This is, after all, a movie in which ineffectual government bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge an imminent threat to their people—and their power—until the evidence is literally right before their eyes. Make of that what you will. Order of the Phoenix satisfies in all of the conventional ways that fans of the books and the previous films will have come to expect: There are appearances by all of your favorite series regulars—including a welcome return by the Prisoner of Azkaban himself, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), who was reduced to glorified cameo status in and CGI wonderments galore, from the skeletal winged creatures called Threstrals (which can only be seen by those who have witnessed a death) to the majestic but menacing centaurs—horsemen in the truest sense of the term—of whom I wish we had seen more.
The movie’s most memorable encounters, however, take place not within Hogwarts’ hallowed walls, but upon the more perilous terrain of Harry’s consciousness, which is already a veritable minefield of fear, self-loathing and pubescent confusion long before Voldemort (played once again by a bald, noseless and eerily Michael Jackson-ish Ralph Fiennes) starts trying to infiltrate it. Goblet of Fire— the first PG-13 Potter pic—tried for a similar feeling of teenage Sturm und Drang, but tended to overly literalize everything, from the goo-goo-eyed blushes of romance between Harry and the comely Cho Chang (Katie Leung) to the odd touches of Fowles-ian homoeroticism between Harry and the jilted Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint). This is, after all, a movie in which ineffectual government bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge an imminent threat to their people—and their power—until the evidence is literally right before their eyes.
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