A new year at Hogwarts is brought to us by a new creative team, building on what has come before, as should be expected. I have found that each successive outing makes it a little bit harder for newcomers. You almost need to have seen the previous four films before going into this one in order to get the full effect. Now, I know that there are probably very few viewers like that, but I found myself feeling a little at a disadvantage, as it has been a while since I've seen Goblet of Fire, but I think I fared pretty well.

This outing picks up with Harry feeling the dramatic effects from the conclusion of the last film, leading us into a world that is getting considerably darker than it had been. The Order of the Phoenix is a step up from the last one, and promises that the true darkness is yet to come.

Goblet of Fire came to a close following a battle between Harry and the returning Voldemort which resulted in the death of fellow student Cedric Diggory. This death and the the danger that Voldemort represents lies heavily upon the head of young Harry. The weight is evident in the very first scene, which is one of the few, so far, to take place away from Hogwarts and its related areas, and occur in the "real" world.

Harry, wearing a face that is much more angst-ridden and weary beyond his years, has a confrontation with his cousin, Dudley, which is stopped short by the appearance of a pair of Dementors on the prowl for the young wizard. Left with little choice, Harry casts a spell to save himself and Dudley, an action which results in his prompt expulsion. You see, it is against the rules for minors to cast spells away from the school.

This brings Harry back together with his permanent companions, Hermione and Ron, and also introduces him to The Order of the Phoenix, a group that is all about putting a stop to Voldemort's advances. All this before they even get back to the school!

Anyway, once they get back to Hogwarts, Harry must go before a council to win back his spot at the school. This sequence goes a long way towards setting up the best conflict of this go-around, that being the one between Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic. The Ministry has been badmouthing Harry and his mentor for claiming the return of Voldemort, so they have been actively attempting to discredit the two, and for a little while it seems to be working.

A couple of new characters are introduced in The Order of the Phoenix, the best being Dolores Umbridge. She enters by way of the revolving door of Professor of the Defence Against the Dark Arts — if you are looking for trouble, this is the first teacher you should look for. She is, essentially, a tool for the Ministry to move into the school, where she employs all sorts of new rules. Imelda Staunton's portrayal of the woman is that of a sweet, but stubborn, woman who really needs a good smacking. I guarantee that by the end of the movie you will want to throttle her — she's terribly effective. The other character is a new student named Luna (Evanna Lynch); I'm not sure where they are going with her, but I found her to be a little bit creepy.

The Order of the Phoenix offers considerable growth in the title character. Gone are the big eyes and smiles of wonder, gone is the "magic" of youth, slowly being replaced with the moodiness of the teenage years. Harry is recognizing the real dangers around him, and he is becoming more of an adult, making decisions and hesitantly taking up a leadership role in the battle that is to come. It is interesting to think of the growth that he has attained over the course of five movies; to see it visualized is quite good. Daniel Radcliffe slips into character like a worn-in coat; he has been playing it so long that it cannot take long to get into that mindset and become this young man who seems to attract danger.

This film is a definite step up from its predecessor; it delivers on a story level that I did not find last time. The stakes are higher, and the darkness is growing. Is the film perfect? No, but it still delivers some excitement. The narrative felt a little choppy at times, but still better than last time, and there seemed to be more actual plot to this one. From the Dumbledore/Ministry conflict to the Harry/Voldemort conflict, to Harry stepping up as something of a leader and the way the friends stick together, there is some great chemistry and forward motion.

Director David Yates brings a stronger vision than Mike Newell did last time, and is more on par with Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban. I am happy that he has been signed to direct the sixth film as well, so we will be able to see how his vision continues as the stakes continue to go higher.

This film also brought in a new screenwriter, Michael Goldenberg, replacing Steve Kloves, who had written all four of the prior films. He developed a nice script, for the most part, that really allowed the characters and their relationships to grow (except for the big kiss, which felt like a throwaway scene just for the fans). There is also a new composer in Nicholas Hooper, who has brought a nice touch to the film with a strong score that successfully builds the emotions throughout.

Bottom line. This is a good movie, not my favorite — that's still Prisoner of Azkaban, but this likely falls somewhere between the first and The Chamber of Secrets. The acting is all quite good (I loved everything featuring Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, and Imelda Staunton). It was quite thrilling as the conclusion came around. Of course, I still have issues with the big stuff only happening during the school year in and around Hogwarts, but it is a conceit I think i can live with. Anyway, go see it, enjoy it, and look forward to the next one.

Recommended.

Christopher Beaumont spends much of his time writing about entertainment when he isn’t sitting in a movie theater. He is known around the office as the “Movie Guy” and is always ready to talk about his favorite form of entertainment and offer up recommendations. Interests include science fiction, horror, and metal music. His writings can be found at Draven99’s Musings, as well as Film School Rejects.

Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German (2006) is a film noir set in Berlin during the months immediately following the surrender in 1945. The film mainly occurs in July and August. Soderbergh makes excellent use of documentary footage from Berlin in those months. The setting is one of complete devastation, of chaos and disorder. The Potsdam Conference is about to occur, and uncertainty about how Germany will be reorganized, and about how many Germans will be indicted for war crimes, is a constant subtext.

Other themes in the film have to do with the tensions that characterized international relations for the latter half of the twentieth century, especially the impending cold war and nuclear competition between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. A basic question, investigated from numerous vantage points, is one of responsibility: who is responsible, who must bear blame? — for the War, for the atrocities against the Jews and other groups, for the nuclear threat, for a developing schism between East and West, for a general breakdown in fundamental human decency. The film’s black and white cinematography creates continuity between the documentary footage and the fictional portions of the film — it’s difficult to distinguish them.

The Good German is about the efforts of American and Soviet officials to locate a missing man named Emil Brandt. He was supposedly the secretary of a German rocket scientist whom both the Americans and Soviets want to enlist to build weapons for them. In fact, the Americans already have him in secret custody. We are told that he wants his secretary to accompany him to America, and that for this reasons the Americans want to find him. Although Brandt was reported to have died in the war, he may still be alive. And there may be other reasons why the Americans want him. The film centers on efforts to locate Brandt, and on the characters involved in the search. Like many films in this genre, the motivations and the credibility of characters constantly shift throughout the film.

With Tobey Maguire, George Clooney, Beau Bridges, and Cate Blanchett among the leading cast members, The Good German offers good acting. Maguire does present difficulties. Sincerity and good old American boyishness are basic traits of the Maguire persona. In this film he plays a driver, Patrick Tully, who is exploiting the chaotic post-war situation to his own benefit. He makes clear that money is all that matters to him — the measure of all things. He sells counterfeit goods to the highest bidder and attempts to sell to the Russians the husband of the woman who is his mistress. She is Lena (Blanchett), the wife of Emil Brandt. Tully is nothing more than a gangster who abuses Lena and viciously beats up Clooney, whom he serves as a driver. Yet at a moment’s notice he can transform into the midwestern American boy-soldier, innocent, wide-eyed, and eager to get back to his family and his girl. The fact that he doesn’t know where Brandt is doesn’t matter to Tully. It’s difficult to divorce the characters Maguire usually plays from this one. With his boyish high-pitched voice, sometimes his character doesn’t seem real; at other times he seems all the more sordid and evil.

When Tully’s body washes up on the bank of a river, Clooney investigates the murder. He’s a military reporter, Jake Geismar, who had an affair with Lena before the war and who now wants to help her, or he wants to restart the affair, or he has some other reason — his motives are not entirely clear, but he does come to realize that the Americans assigned Tully to be his driver because they knew of his affair with Lena and wanted Geismar to help them find her husband. Clooney basically plays the same character in every movie he is in, but his persona — that of the manly, easygoing, sometimes brash American — serves him well.

There is a caustic edge to his character here. He’s irritated with the military bureaucracy, especially when he begins to believe it is assisting in the cover-up of a murder it may have instigated. He’s also bothered that the Americans are attempting to enlist the services of a Nazi rocket scientist (similar to Von Braun). Both the Americans and the Russians seem willing to do anything necessary to win this scientist’s services, and this includes covering up crimes more horrendous than one man’s murder. It is, in fact, the nature of these crimes that make the Americans want to find Brandt — to go further would ruin the film, but the outcome is hardly as straightforward as I suggest here. Clooney sometimes seems to be mimicking Humphrey Bogart, especially when he continually insists that it was his stringer he was sleeping with before the war, not his secretary.

The film’s title resonates with several levels of irony that change in meaning at key points. There is probably not a single good German, or any other kind of person, in the film.

The final scene seems a direct replication of the ending of Casablanca (with a few minor notes from The Maltese Falcon thrown in for good measure). Yet there is a difference. In the Bogart film Rick gives up the woman he loves for the larger sake of the Allied cause in the war. In The Good German, Clooney gives up the woman he loves because he can’t accept her behavior during the war, and because he wants to avoid dirtying himself by association. He’s guilty enough as it is, along with every other character, along with the Americans and the Soviets and the Germans.

In the end, The Good German criticizes American willingness to hire ex-Nazis to design and build its weapons following the end of the war. The criticism is valid, of course, but one might well ask what alternative there was. If the Americans didn’t recruit German scientists, they would have gone over to the Soviet side, and in fact both sides did more than their share of welcoming former Nazi scientists to their weapons-building efforts. An alternative would have been placing the scientists on trial for their war crimes. And of course the Russians and Americans could have decided not to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but this film concerns the realities of the 1940s, not should-have-been fantasies.

The Russian and American emphasis following the war’s end, sharpened by the double nuclear bombing in Japan, was on preparing for the new world order. In this regard The Good German is glib and simplistic in its indictment of American willingness to employ Nazi scientists and (by extension) to develop a nuclear weapons program. Or maybe not. Maybe it is simply calling for recognition that American actions following the war’s end implicated us in some of the worst crimes associated with the conflict.

The fact that one director could make this film and Oceans 13 within a single year is a tribute to Soderbergh’s versatility.