Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Memflix here sent this in a couple days ago, but the internet gods tried to kill it with some messed up text switcheroo in the email. We defeated them, though and now Memflix's words can be shouted from the mountaintops! Enjoy!

This is Memflix returning with a look at “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” It has been close to impossible these days to see a film before it opens (understandably so). However, a theater outside my former employer’s chain let me attend a screening. (Thanks!)

I don’t usually do this, but since the trailers in front of “Phoenix,” were all new with the exception of one, I wanted to give my thoughts.

In front of the film were looks at “Get Smart” and “10,000 B.C.,” as well as a “Fred Claus” Trailer 1 (a teaser was released late last year).

The year-early look at “Claus,” made the combination of Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughn as Santa Claus and his brother, respectively, look promising. This second look takes all the promise and flushes it down the drain. Not a snicker, not a guffaw, nothing remotely resembling laughter was expressed on my face. The premise of Santa Claus as a ‘prodigal’ son of sorts seems to have been thrown out for cheap infantile humor. ‘Fred Claus’ was teetering on my ‘must-see list,’ but Trailer 1 checked it of (don’t worry, not going to make a Xmas list metaphor).

A teaser trailer for Roland Emmerich’s “10,000 B.C.” was featured. Since it opens in about 7 months, it gets points for revealing a bit more than a tagline, but the praise ends there. They show brief glimpses of men and women fighting in the titular time period amidst pyramids and Woolly mammoths. The action is nothing new. However, for me, what is new is seeing Woolly mammoths help raise the pyramids. I am not a historian, but I don’t ever recall learning that those two were around at the same time. Even if they were, having those two pieces of ancient history together was distracting to say the least. During the teaser, I kept my eyes peeled for the incredibly sensual and mysteriously gorgeous Camilla Belle. Unfortunately, she was absent. I was just happy I only had to sit through a minute of this tripe.

There was one good preview and that was for “Get Smart.” It was goofy, but Carell nabbed the role of Smart. I really felt like a kid busting a gut at the innocent idiocy of Maxwell Smart.

All right, on to the feature presentation. If you haven’t read the books, there is a brief spoiler at the end, but it is marked.

At the end of book 4, “Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire,” I was filled with excitement and anticipation for book 5. The end set up the beginnings of a war, not with two, but 3 sides. All four books casually grew up with the initial intended audience. The series was turning into a freight train of pounding intensity. However, for me the book “The Order of the Phoenix” didn’t deliver on the promise of a war of triangular proportions. Instead, what I got was a heaping amount of adolescent angst, and in my opinion a poorly constructed last act.

I am more than pleased to report that the movie knew just how to deal with Harry’s anger and frustration, as well as to carve out a satisfactory end to book 5’s tale.

There has been a lot said and written about hiring a new film director to helm this particular movie. David Yates did a great job and in my opinion, “The Order of the Phoenix” is the best film in the series with the exception being “Prisoner of Azkaban.” However, what the series needed and what it got was a fresh new perspective in screenwriter Michael Goldenberg. I’m not knocking Kloves' imagining of the first four, but having seen “Order,” you can look back at “Goblet” and see that Kloves’ writing and plotting was beginning to get a bit tired and stale.

Goldenberg turned what was a somewhat disappointing book into a carefully honed fantasy film that can stand alone from the previous four, as it’s own film. Credit is due to Yates as well, for navigating through the script with precision and respect.

Potter fans may be put off by how much was left out, but for someone who has enjoyed the books without infatuation and one who wants to see a better movie than a better book, “The Order of the Phoenix” delivered.

All that Harry was dealing with concerning the aftermath of “Goblet” was carefully understated, as opposed to the books throat-cramming description.

There are two sequences in particular that pretty much made the movie for me. In order to help the Order of the Phoenix, the adults rebelling against the ministry of magic and Voldemort (can’t say, ‘He who-must-not-be-named’ anymore, because only the characters still filled with fear say anything but the dark lord’s name), Harry, Ron and Hermione form their own band of fighters for the cause, Dumbledore’s Army. The set-up for the formation of the army was great, but the sequence showing Potter training the group was one of the best mainstream montage sequences I have seen in quite awhile. The training was intercut with the new Defense Against the Dark Arts villain, Dolores Umbridge (played with penetrating, goosbump-raising creepiness by Imelda Staunton) trying to expose the new army, and with a series of realistically portrayed shots of the burgeoning potential teenage love story of Cho and Harry. This entire montage was carefully placed in the middle, which for the previous films have been the weakest point.

The last sequence that particularly thrilled me was the battle between the Army and Voldemort’s followers, the Death Eaters. I briefly skimmed through a review or two that somewhat chastised the film’s ending for being too abrupt.

It didn’t feel abrupt to me. The special effects that accompany the fight were exquisite, and like nothing I’d seen from the previous films, furthering the proof that Goldenberg and especially Yates for his execution have crafted a stand alone commendable fantasy film. In “Goblet,” we briefly saw how the Death Eaters could appear out of nowhere as if a sandstorm was blowing them through. That effect was expanded on with an amazing amount of detail.

There is only one part of the film that didn’t satisfy me (*this next bit has a large spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read the book!).

In the book, it is apparent that Sirius Black sees Harry as an extension of his deceased best friend, Harry’s father James. Nothing through the film’s first two acts suggested this was going to be a thematic element. However, in the end without explanation, while fighting alongside Harry against the Death Eaters, Sirius calls Harry, James. In the middle of the fight after he said it, Harry looked confused and Sirius is killed. Since Yates is taking on “Half-Blood Prince,” maybe he’s planning on expounding on why Black said what he did, but that one word “James,” interrupted the flow of the breathe-taking battle. Even though I had read the book and knew why he was saying it, up until that moment I was made to forget that particular part. The fact that it was shoved in, didn’t seem like it was something they initially planned to explore, it seemed like Goldenberg and Yates said to themselves as they were filming, “Shit! We forgot that Black doesn’t look at Harry the way Harry looks at him! Wait, I got it! Make Black say ‘James.’ That’ll explain everything!”

(End Spoilers) That part aside, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” was an astonishing achievement, a worthy addition, and a spectacular directorial debut for David Yates. As I mentioned earlier, the darker, “Prisoner of Azkaban” is the only film that “Order of the Phoenix” is second to. I believe it is because of Cuaron’s vision of the wizarding world that has paved the ground for this and what I can only imagine will be another great film, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.