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Top Critics (42)
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Fresh (218)
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DVD (46)
Like the first two movies, this is loaded with computer-generated imagery, but for the first time there's a sense of dramatic proportion balancing the spectacle and the story line.
This is a luminous movie -- luminous, imaginative and affecting. For Harry Potter, at least, the third time is the charm.
The most powerfully entrancing children's film in years.
[E]ven if you're never read a word of the Potter books and you haven't seen the first two films, Azkaban stands alone as a creative triumph.
The first true Harry Potter movie -- the first to capture not only the books' sense of longing, but their understanding of the way magic underlies the mundane, instead of just prancing fancifully at a far remove from it.
The third installment in the Harry Potter series, is everything the first two films were not: complex, frightening, nuanced.
Fantastic, but kids are older, themes are darker.
Cuarón filigrees his film with brilliantly outsized projections of Harry's fears and underlying realities. [Blu-ray]
Potter's third year is his most inventive yet.
Ultimately the success of the film lies in the characters, and the emotions that they trigger in us.
...another wonder for the eye, especially in high definition, only this time darker and more mature, appropriate to Harry's growing up. (Ultimiate Edition, Blu-ray)
Regardless of its cinematic shortcomings, the Harry Potter film series still has a ton of life in it.
Rather than a brand new sense of adventure, there's a sense in this sequel of a rerun, a tendency that even Harry's extreme magic can't seem to overcome.
Rather than a brand new sense of adventure, there's a sense in this sequel of a rerun, a tendency that even Harry's extreme magic can't seem to overcome.
A menagerie of menacing and morphing computer-generated special effects make the movie worthwhile.
Cuarón has produced the most terrifying and darkly humorous movie adaptation of Rowling's stories to date, giving it a visual flair sorely missing in the previous installments.
[Director] Cuarón's imagery delights again and again
Compared to its predecessors, this is a more wintry, thoughtful and rewarding movie.
What we're treated to is less a story than a series of vignettes.
Two and a half hours of neck-cramping semi-entertainment.
The childlike whimsy of the previous Potters is dead, replaced by an encroaching loss of innocence and a foreboding sense of darkness. A new punch of life for the series.
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