One of the first things writers learn, early in our education, is the tenet of "show, don't tell." For instance, if I wanted to talk about how appalled I am that Freddie Prinze Jr. is popular now, I wouldn't say, "In high school, he was a shy loner with no friends who was never in drama." I'd say something like, "I remember seeing him walk down the hall, maybe nodding here and there, but mostly caught up in his own world, his own life, his own attempt to make it to the next class without being noticed."

This tenet should especially apply to movie directors, then, who actually WORK in a visual medium. If there's anything that bugged me about the first two Harry Potter movies, it's that Chris Columbus is the master of telling instead of showing. Watching his films makes me feel like I'm nine years old and he's talking down to me, explaining exactly WHY Hermione had to light Snape's cloak on fire rather than giving me the evidence and trusting my intelligence to put the pieces together.

So I was pretty delighted when I heard Alfonso Cuaron had taken the helm for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. My favorite book in the series deserves a director who really understands film, not just one who's renowned for selling tickets. Besides, since he also directed Y Tu Mamá También, it increases the chances that a hot older teacher will take off her clothes. (If that's your only reason for going, though, don't bother. I don't think that's a spoiler.)

The short version, and my initial reaction: This movie was AWESOME.

But the more I thought on it, the more my review became stretched out. Yes, the actors did a phenomenal job, showing they've really grown into their characters. Yes, the cinematography was amazing, and not ONCE did the camera cut away from important action to show Harry smiling/grimacing so we stupid moviegoers would understand that what just happened was good/bad. And yes, the story was told with power and finesse, getting us through the important plot points with heartfelt empathy while not sacrificing artistic dignity and grace.

My one complaint about this movie is that it's not really a stand-alone movie. Rather, it feels like it was constructed as a companion piece to the book. There are a lot of things written in the story that you would never learn if you only saw the movie. For example, right off the bat, they don't talk about Harry's and Aunt Marge's blood-curdling hatred for each other. You know it's there if you've read the book, but if not you might just think she bad-mouthed his family this one time and he blew up at her (or "blew her up," as it were). A friend in our party who hasn't read the books was left feeling that the characters had pretty insignificant motivation for some of their actions.

Sure, it's necessary to drop a bunch of stuff and rearrange a few things. Columbus certainly wasn't innocent of that (even being barely capable of telling someone else's story). But when it comes to things that are important to the flow of the story, I'd say give it two minutes of screen time and drop some of the visual effects. In the aforementioned scene, it took two minutes to get from opening credits to confrontation, and another two for Aunt Marge to inflate and bobble across the ceiling out the door. This book is a lot more psychological than the first two, and the film really needed to reflect that. I'm not sure it did -- particularly since this is the longest book yet filmed, turned into the shortest movie of the three.

The most glaring omission in this film, in my view, was dropping all the description of James Potter. I'm biased, perhaps, since my favorite thing about the book is how it gives a deeper understanding of who Harry's father really was and how he was related to the events at hand. In the film, his name was mentioned perhaps three times. Certainly, events in book five give us a better picture of his attitude in school, but without this bit non-readers may view him as purely a callous jerk with no care for anybody else's safety. And book four shows how his spirit has looked after Harry, but it's more obvious when you have the lead-up in this story, especially when Harry finally conjures a Patronus, which is -- to spoil as little as possible in the film -- TERRIBLY rendered in every possible way.

But I'm nitpicking. Worse, I'm making it sound like I didn't like the movie -- and I really did. I'm an author, not a movie reviewer, so naturally I appreciate the stylings of the book and hate to see what had to be done in translation. Still, the movie is beautiful, the actors are wonderful, and the tenor shifts suitably from the light-hearted tone of the first two to the necessary darkness -- after all, Prisoner of Azkaban really begins the longer story, as anybody who understands foreshadowing can tell, of the final battle between good and evil that will ultimately culminate near the end of Rowling's seventh book. For a series that stopped being just for kids at this point, the movie is amazing in tone, mood, and sentiment.

Read the book before you go, though. You'll enjoy it more.