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. 

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS

The sequel to Guy Ritchie's 2009 Sherlock Holmes reboot has just as much style, period atmosphere, wit and bite, but suffers from a rather baggy script from husband and wife team, Michele and Kieran Mulroney.  The result is a film that is certainly entertaining enough to justify a cinema ticket, but which propels the franchise no further, and does a great disservice to Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry, stranded in under-written roles.

The movie is set in the Europe of 1891 - a febrile, uncertain place with anarchists rising against major powers, and the major powers signing peace treaties but all the while gearing up for what will become the First World War. Holmes' arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Mad Men's Jared Harris) seeks not just to corner the supply of weaponry but also to create the demand for them, by staging terrorist plots and assassination attempts that will bring Europe to war. Holmes (Robert Downey Junior) has to stop him, aided as always by his side-kick John Watson (Jude Law), interrupting his honeymoon with Mary (Kelly Reilly). The movie thus takes the result of a fast-paced, action-set-piece-packed ride across Europe, from London to Paris, by way of Cambridge, and on to the fateful Reichenbach Falls.  Along for the ride are Holmes' indolent but secretly powerful elder brother Mycroft (official National Treasure, Stephen Fry) and a rather random gypsy called Simza (Noomi Rapace - the original Lisbeth Salander). 

First the positive.  All the things that made the first SHERLOCK HOLMES a roaring success are present in the second. I love the dark, richly dressed sets, and CGI that bring to life the grim dirty Victorian cities of London and Paris, filled with dodgy clubs, filthy streets, but punctuated with glorious civic architecture and handsomely dressed upper class men and women.  For the keen-eyed, there's even a glimpse of the Sacre Coeur under scaffolding in Paris harking back to the use of an unfinished Tower Bridge in the first film.  I also love the way in which Ritchie gives us a more pugnacious Holmes than those dessicated twentieth century TV adaptations.  This feels truer to the books, where Holmes definitely has a grimy past and is in fine physical form.  I also love the device Ritchie uses to show his process of deduction - the careful editing, the bullet time replay of fights, the voice-over of every move selected. It all makes for the movies vitality and takes the novels back to their pop-cultural origins.  But most of all, any Holmes adaptation lives or dies on the relationship between Holmes and Watson, and what really sets these films alight is the genuine spark between Downey Junior and Law - the beautifully essayed mutual frustration, respect and affection.  I will always hand over money to see Holmes and Watson sparring.  Finally, to all these factors, we can add one more happy decision.  Jared Harris makes a superb Moriarty, and some of the best scenes in the film are (as they should be) the confrontations between the two - the matching of wits. 

All these good things just about make for the perfect winter blockbuster.  But, as I said before, the movie is severely let down by its script by Michele and Kieran Mulroney.  To be sure, they get some things right. I like the way small details early in the movie become important gags or plot points later on, particularly the urban camouflage!  This is a film in which one has to pay attention despite the superficial appearance of a brawny action flick.  But in too many major ways their script gets it horribly wrong.  The pacing in the first half is woefully slow.  There are some fun action set pieces but we don't really feel we know what the stakes are - what precisely Holmes is trying to do, what mystery he is trying to solve.  It's more than an hour into the over-long two hour run-time before we realise what the plot really is. Poor Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) is pretty much thrown to the dogs, with barely an impact on Holmes.  But worst of all, the whole gypsy plot line is also a complete waste of time. You could easily have cut it from the film and had a tighter, more evenly paced 90 minute flick.  Presumably Guy Ritchie was happy to have another opportunity to indulge his fascination with gypsies, but is all that nonsense really worth it for 60 seconds of comedy dancing from Jude Law, and a short horse joke?  

As it is, we get poor Noomi Rapace cast as Simza - a talented actress who basically looks pained for 120 minutes.  Moreover, poor Stephen Fry is utterly short-changed in his role as Mycroft - I mean - what comic joy could have been woven from an encounter between Fry and Downey Junior on screen!  But the screenwriters simply had a naked arse gag. Poor.  The storyline also leaves poor Kelly Reilly rather short-changed as Mary, although she, unlike Noomi Rapace, does manage to steal every scene she's in and leave a favourable impression far outweighing her actual screen-time. Let's hope now that Simza has been rendered irrelevant, Mary and Mycroft will get more screen-time in the next film. And yes, I suspect that given the early box office there will be another film.  And yes, this instalment was still enough fun, despite its flaws, that I look forward to it. I only hope that the producers replace the screenwriters.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS is on release in the US, UK, Canada, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on December 22nd in Malta, Germany, Israel, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Finland, Indonesia, Romania and Taiwan, Denmark and Norway. It opens on December 29th in Belgium, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Russia, Estonia, India, Lithuania and South Africa. It opens on January 5th in Armenia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Spain and Poland. It opens in Brazil on January 13th; in France on January 25th; and in Japan on March 10th.

SHERLOCK HOLMES - solid blockbuster fun, but what's with Adler?

I have read much of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon, but was never as taken with it, qua detective fiction, as I was with Agatha Christie. The reason being that Conan Doyle did not play fair. His Victorian detective always solved crimes by means of arcane knowledge that only he could possess - the taste of a particular type of wax used by just one candle-manufacturer in Brittany. As a consequence, the clever reader cannot solve a Conan Doyle mystery in the same way that he can use pure logic and close observation to solve an Agatha Christie novel. So, I read Conan Doyle, as most schoolchildren do, for that sense of Britain at the height of imperial glory but also at the depths of urban degradation - and for that wonderfully subversive idea that Holmes was a bit of a bastard, possibly homo-erotically attached to his sidekick Dr Watson, and addicted to cocaine.

I would suggest that Guy Ritchie's new adaptation of Sherlock Holmes also works best as a mood piece, interspersed by some rather spectacular stunts. His London is out of Tim Burton's SWEENEY TODD - all smoke-filled narrow streets and filthy docks contrasted with the opulent luxury of parliament, Mayfair hotels, and quasi-Masonic lodges. The production design is simply marvellous and makes good use of what is left of Victorian Britain in Manchester and London (from what I could tell). Ritchie also finally finds a suitable object for his obsession with posh chaps bruising with the chavs. He amps up Holmes' boxing, drug-taking and general down-and-dirtiness. Holmes is happy chatting with the local bobby, Clarkie, or with a grimy looking trawlerman. He is altogether more uncomfortable dining in a genteel restaurant.

As an action film, SHERLOCK HOLMES works well too. Ritchie gives us some marvellous stunts that truly make use of the Thames. There are three action set-pieces: one sees a ship slipped off its moorings during a fight between Holmes and a French giant; the second sees Watson set off a string of explosions at a riverside factory; and the final act confrontation between Holmes and his adversary, Lord Blackwood, takes places atop an as-yet-unfinished Tower Bridge. I would have happily paid the price of admission just to see the imagined Victorian vista from the top of that bridge.

Even better than as a mood piece and as an action film, SHERLOCK HOLMES works best as a "bromance" in the manner of all the best action/detective flicks. Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law, as Holmes and Watson respectively, utterly convinced me of their fondness for each other. With such a high-stakes and frankly ludicrous plot swirling about them, it was the credibility of their relationship that anchored the film. I loved their bickering; Holmes' resentment of Watson's new fiancée; and their genuine affection. We truly believe that, as in the books, Watson has brought Holmes back to the edges of respectable society. We also believe, in the first of a few annoying retcons, that Holmes keeps Watson's addiction to gambling in check. When all the explosions were over, I loved the scenes between these two, and I'll be watching the next film for those.

So all in all, I had a rather good time with SHERLOCK HOLMES as a beautifully rendered, action blockbuster, centred around a charismatic relationship between Holmes and Watson. Sure the plot was insane - Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) wants to use black magic to rule the world! But it does at least do that typical Holmes thing where something that seems supernatural can be explained with good old fashioned science. I know that Ritchie has exaggerated Holmes' bruiser antics in the manner of his Mockney flicks, but hey, what's life without a little indulgence? And, it finally looks like Ritchie has found a good excuse to use his slo-mo fight scene style!

That is not to say that there isn't a problem with this film. And that problem is the retconned introduction of Irene Adler - a love interest for Holmes. Anyone with any knowledge of the books will know that this is just plain wrong. But, producers aiming for a target demographic of horny teenage boys will have their way so it looks like we're saddled with her. Ritchie just doesn't do female characters. He doesn't know how to create a well-rounded, interesting woman on screen. And Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler is a victim of this. The concept of the character, nowhere in the books, is a good one - to have a criminal mastermind who has gotten under Holmes' skin. But for a woman to have married as many times as Adler and to have been up to as much crime, she would need to be older - nearer to Holmes' age. I would have loved to see Helen McCrory in this role. But more to the point, Adler was utterly redundant in this flick, except as a nod to the teenage male audience, and in helping to set up the second film. I mean, seriously, imagine a film without Adler. It would've been twenty minutes shorter and the better for it. So for the sequel, I'm hoping that McAdams will be booted, just like that awful Katie Holmes from BATMAN BEGINS, and replaced by someone older and frankly, better at acting. I'm also hoping the scriptwriters give her more to do.

SHERLOCK HOLMES is on release in the USA, UK, Bahrain, Croatia, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland, Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Indonesia, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Mexico, Romania and Sweden. It opens next weekend in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Brazil and Estonia. It opens on January 14th in Argentina, Greece, Spain, and Turkey. It opens on January 22nd in Finland; on January 28th in Germany and Switzerland; on February 3rd in France and on March 12th in Japan.

London Film Fest Day 6 - LIONS FOR LAMBS

It seems like Hollywood tries to tackle the fall-out from the Global War on Terror in a new film every week. But I didn't think I'd watch two movies in two weeks written by the same man, Matthew Michael Carnahan, and starring the same actress, Meryl Streep. The first one written by Carnahan was the subversive "CSI-Riyadh", THE KINGDOM. He follows this up with the new Robert Redfod drama, LIONS FOR LAMBS. LIONS FOR LAMBS also stars Meryl Streep as a liberal journalist. She morphs into a CIA neo-con in RENDITION, also currently on release. Added to this, Brian de Palma's Iraqi war drama, REDACTED, is also playing at the London Film Festival.

Of the GWOT films on offer, Robert Redford's LIONS FOR LAMBS has the most intelligence and the most honesty. It doesn't sugar-coat anything. There are no easy choices and no happy resolutions. Rather, it gives us a snap-shot of the US political debate through three inter-weaving scenarios.

The first segment is a conversation between Streep's liberal reporter, Janine Roth, and a presidential-aspirant neo-con Senator called Jasper Irving. (As befits the current Hollywood fashion, we know Tom Cruise's character is a Senator because he's wearing a three piece suit.) The scenes between these two actors are absolutely fascinating to watch. Both actors are on top of their game in this film and the dialogue is fascinating. I love that Carnahan doesn't make Irving the sort of imbecile gung-ho right-winger that liberals love to hate. Rather, Irving is a slippery customer, selling his "by any means necessary" theories with charm and wit. Most of all, he's reasonable. He's candid about the regime's mistakes but has a new strategy to "win the war" (and the presidency). Roth is unconvinced of course. She's heard it before, during Vietnam. But she is forced to admit the fourth estate's complicity in the Iraqi war. The question is, will she sell another story?

Even as Irving's giving Roth the exclusive on the new military strategy, it's failing in the field. Two idealistic young soldiers (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) are stranded in the Afghan mountains, under-fire from the Taliban. In flashback we see that they want to war in order to become engaged with the key issues of their day, and to return home college-educated veterans with a good chance of "being heard". I was convinced neither by their acting, nor by the special effetcs of this segment. Most importantly, I was unconvinced that anyone would join a war on such a pretext. The movie just didn't sell it to me at all. Moreover, I'm not sure you even needed this segment. The dilemmas of the film could have been as easily portrayed by the Senator-Journalist segment and the Professor-Student segment.

This final segment features Robert Redford's liberal college professor using the example of the two soldiers (his former students) to persuade a young privileged kid (Andrew Garfield) to stop being cynical about political engagement. The kid represents the person in all of us who wants to just put their head down, make the monthly mortgage payment, and let the corrupt politicians get away with murder just so long as it doesn't touch our lives. The professor is our conscience, which tells us that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing". This segment is well acted but again the script fails to engage us.

And this is, I think, the whole problem with this film. It feels too dry - too much like we're eavesdropping on a college debate. It reminded me a little of reading Camus' plays, insofar as the characters and narrative are hostages to a philosophical exercise. The problem is that while a movie can instruct us, it will be far more successful in doing so if it engages with us on an emotional level. Otherwise, I can save my money and read the literature on the relevant issues. The power of cinema is, surely, that it can make us empathise with characters and play out our inner-debates? But LIONS FOR LAMBS did not allow me to engage with it. I was demoted to the role of eavesdropper.

LIONS FOR LAMBS played London 2007 and goes on release in Belgium, Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany. Hong Kong, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the USA and the UK on November 9th. It opens in Argentina, France and Hungary later in November and in Italy on December 14th. It opens in Japan on April 19th 2008.

Flaky ending aside, THE BRAVE ONE is pretty decent

THE BRAVE ONE is more intelligent and more patient than your average revenge thriller. Usually these flicks take a more or less explicit and malicious pleasure in the protagonist beating the crap out of the bad guy. THE BRAVE ONE distinguishes itself by not lingering over the violence at all. Jodie Foster plays a DJ whose fiance is killed by a bunch of thuggish happy-slappers and resorts to killing bad guys in an effort to regain control. The heart of the film is her relationship with the cop who is investigating the case. He's portrayed by Terrence Howard in yet another stand-out performance. The crux of the piece is whether or not Howard's character will have the fortitude to shop the women he knows is guilty of murdering people he knows are beyond the grasp of the justice system he believes in. The film oozes class. The performances are top notch; the camera-work is penetrating; the characters believable....that is, until the final reel. Still, despite the flaky ending, it's great to see the revenge thriller rescued from the trash-can.

THE BRAVE ONE played Toronto 2007 and is on release in the USA, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Spain, the UK, Slovenia and Denmark. It opens in Egypt, Australia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Finland, Iceland and Lithuania next weekend. It opens in Czech Republic and Hungary on October 18th, in Argentina on October 25th, in Japan, Slovakia and Brazil on November 2nd.