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 Cuarán, 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)

Cuarán 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.)

Cuarán 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.