His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
"Pullman’s tale is little damaged by a filmmaker’s fear of offending right-wingers, and The Golden Compass sticks rather closely to the narrative on which it’s based. It’s still the tale of Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), a precocious little girl in a parallel world, caught up in magic and intrigue beyond her ken."
Stardust
"Even for a fantasy movie, Stardust is made of pretty silly stuff. In a way it’s a throwback to what fantasy movies were before Peter Jackson, reminiscent of now rather dated work like Willow, Legend, or The Dark Crystal. But inspired directing from Matthew Vaughn and a wry sense of humor saves the movie’s oh-so-80s story from being an out of time curiosity and makes it a completely unique fantasy film unlike any of the other witches and wizards fare flooding theaters."
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
"As it is in each of these movies, the mysterious dark lord Voldemort has returned and continues to make life hard for Harry. This time he seems to have chosen to do it through the Wizard media. The new Wizard government has decided that Voldemort doesn’t exist, and that for the past couple of years Harry has just made the whole thing up. He’s slandered in the newspapers and used as a political tool, which only serves to make Harry’s newfound teen angst even angstier."
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
"Having seen Harry Potter on screen before, his fourth outing at Hogwarts becomes less about exploring him as a character and more an exploration of how much can we throw at him. Apparently quite a lot. This time around Harry fights dragons, angry shrubs, and a school dance. For him, it's that last item that's the worst."
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
"We’re reintroduced to Hogwarts as a choir ominously belts out, “something wicked this way comes,” and are shown walls reeking of age and use. Azkaban’s world is a less polished one than that which Columbus presented to us, more what you’d expect from a movie all about Witches, Wizards, and dark magic."
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
"As the second film in the series, this one is now free from the necessities of character introduction to spend its time more wisely exploring the people and worlds the first movie went through so much trouble to firmly establish. Like they were before, characters are the Chamber of Secrets strength, but Columbus demonstrates exactly why we should all be happy the next installment will be directed by someone else. "
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
"Harry is almost a static character, who succeeds more through luck than actual talent. He and his chums make their way through school, facing many of the same challenges normal kids face, with a bit of a magical twist. However, there is more to Hogwarts than meets the eye, and Harry and Co. have mysteries to uncover and evil to battle. "
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
"Return of the King is a massive conclusion to an astounding epic of astounding imagery and audacious ambition. It’s a spectacle, an undertaking unlike anything else that has ever touched the silver screen. The funny thing is, what sticks with you isn’t the overwhelming scale of this film, but the little moments of subtlety, of caring, and hope generated by genius direction and obsessively loving detail."
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
"Towers is an avalanche of filmmaking perfection, an epic of grandeur and scale that’s been decades gone from the popcorn pushing sound stages of Hollywood. The story and legend continues on exactly as it should, wrapping us all up even more deeply in the people and places of Middle Earth. There are more liberties taken with the translation this time, but Jackson has proven he knows what he’s doing, even if he does have to depart from the books of Tolkien now and then."
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
"Despite being populated with wizards, elves, dwarfs, and trolls, Lord of the Rings has more in common with epic films like Ben Hur or The Ten Commandments than it does with the comparatively small-scale mild adventurism that is the likes of Harry Potter. Fellowship bites down hard and achieves a beautifully broad and dramatic scale, balancing the mind-boggling beauty of Tolkien's Middle Earth with the majesty and history of its characters."
| 
Without the box office success of Lord of the Rings, it’s quite likely that Disney never would have dipped its toe into the world of Narnia movie making. Ironically, without LOTR author J.R.R Tolkien, it’s quite likely C.S. Lewis never would have written The Chronicles of Narnia to begin with.
