+ Imelda Staunton (Umbridge) and Evanna Lynch (Luna) were perfect. Umbridge made my flesh crawl, she was so delightfully repressing some deep psychosis. I was worried about Luna because she's my favourite character and I was expecting to be disappointed, but she nailed the 'dreamy and a bit mad but ultimately logical and pragmatic' air that Luna has perfectly. Plus, she's cute as a button and her costumes were great.

+ I'm sad about the loss of the Quibbler/Rita Skeeter subplot, but it was an acceptable loss. Having Seamus abruptly go 'oh, sorry mate, me mam and I believe you now' was a bit weird, but not too bad.

+ They cut out basically the entire Harry/Cho subplot. This is A Good Thing. When I was reading the book, I started glossing over Cho's whiny crying stupidity very early and I'm glad that it's pretty much absent from the film.

+ Ditto the CAPSLOCK HARRY ANGST. He still spent pretty much the whole thing being pissed off but at least he did it fairly quietly.

+ Loved the aesthetics. I imagined Grimmauld Place (the street, not the house) to be older, but it meshed nicely with my mental image. So did the house itself. I especially liked the family tree room.

+ Snape's Worst Memory got veeerrry little screen time and that was disappointing, but I suppose it's not really important to the plot. Oh well.

+ Sirius punched Lucius in the face! *utmost glee*

+ Voldemort in a sharp suit on Platform 9 3/4 = oh god yes.

+ Thank God they fixed the daft KKK-style Death Eater uniforms from the last movie.

+ The Occlumency was handled wonderfully. Harry looking in the Mirror of Erised and having Snape pop up behind him with a snide remark was a thing of beauty.

+ Loved Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix too. 'Crazy sadist' is a pretty easy role to play, I imagine, but she's ever so much fun to watch. Also, it's nice to see her in a film not directed by Tim Burton. :v But speaking of Bellatrix...

+ Serious Enquiry Time: Why did they change the Veil scene? Why? In the book, Bellatrix zaps Sirius with a non-specific red light and he goes sailing through the Veil, fuelling Potter theorists everywhere. In the movie, she Avada Kedavra-s him and we're invited to believe that he's dead before he goes through the Veil. WHYYY. Is this just JKR using the medium of film to tell us 'no, he's really dead, he's not coming back, quit with your stupid theories already'. But then they go to great pains to have Luna point out that things we lose, we can often get back. I Am Confused.

So, apart from that oddity, you've probably gathered that I really loved it. Despite being the longest book, it felt like the most coherent movie - unlike the previous movies where I was constantly thinking 'they could have cut ABC scene from the movie and kept XYZ scene from the book'. All the editing was sensible and it didn't feel like we'd lost any meaningful chunks from the plot.

Will probably add to this or do some more ranting after Saturday.

P.S: Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman and Jason Isaacs are still SMOKIN' HOT.