If the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling have often worked as otherworldly echoes of childhood and adolescence – by mythologizing the wonders and fears of those years – this adaptation does so in a more introspective way than its predecessors. New director David Yates spends much of the movie inside Harry’s tortured head, easing up on the visual pyrotechnics and streamlining the convoluted narrative that marred the last outing, Goblet of Fire. Most of the movie deals with Harry’s paranoia, loneliness and adolescent anger, though we also get a magnificent new villain: Imelda Staunton’s sweetly sinister Professor Dolores Umbridge.
