Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Film: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, William Nadylam, Callum Turner, Jessica Williams, Mads Mikkelsen

Director: David Yates

Oscar History: Probably not?  The first film won a surprise citation for Best Costume Design, the first film in the Harry Potter universe to do so, but the second one totally missed, and given the baggage of this  movie, it's hard to imagine Oscar latching on even if notice for Visual Effects or Production Design might be worth considering.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We have not reviewed a new movie on this blog for a number of months for a pair of reasons.  First, like many people I am feeling overwhelmed these days, the pressures of work, health, life, expectations, & the world at-large weighing down too much to be able to do any of those things at top speed.  And secondly (and less depressingly), I have a Letterboxd account where I have been doing mini-reviews of every film I see.  If you've been missing my thoughts on modern movies, please follow me there, as I review every film (first-time or repeat) that I see at this point.

But exceptions must be made (I am still deciding and will have a decision by early summer whether or not I will return to doing full reviews on the blog or if only certain new movies will get this treatment), , and few exceptions make more sense to expand upon than the newest (and potentially last) Harry Potter film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.  For over twenty years, I have been obsessed with the world of Harry Potter.  I started reading the books as a teenager, and fell in love with the magical world they provided.  For a young closeted boy in a small midwestern town with few friends, the world of movies & books were my refuge, the place where I enjoyed spending so much of my time, and few places felt more far off & wondrous than Hogwarts.  Even as an adult, this world is a huge part of my personality (shut up-we all borrow from pop culture in 21st Century world to shape our personality...not everything can be Schopenhauer & Aristotle)...if you walk my home, you'll see little knicknacks & winks to the Harry Potter franchise everywhere.  When I went to Los Angeles last year and walked into the world of Hogwarts for the first time, I actually teared up behind my sunglasses, it was like walking into the world I'd spent my childhood imagining.

Being a fan of this franchise in 2022 requires nuance and a bit of self-reflection.  JK Rowling, who was once an icon to a generation of young writers & readers, has sullied herself in hatred & bigotry to the point where being a Harry Potter fan has become, at best, something you asterisk as being "not a fan of Rowling" and at worst, abandoning decades of fandom.  Stars of the franchise Johnny Depp & Ezra Miller have gone from being big enough deals for Warner Brothers to trust a billion-dollar franchise to them to basically unemployable in a matter of a few years (Depp isn't even in this movie, Miller's part greatly reduced from previous films).  But I'm still here-in a similar way that Star Wars became more than George Lucas and Marvel became more than Stan Lee, Harry Potter became far more than JK Rowling in the years since she first wrote it in a coffee shop.  And that teenager inside me who saw it as a refuge during a lonely period of finding myself still has his heart skip the second that he sees an aerial shot of Hogwarts or hears the strums of John Williams' iconic score.

(Spoilers Ahead) With that preamble over, let's dive into the movie at-hand.  Where last we left off (in full transparency, there were virtually no trailers for this movie, which I went with with six friends after a themed-dinner party, and so I missed the first maybe 90 seconds of the movie based on synopses I read about the movie afterward).  Grindelwald (then Depp, now Mikkelsen) had told Credence (Miller) that he was Albus Dumbledore's brother, Queenie (Sedol) had broken up with muggle Jacob (Fogler), joining Grindelwald, while Theseus (Turner) had lost his fiancee Leta (Zoe Kravitz) in the fight with Grindelwald.

Similar to The Crimes of Grindelwald, the film continues to shift focus away from the world of Newt Scamander, more safely into the realm of Albus Dumbledore & the tried-and-true Hogwarts universe.  This film takes place almost completely in Europe, frequently the UK & Germany, and with that shift it becomes at-best an ensemble, sidelining Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander and almost completely removing Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein from the movie (she shows up at the very end, but is otherwise removed from the franchise, fueling rumors that Rowling wrote Waterston's character out of the movie due to Waterston's public criticisms of Rowling's views on transgender rights).

This decision felt like fan service in the second film of the franchise, but with Secrets of Dumbledore I find it more forgivable.  This is partially because the movie puts Law's Dumbledore centerstage, but smartly doesn't give us that much back story as to ruin the mysterious nature of the character during the Harry Potter franchise (I loathe when movies take a character that works so well by being unknowable, and then feels they need to explain them).  Much has been made over the fact that Dumbledore is gay, but not particularly gay (i.e. there's no big kiss scene between he & Grindelwald like there is between Fogler & Sudol, and there's only two mentions of his homosexuality in the film, both of which have been excised from the picture in China), and it's hard not to be disappointed that they don't do more with his homosexuality to feed the character, other than, well, making him lonely because he lost his great love.  But, I'm willing to forgive for two reasons here-one, this is still bolder than I've ever seen from a movie with $200 million-the gay moments that Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, & Marvel have thrown at us in the past decade get less screen-time than Dumbledore's sexuality does...Dumbledore, a decade after Rowling was heavily criticized for making him gay only when the books were done, is canonically gay now.  And two, it works within the story.

Dumbledore as-written was always a bit of a tragic figure, someone whose life has lived on the edge, always sacrificing but never really living.  One of the things that made he & Snape both kindred spirits AND so selfless were that they gave much of their lives so that people like Harry, Ron, & Hermione could be free to live their own lives.  That works here-we see that Dumbledore was always going to sacrifice, that he might have been the most powerful wizard alive, but he also was incapable of finding a peace in himself...instead, he gives so that the people who can have that peace (in the original series the students, in this series people like Newt, Tina, Queenie, & Jacob) will achieve it.  It feels slightly problematic that it's a gay character who does this until you remember that Rowling's world is littered with such characters (Snape, Sirius, etc) & underlines the point that magic is no replacement for human connection & love.

This is the best part of the movie, which I think is the finest of the Fantastic Beasts series, even if it never quite becomes as enchanting as the original "boy who lived" pictures.  The lighting here is off (George Richmond's cinematography needed some lessons in lighting from Bruno Delbonnel), but the effects are fun.  I loved the scene where Jessica Williams' Lally Hicks jumps atop a sea of cascading pages so she & Jacob can escape, and the production design continues to show why Stuart Craig is the best in the business (love the street designs in the scenes in Bhutan). The acting is a mixed bag, with Sudol still the best of the group & Law bringing a weight to Dumbledore that isn't always on the page (that gives the film much more depth).  Recasting Mikkelsen in the Grindelwald role generally works for the plot, though I will say that Depp's seductive Grindelwald is a completely different approach, and honestly worked better with the idea of wise Dumbledore being seduced by an actor once called the "Sexiest Man Alive" (as Law also once held that title, this recasting means we didn't get to see two actors who shared that title play a love story with each other for the first time).  I also liked Williams...I know that people have taken a lot of issue with her accent (which seems to be akin to Katherine Hepburn attempting to be from Savannah), but I thought it was ridiculous enough to kind of work.  These people are riding dragons & casting spells...an unusual accent doesn't suspend belief.

So I'm going with 4-stars here, as I had a wonderful time, even if I'm aware that I'm giving this review with rose-colored glasses (if you're not a Harry Potter fan, your mileage will vary as the film is probably too long & has at least one too many plots...cutting Credence entirely wouldn't have made narrative sense to the last two movies but would've been in total service to this film on its own, and probably would've saved the Warner marketing team a headache).  Given the film's tepid box office (it has just crossed the $200 million mark after two weeks out, and with China's theaters being partially closed still, it'll be the first installment in the series to not hit $500 million), and the ending feeling so finite (with every character either married, on their way to that, or in Dumbledore's case, about to reach their destiny), it's probable that the film's final two chapters, long-promised by Rowling, are a mirage at this point.  If that's the case, Fantastic Beasts will likely be remembered in the same way we recall the Hobbit.  An unnecessary film that fans of the series embraced (albeit not as much as the first series), but casual observers tapped out on before the ending.  Given Warner's theme park investments in the franchise, it's difficult to know what comes next-do they remake the originals, do they try giving blank checks to Radcliffe, Watson, & Grint in hopes of getting them back for a big-screen adaptation of Cursed Child (I feel confident that that would be a $1 billion movie even if this one suffered), or do they hope that love for the originals is great enough to feed their investment for a decade to come?  It's hard to say, but I can confirm that if you are a fan of Fantastic Beasts (and I think at this point I am, regardless of Potter), you don't have to worry about this leaving you behind...you get an ending that satisfies.

OVP: The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

Film: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Alex Sharp, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Noah Robbins, Daniel Flaherty, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Mark Rylance, Ben Shenkman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Michael Keaton

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Sacha Baron Cohen, Original Screenplay, Original Song-"Hear My Voice," Cinematography, Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have said many, many times on this blog when it comes to biopics, I think they are one of the most limiting of film genres, because they are so intertwined with reality.  Their story structure is therefore more routine (the good guys almost always win, if not within the confines of the film surely within its future, because otherwise why would you make it into a movie?), and kind of dull.  Aaron Sorkin apparently agrees with me on this point, as is evidenced by The Trial of the Chicago 7, based on real-life events following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  Unfortunately for anyone watching the film, Aaron Sorkin's idea of how we should bend real-life is to make the entire world be modeled on Aaron Sorkin.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts) The film, as I mentioned, is centered around the Chicago 7, seven leaders in the anti-Vietnam War protests who were charged with conspiracy and the intention to start a riot during the 1968 DNC in Chicago.  As the film unfolds, the movie alternates between flashback & the present-day court trial, in which Richard Schultz (Gordon-Levitt) is winning, largely due to Judge Julius Hoffman (Langella) basically indicting the seven men without the benefit of the jury helping him, harming any attempts from attorney William Kunstler (Rylance) to defend these men in a way that might actually win the case.  While the case is waging, behind the scenes three of the men involved with the trial (Abdul-Mateen's Bobby Seale, Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman, and Redmayne's Tom Hayden) are debating the merits of their movement, and where they go forward with it.  The film has its climactic moment when former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (Keaton) takes the stand, and basically accuses the prosecution of this being a revenge attempt against him by current-Attorney General John Mitchell.

In real life, five members of the Chicago 7 were indicted, though charges were eventually dropped and several of the men went on to great success in the public sphere, particularly Hayden, who was a longtime member of the California State Legislature & at one point was married to actress Jane Fonda (a fact that somehow wasn't mentioned by notorious name-dropper Sorkin into his script).  The trial itself definitely makes sense as a film-it's dramatic, has lots of colorful characters, and some truly astonishing moments (while it didn't happen in the same way that it did in the film, Bobby Seale really was bound-and-gagged at one point by Judge Hoffman, a true low point for the American justice system).

But much of Chicago 7 is fiction, to the point where it should probably come with a "loosely-inspired events" tag.  In real life, Ramsey Clark (who deserves his own biopic-not many former Attorneys General ended up counting Saddam Hussein & Muammar Qaddafi as their clients) didn't call the trial political, and Tom Hayden didn't read the names of the fallen soldiers of Vietnam.  Much of the film is heightened to try and increase the drama, and quite frankly I don't have a problem with that-I think film needs to be loose in order to work, and sometimes real life is too chaotic or formulaic to be interesting.  Sorkin is not pretending the film is a documentary, and I can get behind this.

What I can't get behind is how egotistical the film becomes without someone like David Fincher or Bennett Miller to reign in Sorkin's worst impulses.  All of the characters in the film speak in Sorkin's fast-talking, hyper-intellectual dialogue, but as a result they all sound the same-the personality work that someone like Sacha Baron Cohen or Jeremy Strong is putting into the film doesn't matter when, closing your eyes, you can't tell them apart.  It makes for a really bad movie, almost laughably bad after a while, because the film feels grounded in a partisan reality where everyone agrees with each other, and has out-loud debates more to show they agree than to actually talk about anything.  The script, which Sorkin could win an Oscar for, is its worst asset as a result.  The film looks good (it's very handsome, and has some bouts of good acting, though that also is more miss than hit), but the script is just insufferable, the worst thing I've seen Sorkin put to the screen, as it's drenched in ego that sinks the movie.

OVP: The Good Shepherd (2006)

Film: The Good Shepherd (2006)
Stars: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert de Niro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Billy Crudup, Tammy Blanchard, Lee Pace, Eddie Redmayne
Director: Robert de Niro
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trying to recreate The Godfather is a fool's errand.  One of the truly perfect cinematic masterpieces, it hangs as a shadow over so many movies since it's creation, with really only one man (Francis Ford Coppola) able to duplicate it, and that was as a sequel (and that was only once-just ask any film fan).  A quiet, introverted epic about one family's journey, the movie is legendary for a reason-no one else has been able to achieve such a towering, studied look at an organized syndicate.  But that doesn't mean that people don't try, and perhaps few people should be allowed more leeway to pursue such a venture as Robert de Niro.  De Niro has only directed two films in his career, the first being the commercially-dismissed but critically-praised A Bronx Tale, and the second being this movie, a three-hour (fictionalized) look at the earliest days of the CIA.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, at 167 minutes in length, is expensive, but it's main focus can be summed up in a few lines.  Essentially, we have Edward Wilson Sr. (Damon) who is working for the government during the Cold War in the 1960's during the Bay of Pigs invasion.  We alternate back to his present day, where we learn about his life, his early romances with a deaf woman (Blanchard) and the sister of a friend at Yale, where he's in the Skull-and-Bones, whom he gets pregnant (Jolie).  We also see as he happens, through luck and skill, to eventually be recruited into government channels not available to regular people, in counterintelligence that will eventually become the CIA.  While this is happening, we see others in his web betray him or be subsumed by scandal, and he watches as his wife and son (a very young Eddie Redmayne) struggle with his stoicism, eventually ripping his family apart in pursuit of his career.

This is all very, very similar to The Godfather, with Edward Wilson becoming our Michael Corleone, and while there's no Don (kind of William Hurt, but not really), it's interesting to see just how similar the films are considering that A) de Niro is a major component of that film series and B) how the film fails when it has so many of its components borrowed from a filmmaker who saw the original made first-hand.  The problem with The Good Shepherd is first that it never really justifies its length-the movie is overstuffed with oftentimes repetitive points (how many times can we see Damon's Wilson be betrayed), as if de Niro is trying to shove all three Godfather movies into the same movie.  The film becomes meandering, and while that is likely how it won its sole Oscar nomination (getting to cover decades of furniture, offices, and interiors we get at a "most art direction" sort of citation without ever getting into a traditional British costume drama or fantasy film, which is where "most art direction" is usually used as a criticism), but it makes the picture pretty dull, and takes away the few moments of intrigue it generally lays out.

The second problem is the acting.  Damon is one of those movie stars who has natural charisma, but does better work in lighter films as he confuses serious with lifeless, and his Edward Wilson is without personality in the worst way possible.  It's unfair to compare any performance to Al Pacino in The Godfather, but as they are so similarly structured it's hard not to see that while Pacino lets us into Michael's world and then slowly closes the door, Damon just keeps it closed shut, so all we see is this person whom we don't really care about for three hours.  Jolie's performance is bordering on terrible as his wife, her fight scenes becoming hyperbolic & she seems to have no connection to her other than "this scene I'll play her happy" or "this scene she should be sad."  It's underwritten, but it's hard to imagine that both of these people are Oscar winners based on just this movie.  The best part of the movie is arguably Pesci as a mobster in one single scene.  Pesci came out of his prolonged retirement to make this film, and it was worth it, showing he has lost none of his ability to land a scene.  But the rest, even de Niro himself, are underwhelming in a movie that just sits there, trying to be important but instead is a snooze.

OVP: Actor (2015)

OVP: Best Actor (2015)

The Nominees Were...

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

My Thoughts: Frequently you think of a specific year’s Oscars in relation to the Best Picture winner.  1953 is the “From Here to Eternity Oscars” or 1976 is the “Rocky Oscars,” (for example).  However, that’s occasionally not the case, and I think the most recent example of this is the 2015 Oscars, which few people seem to remember as the SpotlightOscars, but instead the ceremony where Leo “finally” won his statue.  The collective internet seemed to think that DiCaprio’s lack of a trophy was approaching Susan Lucci at the Emmys territory, and as a result he seemed to have won by collective acclimation for The Revenant.  I’ve been a Leo fan for years, someone who has proclaimed he’s earned an Oscar more than once (including in this Oscar Viewing Project-check out 2013 below in the links), but that he won what will likely be his only trophy for a movie like The Revenant seems like a gigantic miss.

Leo’s work in The Revenant, is, at best, a physical achievement. It’s certainly a transformative experience, and in the one truly great scene in the movie (the fight with the bear), he is able to create a sense of fear that is lacking (but desperately needed) in the rest of the movie.  But Leo’s Hugh Glass is nothing more than that.  He’s not a man, he doesn’t have any character growth, he’s just someone enduring the constancy of the elements.  This might be filmmaking, but it certainly isn’t acting.  Leo does nothing to ground the character he’s bringing to the screen, and in my opinion gives his worst performance in The Revenant because there’s nothing there.  It’s hard to even judge it-it feels more like you’re judging a reality TV star for acting, because it’s just a series of stunts and grunts, nothing special & certainly not leaning into the great talents (charm, wit, vulnerability) that made him a star in the first place.

I’ll be real, though-if Leo was going to win over a field for an “it’s about time” Oscar, he picked the right lineup to conquer as 2015’s Best Actor race isn’t that impressive.  Matt Damon, who I always associate with Leo (even though DiCpario had won critical and awards success several years before Damon’s breakout performance in Good Will Hunting), is good in The Martian, a solid action-adventure that doesn’t feel the need to bring depth to its work but instead just let a good story keep the tale going.  The parts where he’s amusing himself to fight the mind-boggling loneliness of being the only man on a planet are quite fun (Damon, like DiCaprio, is probably best at light drama or comedy), but the second half isn’t as impressive when he flexes the acting muscle rather than the movie star muscle, though it’s still game and one of the better performances in this lineup.

Bryan Cranston is probably wishing he was in a film as good as The Martian, as he’s clearly trying to pull a similar trick of a capable actor attempting to substitute star charisma for acting.  Unfortunately, Trumbois not The Martian, and Cranston isn’t doing enough work here to save the film from itself.  His Trumbo is unknowable, though unlike Leo he is definitely a character, just a one-dimensional one.  I left thinking that he must have been just a lovable scamp, but I also don’t think that Cranston grounded enough of the actual actions of his character with the words-why was it that his Trumbo was willing to give up a career that he obviously loved to stand for a principle that doesn’t feel particularly engrained in his day-to-day life?  That there’s not an answer to this question is a fatal flaw not only in the movie, but in Cranston’s performance itself.

Michael Fassbender is also tasked with playing a larger-than-life character, but here he manages to find the sole of the man he’s portraying.  It’s rough playing one of the most famous figures on earth just a few short years after he passed away, but Fassy brings an incredible amount of depth to his creation, not mimicking Jobs but instead making a megalomaniacal genius that recalls his visage (Fassbender is also considerably more attractive than Jobs, so trying to just have him look like him would have been a failure).  Fassy understands the rat-a-tat of Sorkin’s screenplay, which is good but suffers from all of his indulgences (and inability to write particularly compelling women that don’t revolve around a man’s achievements), and is the only person in this lineup who is giving a performance we should still be talking about some four years later.

Cause that sure ain’t the case for Eddie Redmayne.  Redmayne, an actor & celebrity who seemed to have a moment a few years ago and then disappeared into a boring franchise, has never really equaled the talent I saw in him with Les Miserables seven years ago, despite a pair of Oscar nominations since.  His Einar/Lili has a grace that he can’t lose, and that’s necessary in handling such a role, but he’s too calculating and timid in his work, even when Lili is supposed to feel free.  You can almost see him thinking “I need to be angry” or “I need to be scared” rather than let it come organically, and you leave having spent so many intimate moments with this character but knowing little about what she wanted to bring to the world, other than herself.  It’s hard to judge this film already because the politics of it feel dated, but Redmayne’s work is not up to the same caliber of some of what we’d come to expect from him, and certainly not equal to what Vikander is doing as his leading woman.

Other Precursor Contenders: We start with the Globes, which distinguish between Drama and "Comedy/Musical," and as a result have ten men to contend with.  The Drama category saw nearly an exact replica of this field, with the only one missing being Damon (instead going with Will Smith in Concussion…Leo won), while Comedy had Damon beat Christian Bale (The Big Short), Steve Carell (also The Big Short), Al Pacino (Danny Collins), and Mark Ruffalo (Infinitely Polar Bear).  Damon won, despite the fact that he was in a drama.  SAG threw out Damon for leading actor, instead picking Johnny Depp (Black Mass), and went with Leo as their winner as well, while BAFTA went for an exact replica of the Oscar race, and Leo was again victorious.  In picking a sixth place, I suspect it was Smith, but honestly looking at this race I am guessing that it was a very distant sixth place.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I would almost completely re-haul this category.  For starters, I’d keep Michael Caine’s quiet, dignified work in Youth as he tries to overcome the grief of a dead wife whom he neglected.  Jacob Tremblay certainly deserved to be included (even though he was campaigned as supporting) for his breathtaking work in Room, and one wonders if they’d gone all-in as a lead actor if they’d managed to have gotten him the nomination as Cranston & Damon were vulnerable.  I’d throw in Tom Hardy’s double-duty in Legend, which was a dismissible film but one where he’s having a blast (and I did too). And for the final spot, why not Michael B. Jordan, who unlike Leo has a physical transformation AND achieves a complicated performance?

Oscar’s Choice: The internet literally would have revolted if Leo hadn’t won, and Oscar wasn’t going to deprive the people of their big speech.  In a world where he wasn’t here, I suspect Redmayne getting a back-to-back Oscar could have been in the cards (or honestly Will Smith might have gotten a similar sort of Leo Push).

My Choice: Fassbender is head-and-shoulders above the rest of these guys.  Follow him with Damon, Redmayne, Cranston, and DiCaprio.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you agree that this was Leo’s time, or are you with me that Fassbender had this coming?  Won’t it be strange if Trumbo (of all things) ends up being Bryan Cranston’s only Oscar nomination?  And has anyone actually seen Danny Collins orInfinitely Polar Bear…should I?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2015: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2015

Past Best Actor Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

4 Mini Reviews

All right-truth be told right now, I'm in "list-finishing" mode, an article I might be writing next week if I can find the time.  But for now, I've decided that it's time to get 2018 done, and rather than just skip some of the movies that I've seen, I am going to instead do short reviews of a dozen movies that I saw in 2018, many even from that year.  I chose these movies because they were not Oscar-nominated (so they won't be referenced when we go back to those years in 2018) and because while I always find it cool to have a full review, I don't think it is as critical to give each of these twelve their own articles.  Don't worry-missing Best Picture nominees Green Book and BlacKKKlansman, as well as one of my personal Best Picture nominees (The Other Side of the Wind), will still get the full review treatment, but as I catch up on my reviews, sacrifices had to be made.  Don't assume this will be a habit-once I catch up, I plan on staying that way & we'll be back to one film to a review.  Until then, enjoy this look at some of the many flicks I saw in 2018!

(Note-I get spoiler-y about Early Man, Annihilation, Ant-Man, and I Feel Pretty-if you haven't seen them and are planning to, skip over those reviews and just read the other ones!)

Early Man (dir. Nick Park)

This was, sadly, the first movie ever that I watched entirely by myself...not just me going by myself, but no one in the theater, a record I enjoyed attributing to a movie but didn't like because I support movie theaters and because, despite its obvious flaws, Early Man has charm.  A movie depicting cavemen playing soccer, it trades a lot in the British humor that has made Nick Park a staple at the Oscars (Early Man is the rare movie that didn't compete from Park's Aardman Studios), and occasionally falls flat, but there's a lot of heart in this film, and some clever villainy as Tom Hiddleston embraces his dark side as Lord Nooth.  A passing fancy, but still pleasurable and worth a quiet night in if you've liked Park's previous work. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland)

Arguably the movie that I would have most liked to explore in a larger review (you're going to notice four 2018 movies that aren't Oscar nominees that I do give full treatment to, and if you play close attention you'll notice an odd one I highlight as opposed to Annihilation, so call me out for it when you do).  That said, while I adored Ex Machina a few years back, this one seemed to share that movie's ambitions, but not necessarily its execution.  The final third of the movie is gorgeous but makes little sense, and if the metaphor is what it's supposed to be (that we're constantly going to destroy ourselves), you can turn on the news and get that a bit more clearly.  Portman is fine, but there's not enough depth in her main character, and the same can be said for Oscar Isaac as her missing husband.  It's still got great effects (should have been cited for them with AMPAS), but there's too many moments where Garland steers into Christopher Nolan-esque "isn't this cool?" storytelling for comfort. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Ant-Man (dir. Peyton Reed)

The best of these four films, Ant-Man is actually one of the finest Marvel movies, period.  I loved the way that they don't necessarily feel the need to have a tragic backstory, and don't confuse comedy for weird like they did in Thor: Ragnorak.  Paul Rudd is flawless (and his abs are well-exploited in a way I wasn't expecting) as Ant-Man, a hapless loser who becomes a random superhero, but seems to genuinely enjoy his powers.  Evangeline Lilly matches well with him, but best-of-all is Michael Douglas as Lilly's father.  Douglas is one of my all-time favorite actors, and watching him latch into a proper movie star role in a genuinely good movie for the first time in (decades?) is an unabashed joy for me.  Add in truly innovative special effects, and you have the best Avengers film that doesn't have "Winter Soldier" in the title. (Ranking: 4/5 stars)

I Feel Pretty (dir. Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein)

Amy Schumer's career since Trainwreck has been, well, the obvious title pun seems fitting.  She cancelled her hit TV show, and had two flops last year (I think technically Snatched broke even, but considering her promise in Trainwreck that feels like a flop).  I Feel Pretty was at least a financial success for Schumer, ensuring a future paycheck, but she has yet to capture the magic she exhibited with her show and Trainwreck, and seems to be losing the "Rom-Com Queen" wars to someone like Rebel Wilson, who seems a better fit for her material.  I Feel Pretty has too many obvious jokes, and feels more like a lecture than a movie.  The body positivity angles are so overdone, particularly by someone who the bulk of America wouldn't even notice as being "overweight" unless they put her next to Michelle Williams, that it is hokey.  Michelle Williams' turn as a cosmetics boss with a bizarre, squeaky voice, is staggering at first, but I wasn't enchanted by this either-it felt just like a weird decision to make rather than finding something specific to say about her spoiled-but-not-dumb manager.  Still, she's the best part of a dull movie-here's to hoping that Schumer finds her mojo again soon. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

Film: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miler, Zoe Kravitz, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim, Jude Law, Johnny Depp
Director: David Yates
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I didn't grow up with Harry Potter in the sense that many of my younger Millennial friends did.  While Harry Potter was something I was obsessed with as a youth, it was as a late youth-I think I read the first Harry Potter book when I was fifteen or sixteen (I can't remember if Goblet of Fire was out yet).  But, and I cannot impress this enough-I loved it.  It's become a boring cliche for someone to claim their adoration for the works of JK Rowling, but those seven books were full of imagination, wonder, and genuine intrigue.  Though it's been over ten years since the final book and nearly as long since the final of the eight original movies, that love is still there, and I still feel my stomach drop out when I hear the opening music of Fantastic Beasts, with James Newton Howard riffing on John Williams classic score.  But a lot has changed since I first stood on the literary steps of 4 Privet Drive.  Rowling has expanded her empire, but in doing so has created a world that feels a tad bit more generic, less specific than the creation she crafted so exquisitely over seven books.  While her politics occasionally feel a bit problematic (you can take her on from either the right or the left), it's the way that she's in many ways emerged as the Millennial George Lucas that is most troubling.  This is on full-display in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which is brimming with enough Hogwarts wonder that it's hard for me to dislike it, but even the most ardent of fans would have to admit that Rowling has taken a detour into uncharted territory: a decidedly muggle affair.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place relatively soon after the last movie left off, with Grindelwald (Depp) being transported to a different prison while Newt Scamander (Redmayne) faces a potential ban on travel after the events in New York City.  As you might expect, neither of these go as planned with Grindelwald escaping (with a good deal of ease), while Newt is banned but ends up ignoring the ban with little consequence.  He is joined by his brother Theseus (Turner, who is about as ruggedly handsome as you get in the Harry Potter universe), who is the by-the-books sibling to Newt's nerdy rebel.  Newt is quickly joined by his New York City friends Queenie (Sudol), Jacob (Folger), and love interest Tina (Waterston), who initially dislikes Newt when she thinks that he's engaged to Leta Lestrange (Kravitz), who clearly has a thing for Newt but is with Theseus (can't blame a girl).

The picture unfolds in a weird way after this.  Rowling's penchant for thick plot is evidenced here as we get a lot of characters and information, including a few winks to Harry Potter readers (Nicolas Flamel finally shows his face to the delight of readers, while Minerva McGonagall gets a cameo despite being decades to young for this movie), but nothing really happens.  This isn't always a bad thing if you're looking at this as a miniseries-there needs to be down time to lay some foundation-but it feels cheap when you're shelling out $15 to see the movie that you get so little actual progress (just set-up) & that the film cannot stand on its own.  I complained about this with the last Fantastic Beasts, but the cast being all over the place in levels of intrigue certainly hurts the film.  Forget for a second the problematic aspects of hiring Johnny Depp (or the foolishness of putting him in place of Colin Farrell)-the real problem here is that Redmayne & Waterston are so blah as leading characters.  Even Ezra Miller fails to properly intrigue (what a waste!) and Jude Law, while charming and aware of the importance of filling such an iconic character's shoes, doesn't give us much in terms of Dumbledore other than pensive stares and mischievous smiles.  For the second film in a row, it feels like Alison Sudol's Queenie is in a completely different movie, she's so much better than the rest of the cast.  Watching her become disillusioned with a prejudiced government (that won't let her marry a muggle) and thus join Grindelwald is the best part of the movie, and also makes her the only character that would feel at-home in Rowling's original world.

But while the film itself is hardly impressive, I can't say I didn't enjoy it.  Your worst day in Rowling's world is still more fun that pretty much any other franchise out there, and it felt like going home watching Hogwarts emerge on the big-screen.  I let out a squeal the first time Flamel showed up, and was grinning ear-to-ear when I heard McGonagall proclaim "10 points from Slytherin!"  In many ways I wonder if this is how people feel about the worst installments of the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings franchises; you simply don't care because you got another shot of the drug, even if it's not as potent as it once was.  As a result, I can't go below three stars because I genuinely liked it and will watch it again in the context of the series.  My patience with Rowling's storytelling may be waning, but it's not gone yet and I'll be around for another go...though she perhaps needs to hire an editor who is willing to tell her "no" at this point.

OVP: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Film: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Folger, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight
Director: David Yates
Oscar History: 2 nominations /1 win(Best Production Design, Costume*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of the most popular articles I've ever written on the blog came a few years ago when I decided to try to review all of the Harry Potter movies in one post.  In it, I confessed that my undying love for the Harry Potter universe made it difficult for me to objectively review the films.  I experienced the same encounter with The Hobbit a few years back, as the movies were good-but-not-landmarks like their predecessors, and totally unnecessary in the long scheme of things.  So I was genuinely curious when Fantastic Beasts came out if I would feel the same way.  Unlike The Hobbit, deeply connected to the prior movies, this film is almost completely outside of the realm of the following Harry Potter movies, with only a mention of Albus Dumbledore (as opposed to The Hobbit movies, which features Bilbo, Gandalf, Gollum, and Legolas back in action, so it's harder to break it off from LOTR).  What I found was that while I was charmed by the movies, this was surely not Harry Potter, and not nearly as good even when it comes to trying to look at the films based solely on their merits.

(Spoilers Ahead) The picture, much like how The Hobbit went with a lighter touch, with as much time spent on exploring the world of New York City's wizards as the many creatures discovered by one Mr. Newt Scamander (Redmayne), who is a befuddled but kind.  He's not the innately talented wizard that Harry Potter is, but instead more of a Neville Longbottom type crossed with perhaps a splash of Dumbledore's natural curiosity.  The movie unfolds with a growing worry about the rise of Gellert Grindelwald, a sort of predecessor to Voldemort, whom we know to be the love of a young Albus Dumbledore's life through interviews that Rowling has done since the book series was published.  As we move on, madness of course ensues with Newt's creatures causing much havoc throughout the city, him being accused of helping Grindelwald while it's actually Grindelwald (in disguise as Colin Farrell's Percival Graves) who is manipulating a powerful young wizard named Credence Barebone (Miller, and no, Rowling has not lost her gift for the bon mot moniker) who is behind all of the doom-and-gloom of the city.  The day is saved when Grindelwald is stopped, Newt leaves (but promises to return to see his new friend Tina), and we are given ample room for sequels as we know that Grindelwald will continue to find ways to menace in the future.

The movie has a few lovely touches.  The best part would surely be Alison Sudol's dreamy, charming Queenie, Tina's sister who becomes enamored with Newt's muggle (or No-Maj, as it were) friend Jacob.  Pretty much any scene she's in Sudol steals, and announces herself as the obvious fan favorite of this franchise.  I also quite liked the bizarreness of Samantha Morton's performance, which was so weirdly out-of-place and much heavier than the rest of the movie was trying to accomplish.  Rowling, responding to criticism of her world a bit too aggressively in the movie, occasionally throws out things that feel tacked-on or specifically placed to earn her praise (this is by-far the most "woke" of the Harry Potter pictures in terms of progressive politics), but making the world a bit darker, resembling in some ways the turns her last three books took, is perhaps the most welcome development.

Otherwise, though, I left appreciating the nostalgia it brought but wishing that Rowling had left her world alone.  The stretching and pulling of Harry Potter feels like it has hit its breaking point, meaning we're seeing things we once found special become too commodified and commercial, and the effects in this film feel less authentic to the world of Harry Potter and more geared toward an easy translation into an amusement park.  Outside of Queenie and the strange climactic scene where Morton's sadistic mother learns the truth about her child, there's nothing special here.  There's certainly nothing cool about the magic.  Both Redmayne and Waterston underplay their characters so dreadfully that they lack charisma, and really you don't want to spend more time with them.  And the fact that they traded Colin Farrell in for Johnny Depp as the future lead of the franchise is a pretty much unforgivable sin.  All-in-all, I can't promise I won't tune in again (my HP immunities being weak), but this was hardly worth re-opening the memory of Harry Potter so quickly.

Those are my thoughts on Fantastic Beasts, which bizarrely won the Best Costume Oscar and yet another citation for Stuart Craig, but can't really compete in any way, shape, or form with the original franchise.  What were your thoughts on the picture?  It wears more poorly in the memory than I expected (I originally gave it a three-star rating, and have stuck with that even if this review reads more like a 2-star one), but I'm curious for anyone who has seen the movie multiple times-does it hold up?  Share below!

OVP: Actor (2014)

OVP: Best Actor (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton, Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

My Thoughts: I told you we'd be tackling these at a clip (it seems people are enjoying the OVP write-ups, for which I am most grateful and happy).  We now move into the Best Actor category, the one where generally you're tackling titans of acting, and where the nominations are relatively clubby, but in a weird twist only one of these men, the one who arguably had the toughest time actually getting his nomination, is a previous nominee.  Otherwise we have two relative British newcomers, a former movie star best known for donning a leather suit, and a comedian most famed for his work on a British import.  All-in-all, this is, even if most of these nominations were predicted, on paper one of the stranger slates of nominees I've encountered in the usually very traditional Best Actor field.

We'll start with the youngster of the bunch, Eddie Redmayne, who was only the eighth youngest man ever to pick up an Academy Award in this category (ahead of him are such luminaries as Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, so there's a lot to live up to in order to not be, say, Adrien Brody, who has the all-time record).  Redmayne's work here is pretty much the stuff that Oscar bait dreams are made of, as he's playing a real-life figure with an inspiring story who also has a severe disability that he overcomes.  He technically also has an accent, though as it's the same one that Redmayne has in real life I don't know that we should count that in terms of AMPAS points.  Redmayne is quite good early on in the film, as his natural charm (he was born to play a Jane Austen love interest-why has no one done that yet?) flits through, but as the film progresses putting him into the realm of mostly physical acting he loses a lot of that ability.  Honestly, I've never been as wowed by something that is mostly technical and checking boxes, as this looks difficult to do, but we don't give out Oscars for athletic achievement (otherwise Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone would have more of them).  Redmayne's beginning is a delight, and he manages to have sparkling chemistry in his romantic run-ups with Jones, but overall the second half loses a lot of that spark and the script isn't giving enough to let Redmayne really shine.

Redmayne's chief rival for the Oscar was one of those guys that frequently finds himself an Oscar nominee late in his career, but never seems to be able to pull off the win.  Michael Keaton joined Peter Fonda and Mickey Rooney as a former matinee idol with a bit of a reputation who shows that he still has the goods to be able to deliver a knockout performance.  His Riggan is about as brave as a movie star can get onscreen, eschewing vanity (though for a man in his sixties Keaton is in pretty good shape to be running through Time Square in his underwear), and lambasting his own persona, both in that his core fame is from wearing a mask to his famously difficult offscreen persona during the Batman 3 years.  Keaton makes Riggan insane enough to clearly be deranged, but a good enough actor to maintain believability that people wouldn't notice he's completely off-his-rocker (or don't want to because he's a star that can't be challenged).  It's a wonderful performance, really something that I never would have expected from Keaton, and lands a difficult, complicated, but ultimately terrific picture.

Steve Carell is also an actor that defied expectations in 2014, getting his first Academy Award nomination for a very hard-nosed drama after a career that has focused almost exclusively on comedy.  Carell was never one of those comedic actors, however, who I didn't think would excel at drama-quite frankly it felt like it would be his forte.  Michael Scott on The Office was a humorous creation, but frequently (in the first couple of seasons) a vindictive one and (in later seasons) a tragic one, so Carell's abilities were never in doubt.  What was, and is an unfortunate side effect of Foxcatcher is his inability to take his comedian's pizzazz and timing and infuse it into this piece of work.  Instead, what we get here is a serious case of tic-acting, with Carell relying too heavily on his prosthetic nose and not actually giving us anything within this character.  Even when he's alone, when we should be able to see something, Carell is just performing, never really inhabiting the character, which is a shame as this feels like the sort of creation that could have been an all-time great persona for the actor.

This is exactly the same trap that Benedict Cumberbatch falls into with The Imitation Game.  Cumberbatch, unlike Carell, has never turned in a performance that has wowed me, but I do get the appeal.  He's intensely charming off-screen, and he tends to be a lovely human being who winks hard at his rabid fanbase, but his acting choices (and his agent's choices for his career) are so boring.  The script is not helping him in any capacity, of course, but it's worth noting that his choices to fill in the holes in the script aren't great.  He frequently reacts to every scene as yet another one to moan or have a prissy rejoinder (underlining the HOMOSEXUAL aspect of the script without, you know, actually having any moments where he believably is attracted to a man, just to a computer).  Cumberbatch's big scenes, the ones where he's crying or trying to take on Joan he fails miserably-the overacting doesn't quite match the film he's in, which is trying to be a straight, serious biopic, and he's too busy feasting on the scenery.

The final nomination is a quandary for me, as it's from one of the least of these films, and yet the performance, the central performance (no side ones) has grown considerably in my estimation in the years since, to the point where I think it might be Bradley Cooper's finest work so far.  Cooper is an actor I think we all underestimated initially since he was starring in buddy comedies and looks like a male model you put on your vision board.  But his acting prowess and trio of Oscar nominations were relatively well-earned, and I love the way that he projects in American Sniper.  So much of his performance is informed by a man who wants to be at war, who sees the world in black-and-white and who is also haunted by demons he doesn't understand and frequently doesn't wish to acknowledge.  Clint Eastwood doesn't give us enough interesting things to do with Cooper, which hurts the performance slightly, but I am mesmerized by the things that Cooper is able to bring to a relatively stock character that, say, Mark Wahlberg didn't a year earlier in the (better film) Lone Survivor.  His Chris Kyle is someone very human, but believably from Middle America and with a conservative viewpoint, and not just a liberal in red clothes as so frequently happens in films depicting conservative viewpoints.

Other Precursor Contenders: We start with the Globes, which distinguish between Drama and "Comedy" (a term that gets looser and looser every year), so in the dramatic lineup, which usually is the one that gets us our nominations, we have Redmayne, Carell, and Cumberbatch alongside David Oyelowo (Selma) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler), with Redmayne winning, while Michael Keaton in Comedy triumphed over Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Bill Murray (St. Vincent), Christoph Waltz (Big Eyes), and Joaquin Phoenix (Inherent Vice).  The SAG Awards doubled-down on Oscars' winner, but excused Bradley Cooper in favor of Jake Gyllenhaal, while the BAFTA Awards also went with Redmayne as their victor but cut both Cooper and Carell (who was nominated in supporting) for Gyllenhaal and Fiennes.  For all of the comments afterwards about David Oyelowo not getting nominated, it's fairly clear that it was Jake Gyllenhaal who was most upset and the likely sixth place when Bradley Cooper came to town.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: For starters, Jake Gyllenhaal, who is giving what I'd call the performance of a lifetime in Nightcrawler, but honestly Gyllenhaal is so consistent (and even better in Brokeback Mountain) that his wait for a second nomination has gotten laughable at this point and performance of a lifetime isn't quite accurate.  I'd also throw in Fiennes, doing his best comedic bit since In Bruges, along with Oscar Isaac's introverted mobster in A Most Violent Year and the best actor in Foxcatcher who for some reason (perhaps his beauty, which scares off people in this category) never got cited by a major awards body: Channing Tatum.  Tatum's work in that film is still staggering, breathing life into a lumbering brute of a character.

Oscar’s Choice: While at times it felt like Michael Keaton would take this trophy, in the end the Academy couldn't deny newcomer Eddie Redmayne over the comeback kid.

My Choice: An easy choice for Keaton, hands-down the best of this five.  I'd honestly follow him with Cooper, Redmayne and then...ugh, maybe Cumberbatch and finally Carell.  Those last two are really digging the bottom of the barrel.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Do you side with the awards consensus of Eddie Redmayne, or do you think that the Birdman should have flown here?  Why do you think Jake Gyllenhaal couldn't seal the deal here?  And what am I missing in the Cumberbatch love-is there a performance I have to catch to get the devotion?  Share in the comments!

Also in 2014: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2014

Past Best Actor Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013