1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “[T]he final hour of the two-hour-and-21-minute ‘Azkaban’ is the closest any of the films has gotten to capturing the enormously pleasing essence of the Potter books.”

Peter Rainer (New York Magazine): “Finally, a Harry Potter movie that does justice to J. K. Rowling’s books — and then some. … [T]he most powerfully entrancing children’s film in years.”

David Edelstein (Slate): “In Cuarón’s hands, the world of Harry Potter doesn’t feel like a synthetic movie theme park anymore. It’s almost real, Hogwarts and all.”

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek): “J.K. Rowling’s work has finally gotten the romantic filmmaker it deserves. … As an adaptation, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” is all you could wish for.”

*Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “Is ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ as good as the first two films? Not quite. It doesn’t have that sense of joyously leaping through a clockwork plot, and it needs to explain more than it should.”

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “With this fourth film, the Harry Potter saga demonstrates more than ever the resiliency of J.K. Rowling’s original invention.”

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “It’s taken them long enough, but the movies have finally gotten Harry Potter right.”

Peter Rainer (Christian Science Monitor): “Although it doesn’t often scale the visionary heights of Cuarón’s film ["Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"], at its best, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” which was directed by Mike Newell, is a worthy successor. Grade: A-”

David Edelstein (Slate): “I couldn’t be more pleased with what the screenwriter, Steven Kloves, and the director, Mike Newell, have wrought this time.”

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek): “[N]either as garishly dumb as Christopher Columbus’ first two Harry Potter pictures, … nor as lyrical as Alfonso Cuarón’s beautifully tuned ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.’”

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “I admired this Harry Potter. It opens and closes well, and has wondrous art design and cinematography as always, only more so.”

David Edelstein (New York Magazine): “[H]ere comes movie No. 6, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.’ Do we give a damn? I didn’t, until the film started—and it was splendid!”

Peter Rainer (Christian Science Monitor): “[A]s megamovie franchises go, “Harry Potter” is disporting itself far better than most. Grade: B+”

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek): “[W]hile this is, of course, a fantasy movie, the quiet and potent idea nestled inside it is that there’s magic in and around the things of everyday life.”

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “We don’t turn to these films for thrilling or original cinema, we look for a level of craft, consistency and, most of all, fidelity to the originals — all of which we get.”

4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “‘Harry Potter’ now possesses an end that befits the most profitable series in movie history. … [A] solid and satisfying conclusion.”

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2′ turns out to be more than the last of its kind. Almost magically, it ends up being one of the best of the series as well.”

David Edelstein (New York Magazine): “Expecto Patronum, it is! ‘HPATDH 2′ works like a charm.”

Peter Rainer (Christian Science Monitor): “The collective emotion arising from the last installment of the “Harry Potter” franchise … is a sense of loss. Even for those of us who have not found the films transcendent, there is some regret.”

*Salon (Andrew O’Hehir): “[T]his final installment, driven far less by acting and characterization than any of the preceding seven, fails the Peter Jackson test of becoming an affecting and absorbing work on its own terms.”

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” still has much of the enchantment of the earlier films, but Harry no longer has as much joy. “

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “Thinned down from the series’ longest book, ‘Phoenix’ can’t shake an episodic feeling that makes it difficult to develop momentum.”

Peter Rainer (Christian Science Monitor): “Director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg … have trimmed J. K. Rowlings’s 870-page novel into a fairly well-paced 139 minutes — the shortest film in the series, though not the best. Grade: B”

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek): “This is a gangly, confusing sprawl, and yet there are enough patches of beauty scattered throughout that it’s impossible to reject it wholesale.”

*David Edelstein (New York Magazine): “For all its portentousness, this is the best Harry Potter picture yet.”

6. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

Peter Rainer (New York Magazine): “At a time when films have turned into fully loaded franchises, it’s a miracle — magical indeed — when anything comes out that truly captivates. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is no such miracle, unlike the book it is so scrupulously based on.”

David Edelstein (Slate): “It is one thing … to transport an audience and another to enchant it.You need more than big bucks to cast a spell. You need the magic that comes from emotion.”

Kenneth Turan: “What saves ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ is what created it in the first place: J.K. Rowling’s enrapturing imagination.”

Salon (Andrew O’Hehir): “For everything [Director Chris] Columbus’ film mishandles … it remains a professional entertainment with just enough human moments to squeak by.”

*Roger Ebert: “A lot of things could have gone wrong, and none of them have: Chris Columbus’ movie is an enchanting classic that does full justice to a story that was a daunting challenge.”

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): “[A] handsome and sometimes harrowing film [that] will be completely unintelligible for anyone coming to the series for the first time.”

Kenneth Turan (LA Times): “What’s the latest Harry Potter film like? If you’ve seen the previous six, you already know. If you haven’t there’s no point in trying to catch up now.”

David Edelstein (New York Magazine): “There’s nothing wrong with the 146-minute ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1′ that couldn’t be solved if this were, as the Brits would say, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Full Stop.’”

Peter Rainer (Christian Science Monitor): “By necessity, Part 1 is essentially a lead-in to the grand finale, and so there are stretches where exposition swamps drama. I suspect there will be few such stretches in Part 2, when all the stops will be let out. All the more reason to savor the scaled-back moments in this one. Grade: B+”

*Salon (Andrew O’Hehir): “[L]ong, dour, impressive and handsome … It would have been easy to turn this series into transatlantic kitsch — but in fact the kitsch is respectfully made, and distinctively British.”

8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)

David Edelstein (Slate): “A movie about the care and feeding of the child stars of ‘Harry Potter’ would be more entertaining than the thing itself. It would have some real life in it.”

Kenneth Turan: “[T]he Harry Potter novels have a kind of magic that it is beyond the powers of these films to duplicate.”

Peter Rainer (New York Magazine): “[R]epresents a lost opportunity to give children, not to mention adults, a movie experience that would widen their eyes as the justly beloved Rowling books did.”

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek): “‘Chamber of Secrets’ was clearly made with the utmost care (and plenty of money), yet it simply withers before us like a choked-off mandrake plant. It’s starved for the one moviemaking resource that doesn’t cost a lot of money: imagination.”

*Roger Ebert: “The first movie was the setup, and this one is the payoff.”

Ralph Fiennes woke up with the sun streaming through his loft windows in New York. Even though he was British, Ralph loved to travel. He had just flown in from Barcelona the night before, where he had been hanging out with Geoffrey Rush, with whom he co-shared a private villa and a deep friendship. The two men had been drinking ’til dawn, swapping stories about their experiences on the set of “The King’s Speech,” which had brought Fiennes the third Best Actor Oscar of his career for his portrayal of the stuttering ruler.

“It’s all bloody well that you got the statue for playing the king,” Geoffrey had said once they were well into their cups, “But you know the real money is doing these ‘Pirates’ films. I’ve made a billion dollars, Ralphie. A billion dollars off of ‘effing ‘Pirates!’”

Ralph had laughed good-naturedly, but he didn’t much envy his friend. He knew that this morning, Geoffrey would likely be on the set of the franchise he had been tied to for years without a break. No one even remembered “Shine” anymore… Instead, a whole generation of kids just knew the skilled actor as Captain Barbossa, and would boo him on the street. “Ah, damn you Ralphie,” Geoffrey said as they parted ways as the sun began to rise over the surrounding Gaudi architecture, “but for the grace of God, go I. If only you weren’t such a damn fool snob when it came to choosing work!”

It was true, Ralph Fiennes thought to himself as he got dressed and ducked into his favorite Starbucks (the one on 37th street, right next to the Crunch gym where he planned to work out later): better to follow the path of his other best mate, Jeremy Irons, who routinely refused roles in movies that had any chance of a sequel, than to end up with loads of money in exchange for a decade of your career you could never get back.

Nobody at Starbucks bothered Ralph Fiennes, though his barista had hesitantly mentioned how much she had loved him as Colonel Hans Landa in “Inglorious Basterds.” Ralph had smiled and obliged the hard-working young woman with his famous catch-phrase from that movie, “That’s ah-jackpot!” His Venti iced soy latte had been on the house.

Ralph Fiennes had planned to stroll through Central Park, but found himself avoiding 42nd street. For the last few days, Times Square had been overrun by a mob of people waiting impatiently in line to see the final “Harry Potter” film. Ralph Fiennes shook his head, a sad smile on his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his mate Daniel Day-Lewis, who was currently serving out his sentence in the last of those insanely popular children’s films as the villain Volder-something.

It wasn’t so long ago that Daniel and Ralph had been working on shoes together in the street of Vienna, taking a much-needed respite between pictures. Daniel had been cobbling, while Ralph had taken up the artisanal craftsmanship of a cordwainer. Daniel asked Ralph what he thought of the script about a boy wizard, and if he should take the role of its noseless dark lord “as a goof.” Ralph had been obliged to answer truthfully.

“It seems like a fun character,” Ralph Fiennes said, threading the last stitch of a fine leather boot, “but honestly, I think you should take the part in that P.T. Anderson film you were considering last month. The one about the oil tycoon?”

“Actually, I turned down that job,” Daniel said. “It just seemed like kind of a downer to me. And it didn’t make very much sense. At the end I would have to kill a priest with a bowling pin, while screaming about drinking his milkshake.” Ralph had laughed at the time, but he wasn’t laughing when he accepted his Oscar that year for his performance as Daniel Plainview in “There Will Be Blood.” His old cobbling friend had come to congratulate him after the show, but unfortunately Vanity Fair’s exclusive after-party didn’t have Daniel Day-Lewis’ name on the list. The “Last of the Mohicans” actor had to spend half an hour arguing with a bouncer that he wasn’t just some “D-list kiddie star” before calling Graydon Carter himself.

Eventually, Daniel got into the party, because he still was a pretty famous and well-respected actor, but it was embarrassing for everyone involved.

Ralph sipped his iced latte and decided to text Daniel. “Just saw the crowds for HP,” he typed on his iPhone, “Good luck with all that. Drinks soon?”

But Ralph Fiennes knew that he would not be getting drinks with Daniel Day-Lewis anytime in the near future, nor would he be bumping into him on set or in pitch meetings. Sure, Daniel would be fine, and he’d still be able to nab some juicy role here or there. But to them, to the audience, he would always be the evil-doer who tried to kill Harry Potter. Or maybe he did kill Harry Potter in the end. Ralph Fiennes didn’t actually know what happened: He hadn’t read any of the books or seen the movies.

Ralph Fiennes had better things to do with his time.

I’m not trying to wage some kind of King Canute battle against the tide of approbation for this remarkable series and its final chapter, honest. I am suggesting that we’re all congratulating the filmmakers for not having screwed the whole thing up too badly. (Which is something to be celebrated: Consider the ever-dwindling “Chronicles of Narnia” series, or the disastrous efforts to turn Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” and Lemony Snicket’s “Series of Unfortunate Events” into movie franchises.) Director David Yates, screenwriter Steve Kloves and their formerly young cast — Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson began this enterprise as schoolchildren and now seem ready for divorces and rehab clinics — bring the Potter cycle to rest with a great cinematic clash of cymbals (and symbols). “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ is a grave and violent picture built around the large-scale destruction of Hogwarts, Harry’s beloved alma mater, and the final confrontation between Harry (Radcliffe) and the reptile-headed Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), who are linked to each other in ways they don’t quite understand.

As he began to do in “Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” Yates deliberately recalls the inspirational movies about the blitz of London and the lonely courage with which the British faced Hitler in the dark early years of World War II. I don’t know whether J.K. Rowling has ever discussed the Battle of Britain as an influence on her fantasy universe, but she’s precisely the right age to have been raised on such national mythological tales of Churchill-era nobility and sacrifice. While most of “Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ is set in and around the climactic siege of Hogwarts — in which, yes, some beloved Potterworld personages will die — we also see Harry, red-headed Ron (Grint) and shockingly grown-up Hermione (Watson, of course, but in this sequence also played by Helena Bonham Carter, and don’t make me explain) stage a daring raid on the Gringotts Wizarding Bank, which ends with an abused captive dragon totally destroying the place. Any consonance with current events, which renders it especially satisfying to witness a bank reduced to rubble, is presumably coincidental. (As we now know, many financial institutions in the Muggle universe are also run by greedy and untrustworthy goblins.)

If the Gringotts raid is one of the Potter series’ most effective uses of large-scale CGI effects, I found much of the final battle at Hogwarts, including the O.K. Corral showdown between Harry and Voldemort, disappointingly generic. Oh, I don’t mean that it’s boring to sit through, exactly. There’s a whole lot of spell-casting and Death-Eating and exploding Gothic architecture and Fiennes’ lizard-man Voldemort howling in pain and pointlessly murdering underlings as Harry and friends gradually discover and destroy the Horcruxes that contain fragments of his soul. (I can’t stop myself: The next-to-last Horcrux is inside … mmrp! Stifled by the Spoiler Cops, just in time.) Yates and cinematographer Eduardo Serra do a nice job of keeping the viewer oriented in space and time, no mean feat when space is an imaginary digital artifact and time is completely elastic. There’s a lovely and crucial flashback sequence into the memories of über-Goth potions expert turned Hogwarts headmaster Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) — for my money the most compelling character in the whole series — whose long-running and ambiguous role in the Potter mythos is finally revealed.

Along with Rickman, numerous other beloved players make final cameos, making this peculiar film — which is simultaneously too short and too long — feel an awful lot like an extended curtain call. Maggie Smith as Prof. McGonagall and Jim Broadbent as Prof. Slughorn, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, Tom Felton as the chastened Draco Malfoy, Bonham Carter as the adorably evil Bellatrix Lestrange, David Thewlis as lycanthrope Remus Lupin and Evanna Lynch as New Agey Celtic seer Luna Lovegood all get a few seconds of screen time. So do various departed characters, including Harry’s long-dead parents, Gary Oldman as Sirius Black and of course Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore, who appears in a misty-moisty afterlife scene where Yates simultaneously manages to screw up a crucial plot point and render the spiritual underpinnings of the entire Potter franchise as total bollocks. (We also meet Dumbledore’s grouchy brother, nicely played by Ciarán Hinds, a personal favorite.) And I guess Harry’s so-called paramour Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) makes an appearance, but not so you’d notice it. (Potter fans hate me for this one, but the submerged sexual tension between Harry, Hermione and Ron is a central element of this universe, and one Rowling herself seems barely aware of. Ginny is a transparent and inadequate attempt to defuse it.)

What bugs me about “Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ may be an inevitable consequence of the fact that Yates and Kloves, previous directors Chris Columbus, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón, and everybody else who’s worked on this amazing 14-year, eight-film odyssey has had to serve so many masters. Loyalty to both the letter and spirit of Rowling’s books was more important than it almost ever is in a Hollywood production, because the universe of Potter fandom is so large, so well-organized and so vocal. But the filmmakers also had to appeal to moviegoers who hadn’t read the books and were absorbing the whole story on-screen, as well as casual viewers who might dip in and out, depending on reviews or what their friends said, in search of an exciting yarn but without much caring about the history of the Diadem of Ravenclaw or the backstage intrigue among the Hogwarts faculty.

Viewed in that light, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ is an adequate and often artful exercise in checking off boxes. If you haven’t imbibed a minimum of four or five other Potter books and/or movies, including “Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” then the exposition surrounding the action sequences will be total gibberish and you shouldn’t even bother. (By the way, I saw it in Imax 3-D, and unless you can’t stop yourself don’t spend the extra money.) This is almost entirely a movie for the Potter fan base, which may have been the only possible outcome in adapting Rowling’s torrents of verbiage, dense plotting and encyclopedic arcana. But this final installment, driven far less by acting and characterization than any of the preceding seven, fails the Peter Jackson test of becoming an affecting and absorbing work on its own terms.

The “O Children” sequence in “Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” and indeed the entire haunted, lonely middle section of that vastly superior movie, have stayed with me powerfully. Hours after seeing this one, I don’t look back on it with any emotion, or even much in the way of sense-memory. Radcliffe as Harry, and even more so Fiennes as the wounded Voldemort, who feels victory escaping his grasp as evil wizards always will, are both splendid. But the final confrontation between these intertwined geniuses, at least as we see it here, has no moral or intellectual heft; it’s a lightning-bolt battle out of a 1980s “Doctor Strange” comic. (I’m not saying that’s the worst thing in the world.) Seconds later, I was out on the sidewalk in front of the theater, feeling a little baffled and irritated: Wait, Dumbledore said what to Snape and what to Harry? Voldemort is incapable of killing Harry because … why, exactly? Which Horcrux is the giant snake and which one is the Magic Cup of H.R. Pufnstuf? What the Sam Hill are the Deathly Hallows again, and what do they have to do with anything? (Answer: They don’t.)

So ends this enormously important, and enormously extended, chapter of pop culture, with a combination of bang and whimper. Nothing quite like this series has ever been tried before in cinema history, and as I wrote last year, following the central trio of Radcliffe, Grint and Watson through the aging process has itself forced the movies to confront Rowling’s central themes, which I take to be “the painful transition from childhood to adulthood, the loss of parents and loved ones, the first intimations of personal mortality.” For better or worse, Rowling’s books and the hit-and-miss movies based on them have reshaped not just the marketplace for fiction and film but the contemporary cultural imagination, re-establishing fantasy as the central narrative mode (arguably for the first time since the Middle Ages). I suspect that Rowling will remain popular for a long time while the films fade a lot more rapidly into the background. But we have only begun to live in the world they made.

2. Celebrity defense of the day: Kanye West, as explained by Justin Bieber:

“He’s not really an asshole like everyone makes him out to be. I mean, he can, he can do bad things, but he’s really generally a good guy.”

“He can make bad decisions, you know, as well as everyone can,” he added, “but generally I think he is a good guy.”

Now you have Justin Bieber’s word: Kanye is not an asshole; he just makes bad decisions. Like acting like an asshole.

3. Peer pressure of the day: David Letterman grilling Emma Watson last night about Daniel Radcliffe’s drinking problem. When she didn’t give up any juicy details, David turned on her, asking the actress if she’s ever taken any controlled substances. So now we know that Hermione Granger has been very, very drunk. Once.

4. Pitchfork review reviews of the day: The website’s editors list their top 60 music books. Did they run out of actual music to judge?

5. Outfit of the day: The Steve Buscemi dress, designed by James Lillis and going for $100 on Black Milk.

At the very least, it’s guaranteed to make you look more attractive in relation to what you’re wearing… sort of like bringing  your homely friend to the bar so guys will think you are the better-looking one.