HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. Alfonso Cuarón, dir. J.K. Rowling (novel), Steven Kloves (script). US/[UK]: Warner Bros., 1492 Pictures, Heyday Films (prod.) / Warner (US dist.), (2004). See IMDb for complex filmographic details.

Fantasy with stressed and highly self-conscious emphasis on time (note early in film a wizard reading a paperback copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time). The time motif is imaged with huge, old-fashioned clockwork, and a magical-mechanical orrery (although not necessarily a model of our solar system or anything in our universe). Actual time-travel in the film is accomplished magically, with an amulet on a long necklace, featuring the image of an hourglass (though images in the HP world—as in film—can have lives of their own).