Review's Resort: Talkie Tuesday: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

"Ye're a wizard, Harry."

Hello everyone!

As you can probably tell from the title of tonight's blog post, you know exactly which movie I'll be talking about.

I recently had a marathon of Harry Potter movies back when I was at the seaside with my mother, so I thought to myself, what better time to go through them yet again than during the autumn months when the weather is basically PERFECT for witchcraft and wizardry?

After all, the return to Hogwarts is a thing now every September 1st at King's Cross.

Plus, with the prequel movies and all the other hype surrounding the books that are yet to come in this franchise, Harry is everyone's friend, and everyone knows him.

So why not join in the fun, right?

Grab your wands and follow Hagrid, first years!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is just across the Great Lake.

I can tell you in advance, first and foremost, that I won't be getting to all the movies in time. If you've looked at the calendar and did the math, you'll notice that this makes no sense since it's only eight movies - thus eight weeks, right?

Well, yes, but October is null and void because I'm doing something else on the blog that month, and I'm late to start in September because I was doing some other movies earlier that I still had to catch up on.

And because I do Christmas-themed posts in December, this means we're only getting the first six movies in what remains of 2019.

Movies seven and eight will have to wait for 2020 to wrap up the entire storyline.

It's kind of fitting, I suppose, but it's just a warning so you'll know what to expect!

Now, on with the show!

Our story begins on a rather misty, perhaps slightly chilly evening on Privet Drive where not only does Albus Dumbledore suddenly appear out of nothing but Minerva McGonagall has been sitting on a stone wall all day waiting to see whether or not the rumours are true.

Has Voldemort really gone and done the unspeakable?

Why yes professor, yes he has.

Lily and James Potter are dead, and their son Harry is being sent to live with the only family he has left - the Dursleys, a family of Muggles.

In fact, in McGonagall's words, the worst sort of Muggles!

After Hagrid brings little Harry over on a flying bike (that's not even the weirdest thing this movie will serve up, trust me), all three of them look over the baby boy that somehow managed to defeat the greatest dark wizard of all time, knowing they won't be seeing him again for a decade or so until he's old enough to attend a certain school. Until then, he's on his own.

Good luck indeed, Harry Potter.

Just before his eleventh birthday life is pretty miserable for Harry: he's basically bullied by the Dursleys, his cousin Dudley throws tantrums about everything and anything, and he's bullied at school (a detail the movie doesn't really touch on, but the book explains in some detail).

This all changes when he receives a letter, and it's like hitting the PANIC! button for the Dursleys.

They don't just prevent him from reading the letters that come pouring into the house by the hundreds, they whisk him away to the middle of nowhere on a little rock in the sea where he comes to be eleven years old.

And where one Rubeus Hagrid knocks over the door to get into said hut.

What follows is a funny exchange between the Dursleys and Hagrid, who pretty much rolls his eyes at the lot of them and tells them to go away, until he realizes Harry knows nothing about ... anything. That is to say, his aunt and uncle never told him that his parents were wizards, or about Hogwarts, or what had actually happened, so Hagrid is so mad he tries to turn Dudley into a pig, but only succeeds in giving him a little tail.

He takes Harry to Diagon Alley where the boy learns his parents basically left him a fortune and gets all his school stuff (including Hedwig, a fan favourite, who's a gift from Hagrid).

But Hagrid leaves him without one very important clue: how to get onto platform 9 and 3/4 when it's time to board the Hogwarts Express, which is how Harry first runs into the Weasley family and where Molly Weasley (ANOTHER fan favourite and absolute gem) explains the process to him.

This is the start of a beautiful friendship as Harry ends up sharing a compartment (and sweets!) with her son Ron, and the pair of them have their first run-in with Hermione Granger who fixes Harry's glasses. The encounter is a lot friendlier than the one with Draco Malfoy later on at the school, but hey, you have to have your friends and your enemies, right?

Side note: even years after seeing this movie in theaters and so many times on television and DVD, I still pretty much burst out crying when the boats take the first years onto the lake and Hogwarts first comes into view. In fact, I'm teary-eyed even now typing this!

McGonagall reappears on the scene and takes the kids to be sorted by the Hat which, thankfully, doesn't spew out any rhymes, but just calmly sends them all to their respective houses.

After this begins the real magic as Harry and his friends discover what it means to be a witch or wizard, from Transfiguration to Potions, where Alan Rickman basically makes all of us cry with his performance as Severus Snape, and if you don't at least get misty-eyed at seeing the brilliant actor at his finest then you have a heart of stone.

Harry and Draco keep not getting along, which actually helps Harry as he discovers that the wizarding sport, Quidditch, is pretty much in his blood, and after McGonagall makes the fastest dash from her office and through the castle in history, she essentially rewards him saying he'll be playing for Gryffindor House, youngest in the century.

Quidditch is something worth watching even in an age when CGI wasn't as developed yet as it would become in the latter years of this franchise, and the plot thickens because someone bewitches Harry's broomstick (a gift from McGonagall, natch) and nearly kills him.

The kids suspect it to be Snape, mostly because a little earlier during Halloween, there's a troll in the dungeons and Snape gets himself bitten by a three-headed dog also currently at the school.

Why is it at the school, and why did Snape get bitten, you ask?

Well, Fluffy's guarding something.

Yeah, the beast has a name, and a completely silly one at that. You probably know who owns it.

While searching for answers during Christmas break using the Invisibility Cloak an unknown someone returns to him as it was his father's before he died, Harry instead runs into the Mirror of Erised, which shows him his parents - and has a little speech with Dumbledore who explains the nature of the mirror (which is, it shows us the deepest desires of our hearts).

Also, Harry, don't go running around the castle at night again, plz.

Regardless, however, they finally clue in to what, exactly, Fluffy's guarding: the Philosopher's Stone, which had been taken out of the wizard's bank by Hagrid the same day he took Harry over, and has been sitting at Hogwarts ever since.

Only problem is, someone wants the Stone.

And that Someone is a big problem.

Through trying to help Hagrid get rid of a baby dragon, earning detention and landing in the Forbidden Forest on a dark night, Harry learns that, not only is slaying a unicorn the most beastly thing you could do, but that Voldemort is trying to come back using the Stone, and the Elixir of Life it produces.

This means only one thing: someone needs to try and deal with him.

But unfortunately, the adults don't really want to cooperate, so after using a body-binding spell on Neville Longbottom who's trying to stop them, our trio use the Invisibility Cloak and make it past Fluffy, and the other obstacles and challenges set to guard the Stone (these include but aren't limited to a plant that'll happily squeeze you to death and a big ass chessboard you have to play your way across).

In the end, Harry comes face to face, not with Snape as he thought, but with another Hogwarts professor, Quirrell, currently hosting Voldemort in the back of his head (well, his body honestly, but the back of the head is where Voldemort's face is perpetually covered in garlic-smelling turbans). Snape's been trying to save his life all this time, not the other way around.

And during the confrontation after Harry procures the Stone from the Mirror (yup, this is where Dumbledore moved it to), he realizes that he can't be touched because Quirrell literally starts disintegrating when he does, and he fends him off, if barely.

This is later explained by Dumbledore after Harry recovers in the infirmary: because his mother sacrificed herself for her only child, a powerful spell has been laid into Harry's very skin and blood, for love is the most powerful thing of all. And creatures who don't understand it or have never had the chance to experience it simply can't stand it.

The final act after all the excitement is over is Gryffindor winning the House Cup after Dumbledore awards our intrepid adventurers with some last-minute points (and I once again burst into tears every time Neville is awarded his for standing up to his friends and showing true courage), and then the kids need to pack up for their summer vacation back home.

And with a photo album full of photographs of his parents which Hagrid gifts him, Harry, and through Harry we as well, say goodbye to Hogwarts as the train pulls away from the station.

Don't cry though! It's only temporary, and we'll be back soon.

With that said, this movie is the perfect introduction to the wizarding world because it has a fairly straightforward plot that nonetheless sets the stage for the following installments, but also gives us our three protagonists, their inevitable enemies, and of course we get to experience magic through Harry's eyes for the first time. And it's truly brilliant how they filmed it so that you feel as if you're right there exploring with our young hero.

Of course it could be argued that Dumbledore is batty for letting the kids deal with Voldemort all on their own, but then he's always been a bit batty and always will be.

Snape emerges as a sort of shadow that nobody knows what to do about, and won't know for quite some time, but he's hilarious to watch as he prowls around Hogwarts in his bat-like robes and greasy hair. Rickman brings him to life with perfection.

For me, the most interesting thing to think about, however, is a slightly different perspective on the Dursleys, who admittedly are worse than Voldemort in this movie. They seem to hate Harry so much that it's just unbelievable, but what if they're simply afraid? People do terrible things out of fear. An interesting take would be if Petunia is simply terrified, which would be in her rights after her sister and her brother-in-law were murdered, something she knows form the letter Dumbledore leaves her at the beginning of the movie. What if they were simply trying to protect Harry from what they considered as incredibly dangerous?