Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Now I want a big cat.

When the dangerous revolutionary Grindelwald (now Johnny Depp) escapes from prison, it falls to the timid Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to recapture him, much like he does with his other magical pokemon. This second installment of Fantastic Beasts fixes many of the issues I had with the last one.

First, there are less hijinks with the creatures which is a plus as there were some really silly moments in the last movie. This leads to more appreciation to the bits that do focus on the creatures and more importantly gives people (namely Newt) more character development time (finally)!

That's a strange looking cat! I want one!

The villain is more compelling this time around and having segments at Hogwarts is a great addition to the plot. As usual, the music and effects are great which overall makes for a superior movie to its predecessor. I give it 3.5 Dumbledores out of of 5 and would watch it again.

Into the Woods

A waste of good singers.

Since there's more singing than talking here it's safe to say this musical is about how a bunch of well known fairy tale characters cross paths with each other (continuously) in supposedly a huge and sometimes scary forest to make all their dreams come true. While everyone is a good or good enough singer, they don't actually have many (actually any in my opinion) good songs to sing. Hell, Eurovision had more memorable songs. Also, the girl who plays red riding hood is borderline in the acting department.

Egads, make it stop!

The tale itself is not too serious with a few funny bits. However it is also pretty dark and there are a number of mutilations and fatalities though all off screen. It's like they wanted to include gore to be dark and broody but chickened out to try still be "kid friendly". The entire thing also has a narrator, which I always find to be a cheap way to move the plot forward and when the third act comes around I just wanted the entire cast to die already so the movie would end. Annoying, unnecessary tedium!

Pity since the visuals were pretty good, especially for one of Cinderella's solos, but it's nowhere near enough to save it. I give this movie one and a half magic beans out of five and recommend that every stay the hell away from going Into the Woods. Obviously I have no interest in watching it again.

The Rum Diary

Much like the main character, this movie suffers from a long, drunken stupor.

I came across this on TV the other day and after hearing some good music and Johnny Depp catching me by surprise as being the main star, I decided to watch this whacky film set in 1960's Puerto Rico. Depp is certainly likable as a writer looking for work, though he does have some really poor choice in friends and many vices that get him into trouble. He also meets the rich and sly Aaron Eckhart who serves as the "bad?" guy from Johnny's perspective anyway, since Johnny really likes Aaron's hot girl friend played by the beautiful Amber Heard.

Definite hotness.

There are quite a few funny and entertaining parts to this film, the main problem for me is that of all the little story arcs that start up nothing gets resolved. Yup. Absolutely nothing. Even most (not all) of Steven Seagal's B-grade films get this part right. Hell, even Sharknado gets this right. I'm going to spoil the movie for you now so you don't have to watch it: the closing text is "... this is the end of one story and the beginning of another." Followed by a block of text that tries to to tie everything up in 5 seconds. That is what I call bullshit. BULL SHIT. Given the star quality in this film I am surprised to find myself giving it 1 empty beer bottle out of 5. Don't bother watching this crap.