Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  I didn't hate it but I definitely didn't love it as much as my friends did.  I thought it was one big set up for all of the future movies to come and I hoped that the subsequent movies in the Wizarding World would be better.  My hopes were in vain.  I had a chance to see a Thursday preview of the latest installment, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, last night and I thought it was a convoluted mess.  Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) escapes while being transported from the U.S. to England and wants all the pureblooded wizards from around the world to rise up and take over all of the non-magical people.  He is particularly interested in Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), who, with the help of a shape shifter named Nagini (Claudia Kim), is trying to find out his true identity (which, presumably, Grindewald knows).  A young Dumbledore (Jude Law) enlists the help of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to track Grindelwald down because he is prevented from fighting him himself.  Newt's brother Theseus (Callum Turner), who is an official with the Ministry of Magic, his former childhood girlfriend Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), and his current girlfriend Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) are also looking for Grindelwald.  Then Tina's sister Queenie (Alison Sudal) comes looking for her and she brings Jacob (Dan Fogler) along because she's enchanted him into marrying her.  After a bizarre plot twist involving Leta's brother Yusef Kama (William Nadylam), which is all a bit of tedious misdirection, there is an epic confrontation with Grindelwald.  The story is incredibly confusing with a bewildering number of characters who bounce incomprehensibly between New York, London, and Paris and yet nothing of substance actually happens.  There were many times when I couldn't figure out what was going on.  I kept thinking that it would all come together in the end but it doesn’t because this movie, once again, involves a lot of exposition setting up the next movie, particularly a major revelation at the end which comes out of nowhere (people in my screening actually booed at this).  I didn’t especially like Depp’s portrayal of Grindelwald because he is so bland and I found Newt to be more annoying than endearing this time around.  The best part of this movie is Newt's interactions with his fantastic beasts, particularly a sea horse made of kelp, but other than that I found it to be incredibly disappointing.  I think I might be done with the Wizarding World.

Overlord

I was very intrigued by the idea of a movie involving World War II intrigue and elements of horror so I decided to see Overlord last night.  I liked it so much more than I thought I would!  On the eve of the D-Day invasion in France a squadron of paratroopers is sent to destroy a German radio tower attached to a church in a tiny village.  When their plane is shot down, only five members of the squadron survive:  Ford (Wyatt Russell), Boyce (Jovan Adepo), Tibbet (John Magaro), Chase (Iain De Caestecker), and Dawson (Jacob Anderson).  Ford insists that they carry on with the mission to destroy the radio tower despite the odds and they encounter a villager named Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) who hides them.  While scouting the area around the church, Boyce discovers that the Nazis have been using a serum to experiment on the villagers in the hope that they can create a super soldier to win the war.  He eventually rescues a paratrooper who was captured (Dominic Applewhite).  They decide that not only do they need to blow up the radio tower but they also need to destroy the Nazi's lab which leads to an epic showdown.  There are some elements of the story that do become rather silly, especially involving a German officer who injects himself with the serum, but I found it to be incredibly suspenseful and entertaining.  The action sequences are intense, particularly the opening scene in which the plane is shot down, and the scenes where Boyce explores the lab in the church are really creepy and atmospheric (thanks to great sound design) even if they do contain many horror tropes.  My favorite scene involves Chloe taking out a particularly persistent monster (I may or may not have cheered out loud).  Most of the characters are very thinly drawn and stereotypical (the war-weary veteran, the innocent newcomer, the wise-cracking prankster, the self-sufficient survivor) but I did find them to be sympathetic and I was rooting for them to succeed.  This movie is pretty gory and violent (lots of war and zombie imagery) but it is a lot of fun.  I am actually very surprised by how much I enjoyed Overlord and I would recommend it to fans of action/horror movies.

Die Hard

The next selection in the TCM Big Screen Classics series is Die Hard which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary.  I distinctly remember seeing this in the theater when it was first released (which makes me feel old) and I absolutely loved it!  I got to see it again yesterday and it is just as fun as I remember.  John McClane (Bruce Willis), a New York City police officer, has come to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to reconcile with his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) who has taken a high power job with the Nakatomi corporation.  He arrives at the Nakatomi high rise building during a Christmas party which is interrupted by a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), who seize control of the building and take everyone but John hostage.  The terrorists are heavily armed and attempt to open the vault to steal $640 million in bearer bonds.  The police and the FBI are in over their heads, so John, with the help of a lone LAPD officer (Reginald VelJohnson), attacks the terrorists one by one until an epic confrontation with Gruber.  Even thirty years later, this movie is still suspenseful and exciting with great action sequences, especially when McClane jumps off the roof ahead of an explosion.  Bruce Willis became the ultimate action hero after this movie and its easy to see why with his wisecracking bravado touched with a little vulnerability.  This movie was my first introduction to Alan Rickman and I loved him as the suave and sophisticated, yet ruthless, villain Gruber (many believe Gruber to be one of the best movie villains ever).  This movie has often been imitated but, after seeing it again on the big screen, I realize how vastly superior it is to many that came after, especially this one!

Note:  Do you consider Die Hard to be a Christmas movie?

The Girl in the Spider's Web

I am a huge fan of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson (I've read all three books multiple times) so I was very intrigued by a new novel involving the antisocial hacker Lisbeth Salander called The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz.  I didn't initially like it because I was constantly comparing it to the first three books which probably wasn't very fair of me.  I decided that if I saw the movie adaptation I would try to judge it on its own merits rather than compare it to David Fincher's moody and atmospheric adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  My Dad and I decided to see it yesterday and we both thought it was a pretty good thriller.  Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) has become a sort of avenging angel for battered women when she is asked by a former NSA agent named Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) to steal a computer program that he designed, which can access nuclear codes around the world, because he's having second thoughts about its use.  Stealing the program is a simple job for Salander but it attracts the attention of the NSA, who send Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) to Stockholm to retrieve it, and it also attracts the attention of a Russian gang known as the Spiders, who bomb Salander's apartment to steal it from her.  She enlists the help of Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) to discover who is behind this gang and ultimately must confront her own past to get the program back.  This is not the dark and psychologically complex murder mystery that the original is but, in my opinion, it is not meant to be.  It is meant to be an action thriller and on that level it succeeds.  The car chases, explosions, and fight scenes are fantastic and Foy delivers a kick-ass performance.  The screenplay deviates quite a bit from the source material, especially in regards to Lisbeth’s backstory, but I think it improves upon an meandering and overly technical story.  It is quite entertaining and I really enjoyed it.  This movie might not be what you are expecting if you are a fan of the original trilogy, but if you can appreciate it for what it is, I highly recommend it

Hunter Killer

My Dad and I are huge fans of espionage novels and movies so we have been anticipating Hunter Killer for quite a while.  We finally got to see it yesterday and we both loved it!  When the submarine USS Tampa Bay goes missing in the Arctic Ocean, Rear Admiral John Fisk (Common) sends the USS Arkansas, commanded by the unorthodox Captain Joe Glass (Gerard Butler), to investigate.  The NSA also sends a Navy SEAL team to the Polyarny naval base in Russia for a covert mission to investigate the build up of their northern fleet.  The USS Arkansas finds the USS Tampa Bay and discovers that it was sunk by a Russian torpedo under highly suspicious circumstances.  Meanwhile, the Navy SEALs discover that the Russian Defense Minister (Mikhail Gorevoy) has taken the Russian President (Alexander Diachenko) hostage in a coup d'etat and is trying to provoke a war with the US.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Donnegan (Gary Oldman), wants to ready the fleet for war but Fisk suggests that the SEALs go in and rescue the Russian President and that the USS Arkansas go through the Murmansk Fjord, and area that is heavily mined, to rendezvous with them in the hope of stopping a war.  What follows is tense, suspenseful, and action-packed!  This movie feels like a throw-back to the Cold War thrillers that I watched in my teens and, apparently, I've really missed having Russia as an enemy!  The story is compelling, with some great plot twists and edge-of-your-seat action sequences, especially when the USS Arkansas evades a torpedo.  Hunter Killer is exciting and wildly entertaining and I recommend it to fans of the genre (or people like me who miss Cold War intrigue).