Movie Details
| Title: | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | |
| Director: | Chris Columbus | |
| Year: | 2001 | |
| Genre: | Fantasy | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 05.02.10 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Pixels
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 05.02.10 | DVD | Molly read all the Harry Potter books so she wanted to start the movies over (aka watch the first two again). Understandable, but at this point I've seen this movie enough where twice in as many months is a bit too much. I fell asleep about halfway through. |
| 10.25.09 | DVD | It's been a LONG time since I've gone back and watched the first couple Harry Potter films. Since I missed the sixth in theaters I'm a little disconnected and I figured this might be a good way to rediscover the franchise if you will. And Molly has never seen them. So... this one is really good. I know the series' stylistic turns on the world of magic make the first two films seem rather tame and kid-friendly, but there's two things I kept thinking about while watching this that brought me back to admiring this one: 1) the beginning is supposed to be kid friendly. These kids are still kids at this point. 11 years old. The first books were written for a younger audience so the first movies should be too. Knowing the full arc, one of the really cool things about the series (both book and film) is that it follows Harry's growth from a boy to a man. With that in mind, it's perfectly reasonable for this film to be bright and vibrant with Columbus' emotional eye. 2) This was the first movie. Columbus had SO much more to do than just think about where to put the camera. If you think about all the things he got right (casting, settings, art direction, costumes, did I mention casting!?), the rather simplistic or should I say straight-forward storytelling is not as strong as later films, but this is our first visual exposure to this world. I kind of appreciate that he doesn't hide anything behind lighting or quick camera moves because it gives us a critical first exposure to all of the elements that make up this world. After the tremendous amount of foundation laid for this film, all the other directors kind of had it easy. They had all this stuff at their disposal. So... I really enjoyed it. Makes me want to watch through the rest of them soonish. |
