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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald (12A)
Rating: 
Verdict: Less than magical
Not five minutes after leaving a screening of the second of what we are told will be five Fantastic Beasts films — spanning almost 20 years — I walked past the London theatre where Harry Potter And The Cursed Child continues to play to packed houses.
Truly, the ever-expanding universe created by J. K. Rowling is a wondrous thing, still eliciting gasps of delight and not only from her accountants.
Those who never fell under young Harry’s spell are entitled to feel cynical about this lavish series of prequels, but when Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them came out, two years ago this very week, I was firmly among the entranced. It was a delightful film.
It is largely and regrettably devoid of the wit that made the first film such a joy, and the fantastic beasts themselves too often seem like adjuncts to the plot, not accessories to it
This sequel, once again directed by David Yates, scripted by Rowling herself and with the same Roaring Twenties backdrop of flappers and Model-T Fords, is a much darker affair.
In that respect, it follows the same trajectory as the eight Potter movies, but even so, it is largely and regrettably devoid of the wit that made the first film such a joy, and the fantastic beasts themselves too often seem like adjuncts to the plot, not accessories to it.
Did I say plot? Actually, it’s plots. Lots of them. There is so much going on that you’ll need your powers of concentration set to maximum.
Still, as our hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) says of his batty menagerie: ‘There are no strange creatures, only blinkered people.’ Maybe Rowling takes a similar view of those who feel a yard or two off the pace trying to work out who is who and why they’re doing what to whom. Maybe there are no knotted narratives, just inattentive audiences.
This sequel, once again directed by David Yates, scripted by Rowling herself and with the same Roaring Twenties backdrop of flappers and Model-T Fords, is a much darker affair
Until the opening titles, I was blissfully unflummoxed. There’s an exhilarating pre-credits routine, in which Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp, in splendidly fiendish form) escapes after years of solitary confinement in New York to unleash his scheme to lead a violent wizard rebellion.
He thinks non-wizards can’t be trusted with the planet and there’s method in his terrible madness; a brilliant sequence much later in the film shows glimpses of the havoc human beings are about to wreak on themselves in World War II.
Nonetheless, Grindelwald is himself a demonic portent of the muggle dictators soon to carve up continental Europe and, over in London, the young Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) wants him stopped.
Inconveniently, he can’t do this himself because of a childhood pact forged when he and Grindelwald were not only best friends but also, Rowling coyly implies, gay lovers.
So Dumbledore hands Newt the task of stopping evil in its tracks. That this appears to be beyond him is no surprise, given that Redmayne, who in practically all his performances has elevated lip-chewing diffidence to an art form, is here more bashful than ever.
Even in the first movie, I don’t remember Newt being quite so tousled of hair and shy of grin. You will either want to mother him or murder him.
But Newt is more resourceful than he seems, and not only because he can tame a water dragon made out of flailing seaweed.
With his non-wizard pal from the last film, Jacob (Dan Fogler), he defies the travel ban imposed on him by the Ministry of Magic and leaves London for Paris, where Grindelwald is plotting with his protege Credence (Ezra Miller) to take over the world.
Dumbledore hands Newt (Eddie Redmayne, above) the task of stopping evil in its tracks. That this appears to be beyond him is no surprise, given that Redmayne, who in practically all his performances has elevated lip-chewing diffidence to an art form, is here more bashful than ever
That, give or take about 20 other strands of narrative, is the essence of the story. There’s also a fair bit of thwarted romance, at least two sets of brothers being mistaken for each other, and one baby swapped for another in the crib, all of which makes me wonder whether Rowling fancies herself as a modern-day Shakespeare.
Perhaps, along with all those hundreds of millions, she’s earned the right.
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs (15)
Rating:
Verdict: A ten-gallon treat
Yet another pair of brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen, are behind The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, which was conceived as a six-part TV series for Netflix but instead turned into a feature film.
The Coens don’t try to make it a cohesive whole, instead presenting it as six unconnected chapters, supposedly lifted from a book of yarns about the Old West.
As with even the best collections of short stories, there are some you don’t want to end, and some that don’t match up, but for me, only the last of the anthology, featuring Brendan Gleeson as a bounty hunter, fell a little short. And Gleeson is such a gloriously watchable actor that I really didn’t mind.
It’s a terrific film (also starring Liam Neeson), and whether you see it at home on Netflix, or in the cinema where it is getting a limited release, I couldn’t recommend it with more of a yee-haw!
The others are all wonderfully compelling, ranging from extremely funny to joyously whimsical to deeply poignant.
Taken together, they tackle, and in some cases parody, just about every Western cliche — the saloon brawl, the wagon train, the sinister black-clad gunman, the travelling show, gold prospectors, you name it.
And in the most memorable and tragic of the tales, The Gal Who Got Rattled, we naturally also see hostile ‘Injuns’ ominously silhouetted atop a distant ridge.
The first chapter tells the story of Buster Scruggs himself (Tim Blake Nelson), a chirpy troubadour who looks like George Formby and also happens to be the fastest draw in the West.
Oddly enough, gravel-voiced singer-songwriter Tom Waits pops up elsewhere in a part that doesn’t call for song, as an old man panning for gold.
I first saw The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs at the Venice Film Festival, where not everyone loved it as much as I did, and some thought it barely even deserved to be categorised as a film.
Well, to quote an old Western insult, they don’t know dung from wild honey.
It’s a terrific film (also starring Liam Neeson), and whether you see it at home on Netflix, or in the cinema where it is getting a limited release, I couldn’t recommend it with more of a yee-haw!
Dead In A Week (Or Your Money Back) (15)
Rating: 
Verdict: Not much of a pulse
Dead In A Week (Or Your Money Back) is a low-budget black comedy starring Tom Wilkinson as a professional assassin, Leslie, whose clientele are people who want to end their lives but don’t fancy doing it themselves.
Or, in the case of frustrated writer William (Aneurin Barnard), can’t manage it. He keeps attempting suicide, but failing.
Meanwhile, Leslie is desperate for one more hit to keep his job with a guild of hitmen run by a menacing cove called Harvey (Christopher Eccleston).
Two distended jokes cannot sustain an entire feature film. This one feels like an undergraduate sketch stretched well beyond the point at which it stops seeming funny or original
I try to look kindly on British films made on a relative shoestring because they need all the support they can get, but this one feels like an undergraduate sketch stretched well beyond the point at which it stops seeming funny or original.
Writer-director Tom Edmunds strains to extract comedy both from William’s haplessness and the incongruity between Leslie’s job as a killer and his comfy, budgie-fancying domestic life, with a wife (Marion Bailey) who enters needlework competitions.
But two distended jokes cannot sustain an entire feature film, and not even Wilkinson’s undoubted class is enough to give it the kiss of life.
Make Us Dream (12A)
Rating:
Verdict: Not much to cheer about
Before I tackle this Amazon Prime documentary about the former Liverpool FC hero Steven Gerrard, I should declare that I am a devoted, lifelong supporter of Merseyside’s more venerable club, Everton FC.
Nevertheless, it would take a jaundiced fellow indeed not to recognise Gerrard as a marvellous footballer and inspirational captain, whose role in Liverpool’s astonishing comeback from 3-0 down in the 2005 Champions League final will stand for ever as one of the game’s great examples of leading from the front.
That is among the highs of Gerrard’s on-field career explored here, and the lows are remembered too, notably a calamitous slip against Chelsea at the end of the 2013/14 season which helped to bury Liverpool’s title chances.
Liverpool fans will love the film, and there’s some cracking footage of their hero as a kid
Sam Blair’s film treats it as a calamity, anyway, though the word’s real meaning is much better encapsulated by the fate of Gerrard’s cousin, ten-year-old Jon-Paul Gilhooley, who was the youngest victim of the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy.
The producer of Make Us Dream is James Gay-Rees, whose credits also include acclaimed films about Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse.
Those two fantastic documentaries rather underline how comparatively shallow this one is, with no real insights into Gerrard as a person – perhaps because he’s just not that interesting – and nothing at all on some of his off-field mishaps, such as a 2008 assault charge.
Nor does it touch on his current job in Glasgow, as manager of Rangers, which might have given it some much-needed heft.
Liverpool fans will love the film, and there’s some cracking footage of their hero as a kid, but even they should be warned that it’s not much more than a highlights reel of an admittedly illustrious playing career.
Suspiria (18)
Rating:
Verdict: Arresting but over-long
Italian director Luca Guadagnino doesn’t do humdrum. His 2015 film A Bigger Splash was both an erotic thriller and an uproarious black comedy; I loved it. His next, Call Me By Your Name (2017), was a powerful coming-of-age tale about a gay relationship.
I thought it over-praised, but could see why it was nominated for four Oscars, winning one. Now, he has remade Suspiria, in homage to a weird 1977 horror film, by his compatriot Dario Argento, that had a profound impact on him as a child.
As the witches try to recruit her, Susie is sucked into a gory, supernatural nightmare that yields one or two truly extraordinary scenes, but don’t bother unless you can conjure up some serious staying power
Alas, he allows his reverence to get the better of him. The original lasted a little over 90 minutes. This drags on even more weirdly for almost an hour longer, becoming as much an endurance test as a piece of entertainment.
Still, it is certainly full of arresting images, as you might expect of a story that over-ambitiously mixes dance, witchcraft, psychiatry, the Holocaust and the Baader-Meinhof gang.
Tilda Swinton plays more than one role and is on creepily mesmerising form throughout, notably as a celebrated choreographer who also happens to be part of a coven of malevolent witches.
But Dakota Johnson, who also starred with Swinton in A Bigger Splash and has mercifully now slipped the handcuffs of the ghastly Fifty Shades trilogy, is similarly fine.
She plays Susie, a young dancer from a religious community in rural Ohio, who arrives in Berlin in 1977 to join a famous all-female company led by the fierce Madame Blanc (Swinton).
Gradually, as the witches try to recruit her, Susie is sucked into a gory, supernatural nightmare that yields one or two truly extraordinary scenes, but don’t bother unless you can conjure up some serious staying power.
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