Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald is again written by JK Rowling and directed by David Yates and continues the tale of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who is secretly assigned by Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law) to spy on the powerful wizard Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) who is wanting to make the wizarding world the dominant one even going to evil means to make that a reality.
As someone who is not a Potterhead I thought this film was okay and I want to start with the positives firstly Mr Redmayne continues to be good as Newt Scamander and times his line deliveries very well in terms of when to be funny, when to be sweet and when to show his fascination with the creatures he collects and nutures and also Jude Law is very good as the young Dumbledore though sadly he is given very little to do in the film.
And this leads me to the 2 main problems I have with this movie:
- Firstly Ms Rowling’s screenplay is very fragmented in its structure and while watching I felt like I was watching the draft of a book on film instead of a script, one section in particular which was quite good feels like the chapter of a book where the story stops to develop a few things outside of it that in a book where you have no time limits and restrictions work great but as a screenplay the clock is ticking and anything that feels like a distraction just has to go.
And also there are times where the script struggles to give any meaningful screen time to its large cast of characters, the majority of the characters introduced in the first Fantastic Beasts film find their screen time diminished, some of the new characters don’t feel as developed as they should and Dumbledore just feels like a glorified cameo and doesn’t have anywhere near as much screen time as he should have.
- Secondly Grindelwald is a fucking boring character and it isn’t helped that Depp is just doing the same bloody performance he’s been doing for the past 5 to 10 years where he has the makeup on, he’s got the Jack Sparrow esque voice and he sounds like he’s just goddamn sleep walking through the whole thing until he gets the pay cheque.
And look I know I shouldn’t judge but Grindelwald is the title character and he should be a compelling and menacing villain who wants to shake the order of the world asunder by preying on wizard’s weaknesses and then compelling them to spread his message across the world even if it means resorting to violence but there is none of that because its stuck in this boring performance that has outstayed its welcome, it’s a real shame that Colin Farrell wasn’t able to be the villain for this new Wizarding World series as he would’ve been a much better villain and a good contrast to both Mr Redmayne and Mr Law.
And so that was Fantastic Beasts and the Crimes of Grindelwald and look as someone who isn’t a Potterhead I didn’t hate the film but it also did very little for me as its script feels more like a book that’s disjointed and its lead villain is stuck with a boring performance, 2 out of 5.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Film Review - The Girl in the Spiders Web (2018)
The Girl in the Spiders Web is not based off of the late Steig Larsson Millenium books but is based off of the book written after his death and this time Claire Foy replaces Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander who is asked to investigate the disappearance of Project Freefire which could give one person complete control of the US Nuclear Arsenal though as she investigates the case demons from her past also emerge.
The Girl in the Spiders Web is very much familiar to me in that I feel about this movie the same way I felt about Pacific Rim: Uprising back in March in that this film is not terrible or awful in any way but really suffers from the long shadow the 2011 film David Fincher made based off of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book which I absolutely loved.
Ms Foy does a good job as Lisbeth but a lot of the time it feels like she is playing Catwoman/Selina Kyle as a lot of the film just feels very clean for the most part like its only a low ranking MA15+ film when it could so easily have been a high M rated film with some minor tweaking whereas the Fincher movie really felt like a great fit for him as a director it was a dark, nasty crime procedural that also peeked at some of the underbelly of human society something Fincher in films like Fight Club and Seven was no stranger to.
Here it feels like a Catwoman solo film in any other name where something gets stolen and Lisbeth has to get it back but that is only the films first big problem the second is the Blomkvist who was the co lead in the Fincher film and in the Larsson books is very very badly handled here he kind of just drifts into the story, does very little, means very little and then leaves that’s about it and it feels like he was inserted into the story during a script rewrite of an earlier draft that did not feature him in much capacity and yeah that’s that.
Look the Girl in the Spiders Web is not a bad film but its also a very pale shadow of the David Fincher film and like when I saw Pacific Rim: Uprising I just couldn’t help but think of the earlier film it followed which got me into the books after I saw it but the underuse of Blomkvist and it feeling more like a Catwoman film than a Dragon Tattoo story really bothered me, 2 out of 5.
The Girl in the Spiders Web is very much familiar to me in that I feel about this movie the same way I felt about Pacific Rim: Uprising back in March in that this film is not terrible or awful in any way but really suffers from the long shadow the 2011 film David Fincher made based off of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book which I absolutely loved.
Ms Foy does a good job as Lisbeth but a lot of the time it feels like she is playing Catwoman/Selina Kyle as a lot of the film just feels very clean for the most part like its only a low ranking MA15+ film when it could so easily have been a high M rated film with some minor tweaking whereas the Fincher movie really felt like a great fit for him as a director it was a dark, nasty crime procedural that also peeked at some of the underbelly of human society something Fincher in films like Fight Club and Seven was no stranger to.
Here it feels like a Catwoman solo film in any other name where something gets stolen and Lisbeth has to get it back but that is only the films first big problem the second is the Blomkvist who was the co lead in the Fincher film and in the Larsson books is very very badly handled here he kind of just drifts into the story, does very little, means very little and then leaves that’s about it and it feels like he was inserted into the story during a script rewrite of an earlier draft that did not feature him in much capacity and yeah that’s that.
Look the Girl in the Spiders Web is not a bad film but its also a very pale shadow of the David Fincher film and like when I saw Pacific Rim: Uprising I just couldn’t help but think of the earlier film it followed which got me into the books after I saw it but the underuse of Blomkvist and it feeling more like a Catwoman film than a Dragon Tattoo story really bothered me, 2 out of 5.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Film Review - Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Bohemian Rhapsody was directed by Bryan Singer (though Dexter Fletcher did finish the final 2 weeks of the shoot) and stars Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury the front man for Queen and the movie chronicles their rise to fame and culminates with their thunderous performance at the Live Aid concert in 1985.
I was very excited to see this movie due to my love of Queen’s music, Bryan Singer’s 4 X-Men films and those amazing trailers for this movie which felt like mini pop videos in their own right but some of the early response also had me nervous about it, would it be another film from this year to bite the dust or would it be one that rocks me.
Well it is actually the latter as I really, really enjoyed this movie and I have to start with Mr Malek as Freddie as he simply IS Mr Mercury on screen, he embodies every aspect of the man so well that he should storm home with the best actor Academy Award early next year as this is the type of performance that that Oscar should embody, a performance that commands the screen, takes the film and runs with it and carries the whole thing on their shoulders.
He effortlessly captures the loneliness, the sense of wanting to belong, the isolation and the temperament of the man as well as the iconic showman that you just cannot take your eyes off him whenever he is on screen and when he is doing the Live Aid recreation it is simply electric and I was definitely buzzing after the film ended.
Speaking of those concert sequences they are terrific fun and look and sound great on a big cinema screen and during those scenes I couldn’t help but want to grab my empty bottle of water and pretend it was a microphone as they have such energy to them that it feels like your in that audience and the Live Aid recreation in particular really shines and I did get a little emotional during that climatic sequence.
But aside from Mr Malek, a lot of the films other performances work as well, Tom Hollander was good as Jim Beach the long time lawyer/manager of the group and a producer on this movie though at times I did think he felt like a stand in for Michael Fassbender who Singer worked with on Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, Lucy Bonython from Sing Street is also really good as Mary Austin Freddie’s long time friend and companion and Ben Hardy, Gwynlym Lee and Joseph Mazzello (the little boy from Jurassic Park) are also quite good as the other band members.
Now comes sadly the issues though these are minor issues for me and that is the script by Anthony McCarten which takes a lot of liberties in terms of the timeline of events as shown in the film as it crams in a lot within a 134 minute runtime and for me it worked well enough but I did think that at times the film dragged on with those events and shuffled around a little too much prior to the 1985 segments but there is one scene in particular and I don’t want to say much more that really got to my heartstrings.
And so that was my review of Bohemian Rhapsody and I really enjoyed this movie despite some issues with the timeline shuffling in the script but musical biopics are tough to make when their based on real life musicians as the real people will have to be involved to get the clearance for the songs and that means sacrifices have to be made unless you do an Eddie and the Cruisers type film but all that aside I do highly recommend this movie, 4 out of 5.
I was very excited to see this movie due to my love of Queen’s music, Bryan Singer’s 4 X-Men films and those amazing trailers for this movie which felt like mini pop videos in their own right but some of the early response also had me nervous about it, would it be another film from this year to bite the dust or would it be one that rocks me.
Well it is actually the latter as I really, really enjoyed this movie and I have to start with Mr Malek as Freddie as he simply IS Mr Mercury on screen, he embodies every aspect of the man so well that he should storm home with the best actor Academy Award early next year as this is the type of performance that that Oscar should embody, a performance that commands the screen, takes the film and runs with it and carries the whole thing on their shoulders.
He effortlessly captures the loneliness, the sense of wanting to belong, the isolation and the temperament of the man as well as the iconic showman that you just cannot take your eyes off him whenever he is on screen and when he is doing the Live Aid recreation it is simply electric and I was definitely buzzing after the film ended.
Speaking of those concert sequences they are terrific fun and look and sound great on a big cinema screen and during those scenes I couldn’t help but want to grab my empty bottle of water and pretend it was a microphone as they have such energy to them that it feels like your in that audience and the Live Aid recreation in particular really shines and I did get a little emotional during that climatic sequence.
But aside from Mr Malek, a lot of the films other performances work as well, Tom Hollander was good as Jim Beach the long time lawyer/manager of the group and a producer on this movie though at times I did think he felt like a stand in for Michael Fassbender who Singer worked with on Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, Lucy Bonython from Sing Street is also really good as Mary Austin Freddie’s long time friend and companion and Ben Hardy, Gwynlym Lee and Joseph Mazzello (the little boy from Jurassic Park) are also quite good as the other band members.
Now comes sadly the issues though these are minor issues for me and that is the script by Anthony McCarten which takes a lot of liberties in terms of the timeline of events as shown in the film as it crams in a lot within a 134 minute runtime and for me it worked well enough but I did think that at times the film dragged on with those events and shuffled around a little too much prior to the 1985 segments but there is one scene in particular and I don’t want to say much more that really got to my heartstrings.
And so that was my review of Bohemian Rhapsody and I really enjoyed this movie despite some issues with the timeline shuffling in the script but musical biopics are tough to make when their based on real life musicians as the real people will have to be involved to get the clearance for the songs and that means sacrifices have to be made unless you do an Eddie and the Cruisers type film but all that aside I do highly recommend this movie, 4 out of 5.
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