Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

11/20/2018

_By JD Phillips, geekr.org_ The Harry Potter movies are great but one of the main flaws of the original franchise was the struggle the films had condensing the lengthy novels into movies under three hours. Despite the Fantastic Beasts sequel not being based on a book, it still somehow feels like its stressing to condense a five hundred page book into a smaller narrative. The movie runs from scenario to scenario so quickly that it’s hard to remember what all happened in its muddled story. That’s not to say the film is terrible at all, surprisingly. For a movie that has serious pacing problems throughout and has more interest in setting up sequels than it is at finding a memorable plot of its own, it’s actually very entertaining. The returning cast members are all back and while

11/30/2018

The first Fantastic Beasts movie was excellent. It was a bright and magical adventure. This one is going down another path and I cannot say that I was overly thrilled by that. This movie is putting emphasis on political machinations, division between the wizards and the non-wizards, betrayals etc. etc. Take away the magic component and you really have a fairly regular racial-differences, humans are bad and all that, movie of the kind that Hollywood is all too eager to mass produce these days. Sure it is not as blunt, preachy and totally ridiculous as a lot of their creations but still … not the path I wanted these movies to take. At least there are plenty of magic and beasts around in this movie to make the dark and, at times, boring story a bit more compelling. The magic and the bea

12/17/2018

First of all, just like in the last movie the acting in this film is excellent but with a few exceptions. Eddie Redmayne was still excellent as Newt but I think he did a better job in the first film. Same thing with Dan Fogler who didn’t seem as funny but useless and could have just been written out of this film. But I did really like Jude Law as a young Dumbledore and Joshua Shea who plays young Newt. Joshua played younger Newt so well that he actually looked like a younger version of Eddie. Jude Law brought the same kind of attitude towards Dumbledore that we all know and love. The special effects and set designs still looked marvellous. The creatures special effects just like last time were great and looked like if we saw them in real life that’s what they would look like. The sets look

8/10/2020

I re-watched the original _Fantastic Beasts_ today to prep for _Crimes of Grindelwald_ and it made me realise that the only reason I gave that first film a positive review was because of Queenie Goldstein. She's just **such** a sweetheart. Her character wasn't the **only** thing I liked about that movie, but without her, it still gets pushed down into Rotten. So when they took her in this one and first made her a rapist and then a Nazis, I was uh... Not exactly stoked. But that's a personal thing, and I try to, at least partially, put that aside and review on things like technical aspect. And in that Avenue, _Crimes of Grindelwald_ is an **abysmal** failure. This is not the outright worst film of the year, but it was definitely the worst one I've seen in cinemas for a long damn time. _

5/12/2022

Better than its predecessor, even if I still didn't really dig it. <em>'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald'</em> has more of a vibe about it, especially early on, and is marginally better paced. Overall, though, I'm kinda split on how I feel about this second instalment. It is a definite improvement, and yet I don't have any noteworthy positives to share about it. The cast, despite names I like, are just so forgettable to me in this. As such, I don't feel like I can give it any more than a 6/10 rating - which feels harsh, but 7/10 feels too high. With that said, I still plan to check out <em>'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore'</em>. It just needs that little extra oomph and these would be films that I'd enjoy, so hopefully that 2022 release will produce.

7/26/2022

Confused, lost, Johnny Depp always awesome. I think the days of me playing in the Harry Potter world are over.