Been a while since I've reviewed something on here so this'll be a quick one before I transfer my film "criticism" to a new blog I'll be working on (I'll still write on other stuff here though).
The new Fantastic Beasts is arguably the best of the series so far (but even then, like its politics, it's pretty middle-of-the-road), if only for having the most memorable monsters: 1) a very cute cross between a lamb and a giraffe called a "Chillin" that bows to anyone who it deems to be pure of heart; 2) some cave-dwelling lobster-like creatures that seem to imitate human movements, which gives us the funniest part of the film; 3) a creature in a pit that at first recalls the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi before turning out to be more like Shelob in a prison breakout scene that's like a mix of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Disney's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
The replacing of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald with Mads Mikkelsen takes some getting used to (bearing in mind what had been going on behind the scenes, it feels at first like an elephant in the room) but one can get over it when seeing Mikkelsen's own take on the role. With the bleached spikes replaced with slick comb-over, our magical populist demagogue seems to have become a full-on wizard Hitler. Perhaps in a future instalment, an ancestor of Dobby the House Elf will be cast as a cipher for Putin. Hard Remainers may get a vicarious kick out of the (arguably tasteless) way in which evil is defeated this time round.
Directed as per the previous two by David Yates (who also helmed half the Harry Potter series), this more Steampunky take on the "Wizarding World" continues to be filmed in drab greys and doesn't quite have the magic that the Potter movies had. I'm not sure these films will be enjoying much repeated viewing on one of the ITV channels in years to come. Jude Law is a comforting presence though as a younger incarnation of the titular wizard. Ezra Miller's Credence, meanwhile, seems to have turned into Kylo Ren.
