Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

New director Alfonso Cuarón's mandate appears to have been "Make it darker!" So tonally and visually, more darkness is what we get -- some scenes look almost like frames from a silent film. In conjunction with regular big-screen Potter adapter Steve Kloves, Cuarón has taken more narrative liberties than Chris Columbus did, and all of them are good, restructuring the film's chronology for increased dramatic impact. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) runs away from home early on, is chased by an apparent werewolf, encounters talking shrunken heads, and then finally makes it safely to Hogwarts, only to discover that a bunch of soul-sucking zombies have been invited to take up residence around the school, and they might just kill any student who comes near them. Worse, a homicidal wizard named Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) is on the loose and out to do major damage. The scariest Potter film yet, this is a worthy follow-up to The Sorcerer's Stone, much more so than the retread that was Chamber of Secrets.