Care Of Magical Creatures

Year: 2016
Director: David Yates
Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol
Run Time: 2 hours 13 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Of course the Harry Potter franchise wasn’t dead. Did you think J. K. Rowling would abandon her money geyser to keep writing Robert Galbraith mysteries in quiet cafés forever? I’m just glad the franchise is actually moving in a different direction instead of showing yet another wave of students carve their way through a mountain of Hogwarts homework assignments (The Cursed Child was quite enough, thank you).

I was apprehensive when I learned that the new film would in some way be based on the Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but as a literate human being in my age bracket, I was obligated to check it out.

At least she didn’t pick Quidditch Through the Ages, thank Merlin.

In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, magical creature researcher and advocate Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York City in 1926, carrying a case that contains all the creatures he has been studying (it’s much bigger on the inside). After a mix-up at the bank, Muggle factory worker Kowalski (Dan Fogler) accidentally sets loose a couple of the creatures and gets tangled up in a frantic chase to recapture them with Newt and ex-Auror Tina (Katherine Waterston, and if you don’t know what an Auror is, good luck).

Meanwhile, am mysterious dark force has been wreaking havoc upon the city, causing local No-Maj’s (as the Americans call Muggles – get it?  “no magic” – because apparently Rowling forgot how to name things) to become suspicious about magical activity. With the dark wizard Grindelwald still at large, the Magical Congress of the United States of America (which, when the acronym is pronounced, only sounds like “Yakuza” to my delight) feat that this new Salem movement may provoke an all-out war. President Seraphina Piquery (Carmen Ejogo) and Director of Magical Security Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) suspect that one of Scamander’s beasts is responsible, despite his fervent assertions that they’re harmless. So, he’s also tasked to figure out what actually IS causing this mayhem while he avoids the long arm of the magical law.

What a day!

In fact, Fantastic Beasts is even better than just a change of pace. It’s a light, fun fantasy adventure that erases the dour tone of the last few Harry Potter films, returning us to a world of whimsy and wonder… Mostly. The central conflict of this film, which is thankfully treated more like a B-plot, is prone to rather sudden shifts in tone that don’t suit the movie one whit. One minute we’re pirouetting in a sanctuary for teleporting ducks, and the next Ezra Miller shows up playing a terminally maudlin child that looks like he stepped off the set of a Tim Burton film, but acts like he was written by Charles Dickens on a bad day.

These sequences range from the bizarrely overwrought (a little girl plays hopscotch while chanting a rhyme about witch murder) to the actively bad (there’s a bit of business about a presidential election that seems to be setting up a despotic villain – topical – but randomly vanishes halfway through), so the marriage of these two tones is fraught with tension. These sections are also marked by the absolute worst of James Newton Howard’s generic score, which quotes Saw in the weirdest way possible. Again, luckily the move seems to recognize that this portion of the plot is junk, so it shoves it offscreen as roughly and as often as possible.

Pay no attention to the subplot behind the curtain.

But if you excise that chunk of the movie from your brain, the rest is –in a word – fantastic. Mostly. OK, it’s not perfect, but it’s a breezy bit of popcorn fun that is much needed in this horrifying time we’re living in.

The creature effects range from solid (an instantly plushy-able niffler) to iffy (they never have been able to get house elves entirely right), but they’re all triumphs of colorful, fantastical design. And, amusingly, the single worst CGI creature in the whole thing is a lion. Like, just a straight-up, real-ass lion fro the Central Park Zoo, which really puts everything else in perspective. Where the effects really shine is in creating a living, breathing 1920’s New York City that serves as the perfect nostalgic backdrop for the overflowing magical mayhem of this timeless tale.

It’s thanks to this setting that Fantastic Beasts thrives. Placing a grand tale of wizardry and mystical creatures smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world is an ingenious juxtaposition that makes the film pulse with lively, jaunty energy. Although some of the humor tips toward the juvenile (Oh my, a man couldn’t possibly deal with talking about tampons! Gee whiz, that dude is much too fat to fit into a suitcase designed to transport enormous magical creatures! Ho ho! What fun!), it sparkles with a joie de vivre that can’t be denied.

And despite being a transparent marketing plot, there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell that you won’t exit the theater loving the niffler.

But I’ve been neglecting the human element here, which is uncommonly strong. Redmayne is an excellent addition to Rowling’s wizarding world, providing an exquisitely strange energy to his role. But the real standout here is relative unknown Dan Fogler, whose Muggle bravado (I refuse to call him a No-Maj, because apparently this is how little the Brits think of us) is aced with a sublime cluelessness and whip-smart comic timing. I also couldn’t leave out the Marilyn Monroe-esque beauty Queenie (Alison Sudol), who hides some sharp anarchistic edges beneath her airy façade. Katherine Waterston is the least of our heroes because her role is a bit of a cypher, but she grounds the silliness of her motley crew. It’s a perfect mixture of the funny and the unreal.

So Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has its fair share of flaws (not the least of which is how it makes my fingers cramp up whenever I have to type that full title), but it’s a return to form for spotty Potter director David Yates. It’s not quite at the level of his magnum opus The Half-Blood Prince, but that five-year break certainly put a pep in his step. My advice? Go see Fantastic Beasts. Wipe your slate clean of expectations, and have yourself a plain old-fashioned good time.

TL;DR: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fun, light fantasy adventure that overcomes its shaky tone.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1107
Reviews In This Series
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Yates, 2016)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Yates, 2018)

Claw of Desire

Year: 2016

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The Lobster is a preposterously divisive movie. The two movie review blogs I follow religiously gave it a 10/10 and a 0/10 respectively. The patrons at the theater I work at either walk out halfway through or come back for second and third helpings. It’s like – for lack of a better comparison – seafood. Some people despise the taste, but others can’t get enough. So with all this debate raging, of course I had to dive in there for myself and see what all the hubbub was about. 

Did I enjoy The Lobster? No. Do I regret it? Well, mostly.

I’m not allergic to shellfish, but I might be allergic to art films.

In The Lobster, love is mandated by law. Newly single people in The City are sent to The Hotel, where they must find a mate within 45 days or else they are turned into an animal. They also must hunt single refugees known as Loners who live in The Woods. If my disdain for all these oh-so futuristic capital letters isn’t already palpable, let me make it clear that the only thing stopping me from vomiting all over my keyboard right now is the fact that I really don’t feel like cleaning it.

One of these single people is David (Colin Farrell), a schlubby man whose wife has left him. While he struggles to find someone with whom he shares a Defining Characteristic, he ends up desperately pairing with a psychopath (Angeliki Papoulia) before escaping to The Woods and striking up a furtive courtship with Short-Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), igniting the ire of the strictly anti-partnership Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux).

Another thing I absolutely adore is movies that don’t give their characters proper names. More, please!

I see what The Lobster is doing. I really do.  A society that focuses so fundamentally and grotesquely on pair-bonding is shallow and conformist, with no wiggle room to be an individual. In terms of achieving the film’s intended effect of muting all personality from its characters and design, it’s a masterpiece of intention. The ensemble is perfectly cast, especially Colin Farrell, who intimately understands the mechanics of his severely isolated role and knows how best to wring comedy from the character when he can.

The world-building of this incredibly unique setting is likewise terrific, dumping you in with no context and allowing you to uncover the depths of detail as the movie progresses. It’s not quite as rich in history as the production design of a Mad Max: Fury Road, but it gets the job done with ethereal efficiency. And the beginning is an absolute winner, slamming you into the story with a gonzo, out-of-context image that leaves you slavering for more (although, the more you learn about this film’s world, the less sense this scene makes).

So while I see the point of The Lobster and understand the polished mechanics that make it tick, that doesn’t mean I see why anybody would find themselves entertained by this droning didacticism.

Ooh, burn! This Lobster is getting BOILED!

The Lobster is so subdued that it practically fades out of existence. It’s like absurdism on tranquilizers, the monotonous performances and color scheme relentlessly pounding your brain with a sledgehammer of boredom. It’s got the pace of a Kubrick film, the flatly literal dialogue of Invention of Lying, and the music of a murder mystery, the atonal shrieks only highlighting how uninteresting everything you’re watching actually is.

For the entire film, it feels like you’re in a doctor’s waiting room, wondering if they’ve forgotten about you. Then as soon as there’s a knock on the door and you perk up, the film ends. After all, they can’t let us get too excited, or else we’ll start to think this is a fun movie. As much as The Lobster claims to be a black comedy, it does everything in its power to stile any and all joy. The scattered chuckles that escape are almost incidental, owing to the fact that there really is a great concept at the heart of this story. Only one singular moment made me laugh out loud, and I get the sense that the movie actively lamented my enjoyment, because it immediately doubled down on ponderous contemplation and a liberal slathering of slow motion.

Seriously, entire scenes of The Lobster are slomo. Not just key action moments (ha! Like it has any), but full minutes. Minutes upon minutes of pretentious napalm, obliterating the pacing and tearing the storyline to shreds. Watching The Lobster is like being trapped in a nightmare. Your feet move like molasses as you run toward an exit that glides further and further away. And anytime something even microscopically interesting happens, it’s immediately chucked from the film like so much dead weight. The biggest conflict in the movie (between the Loners and The Hotel) is never resolved. Even though we see the two sides briefly clash, these scenes are immediately forgotten and never followed up on.

It’s like listening to your grandfather tell a story.

The most extravagantly frustrating thing about The Lobster is that every now and then it shows flashes of asthmatic brilliance. It never exerts itself too much, but the occasional brutality nestled in this world of soft apathy is jarring and gut-wrenching in a magnificent way. One scene depicting the crowd’s blasé reaction to a particularly maudlin act of self-harm is coldly stunning, like an ice-chilled scalpel slicing down your spine. And then of course the film returns to flatly droning about how to properly launder a stain or the comparative weight of different sports equipment.

I GET IT. I do. But The Lobster really needs to take a chill pill. It’s so far up its own ass that it can see daylight. Everything good about the film (and there really is a lot of potential here) is quietly smothered with a scratchy, off-white pillow. I can see why this movie appeals to the Lonely Heart cinephiles of the world, but care as little about The Lobster as it does about me, or any of humanity for that matter.

TL;DR: The Lobster is a monotonous ordeal that stifles a pretty excellent absurdist premise.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1055

Modern Vampire of the City

Year: 2011

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, David Tennant

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Full disclosure: I have not seen the 1985 Tom Holland vampire flick on which 2011's Fright Night is based. So I can neither extoll its virtues as a glorious remake nor detract it as a pale shadow of its ancestor's glory.

I have no idea of the quality of the original, but I'll say my opinion on the 2011 iteration couldn't be downgraded easily - the film's much too dazzling for that. Fright Night 2011 is one in a long line of modern age remakes of classic 80's horror films and one of the few to accomplish what the remakes of that period (Carpenter's The Thing, Cronenberg's The Fly, The Blob) tended to do regularly - capture the tone and magic of the original film while updating it for the modern world.

Fright Night is endlessly fun and immediately earns a spot in my top five remakes of the century. Although, to be fair, my Top Five Remakes Awards Shelf currently contains Fright Night, Evil Dead, Wizard of Gore, some dead flies, lint, and a Post-It Note that reads "NOT Prom Night."

And a collage of "Colin Farrell shirtless" Google Image results.

High school student Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) has risen in popularity due to another generous gift from the Puberty Fairy, leaving his geeky old friends Adam (Will Denton) and Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse and is there a film in the front half of this decade that doesn't have this guy in it?) behind in the dust. Why would he hang out with them when he can make out with his way-out-of-his-league girlfriend Amy (the hilariously named Imogen Poots) or her douchey friend Mark (Dave Franco)?

Sidebar: Amy is the worst. She doesn't want to go to prom cuz that's lame (I'm thinking she'll regret the decision to be too cool for prom fifteen years from now) and she forces him to buy her smoothies. 0/10. Would not recommend.

He lives in a cookie cutter Las Vegas suburb with his realtor single mom (Toni Collette, who has been playing this part since about the time Hollywood was invented). Business has been tough though, because of all those families in the neighborhood that keep moving out mysteriously without warning. And what's going on with that weird neighbor who only comes out when the sun goes down?

It takes about 30 seconds for Ed to warn Charley that Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire and oh hey, maybe don't let your mom invite him inside.

The real horror is not being allowed to let this carefully unbuttoned man into your home.

Already the plot is moving at a fast clip (take into consideration that it took Bella Swan about an hour to figure out that Edward was a vampire - in a movie completely predicated on this plot point) and Fright Night sprints full pelt through a variety of delectable vampire setpieces as Jerry slinks around stalking his prey, as sly and calm as a jungle cat.

David Tennant plays Russell Brand Peter Vincent, a Las Vegas magician and master of vampire lore who is contacted by Charley to help maybe vanquish the guy who's been killing all his neighbors. But all is not as it seems and Vincent is as cowardly as they come, refusing to go anywhere near him. This is wise, especially considering that he's landed himself in the one remake that's actually pretty consistently scary.

Left to his own devices, Charley must find a way to destroy Jerry and somehow avoid looking like a complete psycho in the process. This leads to a variety of awkward teen situations ("What are you working on?" "...Porn") and the sudden realization that not only is this movie pretty scary. It's funny.

I'm talking actual laughing out loud intentionally funny jokes. Jokes that land! In fact, at least three moments are among the funniest scenes I've ever witnessed in any horror-comedy film (see: Ed falling in the pool and Charley's escape attempt with Doris). And one look at the credits would reveal who else but Marti Noxon behind the pen, one of the key women behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

With a goddess of the craft in her element, a barrage of bloody vampire mayhem, and irrationally solid comic performances across the board, Fright Night is an undeniable success.

It really bites. ...You know. In a good way.

That came out wrong. I meant to say it sucks.

Screw it! It's good.

Imbuing the explosive excess of the 80's (Literally - things explode left and right here. People, houses, you name it.) with modern sarcasm, references to Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, and an unusually well-integrated use of modern iTechnology, Fright Night is a wonderful marriage of two decades of awesomeness.

With an utmost dedication to gleeful pandemonium and a balls-to-the-wall outrageous Third Act chase scene, the film overcomes even the nacho cheesiness of the 3D effects. Did I mention it's in 3D? How could it not be? Although I didn't watch it in three dimensions, which greatly hampers the overall effect of some of the more CGI-based moments.

Alongside the action and gore, the sound design works triple time in a uniquely exaggerated register that is absolutely inspiring. Not many films would be able to stand under the weight of the almost grotesquely comical sound effects (Dave Franco swinging his fist sounds like a freight train) but the film is funny enough all around to sustain and benefit greatly from it.

And although, like most 3D films, the cinematographer is mostly held at bay by the necessities of adding a whole dimension (Altering the basic properties of quantum mechanics is hard, OK?) but one shot - an elevator going down with the sun - is imbued with all the beauty the film could muster.

Kind of like Colin Farrell.

All around it's a great film that doesn't take itself seriously and allows the scary moments to bubble up naturally from within the silly scenes instead of laying them atop them like oil on water. Not for no reason is this film one of the highest rated remakes on Rotten Tomatoes (although we shouldn't necessarily trust them considering that they don't ask for my opinion)

Even if you're not a fan of horror (or perhaps especially if you're not a fan of horror), I urge you to check out this cotton candy gem. It has crazy vampire teeth, a quippy hero, Doctor Who, explosions, and even a twist ending that gets revealed in the final scene! The twist ending being that Anton Yelchin is secretly the hottest member of the cast.

Who could have guessed?

TL;DR: Fright Night is a remake that I'm absolutely not ashamed to admit is pretty fantastic.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1147
Reviews In This Series
Fright Night (Holland, 1985)
Fright Night (Gillespie, 2011)