Daily Archives: November 17, 2018

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November 17, 2018

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwlad

I need a safe house in Paris, because things have gone terribly wrong. J.K. Rowling has finally exhausted her creativity and has delivered the first vapid filler of the Wizarding World. “The Crimes of Grinelwald” could easily be called the “Exposition of Grindelwald”. Almost nothing that happens in this film makes a difference in the narrative that is supposed to be coming. After the opening escape sequence, we get two hours of visual imagination signifying nothing.

Last week on the Lambcast, we covered all eight of the Harry Potter films. I was only on the second show covering the last four films, but if you listen, you will hear everyone at some point praising these movies for making the books come alive and entertaining us. I doubt that on tomorrow’s Lambcast, anyone will be saying the same things about this movie. I fell asleep several times because nothing seemed to be going anywhere. Every time a new scene came up, it involved giving us backstory on a character we just met and who may very well be out of the story by the end of the movie. Halfway through the film I realized I had no idea what was happening and why. I think it’s because nothing was happening and there was no reason.

Let me pick out two or three things that irritate me about the “story” and then I will try to find some things that I can complement. Jacob and Queenie were my two favorite things about “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them“,  in this movie, Jacob is wasted and has lost most of the charm that made his presence in the first film so refreshing. Queenie is completely misused, including having her character undermine the relationship that was so pleasing in the first film. If you get to the end of this movie and you think what happens to her makes sense, please post an explanation so the rest of us can figure it out. Was Katherine Waterson’s “Tina” even in this movie. I don’t recall any scene where she was essential. Her character appears and mostly stands around while other people explain things. She gets back to being an Aurour, but has the investigative ability of a Niffler. She can only see the shiny distraction in front of here and she lets her relationship with Newt turn sour for the stupidest reason imaginable. Newt Scamander is supposed to be the central hero, but Eddie Redmayne is so understated and boring in the film that he is an invitation to nap until something starts to happen (which it rarely does). Now I have a policy on this site to not give spoilers and to avoid recapping the whole movie. The later of these two is easy today because I can’t recall much of the story. As for the former, it is not much of a spoiler to say that Credence, the character from Fantastic Beasts who was responsible for the Obscurial is back. How? I don’t know. Why? the same reason in the first film. What happens?, the exact opposite of what we saw in the first movie.  Again it makes no sense.

There are a wide variety of spectacular visual sequences in the movie. I thought the opening escape from custody by Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald worked really well. The rally sequence at the end also looks solid. There are a few creatures that manage to get our attention as well, but none of them except the nifflers are really relevant to the plot and that is peripheral as well. Jude Law turns out to be perfect casting as a young Dumbledore but he mostly stays on the sidelines. It’s not till we get to the end of the movie that we sort of learn why, and I guess that will be a plot thread for the next film.

Speaking of the end, there is a major issue with the climax of this film. In addition to one of the best characters in the first movie wandering off the reservation, we get a major piece of retconning. It is so unlikely, given the previous materials that if it turns out to be anything other than a convenient lie, I may have to reassess any desire I have to see subsequent film in this series. This is not a good film, and it is a major disappointment for fans of the Wizard World we have been visiting for the last seventeen years.

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Hunter Killer

So, a couple of weeks ago we had a MOTM episode on “The Hunt for Red October”. Most of the participants would put it at or near the top of the list of submarine movies. I can’t say that “Hunter Killer” is going to displace “Red October” but I can say it belongs on the list of entertaining sub movies. The plot here is a little too full of melodramatic twists to be very realistic, but it keeps you engaged and there is a nice amount of tension as you go along. If you don’t mind a few shots of models standing in for real submarines, rather than more extensive CGI, you will also like the look of the movie. It feels like a 1960s film, shot in the 1980s, with some contemporary actors standing in for folks like Charlton Heston or Rock Hudson.

The political scenario has the U.S. and Russia at odds over international policies, but there is no particular tipping point that the conflict rests on. A Russian sub, as it is leaving it’s base, is attacked and the U.S. sub following it is also attacked. We don’t know what is going on but it looks to the major powers as if one side has opened war on the other side. The Russian President conveniently arrives at the Navel base as the U.S. has inserted a SEAL reconnaissance team to investigate and report from the ground. A second American Submarine is sent into the area as back up and potentially as point in a navel battle. The captain of the American boat is Joe Glass, an officer who came from the ranks rather than the Academy, and he is played by Gerard Butler.

If this was a conventional action movie, Butler would be killing people right and left. He has made a career for himself as a tough guy hero in several recent films including “Olympus Has Fallen”. In this film, he is oddly cast because he is not required to break anyone’s neck, punch them in the face, or deliver six shots to the chest at close range. In fact, Captain Joe is reluctant to ever pull the trigger on his torpedoes and missiles. He regularly seems hesitant to take the sort of cowboy action that his casting would suggest is coming. Butler seems to be in the role because he can come off as a commanding presence who can stare down an opponent or reluctant subordinate. For this story he mostly works, although I would have liked him to go all Liam Neeson on someone at some point.

The late Michael Nyqvist plays the Russian Submarine Captain and when he and Butler are on the bridge together, this movie does come across as a poor man’s version of Red October. They have to manage to trust each other through a major crisis and hope to avert a World War. Since there is only a limited amount of sub action in the film, a big chunk of time is taken up by the covert mission on the surface. In another twist requiring Russians and Americans to trust one another, the SEAL team is asked to rescue the Russian President from an attempted coup. In another example of a Brit stealing American roles, Toby Stephens leads the seal team, much as he did in “13 Hours”.  Both he and Butler are convincing as American military officers. Less convincing are rapper turned actor Common, who looks to young to be a Rear Admiral, and current Academy Award Winner Gary Oldman, who shouts too much to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The stuff that works includes a series of shootouts around the Russian navel base, and the submarine moments when Nyqvist and Butler have to stare down metaphorically, the Russian fleet and the narrow passages leading into the bay where the Navel base is. I was a little disappointed that bad guy Igor JiJkine, who I remembered from “Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls”, doesn’t get a memorable death. You usually want that in a film like this. We just have to assume he gets his along with all the other coup conspirators. I won’t say the movie is great but I will say I had a great time. If you measure by popcorn consumption, I finished a whole bucket by myself before the movie was two thirds done. That my friends is an entertaining flick.