Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The fourth film of the series. The year opens with a tournament. A competition is held between three schools and one person is chosen from each. The goblet gives four names. The fourth is Harry, who is too young, and nobody knows how his name got in. From there the film is built on three tasks. A dragon, a lake and a maze. School life runs in between. A ball, arguments, jealousies, and a narrative that has turned to adolescence for the first time. What the narrative is interested in is not the tournament but a return: at the end a rite is performed in a graveyard and the real enemy appears in a body for the first time in the series. That scene changes the tone of the series permanently. A student dies and nobody softens it. There is a teacher on the adult side. Moody is paranoid and harsh and demonstrates forbidden spells in class; who he is emerges at the end. The book was the longest in the series to that point and the film had to fit it into two and a half hours; many subplots were removed entirely, which is its most criticised feature. It was shown with a higher certificate than the rest of the series for the first time. The director is the first British one in the series, and the air of the school scenes is different for it; uniforms loosen, hair grows, and the building works like a boarding school. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Gambon and Robert Pattinson are in the cast. Mike Newell directed. Who it is for: anyone following the series; this is where the narrative turns. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the book; the film drops most of the text.