Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Feloniously underwhelming

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang

J.K. Rowling should have quit while she was ahead.

This newest glimpse into the Potterverse will be virtually impenetrable to first-time visitors, and even avid fans may have trouble keeping up. The information and character dumps are overwhelming, with Rowling — as scripter — apparently assuming that viewers will recall every little detail not only from this series’ first entry (2016’s Fantastic Beasts), but also bits and bobs from earlier Harry Potter adventures.

Having successfully infiltrated the French Ministry of Magic, in search of crucial information,
Newt (Eddie Redmayne) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) are about to be attacked by
guardian Matagots.

Which would be fine, if Rowling presented at least some pertinent detail and back-story along the way, but no; this is instant full immersion, and the tough luck for those unable to keep up.

But that isn’t the only problem. Director David Yates and editor Mark Day assemble this film quite sloppily, with multiple storylines hopping and skipping back and forth, in a manner as aggressively chaotic as the massive Chinese Zouwu that our hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) meets along the way. 

Some encounters flat don’t make sense. Even at 134 minutes, it feels like we’re seeing a Reader’s Digest condensed version of a much longer production, and that too much important stuff was left on the cutting-room floor.

There’s also a strong sense of déjà vu, with Rowling “borrowing” from her own work. This is most obvious when Newt and his “Auror” (magical law enforcement) companion, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), invade the French Ministry of Magic, with the help of some shape-changing polyjuice potion. One can’t help feeling the echo of Harry, Hermione and Ron similarly sneaking into the British Ministry of Magic, back in the day.

It’s too much been there, done that. And way too much talking and angst. Long-suffering unrequited love. A soul-tortured quest for personal identity. Elliptical, deliberately vague conversations where characters refuse to be candid with each other. Dangling clues that don’t amount to much, when answers are revealed.

Frankly, this film is a dull, boring slog. It’s not fun.

Nor is Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald anywhere near a match for Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort. The latter was — remains — a scary force of true malevolence, and was played as such in those movies.

Depp’s Grindelwald, in great contrast, seems more constipated than sinister; his “dire” pronouncements are intoned with a slow, emotionless flatness that feels more like sleepwalking. Were it not for his weird eyes and spiky hairstyle, he wouldn’t even look fearsome. One cannot imagine him rallying hundreds of “pure-born” wizards to his world-conquering cause, as occurs during this film’s climax.

Which, be warned, is little more than a blatant set-up for the next movie.

Logan Lucky: Misfit heist comedy beats the odds

Logan Lucky (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and somewhat harshly, for brief profanity and crude language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.25.17

Director Steven Soderbergh appears to have been bitten by the Fargo bug.

The droll, slow-burn Logan Lucky could be described as a cross between Soderbergh’s Oceans 11 and that iconic 1996 crime thriller — and its more recent, and ongoing, television adaptation — with additional regional absurdity supplied by an impudent original script credited to “Rebecca Blunt.”

Jimmy (Channing Tatum, right) employs a cardboard diorama to explain his "perfect
scheme" for robbing the heavily guarded underground vault at the Charlotte Motor
Speedway, as his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) reacts with mounting disbelief.

The quotes are intentional, because no such person exists. As yet, this film’s writer hasn’t been identified, although sources have suggested Soderbergh, or his wife Jules Asner, or several other possibilities. Certainly Soderbergh is no stranger to pseudonyms; indeed, he employs two for Logan Lucky, having supplemented his director’s duties as both cinematographer (under the name Peter Andrews) and editor (as Mary Ann Bernard).

The narrative here certainly displays Soderbergh’s long-established dry wit and arch sense of humor, and the film is guaranteed to delight viewers who appreciate the methodical build-up and eccentric characters that more frequently populate British quasi-comedies.

The storyline takes its time while bringing the primary characters to the stage. The setting is small-town West Virginia, where divorced, down-on-his-luck Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) never gets to spend enough time with doting young daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie, cute as a button). Jimmy’s intentions are good, but circumstances always interfere, much to the displeasure of ex-wife Bobbie Jo (Katie Holmes), now married to the insufferably wealthy — and insufferably smug — Moody (David Denman).

Jimmy spends considerable time commiserating with his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), who lost an arm during war service in Iraq, and now tends bar at a local dive rather oddly dubbed the Duck Tape. Clyde is convinced that every member of their clan is doomed by a longstanding “family curse,” hence his missing arm, and Jimmy’s injury-related limp, with similar misfortune stretching back generations.

Their sister Mellie (Riley Keough) sniffs at such nonsense, and well she should; there’s certainly nothing amiss in her life. Far from it: Aside from being a talented and popular hairdresser, Mellie is obsessed by cars to a degree that extends way beyond being able to quote make and model stats like a baseball fan; she also can hot-wire anything — and always carries the necessary supplies for such endeavors — and knows local traffic patterns, night and day, with the facility demonstrated by taxi-driving Stan Murch, in Donald Westlake’s marvelous Dortmunder novels.

Alien: Covenant — Rather disappointing

Alien: Covenant (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity, nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

In space, no one can escape being surrounded by idiots.

The Alien franchise, just shy of four decades old, continues to crank merrily along, of late shepherded by founding director Ridley Scott. To some degree that’s a good thing, because his films always are handsomely mounted, crisply paced and graced with compelling ensemble casts.

Once it becomes obvious that something nasty is prowling on board their massive
colony ship, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) and her synthetic companion Walter
(Michael Fassbender) consider their options.

They’re also usually a great deal smarter than this newest installment.

Alien: Covenant suffers from the same bone-stupid plotting that made the recently released Life — a rather blatant Alien rip-off in its own right — such an infuriating experience. Nobody has a lick of sense, the various characters utterly ignoring chain of command and basic safety protocols, while bickering and squabbling like school kids. As I’ve noted in the past, if these numbskulls represent Humanity’s Finest, then we deserve to be massacred by outer space nasties.

This aggravating film’s script comes courtesy of Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan and Dante Harper, who sacrifice plot logic on the altar of routine gore effects. You’ll find little genuine suspense here; all the alien attacks — whether by the now-familiar ovomorphs, facehuggers, chestbursters or adult xenomorphs — are telegraphed by maddeningly unhurried reveal shots.

Most of these encounters are by-the-book horror flick stuff: Somebody hears something, s-l-o-w-l-y turns around — or peers at something — and whammo! More blood on the screen.

This film offers neither the shock of the opening installment, nor the full-throttle energy of James Cameron’s immediate follow-up, 1986’s Aliens.

Most subsequent films were disappointments of one sort or another, until Scott re-ignited the franchise with 2012’s Prometheus. As a prequel to everything that had come before, the Jon Spaihts/Damon Lindelof script established an intriguing back story that explored the creation of the xenomorphs, the origins of mankind, and the space-faring race of giant “Engineers” who apparently seeded life throughout galaxies. Very high-falutin’ God stuff.

This new film takes place 10 years later — still roughly 20 years prior to the events in Alien (for those who pay attention to such things) — as the deep-space Earth colony ship Covenant makes its way to the distant planet Origae-6. The crew and 2,000 colonists are deep in hyper-sleep, the ship monitored solely by a synthetic android named Walter (Michael Fassbender) and an onboard computer dubbed Mother (voiced by Lorelei King, sounding very much like Sigourney Weaver). Once the journey is complete, the settlers hope to establish a new human outpost.

Fantastic Beasts, and Where to Find Them: A roaring good time

Fantastic Beasts, and Where to Find Them (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for fantasy action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.18.16

Daniel Radcliffe was a great Harry Potter, but Eddie Redmayne is a fantastic Newt Scamander.

When Agent Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) brings Newt Scamander (Eddie
Redmayne, left) to the Magical Congress USA's Wand Permit Office, they're met by the
Director of Magical Security, Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), who regards this newcomer
with obvious suspicion.

Newt is the pluperfect misfit researcher — magizoologist, to be precise — who is far more comfortable with his beloved “fantastic beasts,” than he is with fellow human beings. Redmayne is appropriately disheveled, like an absent-minded professor who dressed in the dark; his bashful gaze is concealed beneath a mop of unruly hair, and he often rushes in blindly where mages fear to tread.

At the same time, he’s puppy-dog adorable, with an aura of vulnerability that proves deceptive, under certain circumstances. He may not be able to look a woman in the eye, but he’ll stop at nothing when one of his critters is involved.

More to the point — and just like the trouble-prone Harry Potter — Newt thinks nothing of breaking the rules, if he honestly believes the reasons are valid. Much to the dismay of the higher-ups at the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA).

J.K. Rowling penned Fantastic Beasts, and Where to Find Them in 2001, in between the fourth and fifth installments of her Harry Potter series. It actually was one of Harry’s textbooks: required for first-year Hogwarts students, in its 52nd edition when Harry, Ron and Hermione are assigned to read it, and complete with an introduction by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

This “faux” research tome, compiled by Scamander, describes his research into magizoology, and provides detailed descriptions of 85 magical creatures found throughout the world. As an added droll touch, the pages includes scribblings, doodles and often snarky comments by Ron, who apparently suffered through its pages.

The book was a lark on Rowling’s part — something of a “bonus” for her readers — but not a trivial endeavor. More than 80 percent of the cover price of each copy sold benefited the charity Comic Relief, aiding poor children throughout the world.

Flash-forward to 2013, following the conclusion of the Harry Potter film cycle, at which point Warner Bros. announced that “Fantastic Beasts” would serve as a template for a new five-film series, depicting the many adventures and encounters experienced by Newt, as he developed the data that would lead to the debut publication of his textbook.

And the films would be scripted by Rowling herself.

Steve Jobs: A tarnished Apple

Steve Jobs (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.15

The ensemble cast is strong, impeccably directed and well-suited to each role.

The dialog is rat-a-tat enthralling: classic Aaron Sorkin arguments and badinage, with verbal zingers and snarky rejoinders landing like physical blows, recipients wincing in pain or retreating behind wary glances. It’s the stuff that made The Social Network and TV’s West Wing and The Newsroom so spellbinding: the intelligent, sharp-edged and fast-paced discourse that we’re neither clever enough, nor quick-witted enough, to deliver in real life.

Struggling to find some way to connect with the young daughter whose paternity he denies,
Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) encourages Lisa (Makenzie Moss) to play with a
spanking-new Macintosh computer. "You can't break it," he promises.

It feels more like an intimate, minimalist stage play, and in fact Sorkin has structured it that way, with three distinct acts. I was reminded, more than once, of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made into a similarly mesmerizing 1992 film.

But those characters were fictitious, if familiar archetypes that we’d likely find in the rapacious atmosphere of a high-end, nail-the-deal-no-matter-what real estate office.

Steve Jobs, in contrast, profiles the actual Apple guru, with ample attention paid to the close advisors circling his incandescent star. (He doesn’t appear to have any actual friends.)

And not once, not for a second, did I feel that Sorkin and director Danny Boyle had come anywhere close to capturing the actual Steve Jobs. This relentlessly distracting fact ruins the entire film. Although clearly a sort of “truthiness” — the script is adapted from Walter Isaacson’s thoroughly researched biography of Jobs — this drama seems to exist in a parallel universe where Sorkin has indulged in his own myth-making.

Goodness knows, Jobs was highly skilled at crafting and stage-managing the persona he displayed in public. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Sorkin has described this film as an “impressionistic portrait” of Jobs: an abstraction concocted to surround the Apple guru with the same six characters, at three crucial points in his career, and let them “bang on each other.”

A “heightened version of real life,” Boyle adds, in the press notes.

Balderdash. Those quotes sound like a defensive excuse: an effort to get ahead of the negative publicity destined to emerge — and it definitely has — after Jobs’ actual associates begin to complain, quite noisily, that Sorkin’s so-called portrait is pure hooey.

The degree to which this does or doesn’t prove off-putting will depend on each viewer’s allegiance to truth, and/or a sense of the real-world Jobs. Taken purely on its own merits, Boyle and Sorkin’s film deserves all the descriptive accolades cited in my opening paragraphs; it is riveting.

But even if we give Boyle and Sorkin the benefit of that particular doubt, we cannot escape one glaringly obvious problem: The Steve Jobs depicted here is a relentless, abusive, unapologetic bully. Michael Fassbender’s nuanced performance notwithstanding, there’s no trace of the persuasive, charismatic futurist who inspired and demanded greatness from his associates and staff.

This big-screen Jobs is just a cruel bastard. He couldn’t inspire anybody to change a light bulb, let alone deliver the miracles that routinely emerged from Apple. And all viewers, even clueless tech luddites, will understand the utter wrongness of this dynamic.

That said, one cannot argue with Sorkin’s clever narrative structure.