Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Episode 6 of the continuing Harry Potter saga. It's amazing to look back at the DVDs of the previous episodes and see these children grow up to young adulthood before our eyes. I enjoyed this one, its long at 153 minutes, but manages to fit a lot in. The series has grown increasingly darker and more suspenseful with each episode and for this first time this one has some real adult scares. The first romantic inklings that cropped up in Goblet of Fire are of course expanded further as the older Hogwarts students, including Harry, become interested in a bit of snogging (or snoggling as Ebert calls it). If anything, I miss some of the enchantment of the earlier movies that revolved more around the "routine" of school days at Hogwarts (if there can be anything routine about a school for wizards) and less around the battle with Voldemort. I remember reading Enid Blighton's Famous Five novels growing up (which by the way I am rereading to my young sons now) and liking the opening chapters that set the scene, usually of some idyllic English summer holiday, more than the later chapters when the focus would shift to some adventure or other. By the way, Harry Potter owes a real debt to Blighton and other novelists who wrote so prosaically about English school day adventures.