Deathly Hallows, Part I Review #5 from YuraGamer

The movie opens with an extreme closeup of Rufus Scrimgeour's (minister of Magic) as he's giving a very haunting press conference about all the dangers and horror going around in the wizarding world. The scene zooms out as it turns into a picture in a newspaper. We see the Dursleys packing up, leaving Harry behind, and their house in Pivot Drive completely empty. There's another scene that starts out with Hermione looking worried in her bedroom. The filmmakers then decided to show Hermione hexing her parents to forget their current lives and move to Australia. After she does this, she also makes all images of her disappear from the pictures in their house. This scene was very well done and was one of my favorites in the whole movie. It was very effective because it quietly communicated the dread wizards were feeling due to Voldemort. There's a shot in the trailer of Hermione walking towards what looks like a church. She's not really heading there. It's just part of a shot of her walking down her street, as the camera pans up to reveal the titles. One thing to note about that: since the movie score isn't completed yet, they were using a variety of music from other movies, they had some music from Harry Potter, but I would say most of it sounded very much like a Hans Zimmer score. It was a little bizarre to see the Harry Potter And the Deadly Hallows title set to one of the most recognizable cues from The Dark Knight score.

If I recall correctly, we then see a shot of Snape arriving at Malfoy Manor, where there's a very chilling sequence of Voldemort explaining to the death eaters about the shared core between his wand and Harry's. The Hogwarts teacher who had been captured and tortured can be seen floating above the table throughout the whole scene. We also get a very intense exchange between Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy, when Voldemort asks for his wand in order to be able to kill Harry. The actor who portrays Lucius does a good job of selling the internal humiliation Lucius feels as his wand is taken away. Then Voldemort brings the teacher forwards, and shortly after she pleads for Severus' help, she is killed.

We then cut to Harry waiting for the Order of the Phoenix to arrive. One of the things that I was very impressed with in the movie was how despite it being the darkest Harry Potter movie of all, it also had a lot of light hearted humorous parts. The seven Harrys scene is one of the best examples of this. As we see the decoys taking the polyjuice potion, the camera pans 360 degrees around the real Harry seeing all of them transforming. After, when they are changing, there's a very funny moment when they're all commenting on Harry's eyesight, and Fleur comments how hideous she is as she takes of her bra. The sight gag of Dan Radcliffe taking off a bra got a lot of laughs from the audience. The scene plays out pretty much like the book, with the big exception of Harry and Lupin not having the heated argument they have in the book. In fact, Tonks' pregnancy is brushed aside. It was a little frustrating if you've read the book, because they didn't just omitted it, but literally brushed it aside: just as Tonks is about to make her announcement, Mad-Eye pushes her aside and discusses how important it is to move Harry. Mundungus Fletcher is briefly introduced without much background in this scene, though it is established that he's forced to be there and that he's a sketchy character.

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