It turns out my Harry Potter bitterness hasn't yet tainted the movies because I quite enjoyed Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although it's possible to argue reasonably cogently that the fifth book is the most subversive of the seven, it's also obvious that it's the worst. It's a sprawling, incoherent mess of irrelevant detail beneath which, if you look very hard, you can just about find a moderately interesting plot involving Umbridge's slow corruption of Hogwarts, mirroring Voldemort's equally subtle infiltration of the wizarding world. Slow being the optimum word.

The movie does what all the Harry Potter movies do: it removes a large quantity of the plot leaving behind a lot of exciting action sequences run together without anything particular to unify them. If you haven't read the book, it makes very little sense at all. It can't stand alone but, as a visual adjunct to the book, it works very well indeed and it's futile to judge it by any other standard.

Thankfully, the movie does indeed offer up some very splendid visuals: the Order of the Phoenix rushing Harry across brightly lit London on brooms is a gorgeous and exhilarating spectacle and the collection of mewling kitten presentation plates that line Umbridge's office walls is one of the most bizarre and creepy things I've seen for a while. Of course, it sometimes shoots and misses: I could have really done without the extremely tiny mini-dress Petunia Dursley (yes Petunia!) is wearing at the beginning of the movie. The final battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore feels a little uninspired. And the thestrals looked more like skeletal pigeons to me.

One of the other main pleasures of the movies is, of course, seeing the characters and locations made flesh and, err, whatever it is locations are made of (computer graphics?). The Ministry of Magic wasn't quite what I had expected but works nonetheless, although the World War II imagery was perhaps more than a trifle overdone. The Department of Mysteries, however, was breathtaking and I found The Veil rather less risible than it was in the book (truthfully, not a difficult accomplishment). As usual, the legions of respectable British actors do their best to bring life and purpose to their roles: Maggie Smith and Emma Thompson are, as ever, criminally under-used and Alan Rickman steals in the show in two regrettably brief scenes. Imelda Staunton's Dolores Umbridge is perfect in every conceivable way, evincing a shudder-inducing combination of malice and sweetness. Gary Oldman, a rather more foppish Sirius than I had envisioned (although I'm perfectly happy to yield on this) is equally fabulous, especially the tattoo-showing dressing-gown.

I'm probably one of the few to prefer Michael Gambon's vigorously batshit old coot to Richard Harris's venerable Dumbledore but I do and it's satisfying to see him kicking dark lord ass. Lord Voldemort, himself, however continues to be something of a disappointment. Ralph Fiennes just looks silly without a nose and all the sinister hissing in the world can't blot that out. On a similar note, Helena Bonham Carter's Belletrix looks the part (skanky goth?) but seems so ludicrously cracked that she doesn't quite work. As for the kids, they're on their usual form. I have certain soft spot for the chap who plays Neville, and Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are both decent and not without charm. The Weasley twins seem to have settled nicely into their roles, but Daniel Radcliff is rather mechanical, as if he'd rather be back in Equus. And Luna Lovegood is very pretty and Irish, possibly too pretty, but who's complaining? She makes a nice addition to the cast. I'm not even going to mention Cho Chang: she's pointless in the books and she's pointless in the movie.

It's sadly indicative of just how disillusioned with Harry Potter I am that some of the sequences in the movie struck me as being more effective than the book. Although Umbridge's totalitarian regime is depressing in the book, the lack of pace and structure means it never really acquires any force. The film, however, manages accrue a considerable quantity of tension that is beautifully discharged when Fred and George decide to abandon academia and turn an exam into a glorious magical firework display. Similarly, the fight in the Department of Mysteries between a bunch of teenagers with first level spells and a group of brutal, murderous Death Eaters isn't quite the Home Alone comedy fest it is in the book. Whereas in the book the kids throw around their stupifys with gay abandon and the Death Eaters keep shooting each other in the back and getting hit in the face by frying pans (well not quite), the movie makes good use of visual effects to make the whole encounter genuinely threatening. Sirius's death, also, seems rather more meaningful than in the Worms Armageddon "prod death" it is in the book.

This is not to say the movie does not occasionally make questionable decisions. I'm not sure if the film makers were intending to ship Harry and Sirius but with all the lingering looks, winks and smiles between them that's certainly how it appeared to me. And I'm not even a slasher. Also quite why Lucius Malfoy, heading up the Death Eater contingent in the Department of Mysteries, is wearing what looks suspiciously like a leather bustier I do not care to speculate. I can only presume he borrowed it from Bellatrix Lestrange. Given the rush to get everything in, the film has a rather breathless to feel it and a few semi important characters fall by the wayside. Tonks looks feisty for about half a second and Kreacher's role is reduced to mere muttering. Similarly, in a film so pushed for time, the sheer pointless of the Grawp subplot is breathtaking. Also, Snape's Worst Memory (an endearing sequence, actually - Emo!Snape is the cutest thing I think I've ever seen) is so ruthlessly curtailed that, having just read the final book in which it is rather important, I have no idea how they are going to make the films even make the slightest bit of sense.

But then that's always been the case: they movies are like a big snowball rolling ponderously down a hill, gathering stuff and shedding it again completely at random. It doesn't augur well for coherency but it's certainly fun to watch in action.