Harry Potter in Japanese (well with Japanese subtitles)

So yesterday, I travelled down to Diamond City (the big Shopping mall) in Tegingawa, just outside of Hiroshima, to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I went with Noriko, who for some reason decided to run all the way from the train station beacuse she didn't want to be late meeting me. I told her it was okay to be late (especially after she said she may be 15 minutes late), and we had a good laugh about it.

Anyway, as I usually try to do, there is a review of this movie below -

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

In this the fourth adventure of the teenage wizard, a British director, Mike Newell, gets to take over the franchise. In what is a doorstop of a book, Newell and screenwriter Steven Kloves have hacked and slashed at the material, so what remains is Harry's story and his trials in the Tri-Wizard Cup. Gone are the Dursleys. Gone is Hermoine's SPEW campaign. And Goblet of Fire is all the better for it.

Newell keeps the tone set by previous director Alfonso Cuaron, yet infuses GOF with a impending sense of menace, missing from the previous 3 films. This is a dark movie. Yet the light-hearted comedy remains, and is handled better than previous outings. Newell feels at home with the British humour, and it's these lighter moments (Ron's awful Yule Ball outfit) that mirror the tragedy in the final act.

The child actors have all stepped up a notch. Radcliffe now gives Harry a more rounded nuanced perfomance. Rupert Grint again plays Ron for laughs, but his timing and sparring with Harry and Hermoine show what a talented comedic actor he is. However in the adult cast, Michael Gambon has now made Dumbledore his own (now showing a greater breadth of emotion than he was allowed in Prisoner of Azkahban); Brendan Gleeson is wonderfully eccentric and dark as Allister "Mad-Eye" Moody, and Ralph Fiennes Voldemort is the stuff of nightmares.

The effects in this movie are great with some breathtaking set pieces. Witness Harry's first task in the Tri Wizard Cup as he battles a nasty dragon.

All in all, HPATGOF is throughly entertaining although rightly given a 12A certificate.

8 out 10