Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
To play off Steve's point, I think it is fair to claim that Columbus is just letting the story play through and he should be commended for effective visualization of the world and casting of the characters. Though they do not generally show the skill of the later movies, this is still solid child acting and of course the adult cast is epic. I do prefer Richard Harris in the role of Dumbledore. I think his more congenial attitude is more fitting to the character than the less charismatic Gambon. But the problem with just let the story do the talking is that the first two books are the weakest ones. They are the ones that could use the most creative energy, and of course you can't prove the counterfactual that someone who offers that creative energy would somehow do less in the set design/casting that Columbus established. One thing Columbus' design falls short IMO, and really the books do as well, is a sense of geography within the castle. I know the "stairs change" but I definitely have a reduced sense of where everything is relative to everything else.
One of the distinct things about this entry...actually giving my HP man-crush Sean Biggerstaff some lines as Oliver Wood. That accent! That said, I've generally found the film series coverage of Quidditch to be rather lackluster. It is what I'd expect Michael Bay would do to the sport, making the action more grandiose and violent with no account of the rules of the game that makes it a legitimate fantasy sport. The effects during these scenes aren't particularly convincing neither. I understand that the sport risks being rather uninteresting in the visual medium otherwise, but I'm not sure it goes in a useful direction.
I would have liked to see a bit more panache in the sequence of trials at the end. We've discussed whether the logic puzzle could work on film. But given that the clues were very visual (spatial, color, size), it actually seems a good opportunity to let us be working the puzzle alongside Hermione. Anyway, I can't say I remember the book that well that I pick out what's missing. Most of the shortcuts work pretty well here. At the end of the day, I don't have it in me to not like a Harry Potter film.
Rating: B-