Nerd alert: I have a favorite movie of this summer now, at last, and it is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In urging those who wouldn't necessarily want to see a Harry Potter movie, I'd start by saying that I have never read any of the books, and the first film I thought was perfectly serviceable but nothing extraordinarily special to me other than it's sense of accomplishment and casting. It just seemed a little too light and insubstantial. How wrong I was.

I returned to Harry Potter this year finally catching Cuaron's sublime Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film. That one showed me that Rowling's fictional creation had a perfect balance of darkness and light and atmosphere and actual magic and menace; furthermore there was subtext and the beginnings of some quite weighty stuff. I read that film as a boy entering puberty and accessing his anima and animus. So then I was obliged to watch the fourth film, and although I preferred Cuaron's tone and texture I was starting to see there's a lot more to Harry Potter than I assumed.

What I can only derive in translation from seeing the movies is that Rowling had done something quite extraordinary - lulled us into a charming story of a boy and magic that as he ages, and its audience does, so too does his world become more complicated and interesting. It's already cemented as a classic coming of age story, but I had no idea exactly how lucidly that would get captured in its narrrative. The Potter story starts as a fairly basic bit of outsider wish fulfillment in metaphor - that strange sense of seclusion you've had your whole life is the fact that you're actually capable of magic, and there are a few like you. That's part and parcel of otherworldly fantasy. What this film dares to suggest quite politically is the cost of such when put in the hands of adults and how children must come to terms with it as they become the same. The success of the books most importantly has shepherded the films away from moronic changes and the kind of Hollywood tampering you'd expect. These are odd films with plots and elements that had existed only as a screenplay would've been chewed up and spat upon by the people who made Transformers, I'm guessing.

The new film is about the birth of a revolutionary, a secret education in rejecting facism. I think it's no coincidence at all that the film's villain (and what a marvelously horrible work she is, Imedla Staunton essaying facism with a smile all done up in a wardrobe the Queen and Thatcher would approve of) emphasizes a repressive social order and rote memorization and theory; and her pivotal scene takes place in the primeval, Celtic forest that surrounds the school. We can now see the Potter series as something so much more ambitious. This is a very dark film, still with moments of wonder (and actual wonder - the CGI work in this film is transparent and not there for spectacle) and laughter... But very, very dark. It's about teenage angst and realizing what the actual stakes in revolution are - there will be punishment meted, friendships frayed, and in a stroke of complete and utter genius... For a moment Potter gets a glimpse of his father at his own age and it's an unbelievably honest moment of paternal deconstruction. Even Potter's enshrinement of his parents is subverted here as he gains adult consciousness.

Likewise there's something to be said for a series of five films in which the actors have aged so much - the emotional heft of that alone is incredible, especially in the moments we flashback for mere seconds and see just how much has changed. The series has earned its darkness as opposed to making it eyeliner (which Spider-Man 3 got so horribly wrong). Emo antecdents in popular culture tend to get rejected wholesale by anyone other than overtly hormonal teenagers because we see it as a fashion pose. Here things are so dynamically spot on between the characters that Potter is told that he is somewhat self obsessed with is own misery, as is his idol.

Director Yates has come out of nowhere though and done a few things useful for these films - first of all its the most actual British of them all, in that modern day London actually looks and feels like modern day London. All the British vets obviously have a field day with this stuff, but the kids are exceptional in this one, too. And he so clearly gets the sense of menace well and truly right, showing us that it doesn't just come from monsters without but within, too, in our social order and institutions. My favorite scene is a simple conversation between Radcliffe and Gary Oldman. Mere words.

Oh yes, some people are all a twitter over the fact that Potter kisses an asian girl. Who they drop too easily from the narrative, but another wonderful thing from Rowling is how - especially for a fantasy - multicultural the whole thing is. But I'm still the crazy guy who thinks the Lord of the Rings series is slightly racist. Her own plot hinges on a villain who is obsessed with class and racial purity.

A lot of Potter obsessives of the books, I've been reading, have exceptions with what's been discarded. To me not knowing the books it all makes sense and is paced perfectly, and ultimately I like how self contained this is and clearly about one focused thing - Potter's emotional journey. If anything it's like some odd hybrid between Lindsay Anderson's angry young man films from the 60s in Britain and a Miyazaki film. I could go on and on about this film, so I'll stop and just say: if you want an entertaining spectacle this summer, one that doesn't insult your intelligence and actually provides you with sensations and thoughts to ponder afterwards and go over again, one that challenges the confines of easy mythology, one whose characters earn your devotion, here is your movie.

Here's a silly NYTimes article in which a handful of writers (including Damon Lindelof, master plotter of Lost) come up with their own Harry Potter epilogues, including this bit of art...