Review #1,454: 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' (2018)

Aside from Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy (the less said about his more recent adaptation of The Hobbit, the better), no cinematic journey into the realms of the fantastical has captured the imagination of audiences in recent years quite as much as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, a cash-making juggernaut for both Warner Bros. and the author herself. When the franchise came to a conclusion in 2011, it was never going to be away from our screens for very long, and the 'Wizarding World' universe was expanded in 2016 with the surprisingly charming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Like Harry Potter, Beasts managed to find a nice balance between wand-swishing set-pieces, enduring us to a new set of compelling characters, and building a tangible new world for it all to take place in. And with Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander - a shy and awkward David Attenborough type - at the centre of it all, the pieces were in place for an engrossing - and different - saga to get out teeth into.

The delicate balance found by Rowling and director David Yates the first time around is sadly nowhere to be found in this follow-up, The Crimes of Grindelwald. This is part two of a five-part story, so introductions are brushed aside in favour of plot, plot and some more plot. The first hour is taken up by bringing this new group of characters back into the fold, finding Newt grounded by the Ministry of Magic following his shenanigans last time around, just as a new threat rears its ugly face in the form of Johnny Depp's muggle-hating Grindelwald. The bad wizard is searching for the troubled Credence (Ezra Miller), who has emerged in Paris with a circus performer called Nagini (Clauia Kim), but Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) is already on the case. It seems as though everybody is searching for Credence. Even the young Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who is mysteriously reluctant to face his old friend-gone-bad himself, tries to convince Newt to go to Paris in his stead. Muggle Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is also back with his memory mainly in tact, as is his girlfriend Queenie (Alison Sudol), who is struggling to deal with a Ministry ban on Wizard-Muggle relationships.

The Crimes of Grindelwald throws everything it can into the mix: a rain-soaked battle in the air, Newt caught up in no less than three romantic entanglements, a detour to Hogwarts, and more name-drops and Easter eggs than you can shake a stick at. It's an unfathomable wall of information, punctured by an occasional set-piece that only truly come to life when the titular (and frustratingly sidelined) beasts are involved. The Harry Potter films dodged this bullet by allowing the audience to grow into this world, and often grow up with the characters, but Fantastic Beasts goes all out without really justifying its flagrant disregard for coherency, or earning the right to take such an approach. Although he is often pushed out of the spotlight by the many side-plots occurring, Redmayne just about holds it all together with another endearingly twitchy performance, and Law, who combines some of Michael Gambon mannerisms with a more youthful swagger, proves to be a shrewd bit of casting. Ultimately, this follow-up is too busy moving the chess pieces into place to focus on character, and many are pushed into the background as a result. There are great revelations, but after two hours of trying to keep up with who's who and what's what, they don't have much impact. It isn't enough to derail the series completely, but I'll have a hard time remembering where the hell we are by the time the third entry rolls around.


Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Johnny Depp, Ezra Miller, Zoë Kravitz, Jude Law, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #916: 'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015)

Attempting to piece together the chronology of Max Rockatansky's four-movie journey between 1979 and 2015 would be to miss the point of the series altogether. Max Max (1979) was a raw slice of grindhouse that just happened to be financially successful and genuinely brilliant, and has since evolved into something so wildly imaginative and increasingly insane that to try and piece together how many years have elapsed since Mel Gibson's youthful Main Force Patrol officer watch his family murdered and how he has suddenly shrunk and become Tom Hardy would be as deranged as the franchise's latest instalment, Fury Road.

Whether it's a re-boot or a continuation of the story we haven't seen since 1985's Beyond Thunderdome, we are plunged back into the familiar, post-apocalyptic Australian plains (although it was shot in Namibia) inhabited by obscene punks, raging warlords and ragged rebels. Following a nuclear holocaust, fuel and water is scarce, and the residents of the Citadel are ruled over by the ageing Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a hulking monster of a man with a breathing apparatus strapped to his face. Max (Hardy) is captured and is used as a 'blood bag' for War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), and when Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe's lieutenants, goes AWOL with an armoured truck full of Joe's many wives, Nux and a small army pursue with Max strapped to the front of his vehicle.

Like its predecessors, Fury Road has little in way of a plot. Similar in many ways to Max Max 2, the film is little more than one huge chase with precious few quiet moments in between. Hardy is as reserved a Max as Gibson was, but strangely lacks the charisma that has propelled Hardy to recent superstardom. Yet Max is more in the background, playing second fiddle to the battering ram that is Furiosa. One-armed, shaven-headed and raccoon-eyed, Theron is in equal measures extremely sexy and utterly intimidating, offering glimpses of vulnerability as her trust in Max becomes more cemented. Furiosa's drive is that she wants to get back to her homeland, which is now little more than a distant memory from her childhood, and Max just happens to be along for the ride. But character development is left in the dust of what is ultimately one humongous chase set-piece.

Although he is now 70 and his recent work has consisted of Happy Feet (2006), Happy Feet 2 (2011) and Babe: Pig in the City (1998), director, writer and producer George Miler shows no signs of losing his touch. Fury Road is the most aggressive Max Max yet, complete with acrobats on huge wires who bend into other vehicle's to attack from above, War Boys getting themselves pumped for violence by spraying a powerful drug called Night Fume onto their lips, and an electric guitar player who sprays flame from his instrument and is backed by a hoard of drummers. Everyone involved in creating the stunts should be extremely proud, as what could have been repetitive turns into a two-hour adrenaline rush. It's not the masterpiece that it has been heralded by critics and audiences alike, but it has breathed life back into a genre stuffed with CGI and former wrestlers.


Directed by: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie