Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Alfonso Cuarón managed to mix exactly the right amount of tension, emotion, fairy tale, and thriller to create a film that is suitable for essentially all generations, captures attention with its story and characters, and is also skillfully directed. Although the last two films were not bad, "Prisoner of Azkaban" simply could not be surpassed by any other. (29/01/2014)

That is how things end up when fantasy material gets into the hands of a playful director with fantasy and his own vision. A crying shame that these movies weren’t like this from the very beginning. The change of environment and costumes improved the result. In the same way that part three was a turning point on its journey away from kids’ books to “more", this picture was crucial for the movie adaptations. It is a blessing that Chris Columbus’ boring and uninventive directing is a thing of the past. The only two downsides are the rendition of the werewolf and a certain absence of any link with past episodes. If somebody really liked the first ones, they might not get over the fundamental change in style and rendition. Even though it was a change for the better from all points of view. Thank god. P.S.: Every time we watched this again (lots), we were convinced again and again that SUCH GOOD, inventive and unique family movies come into being once in a blue moon. Proof of this is that now, more than a decade after the premiere I have still not come across any competition in the field of family movies. And by the way, this is the movie with the best and most tightly knotted time travel I have ever seen. (21/11/2010)

Harry Potter has always been a bit of a light rip-off of Peter Jackson's opus. It cleverly borrows various details, not very conspicuously, but I’ve found several very similar scenes or specific things in all three parts. In the third part, it is clearly the Dementors, who annoyingly resemble the breathtakingly executed Nazgûl. However, the truth is that this part is the darkest and least childish in the whole series. For the first time, there are horror elements, which will probably escalate further in later parts. It's not significantly better than the previous two parts, maybe just a little bit. (12/08/2006)

The third Harry Potter didn't charm me either... But it was close. From a filmmaking point of view, it is definitely the best contribution to the trilogy so far – Cuarón works very well with the characters, has less cheesy color compositions and is more attached to the suggestiveness and impressiveness of the environment. From my point of view, however, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is brought down by an overly sparse and flimsy plot that somewhat dissolves in a number of episodes and bon mots. From this point of view, I considered The Chamber of Secrets a much more impressive piece. On the other hand, it is necessary to praise the excellent and variable music of John Williams, the acting of everyone except Michael Gabon (Dumbledore) and to highlight the fact that Harry Potter has ceased to be a shaggy child apprentice and is becoming quite a solid and interesting character. The literal and pandering children's film is turning into something quite impressive and dark... Cuarón did excellent job, but for me, The Prisoner of Azkaban is just a "solid" fantasy film that I would give 70%. (13/06/2004)

It must be excruciating to film a year-long story from the disjointed, ever-changing Harry Potter universe, no matter what the filmmakers prattle on about in the BluRay bonus features. Cuarón has thus proven himself a messiah, whose ability to maintain a unified storyline and focus on the details, particularly in individual scenes whose careful selection is the only saving grace keeping the entire adaptation from disintegrating into a series of clumsily pasted together visual sequences. It can be seen that script editing and pre-production played a significant role here. The individual episodes, then, not only make sense to readers of the book, who, in short, want to at least see some of the things they read, but are capable of assembly into a coherent story on their own. Each scene therefore has purpose and moves the plot forward. It was thanks to this meticulous preparation that it was even possible to focus particularly on the filmmaking aspects, and that's why the third installment of all the Potter films has the most interesting cinematography, mise-en-scene, and various small quirks and elements in the second and subsequent layers. (03/04/2016)