Harry Potter expelled from Hogwarts!

Dumbledore dumped as headmaster in power struggle!

All magic banned from Hogwarts!

Plus, the return of the Harry’s nemesis, Lord Voldemort, as well as the cunning Lucius Malfoy, the snakily duplicitous Severus Snape and the wronged Sirius Black.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter surrounded by magic potions in Severus Snape’s office in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Warner Bros.

Stir the ingredients of author J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix together and they make for one of the darkest films in the series. It’s also one of the most introspective, as the coming-of-age Harry will spend his fifth year at Hogwarts as a stranger in a familiar place … from which he was nearly expelled. For much of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he’s balancing his time between looking to his own tortured past and looking to the future, which is beginning to grow darker and darker.

Because magic has been banned from Hogwarts by the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton in a show-stopping turn), there’s precious little of it to go around and lighten the mood. Harry and some of his friends ride their broomsticks only once in the film, at the start in a hair-raising swooping ride down the Thames through the heart of London. It’s one of this film’s lightest moments.

That’s not to say that new-to-the-series Michael Goldenberg’s script is a gloomy downer. There are plenty of cheeky little lines for the characters to spin. And certainly Staunton’s unnaturally sunny Dolores offers plenty of comic relief, until she reveals her scarier plans. A self-righteous woman, Dolores’s cheery style is a false front for her meaner purposes — she’s a mole for the Ministry of Magic’s commissioner, who fears the Hogwarts headmaster is trying to undermine him — as she merrily pulls the plug on the Hogwarts curriculum and on Dumbledore himself.

She’s one of the few new characters in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a film that depends a lot on moviegoers already being very familiar with the characters and their inter-relationships. Unlike the other films in the series, which almost but not quite could be stand-alone tales, unless you have read Rowling’s books or seen at least two of the previous films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix may leave you scratching your head trying to figure out who’s who and why they matter so much to each other.

This one is really Daniel Radcliffe’s movie as Harry Potter. He’s front and center throughout. Everything that happens revolves around his inner turmoil about his self-worth and his future. Radcliffe, taller and leaner, gives Harry a heartfelt yearning that encompasses the character’s dreads and growing panic and even questions about his sanity, especially when he can see things his friends can’t. Radcliffe’s performance fits this story perfectly. Harry, who now feels alone and alienated at Hogwarts, is encouraged in his deep look inside himself by the return of Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), his godfather who was the longtime prisoner of the dreaded Azkaban Prison, who offers him advice and warnings. But Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, as Harry’s very close pals Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, are secondary characters for the most part this time. And there are new girls, the free-spirited Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) and Cho Chang (Katie Leung) to offer fresh support for Harry.

The film, directed by new-to-Potter David Yates, an award-winning British television director, underlines the dramatic moments in the story and the brewing revolutionary spirit of the Hogwarts students. Harry teaches them the secrets of dark magic in a hidden room so that they will be prepared when, Harry is certain, they will be tested in a final battle with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, returning for some creepy moments). Harry calls his group of wizards-in-training Dumbledore’s Army.

The film itself begins with a shuddery sequence in which a sudden storm blows up on a sunny playground that sends Harry and his bullying cousin running for cover in a subterranean passageway, where they are attacked by the wraith-like, breath-sucking Dementors.

Things are not going well at school, either, where the students are anxious about preparing for the wizard exams. Dolores has issued a series of foreboding decrees, nailed in little boxes to the walls, eliminating many of the creative programs that encouraged exploration and free thinking. Dolores has decided that rather than allowing the students to practice magic, they can only learn it in theory, an idea that Harry and his friends find useless.

Eventually there will be a cataclysmic meeting with Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) who wants to steal Harry’s prophecy from a crystal ball, kept in a warehouse stacked floor to high ceilings with crystal balls, as well as a battle with Lord Voldemort. But it all seems a set-up for what will happen in the next film, or perhaps the one after that. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a bridge from the concerns of childhood to the fears of adulthood.

mjanuson@projo.com