien]

Sounds more like some people in here are manifesting their brand of racism, movie racism.
They are too eager to dismiss a movie simply because it's a cartoon or based on a ''cildren's book'', without bothering to watch it first.

Silliest non-criddic post of the month.

And I happily dismiss new Ron Howard, Michael Bay and Sidney Lumet movies sight unseen.

It's not racism (how absurd). It's called being discriminating and knowing your own taste.

[OscarGuy]

Um, Taki, I think you completely mischaracterize what Eric and I are saying. We're saying that it's silly of Ebert to criticize a movie that's based on a book because it's dark when the book itself is dark.

[taki15]

Sounds more like some people in here are manifesting their brand of racism, movie racism.
They are too eager to dismiss a movie simply because it's a cartoon or based on a ''cildren's book'', without bothering to watch it first.

And I am not a Harry Potter fan.

[Eric]

Sounds more like the near-death experience has cleared his head.

[OscarGuy]

while adding new layers of emotional anguish befitting the adolescent years now reached by the teenage protagonists.

Sounds more like "Harry Potter and The Odor of the Penis."

I believe there's a porno movie in the works with that title, Damien. :p

Roger Ebert didn't like it much.

He doesn't like the fact that the series is becoming darker and losing the "childlike whimsy" of the first two Columbus-directed ones (the ones he gave 4 stars to).

That's because Ebert's an idiot and hasn't ever picked up one of the books. Darker is better for this series.

[anonymous1980]

while adding new layers of emotional anguish befitting the adolescent years now reached by the teenage protagonists.

Sounds more like "Harry Potter and The Odor of the Penis."

I believe there's a porno movie in the works with that title, Damien. :p

Roger Ebert didn't like it much.

He doesn't like the fact that the series is becoming darker and losing the "childlike whimsy" of the first two Columbus-directed ones (the ones he gave 4 stars to).

[Damien]

while adding new layers of emotional anguish befitting the adolescent years now reached by the teenage protagonists.

Sounds more like "Harry Potter and The Odor of the Penis."

[anonymous1980]

Time's Richard Corliss says it's the best of the series.

Looking forward to it.

[Mister Tee]

Don't read too deep in here if you haven't read the book and are avoiding spoilers.

Screen Daily

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles
30 Jun 2007 20:09

Dir: David Yates. US/UK. 2007. 138 mins.
The choice of celebrated UK TV director David Yates to take on the fifth in the Harry Potter series proved a wise one for producer David Heyman and Warner Bros. Yates ramps up the adrenalin and menace while adding new layers of emotional anguish befitting the adolescent years now reached by the teenage protagonists. 20 minutes shorter than the previous film and a good deal tighter on plot and action, The Order Of The Pheonix delivers the goods, and will set the worldwide box office alight when it opens on July 11.

Yates, cinematographer Slawomir Idziak and editor Mark Day, who cut Yates’ best TV work State Of Play and Sex Traffic, bring a visceral visual edge to the Potter saga, lacing the adventure hokum with flash-cut dreams and chilling hallucinations more reminiscent of The Ring or The Grudge than a PG-13-rated family movie. Indeed, as Rowling’s stories themselves become more frightening and violent, the films can only mirror that intensity, making parents understandably wary of letting smaller children see them.

Still that won’t stop the army of fans who have grown up with the books and earlier films flock to the thrilling fifth episode. After The Goblet Of Fire’s stunning $892m take in 2006, there is nothing to suggest that The Order Of The Phoenix won’t rival that, especially with its mid-summer dates around the world. The film certainly possesses a narrative urgency, sense of humour and visual majesty sorely lacking in its summer 2007 predecessors Spider-man 3, Pirates 3, Shrek The Third and Fantastic Four 2.

As if to mark out his territory from the traditional storytelling of Mike Newell in film #4, Yates starts his film with a distinctly contemporary flourish. Shooting with handheld camera in a dull suburban modern setting, Yates first shows us Harry being taunted by a bunch of aggressive youths straight out of a gritty BBC teen drama. Harry, clearly no longer a child, flies into a rage at the gang, led by his cousin Dudley, but the exchange is ended by a sudden and ominous storm which sends the cousins running for cover in an under-road tunnel. Only when two Dementors arrive to kill Harry does the magic begin. Thereafter, Yates settles into a calmer rhythm as we leave the real world for the alternate magical dimension.

Having defeated the Dementors, Harry (Radcliffe) is summarily expelled from Hogwarts for practicing magic in front of a Muggle, and he is summoned to a kangaroo court engineered by the Minister Of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Hardy). First, he flies to London where he is reunited with Sirius (Oldman) and his friends Ron Weasley (Grint) and Hermione Granger (Watson) at the Black family house which is now the headquarters for the Order Of The Phoenix, an old order designed to battle the dark arts which has been reactivated to combat the return of Voldemort (Fiennes).

Acquitted at his trial thanks to the arguments of Professor Dumbledore (Gambon), Harry ventures back to Hogwarts where he feels isolated and vilified by the student body who believe the lies that the Ministry is spreading about him. He is beset by nightmares and gruesome images which apparently foretell real events, and in his waking life has to deal with the sweetly sadistic Dolores Umbridge (Staunton), the school’s new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher and a plant from the Ministry who tells them that they are forbidden from practicing any magic to combat evil.

Taking matters into his own hands with support from Ron and Hermione, he forms a secret group of students, dubbed Dumbledore’s Army, whom he teaches how to defend themselves in the event of an upcoming war. Among the group is Cho Cheng (Leung), girlfriend of the late Cedric Diggory and object of Harry’s affections.

The film ends in a rousing battle of good and evil at the Ministry itself where Harry and his band are lured by Voldemort, and where Sirius meets his death.

This is altogether darker territory than previous instalments. With Voldemort back, the world is faced with a war of good versus evil which will leave many dead. Several of the children in this film are indeed familiar with death – Neville Longbottom’s parents, we discover, were brutally tortured before being killed, Luna Lovegood’s mother died when she was nine, Harry loses Sirius in this film and is constantly facing threats on his own life from Voldemort. Yates creates a mood in The Order Of The Phoenix which is immediately more serious and pregnant with danger than the previous films (remember Chris Columbus’ sunny series openers?). What sets this film apart from other summer fantasies is that Harry Potter is facing real threat of death and he might not make it. We won’t know whether he survives until July 21 when the final novel in the series is published. Knowing JK Rowling's tendencies to date, we are in for some more bereavements.

Particularly amusing here is the character of Umbridge, brought to life with delicious relish by Imelda Staunton. Dressed in a vast wardrobe of different styles, all in bold and shocking pink, the award-winning actress illustrates wittily how the hand of totalitarian tyranny can be disguised in a sugar coating.

Shorn of his childlike mop of hair, Radcliffe effectively transitions Harry from goody-two-shoes to inwardly conflicted young adult. He spends much of the film brooding, snapping and shouting and it is to his credit that the character remains sympathetic without becoming boorish.

The production itself, of course, is nothing short of monumental, from the gigantic sets to the always impressive CG Hogwarts and top-notch special effects. In the blistering finale pitching wizard versus wizard (and Voldemort versus Dumbledore), Yates keeps the action fast and furious, largely avoiding any echoes from similar confrontations in the Star Wars films.

[Okri]

The much-awaited film has a new director in British TV vet David Yates, and he and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg do a respectable job in keeping novelist J.K. Rowling's story on course. The problem, though, lies in that story and its course.

Pretty much, yeah. I'm still surprised I enjoyed the third film as much as I did.

[Mister Tee]

The trade reviews are here.


Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
By TODD MCCARTHY
'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'

A Warner Bros. release of a Heyday Films production. Produced by David Heyman, David Barron. Executive producer, Lionel Wigram. Co-producer, John Trehy. Directed by David Yates. Screenplay, Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling.


The students at Hogwarts leave youthful hijinks behind once and for all in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Considerably grimmer and grittier than the previous pictures in the phenomenally successful series, new entry finds the young charges' head-on collision with adolescence taking a backseat to their sober confrontation with unvarnished evil. Pottermania will reach a peak in July with the nearly simultaneous release of the fifth film and the seventh and final book, and only commercial concern for Warner Bros. may be that, after the second or third week, curiosity about the concluding tome could overshadow interest in the film.
Extravagantly produced in the expected manner, pic nevertheless marks a notable departure in tone from those that preceded it. From the opening scene, portents of bad tidings ahead hang over everyone and everything connected to the wizarding world, even as the magical establishment insists there is no threat at large in the land.

Altered feel this time around stems in large measure from the new blood recruited to push the franchise into ever-darker domains. Director David Yates, heretofore known mostly for his television work (and already engaged to helm the sixth film); screenwriter Michael Goldenberg, replacing series perennial Steve Kloves; and composer Nicholas Hooper, whose vigorously dramatic music uses only a smidgen of John Williams' themes, make the most decisive difference in steering the focus away from flights of fancy and in-house intrigue in favor of elaborate and sometimes heavy-handed foreshadowing of the inevitable showdown between Harry and Lord Voldemort.

Concentrated focus results in an unsettling mood and dramatic scenes of unusual intensity. But condensing the book, which at 870 pages is the longest J.K. Rowling has written, into the shortest film in the series has come at a price. Many viewers won't at all mind that this is the first "Potter" picture without a Quidditch match, nor that house elves and cutesy ghosts are largely absent as well.

But more serious is the diminishment of the myriad intrigues among individuals and factions that comprise so much of the stories' delightfully complicated fabric. Interplay detailing the fluctuating relationships involving Harry, Hermione, Ron (particularly slighted here), Cho Chang and intriguing newcomer Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) is sacrificed in favor of repeated group scenes of Harry teaching his clandestine band of teenage warriors the finer points of wand work. Classroom scenes are scanted and a sense of the school year passing is minute, giving the film a flattened-out feel compared to the wondrous eventfulness of Mike Newell's "Goblet of Fire," the last and most successful series installment.

Current yarn commences at the end of a parched English summer, when Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, back with a clean-cut look) lands in hot water with the Ministry of Magic for issuing a forbidden curse to fend off an attack by two Dementors. Harry's Inquisition-like hearing, where he narrowly escapes expulsion from Hogwarts thanks to the unexpected intervention of Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), sets out the central conflict: The Ministry refuses to accept Harry's contention that Lord Voldemort is back and, in fact, is prepared to put all its propaganda muscle into discrediting Harry and Dumbledore.

To this end, the Ministry imposes one of its own as this year's professor of the Dark Arts. Dolores Umbridge is one of Rowling's most delicious -- and resonantly named -- creations; a stout, toad-like woman reliably clad in shades of pink, Umbridge is a party functionary par excellence, a rules-and-regulations fanatic with a whim of iron who cloaks her proscriptive edicts in dulcet tones and manufactured smiles. Imelda Staunton was the perfect choice for the part and unsurprisingly emerges as one of the film's greatest pleasures.

Umbridge wastes no time clamping down on Harry, the other kids and the Hogwarts staff; assuming more power virtually by the day, she puts her most outspoken student in painful detention, prohibits the learning of practical curses, begins firing wayward teachers and ultimately confronts Dumbledore to assert complete Ministry control over the school.

In response, Harry assembles an underground rebel band known as Dumbledore's Army. The intense way these passages are staged lead one to believe they are the scenes that most engaged the interest of director Yates, who seems to relish the image of Harry and Hermione as nascent revolutionary leaders.

Similarly prominent are Harry's renewed relationship with his beloved godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), hiding away in the secret family homestead in London, and his nightmarish visions of Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), with whom he increasingly feels a disturbingly strong connection. It gets so bad that he is forced to receive private tutoring from the dreaded Professor Snape, whose distaste for the task could not be more pronounced. Until shortly before the end, Snape has very little to do, but Alan Rickman may have outdone himself; seldom has an actor done more with less than he does here.

Climactic showdown between Harry's crew and Voldemort's henchmen, led by Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), is strikingly played out in a huge Ministry storeroom filled with shelved grapefruit-sized globes containing prophecies. One such sphere concerning Harry is of vital interest to Voldemort, and performing especially well on his behalf is Sirius' malignant cousin Bellatrix Lestrange, embodied by Helena Bonham Carter with a particularly maniacal glee.

It doesn't take much of a leap to connect the ill winds afflicting Hogwarts, along with the sweaty anticipation of inevitable conflict, with the present situation in the world at large. The metaphors are all implicit and have a lot to do with just growing up and facing unpleasant realities, but they increasingly contribute to the feeling of nervousness and unease creeping into the series. It will be interesting to see if general anticipation for the two remaining films holds fast or tails off once the epic series' conclusion is revealed in the final book.


And, The Hollywood Reporter:

Things are indeed getting darker in the world of Potter. In "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," both the mood and color scheme are grim, gray and black. There is pink, as a matter of fact, but this belongs to the first female villain of the literary and film series.

The much-awaited film has a new director in British TV vet David Yates, and he and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg do a respectable job in keeping novelist J.K. Rowling's story on course. The problem, though, lies in that story and its course.

This is the fifth -- and longest at 800 pages -- book on which a "Harry Potter" film has been based. Consequently, this is a movie that feels like a reunion in a train station, in which even more characters get introduced and old friends revisited, making for a bewildering array of personages to keep track of even for those paying close attention. Then there is the fact that this book -- and movie -- is a watershed of backstory, revelations and plot clarifications before heading into the two remaining chapters. So while "Phoenix" is a necessary film, it's quite possibly the least enjoyable of the lot so far.

Which will not keep the multitudes from the multiplexes. Harry Potter is now a certifiable brand. Even the release of Rowling's climactic seventh book in three weeks' time and its promise to resolve all the loose ends will deter no one from checking out this behind-the-curve movie version.
Funnily enough, "Phoenix" ends up with everyone realizing what we, the audience, realized at the close of the last film, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" -- that the film's great but to this point almost ephemeral villain, Lord Voldemort, has returned. Only it takes another 138 minutes for everyone, save Harry, to truly comprehend this fact. Consequently, looking back, when the series is finally completed, "Phoenix" might go down as the problematic film, full of plot but little fun.

"Phoenix" begins in a glum mood with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, looking definitely older and more mature) moping about during summer holiday in the blighted land of the Muggles. His use of a bit of magic to save, of all people, his truly despised cousin Dudley results in an almost instant letter of expulsion from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for use of magic outside of school.

Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) rushes to his successful defense in court, but upon his return to school, he finds that most students, other than pals Hermoine (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), steer clear of him. Even Dumbledore shies away.

Harry suffers from nightmares, but even worse is the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, the poisonous-in-pink Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). She is the amalgamation of all our worst high school teachers, a chronically strict and arrogant instructor who hands down decrees without the slightest concern for their impact.

It seems there is a political war afoot in which the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy), is in severe denial about Voldemort's return. He prefers to view it as a rebellion by the school, its headmaster and that odious boy Harry. So the movie boils down to a series of moves and countermoves between a blind administration and a repressed student body.

There are several eye-catching moments here, some featuring otherworldy creatures, magic duels to the death, a clandestine though illicit wizardry school operated by Harry and rides through nighttime London skies. But the magic -- movie magic, that is -- is mostly missing in this outing.

The series also continues its shocking waste of talent. This includes why-bother appearances by the cream of British acting: Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, David Thewlis, Richard Griffiths, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane (who, to be fair, was well used in previous films) and Ralph Fiennes (who, also to be fair, will as Voldemort make his major contribution in future films).

Certainly all design, visual effects, cinematography, costumes and editing are up to the series' state-of-the-art standards.

[OscarGuy]

I just read on some random site that Emma Watson is NOT returning for the rest of the movies. Any truth to this? i was under the impression that all three leads were now signed for the whole series.

Watson had voiced concerns about not wanting to be typecast (too late) for future projects and had contemplated not returning. However, WB announced that they had reached an agreement with all three actors (Watson included) to film the last two films.

[Damien]

I just read on some random site that Emma Watson is NOT returning for the rest of the movies. Any truth to this? i was under the impression that all three leads were now signed for the whole series.

So if I undertand what you're saying here, Worst President Ever gives you wood.

[criddic3]

I just read on some random site that Emma Watson is NOT returning for the rest of the movies. Any truth to this? i was under the impression that all three leads were now signed for the whole series.