The Order of the Phoenix is perhaps the one in the Harry Potter series that stayed truest to J.K. Rowling‘s Book and by far the best movie in its series.

The Harry Potter series have already become much dark since The Goblet of Fire, it is in the Order of the Phoenix that we saw the full blown wizardry of Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), however punctuated with many flaws and foibles just like a normal grown-up teenager. He is the hero, but he have crushes on girls, worries about his boyhood just like any other boys his age. He even finds it really hard to talk to his classmate Cho Chang (Katie Leung) than confronting the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Nonetheless, this is the year that Harry gets his first kiss, a passionate one with Cho Chang.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix opened Friday, the 13th of July, 2007. I am not sure why they didn’t run a Preview Release for this movie. Btw, the movie makers must have find it a daunting task to put the almost 900 paged book in a 2 hour 20 minute movie.

Harry’s return to Hogwarts after confronting Voldemort had led to the ministry of Magic not believing him. So, the ministry send a new teacher to Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who dorns a pink outfits with a really fussy and perky demeanor, to take control and discipline the students. She has some scarry tricks for the students and teachers alike. Her office is covered in moving pictures of cats drawn in various plates of china.

On the other hand, Harry continue to be haunted by his recurring nightmares about Voldemort, who is forming up an army of sort. The ministry even spread a propaganda that Harry is crazy and/or lying and many students believed that. Harry even started a secret class against the dark art of which Dolores, despite being the new Teacher agains the Dark Art, was taking it extremely light.

One of the glaring lack of a Harry Potter movie in the Order of the Phoenix is the Quidditch game. Yes, there is no Quidditch game in this 5th movie. However, you’ll love the scene where the witches and wizards does a broom fly-pass through London at night. Don’t miss that which is during the initial scene of the movie. I seriously hope that they have an extended version for that for the DVD.

Like most other Harry Potter movies, you’ll enjoy Order of the Phoenix more if you have read the books (well, who haven’t?) or have seen the previous movies. But if you are just watching the movie without having read the book or seen the earlier movie, you might get a bit confused in between plots and characters. Like the last scene which was fantastic, tense and emotional to the core. Those who have read the book will realize that the movie tries to hasten up the climx a bit. It was superb acting, however and I am not denying that – just seems a bit short.

The movie also brings us to more roles from Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), who of couse, will be playing an extremely important part of Harry’s life in future (you know what I mean). She was more involved with the wizardry just as Ron and Hermione was.

Meanwhile, in the United States, it is reported that the movie had taken a record-breaking $12m at midnight screenings of the movie. The record was previously held by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which returned around $8m in midnight ticket sales in 2003.

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