Review : Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Final Trailer

Movie Review

It’s been a few days since I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I’m so glad I sat on this one for a bit because my initial thoughts weren’t the most positive. As the days drew on, however, I started to think more and more about all the things the film did well and what made it so special. Sometimes you have to step away from something to fully appreciate its value.

It’s not as if the things I didn’t like about Fantastic Beasts just went away. My biggest issue was the fact that the film never really gave me a chance to settle in. It was light-hearted then took a sharp turn and became extremely dark. It was almost as if I was watching two different films at times.

The dual storyline also detracted from the overall enjoyment of the film at times. Wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) makes a pit stop in New York on his way to Arizona to release one of his beasts into the wild. Meanwhile a terrible, dark force is destroying everything it comes into contact with in the city and a magical wizarding task force has to figure out what’s going and eliminate the threat. The two storylines do cross paths…but not really.

The title definitely lives up to itself as creatures of all shapes and sizes abound throughout the film. I was extremely impressed by not only how many different species there were, but how different each and everyone of them were from each other. I’m hesitant to spoil things by going into too much detail, but prepare to see everything from massive, griffin-type creatures to tiny insects that look more like trees than bugs. You can tell that JK Rowling really had a strong hand in this film as the innovation goes hand-in-hand with Harry Potter universe. My personal favorite beast was Dougal, a pudgy, rodent-like creature that can’t seem to stop stealing things. The movie would not have been the same without Dougal who manages to steal many of the scenes he’s involved in.

Even beyond the beasts, the visuals are amazing. Newt’s magical location where he keeps his animals has an array of climates respective to each species and its cool to see them all mesh together. Typical Harry Potter style, magic scenes abound with disappearing acts and various wizarding duels that get your heartrate going. Definitely an array of eye candy to maintain your attention.

As a whole Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them succeeds with multiple layers that will appeal to all types of people hoping for a relevant experience. Looking forward to what this franchise brings next. 

Movie Rating : 8/10

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Review : Don't Breathe

Don't Breathe

DON'T BREATHE - Official Trailer

Movie Review

It’s been a hell of a year for horror films, not only at the box office, but quality-wise as well.  For me, Lights Out is an instant classic that rivals classic 80’s films in the genre like The Thing (1982), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and the like, and now comes Don’t Breathe, from Fede Alvarez, whose underappreciated Evil Dead (2013) remake I really enjoyed, and Don’t Breathe is even better with a good amount of likeable protagonists and a great villain and premise.  There’s lots to talk about here, so let’s get going.

We’ll start with a pretty great premise: a group of young thieves plan a heist on an old blind army veteran, and while the kids have some slick moves, they messed with the wrong old blind guy, and he slowly stalks and attacks the intruders as they try and survive the night.  And of course, the best way for him to find them, as they discover, is him hearing their breathing, so as the title suggests, if you want to stay alive, don’t breathe.  It’s a great story and one that I’m sure some sleazy, low-budget, direct to DVD horror directors will try to cash in on in the following months and years.  Next we’ll have a deaf old woman being preyed upon by a group of teens.  They’ll call it Don’t Look or something.  Anyways, another element I quite liked was the cast.  With leading lady Jane Levy, an Evil Dead alum and Dylan Minnette playing two of the intruding teens, both were phenomenal in their roles, and Daniel Zovatto plays the third intruder, the one you love to hate and hope gets caught by the blind man.  Speaking of which, the most layered and brilliant performance definitely is Stephen Lang as the army vet, who has more than just home security in mind when it comes to getting rid of his intruders.  I’ll leave it at that.

One of my favorite parts of Lights Out was the likeability of the main characters.  Don’t Breathe doesn’t succeed quite as well in this field, but it does come pretty damn close.  We see that for Levy’s character, Rocky, the breaking and entering, and of course theft, is not just her acting out, it’s a way out of Detroit for her and her sister.  Minnette’s character we cheer for a bit as well, seeing as his involvement is all about being with Rocky, who he likes, in spite of the illegal acts they are performing.  And at first we understand why the army vet is going as far as he is; the poor man is blind, lost his family and is pretty much living on what little he gets.  As we get more into his character, though, we discover that we actually shouldn’t cheer for him too hard, and that perhaps he’s more diabolical than he leads on.  I won’t say much more, but those who have seen the film know what I’m talking about.  So the shifting perspective of who is the true hero of the story is fun and unexpected, and I enjoyed this aspect very much.  Also for a horror/thriller, I have to say that the film actually made me jump at times.  Anytime this happens I have to give credit to the director or whoever it is that’s responsible.  I’ve seen every last trick in the book when it comes to horror films, so if I get jumpy or freaked out, you’ve got something pretty good.

Now I do have to say that for the most part, I am willing to suspend my disbelief for most horror films.  Like really, how does Jason keep going after all these years, or how does Michael Myers survive the initial fall in Halloween (1978) and the endings of all the sequels?  But anyways, from the start Don’t Breathe is set up to be a pretty realistic thriller, so by the end when the characters have gone through as much as they have, I’m surprised their brains aren’t mush or they haven’t bled out.  In particular all the blows to the head and falls and injuries one of the intruders suffers, I won’t spoil which one, I’m surprised they’re not a vegetable by the end of the film.  It almost felt like the R-rated Home Alone (1990) by the last fifteen minutes.  It is such a persistent problem for me that by the end I was distracted from the last chase scenes.  Now if we revealed halfway through the film that one of the intruders, the one that takes all the blows, was a ghost or something, I would have been fine because they could make that work within the horror genre, but since it is a realistic setting with a realistic set-up and story, it went just a bit too far for me.  While this sounds like a small complaint, it affected me enough to take a couple of points.

With that exception, Don’t Breate is well shot, executed, and also well-written and offers a great entertainment for those out there looking for a good thrill or scare.  I really hope that Alvarez gets some good gigs following the amazing box office performance of the film, because he certainly earned it after Evil Dead and now he’s overdue for a big shot, unless of course he doesn’t want one and is fine where he’s at.  Either way he’s become one of the more dependable horror directors of the day and I sure hope there’s a lot more when Don’t Breathe came from.

Movie Rating : 8/10

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Review : Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad - Official Trailer

Movie Review

I come in peace, let me preface this review with that. I can’t promise you my words won’t get a bit ugly, but just think of me as that one relative in your family. You know the one I’m talking about, the one who always speaks the truth even when it’s probably in his/her best interest to keep their mouth closed. I didn’t hate Suicide Squad. Then again, I didn’t like it much either. Allow me to explain.

Let’s start with the good. Viola Davis playing the role of Amanda Waller? Absolutely phenomenal. By the end of the movie, you will definitely feel some kind of way about her and those feelings probably won’t be positive. She makes you hate her. You think there’s a screw loose until you realize there’s actually an entire wheel missing. She is the one that puts the team together, but if I was making my own team, she would easily be my star player. There’s such a cold demeanor about her that spreads from her eyes to her voice, a demeanor that screams, “You cross me and it’ll be the last mistake you ever make.” As I said, phenomenal.

The action sequences weren’t half-bad in certain spots although a bit more disjointed than the scenes you might see in an Avengers movie. I especially loved the scenes that utilized Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a sword-wielding bad-ass whose weapon captures the soul of each person she kills. Watching her cut through enemies in slow motion was pretty fun and definitely put a smile on my face a couple of times. The cool thing about facing off against a swarm of enemies with only a sword or your hands as a weapon (as opposed to a bunch of guns) is it makes the odds seem more insurmountable and, therefore, leaves an even greater impression when you come out of the battle unscathed.

DC fanboys, did I take you high enough? Good, because this rollercoaster is about to plummet straight down. Hold on to your armbars.

The plot: Waller is recruiting a group of the worst of the worst supervillains to take on some kind of threat. Either I wasn’t paying attention or we never actually find out what the original threat was as it quickly changes into something apparently way more sinister. I’m definitely willing to admit that I might have missed something as the story happens way too fast for my taste. Ever seen an episode of “Gilmore Girls”? If you haven’t, maybe you’ve heard jokes about how the dialogue between the characters is extremely speedy and incoherent at times. That’s the best way I can describe the storyline of Suicide Squad. Everything seems rushed to the point that it becomes a jumbled, hot mess. Even as a popcorn movie, you gotta give me something to go on so that I’m not sitting there scratching my head wondering why this story even needed to happen in the first place.

The character development is like looking at a bar graph in a stocks presentation. Will Smith’s Deadshot would be your stock of the day as they clearly spent the highest amount of payroll in landing him. The amount of screentime he’s given makes it quite obvious. There weren’t enough lines in the world to make me care about his character, though, who I valued about as much as I did Captain Boomerang, the low stock in the bunch.

It’s frustrating because that’s Movie Creation 101: If you don’t care to develop the characters then we, as the audience, won’t care about the characters. If we don’t care about the characters then we sure as crap don’t care whether or not they succeed. And wasn’t that the goal of the entire movie? To show us that, even though these characters are the worst of the worst, they’re people we can stand behind and root for? Mission failed big time.

I could say more. I could talk about Killer Croc’s awful dialect or the corny dialogue in general. Instead I’ll wrap it up with this: It appears that DC is trying so hard to catch up to Marvel that they’re not taking the time to establish their own world properly. So far they are 1-3, Man of Steel being the only quality movie in the bunch. They’re not out of chances yet, but one more flop might bring them to the point of no return.

Suicide Squad is nowhere near as bad as Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. However, that’s like saying Hilary’s not as bad as Trump. They both suck. I’m rooting for you, DC, but I can’t let you get away with putting out a blah product. Do better. I give Suicide Squad a 6.

Movie Rating : 6/10

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Review : Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange

Marvel's Doctor Strange Teaser Trailer

Movie Review

Doctor Strange is a Big Mac that someone spiked the special sauce with LSD. By that I mean that Doctor Strange is possibly Marvel’s most derivative and formulaic movie yet, but it just so happens to contain a little shot of absolutely brilliant insanity thrown in. It’s a frustrating cocktail but entertaining regardless.

The main problem with Doctor Strange is that it’s the shortest Marvel movie yet. Not just in run-time either, although a 115 minute run-time is pretty odd to see in today movie market. It isn’t so much that Doctor Strange just feels like it’s hitting the basic Marvel movie beats, but that that’s ALL it’s hitting. There’s so little meat in between the bones of Doctor Strange that I’m really confused as to why this wasn’t just dropped on Netflix. It’s not even that it feels like this movie is missing entire scene’s or anything like Suicide Squad; it’s definitely a complete movie, just a very short one. The movie knows its only really serving the purpose of setting up things and characters Marvel is probably going to use later, and I’m a little sad that’s all it really ends up being (although kudos to the first end credits sequence for actually giving us a direct look at how). As such, Doctor Strange ends up feeling like the perfect Phase 1 movie, and that can’t help but stick out like a sore thumb when we’re already on Phase 3 and we’ve just started seeing all that Phase 1 potential start to pay off.

What’s interesting is that even though a lot of the actual material of Doctor Strange is bare-bones, it’s not really badly done. All though I don’t think anything in this movie gets the full, enriching development I usually like, there isn’t really a bad piece here. The actual character of Strange isn’t just “Magic Iron Man” as I was fearing; instead it’s “Magic Iron Man” but with the arrogance and awkwardness dialed way up. For about the first 1/3 of the movie, he’s genuinely unlikable. It actually adds a uniqueness and distinction to his character that feels very welcome, and Benedict Cumberbatch sells the heck out of it. I can’t wait to see how he actually interacts with other Avengers in the future. The supporting characters are also really fun. For the amount of screen time they receive, they manage to all feel like real three-dimensional human beings that have lives outside of the movie. This is mostly down to how tight the script actually is. For however story-lite it may be, the movie has a very great understanding of its characters. Even the villain seems like he actually could’ve been one of Marvel’s legitimately interesting villains had the movie not been in such a rush.

The real thing that saves Doctor Strange from being “just another Marvel movie,” is the actual magic itself. It’s not only brilliantly visualized with some of the best CGI Marvel’s ever put out, but the actual creativity on display here is enough to make me stand up and cheer. Part of that is mostly from the fact that instead of having characters stand-around and flesh out the minutia of how everything works, the movie really just prefers to show you and let you fill in the gaps. This leads to a number trippy visual sequences and incredibly creative action scene’s that more or less make the price of the admission ticket worth it. I kid you not, you have probably never seen stuff like some of the fight scene’s they create towards the end. To that end I really can’t blame the movie for wanting to rush everything else just to get to the action, since the action and visual sequences are just that good. I’d totally recommend seeing this in 3D or IMAX just for how cool this stuff actually gets.

Doctor Strange isn’t bad at all, just one of the weaker Marvel movie’s overall. Maybe it wouldn’t suffer so much if it hadn’t been structured like a typical Marvel origin movie, but I can’t really ignore that a lot of these flaws are flaws that Marvel really needs to start addressing. Still, it’s been a slow fall movie season, you’re probably gonna see this anyway, so at least know you’re in for a visual treat.

Movie Rating : 7/10

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Review : The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train - Official Trailer

Movie Review

I love a good mystery. I enjoy stories that present a central question for which the answer will eventually be revealed. Of course, it’s not just the thrill of finally discovering the answer that’s worthwhile, but also the intrigue of looking for the answer and predicting what it might be. This is why Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives captivate so many people. But let’s not forget mysteries where the main character is trying to solve a mystery for personal reasons, rather than solving a mystery as part of an investigative occupation. One such mystery in recent years quickly rose to bestseller status and has been made into a movie: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I did not read the book, but after seeing it displayed so often on websites of online stores, such as Amazon and Audible, I decided to see the movie and find out what the hype is all about.

The first thing I like about this story is the setup. The title character is a sad, lonely woman named Rachel (played by Emily Blunt). She spends much of her time riding a train and, along a specific segment of her usual route, watches people inside and outside houses situated close by. It’s as if she chooses to spend her time envying others and imagining herself in their shoes, instead of taking steps to actually improve her life. Even before more of this character is revealed later, it is clear that Rachel is deeply disturbed. After this introduction, the movie introduces the other two central characters. One is Anna (played by Rebecca Ferguson), a woman with a husband and a baby. The other is Megan (played by Haley Bennett), a young woman who works as Anna’s nanny.

I will not reveal anything else about these women, nor will I present details of the other characters or of the plot itself. This is a mystery story, after all. For me to divulge further information is to take away the fun of following the events of the story. I will, however, talk about how the movie is structured and the style in which the story is presented.

Think of this mystery as comprising two kinds of mysteries: mystery of character and mystery of plot. The former refers to the fact that the movie reveals new details about the characters and what they have gone through. The latter refers to the big central question halfway through the movie, when something happens to one character and an investigation ensues. The two kinds of mysteries coexist simultaneously and feed off each other. When you focus on the plot mystery, you can’t help but need to know more about the characters because the explanation may lie somewhere among them. Likewise, when you learn more about the characters, you wonder if they are connected to the plot mystery. Really, this movie is a mystery for the audience, not an investigator in the story, to follow. Watching this movie is like seeing a covered picture exposed bit by bit until the whole thing is visible.

As for how the film looks and feels, I would describe it as sometimes quiet, sometimes dark and intense. Some scenes feature characters speaking in a relatively quiet setting, often during moments of self-contemplation. Other scenes are designed to make you hold your breath momentarily in fear, such as those involving one specific character’s hazy flashbacks. Speaking of flashbacks, the story is told somewhat out of chronological order. It starts in the present, then paints a narrative taking place in the past, sprinkled with momentary flashbacks going even further back in time. If you’re the kind of person who gets disoriented easily by convoluted story chronologies, don’t worry. It’s not terribly convoluted here. It’s mostly easy to follow the story, and you should be able to distinguish the recent past, distant past, and the present.

Before I forget, let me talk about the cast. I think the stars of this movie deliver good performances, especially during scenes where emotions have to run high. Still, one star stands out more, and that star is Emily Blunt. She practically sinks into the role of a woman who is so depressed that she’s either borderline unstable or obviously out of control emotionally. This may sound like the kind of person one should avoid, but as the movie reveals more about her, it’s hard not to feel for her and understand her pain. Then, when the central plot mystery comes up, it’s hard not to feel concern for her, because we don’t want to see her as a bad person, even if certain characters assume otherwise.

The Girl on the Train may not be the greatest mystery story ever, because the big revelation at the end is one we may have seen in other mystery stories (as opposed to twists and revelations that are so original and unexpected that it’s hard not to be stunned), but this is still a nicely presented story because of how something new is revealed every few minutes and because the big revelation at the end still packs some punch. So now I know why Paula Hawkins’s novel of the same name became a bestseller. It’s mysterious, intriguing, and emotionally charged. Of course, I haven’t read the book, so if you want a review from someone who did read it, look elsewhere. But if you want a review uninfluenced by knowledge of the book, you can be assured, from my experience, that you may like this movie. The Girl on the Train takes you on a memorable ride.

Movie Rating : 8/10

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