"The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York's secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school."
Meh, there's nothing too original or exciting in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". As many have noticed, it really is like a "Doctor Who" special mixed with "King Kong" mixed with "Pokémon".
The lead who I can't be bothered to look up the name of (Edit: it's Eddie Redmayne) channels Matt Smith so much that he might as well be Matt Smith. He has the same mannerisms, awkwardness, and dress sense. He even has a bowtie, uses his wand like a sonic screwdriver, and carries a suitcase with Tardis properties. I'm not calling J.K. Rowling a plagiarist, but... yeah, this is either plagiarism or a really blatant homage, take your pick.
For those who care, Colin Farrell is more than tolerable, and Johnny Depp gets less than a minute of screen time roughly 5 minutes from the end.
Other than that, and the abundance of CGI, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" isn't the worst thing I've ever seen. The period setting in New York works well, and I expect American Harry Potter fans will love it. But because I'm not ten years old, and I loathe all things Harry Potter, it didn't do anything memorable for me.
As theatrical family films go, it's okay-ish. The creatures aren't very scary, and the story is easy to follow. It's just so below average in every other way that it's hardly one of this year's "must sees".
"Juggling angry Russians, the British Mi5, and an international terrorist, debonair art dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai races to recover a stolen painting rumoured to contain a code that leads to lost Nazi gold."
As I've moved further and further away from the purest forms of the horror genre with nearly every review this year (mainly because there aren't any new horror movies left other than a few bottomfeeder indie ones on the VOD streams which I'm not likely to ever care about anyway), I thought that I might as well watch something completely different for this "Surprise Sunday".
Although I freely admit to disliking comedies in general (especially since the American ones are usually more spiteful and mean-spirited than horror), sometimes people need a little bit of comic relief in their lives. I have no problem with that. Just because comedy isn't really meant for me, it doesn't mean that I can't still objectively appreciate the merits of a film within that genre. Drama is drama, and a good story will usually entertain me regardless.
Thus, I decided to watch "Mortdecai". Having heard nothing but bad things about this R-rated box office flop from the "critics" (and the usual snarky assholes all over the internet), I also set myself a challenge to see if I would agree with them or end up being a contrarian.
This is the poster. Obviously.
Unfortunately, despite "Mortdecai" having a great cast of credible acting talents, a huge budget, and quite beautiful camerawork in places, I have to come down on the side of the critics. "Mortdecai" looks like a Brosnan-era "James Bond" film, but the story is both confusing and drawn out in equal measures, and the best thing it has going for it is the amusing Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany double-act which reminds me (and everybody else) of Inspector Clouseau and Cato (albeit with British accents).
I've never actually watched any of the "Pink Panther" movies in their entirety, mind you, but I saw substantial parts of most of them on television as a child. Mainly due to clip show quizzes such as the BBC's "Screen Test", some of the slapstick fighting scenes stuck in my memory. Therefore, whether the homages in "Mortdecai" are intentional or accidental, I have no real way of knowing. I have absolutely no desire to ever attempt to watch them again. Fans of Inspector Clouseau, however, will know for sure.
No funny caption for this. Something about carrying the film, maybe?
Moving on to things which I can properly appreciate, the stunts are very good, the locations were well chosen and dressed beforehand, and I don't have any real problem with the script. Other than Johnny Depp channelling Terry Thomas, none of it is that funny though, and the moustache gags are very repetitive and overused. "Mortdecai" also clearly suffers from pacing problems and padding more than a few times, but that still doesn't completely wreck the somewhat challenging non-linear narrative which is its own worst enemy.
Including small roles for Paul Whitehouse (who Brits like me tend to love) early on and Jeff Goldblum two-thirds in, the main problem with "Mortdecai" is that it doesn't allow any of the supporting players apart from Ewan McGregor to really stand out. Although I'm pretty sure that nobody involved wanted to create anything other than a Depp-centric product to entertain an audience for an hour and a half, sadly, it shows.
"Mortdecai" won't be winning any Oscars or major awards (unless the world goes even more batshit insane than it has done in the last two years), and it's not the most original comedy-spy movie that I've ever seen either, but it's relatively okay for what it is. It's not as good as any of the "Austin Powers" movies by any stretch of the imagination, but it has many intentionally amusing moments and a couple of extremely nauseating ones.
"A rare book dealer, while seeking out the last two copies of a demon text, gets drawn into a conspiracy with supernatural overtones."
Nine days left until Hallowe'en so it's time for "The Ninth Gate". See what I did there? Don't worry, it probably won't happen again. I doubt that I'll ever rewatch "The Ninth Gate" anytime soon either.
I'm not a Johnny Depp fan and find it kind of disgusting to watch somebody with $200,000,000 and their own island playing a part which absolutely anyone could have done just as well. I know his fizzog sells plenty of movies, but I find him overrated. Johnny Depp sort of reminds me of somebody I used to work with who had the same stupid little beard and reeked of body odour so, unfairly, I imagine him to be much the same.
I'm not going to get all moral on you but seeing Johhny Depp romp around naked with Roman Polanski's younger wife also makes me feel nauseous. Given Roman Polanski's criminal history, it's no surprise that his wife is half his age, but it's still weird to see her used in this way. I suppose she wanted to do it, but it's not right.
As you probably know, Johnny Depp plays the part of a "book detective" who gets hired to track down the last copies of a Satanic tome. With a neo-noir feel to the story, he's reminiscent of Mickey Rourke in "Angel Heart" to some extent. His employer, Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), is hardly Lucifer in disguise, but there are superficial similarities.
I'm not sure if the intention was to rework the "Angel Heart" storyline because I only listened to a few parts of the director's commentary on the DVD. I do know that "The Ninth Gate" was based on a novel about something less Satanic with an ending which faded out in a way that made it almost impossible to conclude satisfactorily here either. Kudos for at least trying to wrap things up, but after nearly two hours of watching a mystery unfold, it was still weak.
The standout for me is Lena Olin who plays Liana Telfer as one of the more truly vicious femmes fatales that I've seen for ages. Not only is she extremely hot but sinister with it. Corso (Johnny Depp) describes her as "dishy", but scary and mad as a bag of cats would also apply. She's certainly got claws and she bites!
It's amusing that so many rich characters in "The Ninth Gate" are all into collecting old books about witchcraft. It's yet another thing for the conspiracy theorists who drag up even though though it's just a trope. Considering the elaborate measures many of the bibliophiles take to safely store their treasures, the rough treatment which the Satanic book that they are all chasing receives is also unintentionally comical. I can't think of any book dealers who would handle such a valuable item without gloves, and I highly doubt that they would smoke all over it or press it onto a photocopier.
Roman Polanski's wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, who plays "The Girl" or "Green Eyes" does a fine job as a demonic sidekick even though her role is never truly explained. Whether she is saving Corso from destruction or leading him to his destiny is flawed thoughout the story. Ultimately, she's there to encourage his bad side, but it's complicated and open to too much interpretation. She's nice to look at when nude even though she has a Maryam d'Abo thing going on with her eyebrows which is distracting.
As for the plot, well, it's a mystery in the same vein as "The DaVnci Code" or "Angels and Demons" but years before Dan Brown even thought about writing them and without any twists. It's a straightforward, "connect the dots" affair with a little bit of horror action along the way. It's actually rather difficult to classify "The Ninth Gate" as a horror movie except for the supernatural elements and the Satanism because it isn't all that scary.
"The Ninth Gate" is a beautiful looking film with a rather sleazy and grubby atmosphere which makes me homesick, but the ending is such a disappointment that it it spoils what could have been another Roman Polanski classic.
"An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection."
There are some films which you have to be bored out of your mind to watch, and, unfortunately, I was that bored enough today to see if I could find anything enjoyable in Tim Burton's version of "Dark Shadows".
I'm glad that I have no sense of humour because "Dark Shadows" failed completely as a comedy. It also failed to be anything other than an all-star cast playing dress-up. If the intention was simply to destroy any nostalgic admiration anyone could have for the original Dan Curtis series with a load of silliness and superficiality, it certainly succeeded there.
I've only ever seen a few episodes of the TV series and one of the films (I forget which one), but they were a lot more entertaining than this hack job. Although Johnny Depp was slightly comical, Eva Green was sexy as Hell, and I now know what happened to Jonny Lee Miller, it was just a lot of high production values layered over a weak script.
Having watched a lot of these over-produced and under-written movies this week, I'm beginning to wonder if this is the thing now. Nobody seems to care about providing any kind of engrossing or cohesive story as long as they can stick a few big name actors in costumes up on screen and grab some quick cash from the kids who don't know any better.
Even if I was the right age to be part of the targeted PG-13 audience, I'm sure I would still have been disappointed with "Dark Shadows". It started off too fast, then wasted a lot of time on unnecessary details and characters who didn't really do anything, while, at the same time, it badly mixed fish-out-of-water, "Austin Powers"-style humour with a feeble attempt at a Gothic love story.
After sitting through nearly two hours of this dreck, I really don't want to waste any more time talking about it. "Dark Shadows" looked extremely good, the 1970's music was better, the couple of surprise cameos were okay, but it was a whole load of nothing really.
