Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

November 17, 2018 at 2:47 pm | Posted in 2018 | Leave a comment
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Well, I think there is one thing we can all agree on: “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” has to be one of the most unwieldy (and worst) movie titles in recent history. The second film in the second Rowling film series, “Grindelwald” takes place in New York, London and Paris in 1925. It follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he is recruited against his will into the escalating battle with Grindelwald (Johnny Depp in his best role in years). After the gentle slapstick nature and light-heartedness of the first “Fantastic Beasts” movie, it is clear Rowling, et al. are returning to the same dark, serial format that has served them so well. This is not a bad thing. I was most engaged with the “Harry Potter” series when it went dark, and the goofiness was the least engaging thing about the last “Fantastic Beasts.” This will, no doubt, be one of several films in the “Grindelwald” series. Grindelwald is a promising villain, but the writing needs to be a lot better if I am going to be drawn in. While riddled (may I say Tom Riddled, or is that going too far?) with lots of beautiful special effects and some fun creatures, this film has little else to offer the viewer. The plot meanders pointlessly for the films 2:15 run time, only getting any real momentum in the last couple of scenes. My impression was that the story was an excuse to stitch together all the cool effects they wanted to show the audience on their way to the 30-minutes of story they had actually written. The characters felt equally ill-conceived. There is real complexity in Grindelwald’s and Dumbledore’s backstory, but it is only hinted at in the vaguest way. I hope that’s because they are saving that story for a future movie and not because they are afraid to make Dumbledore’s sexuality too overt. As much as I love Redmayne, I find Newt to be too awkward and painfully shy to draw an audience in. The sexual/romantic tension between Newt and Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), or Leta Lastrange (Zoë Kravitz), or his animal keeper all fell flat. He was so repressed that nothing really showed through; no relationships had any impact. The only relationship that seemed to contain any emotional punch was the one between Queenie and Jacob (Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler), particularly at the end of the film. I will be curious to see how that develops. Ultimately, this felt like an empty affair: a lot of flashy effects and a lot of setting the stage for something Rowling presumably has planned. Well, let’s hope that comes quickly. I’m not sure I can sit through too many more films like this one, on the way to something better.

Alien: Covenant

May 21, 2017 at 7:42 pm | Posted in 2017 | Leave a comment
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The genius’s curse. A filmmaker redefines the industry with a groundbreaking film. The second in the series is as good as, or better than, the first. And then it all goes down hill… And we end up with “The Godfather, Part III,” ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, and now “Prometheus” and “Covenant.” In fact, it seems that Ridley Scott has fallen into the same trap that George Lucas did– the need to over explain, and therefore over complicate. Everything was fine when the Force was just the Force and evil aliens wreaked havoc on unsuspecting crew members. But now we have midichlorians and an unbelievably complicated backstory about how humans and the aliens came into being. It is all so ponderous and complex that it cannot help but slow the story down. When this film is focused on the aliens, it works. Scott has faithfully captured HR Giger’s imagery beautifully. We spin through disorientingly similar passageways on spaceships and in dead alien cities. There are some great scary moments and several good jumps to be had, just not nearly enough of them. These scenes, which helped to make the first movies such classics, are painfully few and far between. The rest of the time, we get Michael Fassbender talking to himself about life, morality and who cares what else. Too much of this film was tedious and sometimes baffling. There was an air of weightyness that hung over the whole story, as though Scott has something important he wants to say. Unfortunately, that becomes the focus of the film. The audience would have been better served had he simply made another really good horror film. It seems that, as soon as a director understands that they have created something important, they shouldn’t be allowed to keep working on it. The line between importance and self-importance seems to be an awfully thin one that is just too easy to cross.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

November 19, 2016 at 1:41 pm | Posted in 2016 | Leave a comment
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Rebooting a very successful franchise can be a risky gamble; just look at Star Wars. Fans have incredibly high expectations. They love the world just as it is but they don’t want a retread of what they have already seen. How do you create new characters who do not look like shadows of previously beloved ones but can still find a place in this world? How do you even reenter this world in a way that feels fresh and familiar at the same time? To her credit, JK Rowling has done a fairly good job of doing exactly that. We are brought back to the world of Harry Potter, only we have been transported to 1920s America and introduced to whole new set of characters. The four main protagonists (two men and two women) are sufficiently different from Harry, Hermione and Ron, so as to not feel like cheap copies. Also, the arc of this story is utterly different from the Potter series. Much credit should be given for her ability to create such a different look into the same universe. That said, I am not sure that this one is as compelling as the original. Newt Scamander is not nearly so engaging a character as Harry Potter. He lacks the sense of destiny that was a driving force in the original books. Also, where Harry was a moral compass (righteous, brave, charismatic and unflinching in the face of destiny), Newt is timid, painfully shy and prone to tears (he reminded me more of Redmayne’s “Danish Girl” than anything else). He’s likable as a character, but only in a “hey, buck up. You’re better than you think you are” kind of way. The audience likes him because he seems vulnerable and misunderstood. He does not command attention the way Harry Potter did, nor does he seem to have the hidden potential that drove our interest in Harry. In addition, this story lacks some of the fundamental tension of the original series. There is no great rising danger that we know is coming (though we are given hints of a potential future villain). Rather, this story is more of a goofy romp around New York, full of slapstick humor and dashes of sentimentality, that may work more for other audiences than for me. The story worked best when it strayed back into darker territory, as it did with Samantha Morton (“Sweet and Lowdown,” “Minority Report”) as the anti-witch evangelist and Ezra Miller (“The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” and The Flash in the new DC movies) as her disturbed son, Credence Barebone. The name is classic Rowling and the character is full of pain and menace, played perfectly by Miller. We are introduced to a lot of new, silly creatures but also to one terrifying one, an obscurus. It isn’t quite as good as a dementor, but it’s pretty good. In fact, my main takeaway from this film is that, it isn’t as good as the original series yet, but it could be. This film was fun and mostly silly. If the next ones get darker, as the original series did, then I think there is real potential here.

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