Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince doesn’t do much half way but even clocking in at just under two and a half hours it’s still impossible to completely detail the brilliant plotting outlined in the book by J.K. Rowling. However it does deliver gloriously the gist of this sixth voluminous tome in the Potter series. Here the three Hogwarts buds - Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) - are older, wiser and a lot less innocent. As full blown teenagers their hormones rage in counterpoint to the gloomy storm brewing as the unseen Lord Voldemort grows in strength. Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is starting to lose his grip in the magic underworld and relies on Harry to uncover the origins of that Dark Wizard via the newly installed Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). At the same time Harry has also taken upon himself the investigation of the suspicious behaviour of his eternal nemesis and ever more powerful Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton). With all this adventure, keeping up with schooling is a challenge but that gets mitigated for Harry by a text book riddled with annotations from a former student known only as the Half Blood Prince. Of course the door is left open for another chapter (actually two even though there is only one more book left to bring to the silver screen) but unlike the litany of sequels we normally see each year to capitalize on the previous year’s box office smash, this time it’s the natural progression of the original books. This is not quite a stand alone movie for the uninitiated but it is a stunning visual for those following the movie series and a delightful augmentation for the hard core book fanatics.