The true challenge of being an indie filmmaker who makes the leap to blockbusters is whether or not the audience can still see that distinctive style in the middle of a massive budget, visual effects, and A-List actors. Plenty of filmmakers have made the leap to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example, and not always come out with a film that feels like they made it, as opposed to the MCU creative committee. (Chloé Zhao was given a chance with “Eternals,” for one, but that movie largely feels like a quieter and slightly more somber MCU film than a Chloé Zhao movie.) One case where that is absolutely not the situation is the 2004 film “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” 

Though future Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón had worked within the studio system before, with his adaptations of “A Little Princess” and “Great Expectations,” he’d never had such a big canvas on which to work, and he certainly made the most of it. It helps that the third book in the J.K. Rowling series is much darker than its predecessors, and that a decision was made to have the teenage actors dress like … well, like teenagers, eschewing the more buttoned-up school uniforms of the first two films. More than anything, though, Cuarón’s energetic, youthful style is present in the constantly roving camera, the playfulness of the film’s humor, and just enough of a heightened sense of puberty having its way with Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the other Hogwarts students. Twenty years later, this is still the best “Harry Potter” movie, largely because Cuarón made the leap from “Y Tu Mama Tambien” to a massive budget without losing himself.