Harry Potter has never been great literature, and the movies have never been great cinema. Whereas the books are a genial mishmash of well-selected 20th century children’s authors, the films have struggled to find their own integrity outside the Scholastic merchandising machine.

The first couple of movies are not so much films as greatest hits reels of the most memorable moments from the books, translated as literally as possible to screen, with barely a thread of contextual material to bind them together. Generally speaking with each sequel the scripts stand a little better on their own feet, the pacing gets less frantic, the direction less arbitrarily showy, and the central performances grow more confident.

The Half-Blood Prince is the sixth movie, and the second directed by David Yates. Although not as masterful as Goblet of Fire director Mike Newell, Yates does solid work here, keeping a steady pace without getting too hyper and linking shots or scenes with some lovely (often heavily effects-laden) camerawork. At one point there’s a long swoop out the window of a moving train, and into another window further down. Gratuitous, perhaps. Yet it does give the viewer a welcome sense of context and scope, binding together a world that is easy to dismiss when presented as a series of scene fragments and jump cuts.

At this point the story itself is beginning to feel like standard pulp melodrama, in place of the quirky British satire of the earlier volumes. How much of that is the continually literal adaptation, which prefers fact and action over manner and nuance, and how much of it is just the nature of the beast, I am not prepared to speculate. The books wore on me long before volume six, and I figure that the films have become adequate enough to fill me in on any significant developments at a much lower level of investment.

I suppose that’s the best summation I can give. If you haven’t read the books, and just want to know the story, the films have become good enough. Considering where they started, that’s something of an achievement.