I was not a fan of the first Fantastic Beasts film so I was not looking forward to the sequel.  Still, the creative forces behind Harry Potter usually meant that their films were reasonably entertaining so I hoped that I would find the sequel an improvement.

Nope.

I found much of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald to be boring and confusing.  Honestly, there were many moments where I had no idea what was going on and I even took an extended break to go to the concession stand during the middle of the film.  I did not find it engaging at all.

I will say that the opening scene had some cool visuals and grabbed my attention.  Unfortunately, it failed to maintain such an interest.

After his misadventures in New York in the first film, Newt (Eddie Redmayne) found himself grounded, unable to travel internationally.  Still, when Dumbledore (Jude Law) needs Newt to go to France, he finds a nearby bucket and off they go.

Fortunately, Jacob Kalowski (Dan Fogler) arrived with Newt just in time to go with him.  His love Queenie (Alison Sudol) left him when he expressed a reasonable concern over them getting married.  And then Newt had googly eyes over Tina (Katherine Waterston) without ever really looking at her, and trying to avoid his brother Theseus (Callum Turner).

The plot of this movie is all over the place and is desperately confusing.  Despite there being way too many plot threads, I honestly cannot think of anything.  They clearly did not stand out.

Johnny Depp appears as Grindelwald and he is one of the worst parts of this movie.  Grindelwald is very lacking in any real intrigue or interest.  Outside of Depp’s typical weird hair/eyes, there is little to make this guy sinister or scary or intimidating.

Jud Law makes a good Dumbledore in the few scenes that we see him in.  Law is criminally underused.  There are also a criminal misuse of fantastic beasts, which is ironic in a film named Fantastic Beasts.

There are some decent moments, but the bad truly outweighs the good here.  The finale is downright dumb and lacks any true tension.

It was a long movie with the plot making it f3el even longer.  The best part of the original Fantastic Beasts film was the interactions with the four stars, but this film breaks them apart and keeps them away from one another for much of the film.  Redmayne was fine as Newt.  Jude Law was good as Dumbledore and I would like to see an extended role in future installments.  Depp’s character was lacking any pizazz.

I did not feel connected to any character here and so it did not bother me when things happened to them.  This series could really use some characters like Harry, Ron and Hermione.

2 stars

I wasn’t ready to be depressed tonight.

Beautiful Boy is a teen drug movie starring Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell and the pair of them are amazing here.  Unfortunately, much of the movie itself was average at best and felt, at times, manipulative.

However, there is absolutely no denying that Timothée Chalamet nailed this.  He was superb as Nic, the young boy who finds himself addicted to drugs and unable to maintain his sobriety. As good as Chalamet was, I think Steve Carell matched with with every scene.  Carell provided such a remarkably subtle performance filled with nuances that made me believe that Carell was truly David, the father of this boy that, no matter what he did, he just could not help.

The rest of the cast is very good as well, with a special shout out to Maura Tierney as David’s second wife and step-mother to Nic.

Still, the story meanders around and, at times, feels more self-important than it needed to feel.  It felt a few times that my emotions were being manipulated and they were not just seriously reacting to the situations happening on the screen.

This is base don a true story, based on both the book written by David Sheff and the book written by Nic Sheff.

Still, the reason to see this is for the masterful performance from these two actors. Timothée Chalamet is amazing considering how young of an actor he is.  Steve Carell has improved with every outing and he matches his young co-star with every glance.  The performances make this much more compelling than it had a right to be.

3.1 stars

I liked the new Steve McQueen directed film, Widows.  I wanted to love it.  Unfortunately, I just could not get to that level.

Widows was fine, but I went in with high expectations and the film was not what I expected it to be.

When her thief husband (Liam Neeson) and his crew are killed in a robbery gone bad, Veronica (Viola Davis) gets stuck between her grief and loss and the people whose money was taken.  Veronica organized the wives of the crew to help her pull another job to get the money needed.

First of all, Viola Davis is the bomb.  She has a moment at the beginning of this movie after her husband is killed that might have guaranteed her another Oscar nomination.  She let loose a cry of anguish, only to pull it back insider her.  Viola Davis was absolutely tremendous in this movie and deserves all the credit.

In fact, the entire cast was very strong.  I really liked Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya, Cynthia Erivo, and Brian Tyree Henry.  There were also great cameos from Robert Duvall and Jacki Weaver.  Acting here was top notch.

Fact is that Widows was considerably more of a slow build than I expected or than what this film sold itself as in its promotional material.  It turned out much slower than I thought it was going to be.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I got a little bored early as there were so many characters to set up and introduce.

The other problem was there was a twist that I won’t spoil, but I saw coming a mile away.  Anytime that happens, the film takes a hit in my eyes.

The subplot of the political race between Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell) and Jamal (Brian Tyree Henry) felt forced and out of place here.  I’m still not sure how it really fit into the narrative and seemed too convoluted for what it was worth.  Colin Farrell’s character was all over the place in motivation and was not filled with common sense.

I really liked the tension and the higher stakes than your typical heist movies.  Usually, a heist movie is just a fun time in the robbery, but this was ugly and nasty.  It felt much more realistic than most heist films and I appreciated that fact.  Thing was though that the heist does not appear in the film until the very end of the movie.

I wish the film’s material and script could have brought it as much as Viola Davis did.  She was just awe inspiring with her performance, bringing pain and grief as well as anyone.  The performance elevated the material.

3.5 stars    

EYG Hall of Famer Orson Welles’ final film, a film that had been locked away, mostly completed, for 40 years, has finally been released on Netflix.  And it is some kind of movie.

The story of how the film came to be is almost more of a tale than The Other Side of the Wind.  I would certainly recommend that if you plan on watching this movie, you take the time to watch the documentary, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead as well.  It makes for a very important companion piece to this movie.

The Other Side of the Wind is about a legendary film director who had been self-exiled to Europe for years, returning to Hollywood to get his final passion project filmed.  The narrative of this movie is told through two lenses.  One, the struggles of the director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), trying to get through the filming with money troubles, struggles with actors and with the Hollywood machine.  Two, the film that he has made is used as a “film within a film” and helps to show the artistry and the imagination of Hannaford.

Now, many people assume that the film is basically an autobiographical tale of Orson Welles himself.  Welles had denied this, but it does seem to be pretty obvious that the character of Jake Hannaford is based strictly on the director.

Apparently there were some scenes of the nearly completed film that were damaged and had to be replaced with photos and voice over.  These scenes feel as if they would have been important for the conclusion of the movie unfortunately.  Of course there is no way around that and what they did with those scenes is the best they were going to be able to accomplish.

There are so many truly visionary shots in this film that you could break down countless numbers of them for analysis.  The scenes fly fast and furiously through the film and you are never allowed to linger on anything for long.  It is certainly an impressive feat of film-making and the creative process.  It changes perspectives, black and white to color, and points of view as easily as you can imagine.

It is slight on story and may be too inside Hollywood to truly reach a wide audience.

John Huston is tremendous here as Jake and the relationship between him and Peter Bogdanovich’s character, Brooks Otterlake, is compelling.

While Welles never put together the ultimate final cut of this movie, those who did paid tribute to his overall vision and presented the world with a film about moviemaking that is chaotic, wild, jubilant and full of the proper amount of satire.  This feels like an appropriate end to a legendary career.

4.2 stars

The Netflix original documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead tells the fascinating tale of the efforts of EYG Hall of Famer Orson Welles and his attempts to finish a film called The Other Side of the Wind, a film that has now been released on Netflix as well.

Alan Cummings narrated the documentary, which joins a group of wonderful docs from 2018.

Fast paced and engaging, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead uses archived footage of Orson Welles to show us truths about the legendary filmmaker that we have never known and to tell the story of the struggle to make this movie as a way of a comeback.

This documentary is not about Citizen Kane.  Sure, it is mentioned, but it is not what is being investigated here.  Instead, we see Welles’ conflicts with Hollywood and the movie business, especially the money providers, in his desperate attempt to get his movies made.

In fact, because of the money, an almost finished cut of the film The Other Side of the Wind wound up locked away in a vault for decades…even after the death of Welles.

Directed by Morgan Neville, this documentary really made me want to watch The Other Side of the Wind on Netflix myself, which is what a good doc about a movie should do.  The Other Side of the Wind will be my next watch soon.

3.7 stars

Claire Foy is the next actress to take up the role of Lisbeth Salander, the woman who arrived first in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  This is the next film featuring the character.  Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lack of what made Lisbeth such an original character in her past offerings.  Here, in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, she is basically just another action hero.

We join Lisbeth as she is in pursuit of a MacGuffin that gives the possessor the ability to control the nuclear weapons of the world.  The man who invented the technology (Stephen Merchant) is being chased, and his son August (Christopher Convery) knows how to access the info as well.

Lisbeth is in a race against her sister (Sylvia Hoeks) in a twist that is revealed in the trailers, but should have been held back.

There are a ton of action beats here, some decent, but others just silly.  The film is really more of a Mission Impossible or a James Bond type of flick. There is less darkness in the movie and Lisbeth is no where near as harsh as she was in the previous movie.  Where as the other movie showed Lisbeth taking to a serious extreme and being more psychological, this was more action/adventure.  I think this did not work as well for Lisbeth than the previous way.

Claire Foy continues her strong work this year.  I liked her as Lisbeth, or at least, what they let her do as Lisbeth.  I think she would have been a great actress to take this character to another level, but the film does not want to let her do it.

There were many scenes where I was bored during the movie.  It did not grip me the way I had hoped it would.  There were too many scenes where I was rolling my eyes wondering how that was even possible.  The Girl in the Spider’s Web was too predictable and too poorly executed and took a character that could be an original female protagonist and made her into just another action hero.

2.7 stars

You’re a mean one… well, maybe not that mean.

The Grinch is the newest version of the Dr. Seuss classic children’s book, How the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and this film is an animated film from Illumination, the company that brought us the Minions.

Benedict Cumberbatch voiced the Grinch and he does a nice job. The problem is that the Grinch seemed to be an alright dude early in this film.  He had some bad things happen to him, but I did not think that his heart was three times too small.  He was just lonely.  I would have liked to see the Grinch be more rotten early here.

The film followed the book pretty closely, except of course that there is way more added, because it is a short book, and the original animated version was around 20 minutes long.  This film is 86 minutes which requires a bunch more to the story.  Unfortunately, most of the additions were weaker than the parts from the actual story.  The middle of the film dragged a bit, making it feel longer than the 86 minutes.

The animation is wonderful and the colors are beautiful.  The film looks great.  The voices are really strong as well.  Cameron Seely, Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury all do good work with voices.  I was not a huge fan of Pharrell Williams as the narrator.  His voice was not as deep or tense as Boris Karloff from the original.

This is a fine version, although fairly unremarkable.  There are some funny bits, but it is stretched out too much.  There is great animation and strong voice work.  The film will probably be loved by a lot of the kids watching it, and it is passable for the adults.  It could be worse.

3 stars

J.J. Abrams newly produced horror/thriller is awesome.  It is tense and exciting and about as dramatic as you are going to get.

How could you go wrong by combining a war movie fighting Nazis with a monster/zombie movie?  It is like peanut butter and chocolate.

Overlord had a strong young cast (including Agents of SHIELD’s Fitz, Iain De Caestecker).  There is Jovan Adepo (from Fences and mother!), Wyatt Russell (Everybody Wants Some), and Pilou Asbæk.  There are some good performances here as these actors brought more to these roles than you might expect.

The story takes place as US Forces were preparing to invade France during D-Day in World War II.  What we did not know was that a small team of US soldiers needed to be dropped into a village in France to destroy a tower if the US Forces had any hope of landing on the beaches of Normandy. However, once they found this village, the crew found more than what they thought they would.

Overlord is a violent film with some serious gore involved.  The tension is tight and the anxiety was real.  Jovan Adepo had the feeling of a star, commanding the screen throughout the movie.  He reminded me of a younger John Boyega.  I can see this young man being a real star for years to come.

The effects are very strong and the war scenes are put together very well. There may be some real stretching of the disbelief in a few scenes.

This is a fun film with a great atmosphere.  You are engrossed with the heroes, who are surprisingly three dimensional, and are in fear of the villains.  The film is a B-level movie, but that does not make it a bad thing.  It is a lot of fun.

4 stars