Each time I watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie I realize how much more I like it than when I watched it the previous time.  Since I know the story like the back of my hand, I now look at the subtle nuances in the film -- the expressions on Dan Radcliffe's face as well as the other actors, what's going on in the background while the main part of the story is going on, the lighting, set decorations, props, and directing.  Of course, each film has it's own unique quality but the first film set the tone for the others to grow from and develop in their own slightly different direction.  I also really like the deleted scenes, especially the scene where Harry and Ron visit Hermione in the hospital after she no longer looks like a cat.  I also like the scene in Snape's class. 

After countless viewings I still find things I didn't notice before... or if I did notice them, I didn't think about what they might mean story-wise.  I'm not trying to point fingers but rather just shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Huh...that's interesting." 

The owls are delivering hundreds of letters to Harry at Number Four Privet Drive.  Harry looks out the window and sees scores of owls perched every where around the house.  Are they just resting or what?  Are they waiting for Harry to send a reply?  And wouldn't all the neighbors be looking at this odd owl phenomenon too?  Maybe they are.  For impact, I understand why they set the shot up this way but the owls in Jo's books generally deliver and fly off post haste.   Perhaps these screen owls were plying for bigger credits so they could move out of the extras guild and into BAFTA.

At Kings Cross Station Hagrid suddenly vanishes.  Did he disapparate?  I wouldn't think he would be allowed to even if he know how.   After all, he was expelled at the end of his third year at Hogwarts and isn't supposed to use magic, "strictly speaking."

During the Quidditch match the Slytherins start fouling the Gryffindors shamelessly but Madame Hooch never calls "foul" on them.  Yet in the OotP book, she calls foul on the Slytherins non-stop so I know that unlike ice hockey, players can't get away blatant cheating.

Harry sees his parents in the Mirror of Erised... This is the one thing I truly have a problem with in this movie.  Who casts these actors?  Nothing against the actors except that they are too old to play Harry's parents as they would have looked when they were killed by Voldemort.  Both should have been around twenty-two, not thirty-five to forty.  In an interview, Jo Rowling said that Sirius was about twenty-two when he was sent to Azkaban so it's confirmed that Lily and James Potter would have been the same age when they died.  I was really happy to see that Lily and James had been recast in the POA movie.

At the end of the film, Harry kills Quirrell in self-defense.  So in this version, Harry sees someone die but he doesn't see thestrals in the COS movie.  Huh... that's interesting.

CAST CREDITS