A summer job with an over-the-hill actress (Julie Walters) emboldens a timid minister's son (Rupert Grint, the Ronald Weasley of the Harry Potter series) to throw off the yoke of his smothering mother (Laura Linney). Coming-of-age confection, sweet enough to cause tummy ache. Written and directed by Jeremy Brock.

Or for short, Harry Chamber Pot. In the second screen adaptation of a J.K. Rowling children's book, our now pubescent hero fumbles his way to a giant, squirming, slithering basilisk (syn., cockatrice) via a concealed orifice in the girls' lavatory, the haunt of a ghost called Moaning Myrtle: "Harry, if …

The epic chronicle ends, after eight films that filled a decade. The over $7 billion in movie lucre it will finally receive is far less important than the many millions of fans who have loved the storytelling abundance, the beautiful splurges of craft, the three growing heroes (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma …

The fourth installment in J.K. Rowling's series of children's books yields a two-and-a-half-hour movie which, for all its furious activity, gets virtually nowhere. It gets, more specifically, through the "legendary" Triwizard Tournament, only to arrive at the dampening admonition, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead." Potterites, under the freedom-of-religion pact, …

Part VI — Pot VI — comes close to a complete cheat. The once child actors, children no more, are developing faster than the story, and indeed the foretold war with the Dark Lord tends here to be crowded out by assorted amorous hankerings among Hogwarts classmates. (Those broomsticks for …

Pot V, if you're counting. War with the Dark Lord, as you might recall from the end of Pot IV, approaches; and after another two-and-a-quarter hours of stretching and padding, it still approaches. At the rate Daniel Radcliffe is aging, Harry looks on course to be the World's Oldest Grad …

Or for short, Pot III. It has a new director — Alfonso Cuarón, of A Little Princess and, less pertinently, Y Tu Mamá También — and a new Dumbledore — Michael Gambon, in place of the late Richard Harris — in addition to new roles for the likes of Gary …

The children's book by J.K. Rowling, now a movie by Chris Columbus — maker of, among others, Adventures in Babysitting, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Nine Months, Stepmom, and Bicentennial Man, chief rival of Steven Spielberg for his in-touchness with the Inner Child. No longer applicable, quite plainly, will be the …

The moon landing was, among other things, possibly the greatest PR stunt America ever fashioned for itself. So even if it wasn’t a hoax executed by the late director Stanley Kubrick, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that someone had a Plan B in case things went FUBAR. To wit: …

Bill Nighy will, for some older viewers, elicit fond memories of Clifton Webb. Dry, sly, snarky Nighy plays a sheepish English assassin with a bossy mom (Eileen Atkins), a sexpot in peril (Emily Blunt), and a cute apprentice (Rupert Grint). Silly in plot, pushy in music, Jonathan Lynn’s crime comedy …