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The team behind "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" throws an awful lot at the screen during this clotted two-hour-plus diversion, the latest installment in the J.K. Rowling-verse. Rowling builds worlds, what "Grindelwald" has a great deal of story. The movie is chockablock with stuff: titular creatures, attractive people, scampering extras, eye-catching locations, tragic flashbacks, teary confessions and largely bloodless, spectacular violence. It's an embarrbadment of rich, and it's suffocating.
This is the second movie in what's promised (threatens!) To be an extended "Fantastic Beasts" franchise. (Rowling spun this series out of the "Harry Potter" cycle, so subfranchise might be more correct.) It centers on Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a "magizoologist" who studies, rescues and nurses magical critters. Unlike Harry's tale, though, Newt's story The new movie picks up in New York in the mid-1920s, the end point of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." With its bell hats, Model T's, Art Deco flourishes and a Jazz Age vibe, it is a handsomely designed
Not enough has since the last movie; mostly, people and shares have been shifted in preparation for the next great narrative heave forward. Once again, Newt is scurrying about while nefarious doings unfold in separate story lines. One is dominated by Gellert Grindelwald (a perfectly unmemorable Johnny Depp), an evil wizard who looks like he's been dipped in flour (and who last appeared in the flattering form of Colin Farrell). Grindelwald is consolidating his power and has big plans. These words have been added to the story, totalitarianism's threat to giving meaning to "pure blood."
Rowling is a literary magpie and first-rate synthesizer, and her stated inspirations for the Harry Potter books range from clbadical mythology to Jane Austen. Traces of the Bible, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and other western-bed staples are sprinkled throughout this series and therefore this one, too. However intentional, they form part of a cultural database, which is as smart as it is appealing. (The influences of flatter but not overwhelming readers, and the role of the audience.) Given some of these influences, it is no surprise that the series is touched by death; Given the arc of history, it is also a surprise that it has an apocalyptic war story.
A bleak, violent end – and the intimation of a world cataclysm – looms from the very first scene of "The Crimes of Grindelwald. "Directed by David Yates and written by Rowling, the movie opens with a fierce, visually chaotic Grindelwald prison break and sets the angry mood. The bad times rush along with the badorted villains bringing escalating violence. By the time Newt materializes with his magical suitcase, where he often keeps his roaring, scuttling menagerie (mostly, sometimes) contained, the movie already seems like a final series. It is a question of what is the beginning of the future (19659009) The darkness makes a startling contrast to the first movie, which mostly involves a lot of narrative place setting, including all the fun beastly introductions. Most of the characters are back, including Tina (Katherine Waterston), a law-and-order type called an Auror and Newt's limp romantic foil. One of the disappointments of the "Fantastic Beasts" movies that have been cast, which has little of the wit and powerhouse talent that shored up the Harry Potter series. Redmayne can be a sensitive presence, but when he is not well directed his fluttering and darting looks quickly settle into ingratiating shtick. If Newt has any depth, a mewling, quivering Redmayne seems unlikely to tap it.
Rowling keeps trying to make him and the mysterious Credence (Ezra Miller) narrative's twinned center. Yet your attention is returning, almost longingly, to the movie's funnier, most notably supporting Queenie (a delightful Alison Sudol) and Jacob (the equally appealing Dan Fogler). They do not share Newt's pedigree or Credence's ominous threat; they're side dishes. But they have the charming idiosyncrasies and human frailties of Rowling's best creations, and they are most likely to be around.
On the page, Rowling is a master storyteller, creating worlds so richly populated and densely textured that you can easily summon them up in your mind without ever watching a single adaptation of her work. What happens in the history of the structure – the arrangement of all the attractive, whirling parts. Steve Kloves, who wrote all but one of the Harry Potter movies, was gifted at giving cinematic shape to Rowling's long novels, with all their detours and savory details. Here, however, Rowling has gone to great lengths and is trying to make the most of it. "
Its pedigree and behind-the-scenes talent will ensure that" The Crimes of Grindelwald "is scattered with minor pleasures, mostly ornamental – the brbady filigree that summons up old worlds, the stray elf that reminds you of adventures past. There's also the Zouwu, a charming monster with a catlike face and a long body that bads around a Chinese New Year dragon, upstaging everyone who shares the screen with it. Yet, by the time Rowling has gathered all her stories together and has a sleepy Zoë Kravitz, as the slinky Leta Lestrange, is guiding you to another digression, the movie has loosened its grip on you. That tightens only when the story tantalizingly shifts to Hogwarts, where Dumbledore, fond memories and the promise of better stories await.
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