12 Movies Challenge: 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'

by Julian Spivey
Last year I embarked on a movie challenge in hopes of seeing some films I’ve never seen and more importantly opening myself up to some kinds of films I likely would never see. The premise is that you have 12 months to watch 12 movies recommended by 12 friends. I don’t often participate in such social media challenges but being a movie buff, I felt this might be an interesting way to get out of my comfort zone a bit when it comes to watching movies.

Like in 2023, I have some movies on the list that I’ve always meant to get around to watching but haven’t – most notably the 1962 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which I think I saw the first half of in school but was absent on the day it finished. And there’s some stuff I probably never would’ve gotten around to like Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 Polish film “Ashes and Diamonds.”
As I did last year I will write about my thoughts and feelings on each of these films after I have viewed them.
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Here are the 12 movies recommended to me and the months I’ve assigned myself to watch them:
 
January: “The Wonder” (2022)
February: “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962)
March: “Dreamgirls” (2006)
April: “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004)
May: “21 Jump Street” (2012)
June: “Mamma Mia” (2008)
July: “City of Angels” (1998)
August: “Fried Green Tomatoes” (1991)
September: “Ashes and Diamonds” (1958)
October: “Clue” (1985)
November: “The Intouchables” (2011)
December: “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (1965) 

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Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

Admittedly, my April movie recommendation is one that I was dreading, despite it coming from my wife Aprille. She, like much of the world, is a big Harry Potter fan. I’ve managed to avoid the series thus far, which is fairly impressive given my wife and I have been together for nearly two decades.

Harry Potter had two things going against it for me. I’ve never been a huge fan of fantasy films. My idea of a good fantasy film is ghost baseball players in an Iowa cornfield. And I’ve also never had an interest in serialized film series. I don’t want to get involved with an eight-movie series.

I never thought the series would be bad – they’re fairly well-reviewed by critics. I just never had an interest.

But part of this exercise that I’m in my second year of doing was opening myself up to not just films I hadn’t seen but some that were out of my comfort zone.

Another hesitation I had with this series specifically is Aprille wanted me to watch her favorite Harry Potter film, which is 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”

This meant my first foray into the world of Hogwarts would be the third film. Though I will say there’s so much Harry Potter within the pop culture landscape that I pretty much knew the main characters without any previous knowledge of the series.

“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” mostly revolves around an escaped prisoner Sirius Black, played by Gary Oldman, and his relationship with Harry’s deceased parents.

It’s an interesting plot but I feel like one that doesn’t get enough focus in the film. The film is so dense with the world of Hogwarts that the movie feels more like world-building than the actual Sirius Black/Harry Potter plot itself. I felt like the movie needed more Sirius Black, more Remus Lupin (David Thewlis) and less everything else going on.

As directed by Alfonso Cuaron in his only Harry Potter film, it’s a beautiful-looking film. It’s funny to me that Cuaron went from 2001’s “Y tu mama tambien,” a film about an erotic tryst between two young men and a slightly older woman, to what amounts to a children’s film. That was kind of a wild choice by Warner Bros. Pictures. But from what I understand this is nearly universally considered the best of the series so it worked out.  

I finished the film basically as indifferent to the Harry Potter series as I was going into it. It certainly wasn’t a bad film. It just didn’t do anything for me as a viewer.