Film

“Hey, baby. on a scale of one to America, how free are you tonight?”

The magic has gone

I was a little late to the Harry Potter party. I didn’t like the first movie (a bunch of kids who didn’t know how to act participating in a big costume pageant), thought the second was really good, and then loved the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a masterpiece).

The Harry movies got a little inconsistent after Azkaban, but the character rose above any of the mediocre moments delivered by director David Yates, who helmed the final four movies.

Yates returns to helm the next chapter in the Potter universe, a prequel called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the title of a textbook Harry studied at Hogwarts. The film takes place well before Harry’s time, as the world of wizardry comes to New York City in the 1920s.

Unfortunately, Beasts struggles with some of the same problems the first Harry Potter had. It’s a sometimes goodlooking movie with a screenplay that never takes hold. It’s all over the place, with no real sense of purpose other than setting you up for future movies. It’s nothing but an overblown place-setter.

In place of Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry, we get Eddie Redmayne’s Newt, author of the infamous textbook and caretaker for a variety of “fantastic beasts.” The film opens with him coming to New York toting a suitcase with a variety of beasts bursting to get out.

Some of them do, indeed, escape and wreak havoc. Most notably a little platypus-looking thing called Niffler. There’s a fun moment when Newt opens his case, and drops into it like it contains a staircase. It reveals a vast home for the creatures inside, where he feeds them and plays.

And that’s it, really. The movie is a big setup for the occasional sequences involving Redmayne

interacting with special effects. The creatures might look relatively cool, but none of them register as great characters that move the plot along. Dan Fogler delivers what turns out to be the film’s best performance as Kowalski, a wannabe baker who winds up crossing paths with Newt while trying to get a bank loan. He’s a “muggle” dabbling in a non-muggle universe, and some of the film’s better moments come from Fogler’s reactions to crazy sights. He also has a little love story that’s sort of sweet. Ezra Miller, DC’s current The Flash in cinemas, plays Credence Barebone, a suspiciously worried looking fellow who has a nasty secret. Colin Farrell is on hand as an agent for a secret society seeking witches and wizards, and he also has a big secret. Of course, as the press has already announced, Johnny Depp has a role in this new universe extension, one that will surely Fantastic Beasts and get bigger than his two-line appearance in this film. Where to Find Them There’s definite joy in simply seeing the extended 12345 Potter universe come to life again on film, even if Harry isn’t present, and the film Director: David Yates itself is somewhat of a dud. Starring: Eddie Redmayne, There are many more to come, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller with Yates already announced as the director for four more chapters allegedly to be released in an every-otheryear cycle. So there will be more movie wizardry, more beasts and another big wizard showdown. This time, it looks to be a younger Dumbledore facing off against Depp’s character, who is a precursor to Voldemort. Wait a minute, talking about all that cool future stuff is distracting. The matter at hand is the current film, which is an ultimate bore. See it knowing that 1) things will probably get more exciting in future chapters and 2) Nifflers aren’t half as interesting as Hippogriffs. Also, maybe Yates should take a break from directing these films and give somebody else a shot. Bringing back Alfonso Cuaron, director of Azkaban, would be a nice move. Yates has done well, but Beasts has proven that his approach might be getting a little stale. Ω

3The Accountant This plays out like a deranged Batmanwith-a-calculator action flick. Ben Affleck plays Christian Wolff, a high functioning autistic man who has managed to harness his extreme intelligence with numbers and physical tics down into the strangest of professions. By day, he’s your average accountant helping a farm owner find tax loopholes to save a few thousand bucks. At night, he’s some sort of accountant ninja who can take out a room full of mob guys with a dinner knife and some totally Batman forearm blasts to the face. Christian takes jobs laundering books for dirty folks all over the world and, while he does have a modest, sparsely decorated home, he also has a mobile man cave—or, should I say, Batcave— that keeps all the spoils of his riches—money, gold, Jackson Pollock paintings and, yes, collector’s items like Batmancomic books. During one job, trying to find missing money for a prosthetics company led by John Lithgow, he takes a liking to fellow accountant Dana (the invaluable Anna Kendrick), and they conspire to find the missing money, which, of course, wasn’t really supposed to happen.

4Arrival Director Denis Villeneuve has made one of the year’s best science fiction films. Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics teacher crippled by visions of a daughter who died of a rare illness. She lives a life of seclusion, where the only thing she really does is teach her class and mope around her lakefront home. (Man, that must be one abnormally high paying teacher’s gig.) During class, a bunch of phones go off, a student instructs her to turn on the TV, and, bam, that’s how she discovers the planet seems to be getting a visit from an alien force. Strange giant pods have parked themselves all over the planet, and nobody knows their intent. A solemn military man (Forest Whitaker) shows up in Louise’s office and informs her the world needs her. She has a sense of purpose again. It isn’t long before she’s inside an alien ship trying to talk to the “Heptapods,” large elephant looking aliens with seven legs. She’s joined by a science officer played by a surprisingly low-key Jeremy Renner. The movie is drawing comparisons to Spielberg’s CloseEncountersoftheThirdKind. It’s a very different type of film from that one. If you’re looking for some sort of action pic, you will not find that here. This is a sci-fi movie that gives itself time to breathe, and while it does have a few action scenes, for the most part, it’s intellectual fare.

3Doctor Strange The latest Marvel movie is certainly one of the weirder ones, with Benedict Cumberbatch starring as the title character, a sorcerer who can cast spells and slip through passageways in time. It’s an origin story, showing how Strange loses his surgeon’s hands in an accident, travels to India, and learns about the mystical arts from The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). I have to admit, I didn’t always follow exactly what was going on in this movie, and I found some stretches a little convoluted and boring. When the movie soars, it soars high, and Cumberbatch winds up being a decent choice for the role, even with his weird American accent. Director Scott Derrickson (Sinister), who looked like an odd choice for a Marvel movie with his horror film pedigree, acquits himself nicely. The movie often plays like a Matrix-Inceptionmashup with a little bit of CrouchingTiger,HiddenDragonthrown in for good measure. The special effects are first rate. DoctorStrangeis a bit of an oddball character, and he’s supposed to factor into future Avengersmovies. I’ll be curious to see how he fits into the mix with the likes of AntMan and Hawkeye.

4The Edge of Seventeen Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig makes an impressive debut with this darkly funny take on the life of a modern day high school outcast. Hailee Steinfeld gives her best performance since TrueGritas Nadine, a highly intelligent teen going through an awkward stage when her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) starts dating her brother (Blake Jenner). Nadine is a practitioner of brutal honesty, which basically gets her ostracized at school and in trouble with her family. The only one who really stops to listen is her teacher (a hilarious Woody Harrelson) who actually has no choice given his profession. Craig’s screenplay is first rate, and her directing results in some great performances. Steinfeld is good enough here to be considered for her second Oscar nomination, while Jenner (who starred in this year’s EverybodyWantsSome!!) is equally good. This one draws comparison to the best of John Hughes, and I would call the movie a good companion piece to TheBreakfastClub. It’s good to see Steinfeld getting a role she very much deserves and exciting to see a new voice like Craig’s on the scene. Kyra Sedgwick is also very good in a supporting role as Nadine’s mother, while Hayden Szeto does excellent work as a high school boy who hasn’t mastered the art of properly asking somebody out. (His performance is all the more impressive because he’s over 30 playing 18.) This is one of the better family dramas of recent years, on top of being a solid, funny comedy.

4Hacksaw Ridge Mel Gibson directs his first movie in a decade and—surprise—the sucker bleeds. It bleeds a lot. As a director, Gibson stands alongside the likes of Sam Raimi, David Cronenberg and Peter Jackson as a master of body horror. Yes, I will go so far as to say his latest, HacksawRidge, is an all out horror film in parts. His depiction of a World War II battle makes George Romero’s DawnoftheDeadlook like Zootopia. The movie tells the true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a battlefield medic and the first of three conscientious objectors in U.S. warfare history to receive the Medal of Honor. The dude refused to pick up a gun, or any weapon for that matter, during his time served in Okinawa. That didn’t stop him from braving the battlefields with comrades, eventually saving the lives of 75 men during horrendously bloody battles. Much of the film’s first half is devoted to Doss’ backstory, a troubled childhood with his alcoholic World War I veteran father (a good Hugo Weaving) and an eventual romance with future wife Dorothy Schutte (Teresa Palmer). The early goings in the film are handled well, although schmaltzy at times. When Doss goes to boot camp and faces off against commanding officers like Captain Glover (Sam Worthington) and Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn), the film starts to get very interesting. Due to his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs, Doss refuses to pick up a rifle, and this gets him into all sorts of jams on the training field and in the barracks. After a detour for a court-martial hearing, Doss and his infantry mates are deployed to Japan. When the action switches to the scaling of the Maeda Escarpment a.k.a. Hacksaw Ridge, the movie becomes perhaps the most grueling war movie experience ever made.

1Inferno This is easily the worst of the Robert Langdon series, a series that was already pretty terrible in that both TheDa VinciCodeand Angels&Demonsblew ass. Ron Howard once again directs Tom Hanks as Langdon. When Langdon wakes up in a hospital room, with a bullet scratch on his head and loss of memory, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) is there to help out. Then, somebody starts toward Langdon’s hospital room guns blazing, and the so-called adventure begins. Langdon is having hallucinations about something akin to Dante’s “Inferno” while trying to work his way through amnesia. He’s in Italy, and he doesn’t know why, but Sienna, for reasons unknown, is going to stay by his side until he works things out. Langdon must race against time (and solve puzzles!) in order to save the world. The main “puzzle” Langdon has to solve this time is where a doomsday bomb containing a virus that will wipe out the majority of the Earth’s population has been planted. If he doesn’t find the Make Everybody Sick bomb, it will be an apocalypse like no other. Gee, I wonder if the whole world will die in a Ron Howard movie?