Review: "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"

What an utterly imcomprehensible movie.

J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" spinoff, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," was a lackluster effort that showed that successful novelists don't always make for good screenwriters. It featured a drab, uninteresting protagonist, a retread of the Harry/Voldemort dynamic of good/handsome young wizard versus the evil/ugly old wizard, and a lot of hard-to-follow CGI. Even though it only came out two years ago, I barely have any solid memory of it.

The not-needed sequel, "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald," is so nonsensical that I spent the entire 2¼-hour run time just trying to figure out who was who and what was what. I still didn't have it all properly sorted by the end.

You may recall that the end of the first film, magical zoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, still stooping and mumbling his dialogue) had battled a member of the Ministry of Magic, which acts as the law enforcement for the parallel world of wizards and witches, who was revealed to be the nefarious Grindelwald. Like Voldemort, he believes that magic-users are destined to rule the world over the non-magical Muggles, especially those of pure blood.

He quickly escapes his confinement in a daring mid-air battle, and sets about leading his revolt. Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law), the most powerful wizard in the land, refuses to take on Grindelwald himself, and begs Newt to do so instead.

"You do not seek power or popularity," Dumbledore tells Newt as the pretext of why he should do battle in his place. Flashbacks, however, reveal a friendship of a... special nature from when he and and Grindelwald were young.

(Rowling still keep insisting, in a cheap bit of post-publication revision, that Dumbledore is gay, though as a screenwriter she hasn't yet seen fit to make it explicit.)

This sets off another round of international magic-hopping, face-offs, Newt being chased by the ministry "aurors," including his own brother, and the introduction of some new critters from Newt's briefcase menagerie, including one that looks like one of those Chinese parade dragons brought to life.

Several side characters return, without good purpose. There's Newt's Muggle friend, Jacob (Dan Fogler), and his witch lady love, Queenie (Alison Sudol). Credence (Ezra Miller), a disturbed wizard everyone refers to as "a boy" even though Miller looks to be pushing 30, acts as the Macguffin everyone is chasing after because he's the key to something.

(Things are always keys to something in the Harry Potter universe.)

Katherine Waterston returns as Tina, an auror who arrested Newt in the last movie and then fell in love with him, although no one actually says so because everyone's British. This movie literally has no idea what to do with her, so she's shunted off to the sides of the action and we largely forget about her. We're to believe that she's an expert investigator, but took at face value an erroneous wizard newspaper article claiming Newt was engaged to Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) rather than Newt's brother, Theseus (Callum Turner), thus hurting her feelings.

Johnny Depp is pretty much the only interesting thing in the movie, needling and coaxing like a mythical serpent, essentially colorless with a shock of platinum hair, death's-head pallor and mismatched eyes. As written he's merely a more charismatic version of Voldemort, but still, whenever he's onscreen you can't take your eyes off him.

The opposite can be said for Newt, who's just as bloodless and boring as the last time around. It often happens that the protagonist of a story, especially one with a fantastical backdrop, is made to be less interesting than the whiz-bang supporting characters and villains, acting as a familiar anchor for the audience to relate to.

But Redmayne's Newt is just a drip. The fact that he's caught in a raging storm of impossible-to-follow subplots and eye candy makes it understandable that he's swallowed by his own story.

Video review: "Alien: Covenant"

“Not an utter embarrassment” is unfortunately the new bar for films in the “Alien” franchise, and I’m pleased to say the latest iteration manages to clear that low threshold quite easily.

It breaks no new ground and gives us no character as compelling as Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. But it puts the people through their familiar paces with technical and emotional vitality in a way that will leave audiences not exactly thrilled, but surely not disappointed.

It’s nice that original director Ridley Scott, after seeing his movie pass through the hands of multiple imitators, finally took back the reins himself with “Prometheus” and now this film, which exists as its sequel within the (admittedly somewhat murky) timeline.

The set-up is that a space ship is carrying thousands of hibernating humans (and some fertilized embryos) to a distant solar system to colonize it. When a solar flare damages the vessel, the crew is awakened early – all except the captain, who is incinerated in his sleeping pod.

Not wanting to face the prospect of living and dying before they reach their destination, and too scared to go back into hibernation, the crew settles on a nearby planet that appears to be able to sustain life. Billy Crudup is the fickle second-in-command calling the shots, while Katherine Waterston is the more sensible subordinate who we know will eventually take over.

The rest of the cast includes Carmen Ejogo, Demian Bichir, Amy Seimetz and Danny McBride. Interestingly, the crew is made of matched romantic pairs, so there’s a lot of tension about protecting loved ones and, soon enough, mourning them.

Michael Fassbender returns as an android named Walter assigned to help the humans. He previously played another, more malevolent “synthetic,” David, in “Prometheus,” and that character turns up again, a bit implausibly. Their clashes and ruminations about the mystery of human behavior represent the movie’s high point.

When the planet turns out to be populated with the iconic aliens -- face-huggers that give way to two-mouthed killers -- the blood starts flying, the character clashes grow more intense and the aliens start spreading.

Taken purely as a popcorn flick, “Alien: Covenant” is filled with plenty of creepy, moody sequences set apart by bursts of high-octane action. It’s not like it was in “Alien” or “Aliens,” but it gets a passing grade.

But seriously, when are people going to figure out the thing that made the first two “Alien” movies great was not the critters, but Ripley? Maybe Scott or somebody will realize Weaver is still around, and still pretty spry.

Bonus features are pretty substantial, starting with a feature-length commentary track by Scott. It’s bothersome that so many storied directors -- Spielberg, Coppola, etc. -- have refused to do commentaries. He also takes part in a “Master Class” documentary on making the film.

There are also a dozen deleted or extended scenes, gallery of production photos, and six making-of featurettes.

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Review: "Alien: Covenant"

Everyone knows the “Alien” franchise stopped being good after the second movie, reaching its nadir when the iconic mouth-within-a-mouth critter squared off against the Predator.

Original director Ridley Scott, no doubt grumpy about the state into which other filmmakers had led his creation, came back in 2012 with the moody, dizzy “Prometheus,” which he coyly declined to describe as a prequel, saying it “shared DNA” with his 1979 movie.

Well, now Scott has made a sequel, “Alien: Covenant,” and there’s no more doubt remaining about where the two latest films fall within the canon. (Squarely.) These events take place 10 years after “Prometheus,” and still some decades before “Alien.”

It’s energetic and fast-paced, covering familiar territory with (mostly) new characters playing out a lot of the same scenarios and musing upon the same themes. Despite the lack of originality, I liked it better than any of the other “Alien” movies since 1986.

It’s probably the closest inheritor to the story and mood of the original, with a crew of woefully unprepared humans exploring an unknown planet where alien bugaboo will infect them, releasing larger versions that grow rapidly and kill even quicker.

Again, a female junior officer chafes under the yoke of clearly less competent male superiors, having to wait her turn until a sufficient number of them have died to place her in command. Here it’s Katherine Waterston as Daniels. As before, characters are known simply by their last names, and share a sort of martial comradery.

There are some differences, however. The ship Covenant is traveling to colonize a far planet, carrying 2,000 colonists in cryo-sleep and another 1,400 or so human embryos to speed up the population-building. Interestingly, pretty much all of the crew are paired off into romantic couples – an arrangement better suited to starting a new life far, far away.

“Alien: Covenant” has lots of fascinating ideas like this that it never bothers to really explore. Such as the captain, Oram (Billy Crudup), being a man of faith whose leadership is questioned by a crew more typical of an agnostic future.

Actually, they doubt him because he’s a squirrelly, inconsiderate weakling who was never meant to be the leader in the first place. The real captain (a cameo by James Franco) dies in the opening sequence, in which a solar flare damages the Covenant, necessitating the early awakening of the crew, and his hyper-sleep pod fails horribly.

They receive a strange signal they believe is human from an uncharted planet. Since no one wants to brave the sleep pods after the accident, and this planet can sustain human life, they decide to go there to check it out as an alternative to their destination. Daniels and Oram clash over this, and we know who is going to turn out to be right.

Demián Bichir plays the chief of the security squad (along with his husband – hey, it’s the year 2104, people); Amy Seimetz plays Faris, the hyperventilating one; Carmen Ejogo is Karine, Oram’s mate and the science chief. Danny McBride shows he can not be goofy as Tennessee, the cowboy hat-wearing pilot who gets to show his right stuff.

Michael Fassbender reappears playing Walter, the creepy “synthetic” – aka android – assigned to the Covenant. He’s a later model of David, the trouble-making synthetic from “Prometheus.”

Mild spoiler alert: Fassbender also has a dual role playing David himself, whom we might have dismissed, seeing as how he was decapitated in the last movie and all. The two get to have a number of philosophical conversations about the nature of humanity before the inevitable square-off.

“Alien: Covenant” doesn’t break any new ground or raise the bar for the franchise. But it’s entertaining and doesn’t embarrass itself in front of its forbears.

Review: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"

 The act of watching “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is like riding an amusement park ride with the speed set way too fast. There are indeed many amazing creatures in the movie, but they whiz by so quickly they barely have time to register. Characters are introduced and misplaced in a flash. Storylines stretch out before us like a tangle of vines, and we must step lively to figure out which ones lead to dead ends.

Even Eddie Redmayne as the main character, Newt Scamander, does not seem entirely there. Chin perpetually in his chest, eyes averted, he stammers and fidgets like a fourth-rate Hugh Grant character in a romantic comedy, minus all the charm. He’s dizzy and ditzy, a mop-headed sorcerous dipstick who’s more a set of quirks than any attempt to build a character.

(His mushed-mouth line readings don’t help, either.)

“Fantastic Beasts” was a 2001 novel by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling that purported to be the textbook written by Newt, a famed “magizoologist,” that Harry and the gang read their first year at Hogwarts. It wasn’t actually a tale of his adventures, more a creature compendium complete with doodles and scribbled notes.

Now Rowling takes her first stab at screenwriting to chronicle Newt’s adventures as a young man in 1920s New York City. David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter movies, is brought in for continuity.

Newt arrives in the Big Apple after a year abroad, studying and collecting magical creatures in the hopes of keeping them safe from wizards and witches who might do them harm out of fear. He carries a magical suitcase that he can step into and out of, and inside is his zoo full of critters. It’s enormous in there -- complete with different ecosystems for the various beasts’ needs -- but some of the naughtier ones have a tendency to escape.

Indeed, the entire manic story is about creatures getting loose from the suitcase as Newt and his companions race around to recapture them. Of course, they also deliberately free some others as circumstances demand, so the whole thing turns into a bizarre offshoot of “Ghostbusters.”

It’s stuff like this that drives me buggo. If Newt is a talented enough wizard to create a whole world inside a bag, why couldn’t he make a decent lock to keep them sealed in and safe? Also, since we know about wizards/witches living separately from the non-magical humans, how would these creatures exist in the wild next to regular critters without ever being discovered?

Almost as soon as Newt steps off the boat, his wayward creatures are blamed for several disturbing incidents around the city -- described as a dark wind with glowing white eyes tearing up buildings and streets. He’s hauled in by Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), an interloping bureaucrat with the American magical authorities who’s been busted down rank for past transgressions. They’re briefly locked up by Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), the Director of Magical Security. With his martial bearing and contrasting black-and-grey hairdo, we just know he’s up to no good.

There are a lot of other characters in the mix -- too many to describe, and certainly too many for the filmmakers to adequately juggle.

There’s Porpentina’s sister Queenie (Alison Sudol), who’s got a Marilyn Monroe va-va-voom thing going on; she can read minds but isn’t bothered by the lustful thoughts men have about her. Dan Fogler plays Jacob Kowalski, a good-natured No-Maj (that’s American for muggle) who dreams of starting a bakery and gets unwittingly roped into the fray so he can ask lots of questions and carry the exposition.

Loitering around the edges of the story are the Second Salemers, who want to bring back the witch trials with a vengeance. They’re led by Mary Lou Barebon (Samantha Morton), a terrifying puritanical figure who adopts urchins off the street, then uses and abuses them. Credence (Ezra Miller) is her eldest and creepiest charge.

There’s also the rich and powerful Shaw family, with Jon Voight as the newspaper magnate patriarch, whose reason for inclusion in the movie remains a mystery till the end. A loathsome goblin gangster (voice by Ron Perlman) makes a brief impression with his backward-bent fingers.

I spent most of my time watching “Fantastic Beasts” just trying to catch up. What was the name of that creature? What did Newt just say? What’s this about a girl he once loved? What exactly are these fearsome “obscurials” we keep hearing about?

It’s often said that the main challenge in adapting a book to the screen is paring it down to size. This movie’s got a novel’s worth of imagination, all spun together in a less-than-magical vortex.

Video review: "Steve Jobs"

Let's be clear: although "Steve Jobs" is based on a biography by Walter Isaacson, who received the official blessing of the Apple computer pioneer, the movie is an utter fabrication from beginning to end.

Well, maybe not totally. It is about Steve Jobs. And includes conversations with several key figures in his life, spaced out over the years. And it shows the launch of actual iconic Apple products, including the original Macintosh and iPhone.

And the film depicts Jobs as both visionary and bully -- qualities that everyone who dealt with him agreed he shared in equal, plentiful quantity.

But beyond that, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle have not really tried to make a factual biopic of Jobs. Rather, they are staging a sort of Shakespearean rumination on the man and the myth. Jobs encounters the most important people in his life, nearly all of whom have turned against him, almost like Scrooge with his sundry ghosts.

The movie is not just an exaltation of Jobs the technology visionary, but also an examination of how his personal failings brought him low. "Steve Jobs" is more about the idea of the man than the flesh-and-blood one who left this mortal coil in 2011.

Michael Fassbender is commanding and slithery in the title role. Perhaps deliberately, he looks and sounds absolutely nothing like the real incarnation we know from video, usually talking about how some expensive new gadget was going to forever change our lives. Fassbender's Jobs is hyper-smart, super aggressive and views every social interaction as a contest to be won.

Kate Winslet is terrific as Barbara Hoffman, his right-hand woman and fixer. Other recurring characters are Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, an early Apple developer; Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, Apple CEO and Jobs mentor-turned-nemesis; Seth Rogen as former partner Steve Wozniak; Katherine Waterston plays his resentful ex-girlfriend.

This fictional version of Steve Jobs may or not bear much relation to the real guy. But "Steve Jobs" is a gripping tour de force portrait of an overpowering personality.

Bonus features aren't terribly extensive, but they are quite meaty.

There is a lengthy making-of documentary. And not one but two feature-length commentary tracks: one by Boyle, the other by Sorkin and editor Elliot Graham.

It's too bad that actors are so rarely included in these conversations, because it makes for some wonderful insights. Maybe that'll come in "Steve Jobs 2.0."

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Review: "Steve Jobs"

"Steve Jobs" is the second screenplay by Aaron Sorkin that peeks behind the fabricated legend of an Information Age titan and finds a small boy bearing many scars who lashes out at those around him. It's not quite on the level of the Oscar-winning "The Social Network," but even a half-step below is pretty rarified territory.

Michael Fassbender plays the title role of Apple co-founder Jobs, a man who was equal parts visionary and bully. As one character points out to him, he couldn't write code or create circuit boards or really do much of anything practical, but was a master at getting those who could to synthesize products in dynamic new ways.

Jobs didn't believe in letting the customer tell you what they wanted; he would invent a need they didn't know they had, then construct a product and marketing bombardment to convince people to satisfy it.

Directed by Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire"), "Steve Jobs" is already being attacked as a largely fictional version of the man and those around him. I don't doubt that. Although based on the book by Walter Isaacson, a mostly friendly portrait in which Jobs willingly participated prior to his 2011 death, Sorkin conducted extensive interviews and research on his own, and has used the text as a mere springboard.

What we're seeing is less biography than cogitation.

Start with the story structure, which is divided into a three-act play format, each centered around pivotal product launches in Jobs' career: the Mac in 1984, the NeXT cube in 1988 and the iMac in 1998. Each time Jobs is visited by key people in his life, and spars with them, like Scrooge and his ghosts. They difference is that here the man rejects the lessons his interlocutors would impart.

There's a whole lot of big speeches and emotional tirades, always in the minutes leading right up to the moment Jobs is supposed to go on stage and wow the audience. Pretty amazing coincidence, that.

Some of what is put forward is pure bullshit. For instance, Jobs' marketing chief and major domo, Barbara Hoffman (Kate Winslet), is shown putting out fires all three times, when she actually retired in 1995. And Jobs is shown as using the NeXT launch to springboard himself back into the Apple camp, when really that didn't happen until a decade later.

So keep in mind as you watch Jobs battling with co-founder and rare friend Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) or Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) that we're not seeing stuff that actually happened. These are Sorkin's words, not the real people's.

This is Hollywood-style high art here, folks: 'Lying in order to impart a greater truth.'

That's reflected by Fassbender in the title role, a sterling actor who does not resemble or sound like Jobs in the faintest. But it's still a whiz-bang performance, portraying a man of limitless imagination and stunted emotions. Here was a guy who denied the paternity of his daughter, Lisa, for years, allowing her and her mother to subsist on welfare while he became worth billions.

The movie is essentially a series of dialogues between Jobs and one other person. With each he has a different motivation and mindset, and that evolves over time along with events. He starts out friendly with Sculley, even seeing him as a father figure, but that changes when dad orchestrates his ouster from Apple. (Though, as the movie claims, it was a mutual assured destruction scenario.) For "Woz," there is affection tempered with resentment, each man recognizing and desiring qualities in the other they themselves lack.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Andy Hertzfeld, a key figure in the early days of Apple, who is bullied and berated by Jobs but somehow attains a sort of geeky grace with time. The relationship with Hoffman is probably the deepest, as she seemed to be the one person in his life who didn't need anything from Jobs and could stand up to him without endangering her own position.

The face-offs with his daughter's mother (Katherine Waterston) are more rote than the others and therefore less interesting; we know how it's going to play out, with recriminations and eventual demands for money, and wait for them to pass. His interactions with Lisa probably best mirror reality: halted, fractured, but gradually moving toward warmth.

"Steve Jobs" reminds me of a phrase used in another context but pertinent here: "Fake but accurate." It's a remarkable film that gets to the essence of a person largely by making things up.

What a magnificent fib.