Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Despite not liking the book so much (besides the ending it's not very eventful for the penultimate chapter of an epic story), David Yates was able to turn the Half-Blood Prince into a mostly successful movie, showing to me that the key to a good Potter adaptation is keeping the spirit of the story in a well-made film, not just being as faithful as possible to the book. I thought it was just a bit too long and leisurely paced, but the cinematography and editing in individual scenes was brilliant, it was probably the funniest Potter movie yet, and it pulled off the crucial moments as well as could be hoped. There's a lot of interesting use of color throughout as Yates clearly experiments with the look in his second turn at the helm, and even if what's happening seems as pointless as it did in the book, at least it's nice to look at. There's not a lot of digitally created terrors this time, but some of the visual effect stuff is more subtle and pretty impressive, and I was actually a bit surprised that it was only PG because while it may have been less explicitly violent than the other recent films, it wasn't less menacing in tone.

Ralph Fiennes' Voldemort is absent this time as the students spend most of the movie besides the surprisingly long opening scenes within the magically protected walls of Hogwarts, and the threat of evil is mostly in the background as roving bands of Death Eaters assault and terrify both the magical and mundane worlds. There's an added scene of violence in one of the movie series' few moments of pure fabrication, but it did help with the deliberate pace and also conveyed the sense of danger that just mentioning occasional attacks elsewhere wouldn't have. Despite the reincarnated villain being a no show, Tom Riddle's presence still exists in some background exploration that leads to the discovery of a way to potentially defeat him, and he is seen in flashbacks portrayed by a couple different actors. At his youngest he's played by Fiennes' nephew, and to be honest it's the scariest he's been in the whole series. Prancing around with a snake nose just doesn't compare to a child who seems evil way beyond his years. His teenage version is a ponce in comparison.

Anyway, a lot of the normal course of the movie is spent showing the increased romantic tension among the main cast of students as they seem to have the opposite sex on the mind more than the increasingly looming risk of violent death. There's a lot of humor too, as Draco Malfoy's subplot is almost the only time we see how serious things are. There's also Michael Gambon's finest turn yet as Dumbledore, with a mix of seriousness about Harry's task and fatherly concern for him that perfectly captured the character to me. Alan Rickman's also great as Snape, and I can't picture anyone doing the part better. Helena Bonham Carter hasn't had a ton to do in these movies, but she does embody the part of Bellatrix fairly excellently and she should be good in the last couple movies. The scene near the end where Harry and Dumbledore leave Hogwarts briefly was very effectively pulled off and tense, with some really nice effects work in one of the only true scenes of flash, but I was a bit disappointed in the climax. The crucial moment was fine, but the way the stuff around it was removed, not only was it not as exciting as it could be, but it effectively made a good deal of Malfoy's subplot irrelevant and unnecessary. I'm not sure the Deathly Hallows needs to be two parts after they did the first six books in one piece, but it should be fun, and I believe Yates can do it after his work on the last two movies.