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: "The Legend of Tarzan"

Gosh knows how many cinematic iterations of “Tarzan” there have been, but the newest big-budget effort, “The Legend of Tarzan,” adds little to the oeuvre.

Watching Alexander Skarsgård swing on a vine, fight apes and men, deliver the ubiquitous yodel, etc., it finally occurred to me that this is actually a spiritual remake of another Tarzan movie – “Tarzan the Ape Man,” the 1981 version starring Bo Derek.

Like that soft-core piffle, the main point of this new movie is to delight in displays of human flesh. Except here we’re ogling the guy instead of the girl.

Skarsgård’s body has been transformed into the perquisite tangle of veiny bulges and rippled abdominal landscape favored in this age. We watch him flex and stretch and contemplate the desert of carbs in his diet. Maybe at some point we wonder why he would look like this, since as the story opens he left the jungle many years ago to take up the life of a British nobleman along with his lady love, Jane (Margot Robbie).

Somehow, I doubt they had P90X classes in 19th century England. And you can’t rock a six-pack from playing cricket.

Anyway, they get lured back to the Congo to investigate some allegations of bad behavior, including slavery, at the mining camps, kicking off a confrontation with Leon Rom, a Belgian baddie with dreams of capturing the entire diamond operation. He’s played by Christoph Waltz, in about his sixth version of the “off-putting Christoph Waltz villain.” Samuel L. Jackson tags along as an American envoy offering to help.

A few of the action scenes are gripping, but Tarzan himself is an uncharismatic drip. The truth is the screenplay gives most of the interesting stuff to the supporting actors. Tarzan is just there to be gazed upon.

Maybe 110 minutes of ogling is enough for thee, but not for me.

Bonus features are merely adequate, and are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions. They include five making-of featurettes and a public service announcement about the African ivory trade.

Movie:

Extras:

Video Review: "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

I have not always been Harry Potter's best friend. I liked the first two movies in the series well enough. But by the third -- when most observers believed the 10-year, eight-film epic journey really took things to another level -- I felt like I'd seen this movie too many times already. The saga of the boy wizard and Voldemort, his mortal enemy, had become episodic and repetitive to these eyes.

But the last film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" was the grand payoff that I had been waiting for. No more exposition, no more new characters cluttering up the storyline, no more sense of the filmmakers dawdling -- just the logical, satisfying and sweeping culmination of a long voyage.

The story picks up with Harry, Ron and Hermione returning from exile to challenge Voldemort, who's tightened his death's grasp on the entire wizarding world. There's a climactic assault on Hogwarts School by Death Eaters and their minions, a terrifying chase through a maze of dragons, and of course the epic final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.

The stakes are high, and many people die. There's a sense of grandiose finality to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." This is the end -- and what a glorious one.

Videos extras are decent, though not quite magical. The lack of a commentary track is rather galling.

The DVD has a making-of documentary, deleted scenes, a tour of the Warner Bros. London studio where most of the films were shot, plus three featurettes: "The Goblins of Gringotts with Warwick Davis," "The Women of Harry Potter," and "When Harry Left Hogwarts."

The Blu-ray edition has all those, plus two juicy additions. There's an interactive pop-up collection of behind-the-scenes videos, and a conversation between author J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows: Part 2"

Harry Potter's epic journey ends with power and majesty. For 10 years and seven previous films, we've waded through oceans of exposition and endured ever-burgeoning layers of new characters and mythology to absorb. All building to: This.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" does not disappoint. It is easily the best film of the series, mainly because we no longer feel the filmmakers stringing us along to set up yet another movie. People die, many of them central characters, and the audience recognizes the finality of these events.

In the final showdown with the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in still-creepy bone-white makeup) there are several sequences that will last with me.

A terrifying chase through a maze with serpents of fire in pursuit. An assault on Hogwarts School by an army of Voldemort's Death Eaters, complete with lumbering trolls and wraith-like Dementors, that approaches the battles of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. A sad but illuminating journey through the mind of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the Hogwarts professor of shifting loyalties.

And, of course, Harry's final toe-to-toe magical battle with Voldemort. Daniel Radcliffe has grown so much in this role, and he brings it all together in this last movie, showing us the character's bravery and contradictions, his rage and grief. The Harry Potter of "Deathly Hallows" is no longer a young boy excited by magic, but has turned out much like LoTR's Frodo, aged before his time and regretful of the events in which he's been chosen by fate to play a pivotal role.

There's also an element we haven't seen out of Voldemort before -- fear. Early in the story he realizes that Harry, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) have stumbled upon the secret to his forbidding dark power. By splitting his soul into hidden objects called Horcruxes, he's given them a chance to destroy him.

For those like me who have not read the series of books by J.K. Rowling, it can be a little difficult at times to keep up with the spinning narrative. At one point Harry pulls out some little golden doohickey that acquired somewhere in his travels, which I could summon no memory of. And then the thing it contains, which we had been told was the secret to Voldemort's downfall, ends up playing no role in their confrontation.

Contrastingly, diehard fans may complain about the film not containing every morsel of detail from the books. Such a thing is impossible -- even when director Peter Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves split the last book into two movies.

In that sense, this final film may be more satisfying to those who are innocent of Rowling's novels than the untold millions who have voraciously consumed them.

("Part 2" is being released in 3-D, and a more worthless and distracting use of that technology I have never seen. It adds little depth to the action, and dims the movie unnecessarily.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1"

A lot of people were upset that the final book in the "Harry Potter" series got split into two movies.

]Personally, I don't mind. At 2½ hours, Part 1 of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is so jam-packed with narrative, it's hard to imagine what a mess it would've been if the filmmakers had tried to cram in a few hundred more pages of story.

Not even the most powerful spell could've saved the movie.

As it is, this penultimate finale to the saga of a boy wizard battling his evil nemesis moves along at a crisp pace under the steady hands of director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves, who collaborated on the last three Harry Potter movies.

Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters have effectively taken over the government of the wizarding world, and begun a reign of terror aimed at killing Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint). Their mission is to find the Horcruxes in which Voldemort has split up pieces of his soul, rendering him effectively immortal.

The mood is darker than previous Potter films, and it's nice to see the series growing up with the young trio of actors at its center.

Video extras are rather paltry with the DVD version, but an upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo brings a wealth of goodies. The DVD contains only eight deleted/extended scenes totaling 11 minutes.

The centerpiece of the Blu-ray is a "Maximum Movie Mode" -- an interactive feature of pop-up scenes detailing various features of the production, hosted by actor Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy). There are other featurettes on topics like an on-set competition between the three stars, a round of golf in which Rupert Grint and others reflect on the series, and the making of the soundtrack.

The combo pack also includes a digital copy of the film, and a sneak preview of "Part 2."

Please note, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" will be released on video Friday, April 15.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1"

Right off the bat, the final chapter of the Harry Potter saga -- well, the first half of it, anyway -- broadcasts that its mood will be substantially darker than its predecessors. War is come, and wizards, witches and non-magical muggles alike are battening down the hatches.

For me, the seriousness of the outing was underlined when Hermione cast a spell to "obliviate" herself from her muggle parents' memories, in order to protect them from reprisal at the hands of Lord Voldemort's forces. Watching her portrait fade from the family photographs, and knowing what she's giving up, is unsettling and grave.

I also appreciated that the blooming of teenage romance, so annoyingly pushed on us during "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," is appropriately tamped down. Harry and new love Ginny Weasley share one quick snog, and then she's thankfully given the boot for the rest of the movie. Even the Hermione/Ron Weasley quickening is mercifully kept at a low boil.

It didn't even occur to me until after "Deathly Hallows" was over -- and I should point out its 2½ hours fly by at a brisk pace -- that Hogwarts School, which has been the focal point of the entire series, is never glimpsed, or even mentioned.

The wand-wielding kids are all grown up, and school is most definitely out.
If you're not up to speed on the chronicle of the boy wizard, his friends and his evil nemesis ... well, then head to the video store or fire up your Netflix account, because you've no chance of catching on at this late date without seeing the other movies.

The last film ended with the death of benevolent schoolmaster Dumbledore, and the revelation that Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in slithery makeup) has divided his soul into several objects called Horcruxes. It's up to Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) to find the rest of them, and destroy them.

Meanwhile, Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry of Magic -- the central government for the wizarding world -- and begun a reign of terror designed to weed out those wizards and witches not of pure blood, and to trap Harry and friends.

For non-readers of the books by J.K. Rowling (like me), it's difficult to keep track of the dozens of tertiary characters who flit in and out of the background. Pretty much all of them who aren't dead show up at some point, and a few of them are killed off.
One doomed character, whose name I won't reveal, hasn't been seen since about the third Potter movie. So to suddenly bring them back and then off them deprives their death of any emotional impact.

Director David Yates, who's helmed the last three Potter movies, and screenwriter Steve Kloves, who's penned all but one of the series, keep things moving along at a zippy tempo that focuses on the relationship between the Big Trio. The only place the story bogs down a bit is toward the middle, when the three are wandering in exile. The simmering conflict between Harry and Ron over Hermione's affections feels ginned up.

I will confess I'm not a big fan of Rowling's shoddy storytelling. Her imagination is great -- too great, in fact. Whenever the kids are presented with a problem, there's always a new spell, or a new magic object, or a new ally that pops up to aid them. Her story construction doesn't have an airtight feel because she always invents a new backdoor for her characters to wiggle out of.

For example, somewhere in the last couple of movies they've introduced a spell to "apparate," or teleport instantly from one place to another, along with those touching the caster. If so, why do they bother with broomsticks to get around? For that matter, why did Harry and all the kids have to climb aboard a special train to get to Hogwarts that first time? Wouldn't it be much easier to send a few wizards to poof all the kids there instantly? 

But that's just my muggle mind talking.

3 stars out of four