Harry Potter is back for his fifth year at Hogwarts and he angry, brooding, and apparently lifting weights in his spare time.  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is quite good.  I don’t know how true it is to the novel, since I haven’t gotten past the first few pages of the novel myself (Dursley nonsense kinda put me off on reading further).  Anyhow, the pacing is good and the film has “grown-up”, so to speak, along with the characters.  This is dark and dreary movie both in scenery and costume and it adds to the impended turn for the worse at the end of the movie.  Daniel Radcliff is turning into quite a good actor and brings forth well the conflict and frustration within the Harry Potter character.  The story and the character of Harry Potter are getting more interesting and, in a way, I was reminded of Star Wars and the way we were cheated out of a good downfall story for Anakin Skywalker — that is to say, the Harry Potter story, so far, could be a compelling tale of how a good kid goes very very bad.

Anyway, the movie was well worth my $9 and lost sleep due to the midnight start time last night.  By the way it was very fun to see the movie at midnight with all the Harry Potter fanatics.  A good portion of the audience was in costume and my local theather was kind enough to open more theater houses than they sold tickets for so nobody got a bad seat.  The audience was very lively which heightened the movie going experience.