FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD

For a very long film, CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD has a lot of characters with very few lines, and even less to do.  There's the troubling casting of a pretty Asian woman as a mysterious but almost mute Nagini.  There's Ezra Miller (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN) as the troubled, mysterious but almost mute Credence.  Even the lead character, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) says little except in a cryptically shy mumble, his eyes shyly averted from his interlocutor's face and yet somehow aimed at their boobs. 

For a very long film, CRIMES OF GRINDEWALD also seems rather rushed and haphazard.  Scenes end in a jarring manner, mashed up against the next one. There's a feeling that things are happening in between that have been left on the editors floor.  Things that would help us understand what the frack is going on.  It's been quite some time since I've had to google the ending of a film to figure out what just happened, but I had to with this film on two counts!

So what's actually going on? There's a powerfully magically destructive kid called Credence. He may be able to take out Dumbledore (Jude Law).  Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is a kind of fascist anti-muggle bastard who's escaped prison and now wants to manipulate Credence into helping him take out Dumbledore.  It's not clear why Grindelwald can't go after Dumbledore directly. But maybe it's for the same reason that Dumbledore has to use his proxy - Scamander - to go after Grindelwald - because the two have a blood oath not to attack each other. Apparently this is because they used to be gay lovers. I know this because of the interwebs, rather than from anything the film might helpfully tell me.

What the movie actually consists of is a bunch of different characters wandering around Paris trying to find each other.  This is all very dull. What makes the movie worth watching are two things - first the absolutely ravishing costume and production design evoking an inter-war Paris - and the occasional moments of emotional impact - mostly revolving around the character of Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz.)  Leta is, like Credence, filled with self-hate and conflict. She's an old school friend of Newt, engaged to his elder brother, anxious about some childhood guilt, and flirting with joining Grindelwald.  By contrast, the less I had to watch Redmayne's Scamander - a bag of cliched tics and mumbles - the better. And his purported love interest - played by Katherine Waterston - is a charisma vacuum.  Dan Fogler is far more engaging as the muggle comedy sidekick but is criminally underused. And as for his lover, Tina Goldstein (Alison Sudol channelling Marilyn's breathy high-pitched voice), it's not clear why she would react to not being allowed to marry a muggle by following a fascist who wants to enslave muggles.

Not much of this movie makes sense.

FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is available to rent and own. 

LOVE HAPPENS - undeserved

LOVE HAPPENS is the excruciatingly dull and self-important debut feature from writer-director Brandon Camp. It features Aaron Eckhart as a self-help guru who coaches grieving Americans on how to reclaim their lives. Irony being that he has yet to confront the death of his own wife. He will do this through his nascent romance with an earnest florist (Jennifer Aniston in a beanie hat and pigtails, which is how we know she's earnest and tree-hugging). Their budding romance is egged along by her quirky girlfriend (a typecast Judy Greer). The final act emotional breakthrough is nursed along by the grieving father-in-law (Martin Sheen). In a movie filled with trite one-liners about the grieving process, and written to a quality that is undeserving of its profound subject matter, the only really authentic emotion is expressed by John Carroll Lynch (SHUTTER ISLAND) in his role as a grieving father.

LOVE HAPPENS was released last autumn and is available on DVD.

London Film Fest Day 13 - TAKING WOODSTOCK

TAKING WOODSTOCK sees Ang Lee, director of tense, beautiful tragic romances - LUST, CAUTION and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - take a step back into gentle comedy. The resulting film is warm-hearted, earnest, occasionally funny, but also somewhat ramshackle, meandering and ultimately, unsatisfying. Interesting characters are given too little screen time in an ensemble film, uninteresting characters are left to over-act wildly, and the third act acid trip is a complete waste of half an hour. Maybe the problem is that Ang Lee doesn't quite have the conviction he needs to make a film about a famous concert that IS NOT a concert film. He wants to tell the story of the family who's run-down motel became the HQ of the organisers and the impact the festival had on them. He wants to make a point about Woodstock being, for most people, about the journey there and the people you met, rather than the concert itself. But Ang Lee does cave in and gives us his protagonist journeying toward the mainstage and getting dragged into acid trips and mud-slides. It's just too much of a tease! Either focus on the motel, or give us the concert, but don't flail around in the mud!

The movie starts of well. We have a likable protagonist called Elliot - a sweet kid, who's compromising on his dream of going to San Francisco because he's helping out on his parent's run-down motel in the Catskills and because he can't quite admit that he's gay. Faced with foreclosure, he decides to invite the Woodstock festival to relocate to his parents' motel and his neighbour's land, when the folks in that town rescind the permit, scared of thousands of freaks showing up. Before you know it, the cash is rolling in and Elliot's conservative parents are surrounded with hippies and beats. Both they, and Elliot, experience many-splendored life, and then the festival rolls of out town.

The period setting and casting are absolutely spot on, with the exception of rather broad performances from Emile Hirsch as Billy and Dan Fogler as Devon, the Earthlight Player. Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman are particularly good as Elliot's rather flummoxed parents, and Demetri Martin is affable and congenial as Elliot. But the two most interesting characters get way too little screen time. The first is Eugene Levy in a fairly straight performance as farmer Max Yasgur, the guy who actually rented out his fields to the festival. Why was such a provincial farmer so very liberal minded? Fascinating, but unexplored. The second fascinating, but too little explored character, was Vilma, a former US marine turned transvestite, played by Liev Schreiber. What a wonderful character! And what a fascinating nascent relationship with Elliot's father! I would have loved to spend more time with them. But instead we get Ang Lee trying, very clumsily, to speak to Vietnam in the form of the cliche of a battle-traumatised Vietnam vet, and to speak to the counter-culture in the form of a completely pointless acid trip. And when Ang Lee tries to create some real dramatic tension with a final act revelation involving Elliot's mother, it all seems out of tone with the rest of the film. Shame.

TAKING WOODSTOCK played Cannes 2009. It opened earlier this year in the US, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the USA, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Estonia, France and Spain. It is currently on release in Hong Kong, Israel, Singapore, India, Italy, Taiwan, Belgium and Greece. It opens in the UK on November 6th, in Argentina and Mexico on December 10th and in Brazil on January 15th 2010.

KUNG FU PANDA - earnest but unmemorable

KUNG FU PANDA is an amiable CGI animated movie for kids. Jack Black plays a kind-hearted panda called Po, the ultimate Kung Fu fan-boy. To everyone's surprise, Master Oogway names Po as the Dragon Warrior - the only fighter who can beat the evil tiger Tai Lung and bring peace to the valley. At first, all of the other Kung Fu masters mock the fat panda, but Po's tenacity wins them round. He developes his own style of Bear Kung Fu that uses his big belly as an asset and fulfills his destiny. The moral of the story is that even the most unlikely person can be a hero if they only believe in themselves.

Like Po, KUNG FU PANDA has a kind heart and good intentions. All of the characters have names that correspond to their meanings in Mandarin and great attention has been paid to the choreography of the martial art scenes. They reference great cinema battles, but never cross the line into pastiche. There are moments of great humour - not least a chop stick fight over a dumpling between Po and Shifu. Jack Black does a great job and he has great chemistry with Dustin Hoffman as his master.

Having said that, KUNG FU PANDA isn't up there with the best of animation. It doesn't have the emotional depth, narrative complexity or visual style of a RATATOUILE or TOY STORY or MONSTERS INC. It feels rather thin. Aside from the relationship between Po and Shifu, the subsidiary characters - voiced by the likes of Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan - are poorly developed. Basically this is a one-note story and it could've been 75 rather than 90 minutes long.

KUNG FU PANDA played Cannes 2008 and was released in June in Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Estonia, the Philippines, Singapore, the USA, Egypt, Kuwait, Thailand, Indonesia, CHina, Mexico, Australia, Israel, New Zealand and the Hong. It opens on JUly 3rd in Iceland, Argentina, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Austria, Brazil, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the UK. It opens later in July in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Japan. It opens in Finland on August 1st; in Italy on August 29th and in Greece on September 3rd.

Dullard DVD of the month - GOOD LUCK CHUCK

GOOD LUCK CHUCK is a piss-poor romantic comedy starring alleged stand up comedian Dane Cook and the not unattractive Jessica Alba. The set-up is ridiculous. Dane Cook plays a man who has been cursed. If a woman sleeps with him, she is bound to marry the next guy she dates. Apparently, this leads lots of credulous women to offer themselves to him, just so they can end up married - an absurd, and borderline misogynistic premise. Cook's character then meets a pretty girl played by Jessica Alba and has to work out how to date her, but stop marrying the next guy she meets.

Director Mark Helfrich eschews verbal witticisms in favour of physical humour. Now I have nothing against slapstick but this stuff is obvious and neither Cook nor Alba have the talent to pull it off. Neither do they have the chemistry to pull of a rom-com. As for Cook's comedy side-kick, Dan Fogler, that actor is rapidly becoming the Rob Schneider of his generation. Definitely one to avoid.

GOOD LUCK CHUCK was released in Autumn 2007 and is now available on DVD.

HORTON HEARS A WHO! - by far the best of the recent Dr Seuss adaptations

Like many of you, I grew up reading Dr Seuss, so his books are a cherished part of my childhood.* That's why it hurt so much when Jim Carrey and Mike Myers' live action versions of his books were less CAT IN THE HAT than Smelly Cat. But prejudice aside, I am pleased to report that HORTON HEARS A WHO! is a giant step forward. First off, the minute you see the animation you realise how intrinsically right it is to forgo actors dressed in prosthetics. Dr Seuss should feel whimsical and magical rather than forced and deliberate. And no matter how good Carrey and Myers are as comedians, they never managed to make all that make-up seem, well, natural. Directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino also make the right choice in keeping a lot of Dr Seuss' famous rhyming couplets in a voice-over narration from Charles Osgood. I particularly liked their little conceit of having Horton day-dream in Seuss' trademark 2-D style!

But back to basics. For those who don't know, you're in for a treat! Horton is a large, happy-go-lucky elephant who stumbles upon a delicate little speck sitting on a flower. He hears a little voice and makes contact with the tiny little Mayor of Who-ville, who lives in a miniature world upon that very speck. Horton and the Mayor realise that unless Horton can put the speck in a safe place, Who-ville will be destroyed by all the commotion. But first, Horton and the Mayor have to gather the courage to hold on to their belief in each other's existence; and to fight for the right to br heard, no matter how big or how small they are.

The directors handle the animation beautifully and the voice-cast also do a superb job. Steve Carell is charming as the Mayor and Jim Carrey is absolutely hillarious in a slightly more modulated performance than he typically gives. The script-writers manage to keep to a minimum the post-modern in-jokes that cover modern animation like poisonous pustules. And the defiantly pop-culture reference they do include - having Horton imagine himself as a manga hero - is absolutely brilliant. My only slight criticism is that the material is too thin for the run-time. Frankly, they could've trimmed the film down to 70 minutes and we would have all gone home as happy as after 85 minutes but without having mainlined as much glucose from the tofee popcorn.

HORTON HEARS A WHO is on release in the USA, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Iceland, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Belgium and the UK. It opens next week in Egypt, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong and Croatia. It opens on March 27th in Croatia. It opens in April in France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Israel, Italy and Turkey. It opens in May in South Korea and in Japan in July.

*I even went to the same college as Dr Seuss, although I must confess that by the age of 16, the fact that John Le Carre was an old boy was far more impressive to me.

BALLS OF FURY - quite depressingly piss-poor

We went to see BALLS OF FURY on the grounds that in our fragile state (the variety of the wine) we couldn't handle anything too cerebral. On the other hand, as we were soon to discover, there's a level of brainlessness that can exert its own special kind of pain on the poor hapless cinema-goer.

BALLS OF FURY is brought to you by the cinematic gurus (sarcasm) behind the altogether dismal RENO 9-11: MIAMI. This time, writer-director Ben Garant and writer-actor Thomas Lennon try to spoof martial arts and under-dog sports movies. Trouble is, this is territory that has been mined with greater success by recent classics such as DODGEBALL or even BLADES OF GLORY. Dan Fogler plays a washed up ping-pong player called Randy Daytona. Daytona is recruited by the FBI to bring down a sinister triad and ping-pong fanatic (Christopher Walken).

The jokes are weak - alternately sexist or racist. The plot is entirely predictable. And I spent most of the movie feeling embarassed for the actors - especially Walken. And as for Aisha Tyler, she loses all credibility as a guest reviewer on Siskel and Ebert given her choice of script.

BALLS OF FURY was released in the US, Singapore, Russia, the Philippines, Ukraine, Iceland, Slovenia, Australia, Kuwait, Greece, Spain earlier this year and is currently playing in the UK. It opens in Argentina on January 17th 2008.