Not a dry eye in the house. - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Reviews

Read this only if you've read the books. When you take such a beloved series of books and such a beloved character it often happens that people don't approve of the directors vision as compared to their own imagination, as was the case with my opinions of the "Prisoner of Azkaban." I did not like Azkaban the movie, because it didn't agree with my vision. The exact opposite can be said for this movie. The movie moves much faster than the book obviously because of time restraints, however the movie spins together the crumbling of Hogwarts and the Ministry with "Dumbledors Army" very well. However the thing that I found most enjoyable about this movie as compaired to the others, is it truly gave life to the visuals in the book. Most notibly was Evanna Lynch's portrail of Luna Lovegood. In the books I found that Luna almost seemed creepy, however Lynch made her to be a lot more loveable of a character by her undying innocence and whimsycal nature of always seeing the good in people. When reading the book I knew that Dolores Umbridge was mean but the movie succeeds in making her completely unlikeable. It was incredible to actually be put in the middle of a wizard battle, where the book can only say things like the "pop of spells missing" you are actually put in the middle as beams of light flash by you. It was at the end of the battles where I found the most joy in the movie adaptation, with both the possession of Harry and the death of Sirius. I've always had a hard time with death scenes in books, they never seem to get what death looks like. I found it so much more jolting to actually see the moment, and Harry's reaction to, the death of his only family Sirius. This however paled in comparison to the possesion of Harry. When Harry is taken over by Voldemort we see not only the compassion in Dumbledore's eyes but the we are again shown clips from the previous 4 movies and see not only Harry's struggles but see his visual growing through the movie, I was completely lost in that moment and found myself chokeing up when the sniffleing of the girl next to me in the theater brought me back to reality. I took a moment to look around the theater and found much of the audience wipeing their eyes. It was a very powerful moment that as much as I loved the book, was only captured through the visuals. Their are a few negatives I personally had with the movie. I thought their was a little to much reliance on newspaper headlines to tell the story. As well completely ignoring an intersting plot point in Harry's reaction to reading Snapes memories and seeing that his father might have been a jerk. Overall you are going to hear a lot of reviews from professional critics that the movie got too dark, it did, and being a fan of the books and seeing how dark they have gotten, a fan of the book will not be surprised, and will hopefully find it as enjoyable as I did.