Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

We catch up with Harry - wizard-in-training - just before his third year at Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, (and fine robes). Harry learns that a convicted murderer, Sirius Black, has escaped from Azkaban prison, and could be coming after him.

(Quick! Grab your wand, Harry! Grab your wand!)

The ever-aging Harry Potter, played by Daniel Radcliffe, grows up before our eyes in the "Junior" film of the progressively-dark Harry Potter franchise.

To battle Radcliffe's rapid aging, producers should welcome Dick Cark's Anti-aging Cream, or perhaps acquire the lesser Anti-Client Eastwood-Face Cream, which as I understand it, makes your face as smooth and glossy as No Face, from Dick Tracy. (A slight design flaw, I admit.)

Furthermore, I suggest a smidgin of the Bill Maher De-beautifying Cream for the aggressively adorable Hermione, played by Emma Watson. I suggest this due to my itching temptation to pinch her cheek, which, problematically, is being projected on the giant movie screen.

The Director of Azkaban, Alfonso Cuar á n, risks grade school anarchy from the young Potter readers (I highly recommend that all Harry Potter readers must be young) by thinking it would be fun to genuinely adapt the J.K. Rowling Ronald Reuel Tolkien's (?) book rather than staying verbatim-ly close to the source material, as Chris Columbus did for the two pervious Potter films, which resulted in a four-hour directors-cut.

(Myth has it, if you watch either of Columbus' Potter films with your eyes closed, you are hearing the actual transcript of the book; yet tragically, Tom Bombadil is still left out of the films.)

(Lord of the Rings reference number two)

Cuar á n was the director of the superb, yet sexually explicit, Y Tu Mama Tambien. (I was happy to see no one in the Missionary Position during the process of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, except for maybe Dobby the House Elf. That might have been interesting. I'm kidding.)

Cuar á n brings new life to the look of the Potter films by incorporating old timely visual flourishes, akin to silent films, among my favorites: the Iris Wipe.

Prolific film composer John Williams (who also scored Azkaban's predecessors), adds to the musical palette with a icy children's chorus that would feel right at home in a Tim Burton movie (Edward Scissorhands,Sleepy Hollow.)

Despite Azkaban's script innovations by screenwriter Steven Kloves, who also adapted the last 2 Potter's (allegedly), Azkaban is sadly cursed by some clumsily contrived time-traveling.

When the movie was over, I asked a devoted Harry Potter fan - let's call her Stacy - how Harry and his friends had future-selves existing in the past before they even time-travailed in the first place.

Stacy offered that in J.K. Rowling's time travels, "world time," as see calls it, is an absolute, meaning that there's overlapping of time.

(Currently, Stacy has been commissioned by J.K. Rowling to write the Harry Potter companion book: Harry Potter and the Unexplained Time Semitics. Good luck with your book, Stacy.)

Azkaban opened in my hometown with 3 midnight showings, the theaters were just packed with grade-schoolers in self-made Hogwarts robes. If you've ever been to a midnight showing during the summer, the negligent, quarter-witted Regal management won't turn on the air conditioning (for reasons unbeknownst to me) until moments after the film ends - they think it's funny.

It got so head-crushingly-hot that I contemplated striping off articles of clothing while becoming sickly when inhaling the copious amount of the ineluctably sweltering air, shooting and stinging down my nasal passage.

We were making our own gravy. With our malodorous juices accumulating, the theater began to remind me of damp topsoil and the inside of a pumpkin cooking in an oven.

The heat soon took a translucent, yet palpable, shape, flooding into my ear canal, forcing me to miss relevant plot-points.

As I understand it, Harry didn't find the six rings that were given to the Dwarf Lords in time, which, in turn, enabled the Nazgul to get the Master Sword? - Something to that effect.

(Lord of the Rings reference: three. Legend of Zelda reference: one)

Hell, I don't know, did Gargamel or Azrael the Cat have something to do with it?

At any event, Harry Potter and the Prisoner ofAzkaban was still enjoyable after a near-heatstroke. That's something can't say with most movies.