Category: Movies

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Shmee Helps Newt Scamander Find His Fantastic Beasts!

Fantastic-Beasts-and-Where-to-Find-Them

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the first major work in the Potterverse not to feature Harry Potter, and it shows that J.K Rowling’s magical world is bigger than one boy wizard.  Fantastic Beasts is not a perfect film by any stretch, but it does move the universe forward in some interesting ways, and it shows us new aspects of the Wizarding World, while still feeling grounded in Rowling’s universe.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he lands in America with a case full of creatures and some unknown purpose.  Things quickly get out of control when he looses his case and a few of the creatures escape.  Meanwhile something has been terrorizing the streets of New York, and Newt has to prove it is not one of his beasts and save the city.

The story is fairly basic, which is fine, but it gets kind of muddled with the three or four other things going on at the same time.  This movie does a lot of world building for being the ninth movie in a franchise.  Luckily all that world building is pretty cool and the more we can dig in to the Wizarding World the better, and I was very happy that Fantastic Beasts has a proper ending.  It may have put to neat a bow on everything, but it was nice not to have wait until next time get the rest of the story, and with four more Fantastic Beasts movies in the works, there is a lot of story still coming.

Like all Potterverse films, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has a great cast.  Eddie Redmayne is charming and fun, and Colin Farrell is dark and obviously villainous in a wonderful way.  Dan Fogler is a perfect stand-in for the audience as the No-Maj (muggle) who is constantly being blown away with everything he is seeing, but loving every second of it.  I don’t think there is one bad casting.

Fantastic Beasts is a visual treat.  1920’s New York looked great, and every magical creature was a wonder to behold.  The spells all were realized wonderfully.  While I don’t think I could ever tell you what David Yates style is, or be able to pick one of his films out of a line-up, he does handle large speciall effects laden films well, and that is a very hard skill to master.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a great film that buckles a little under all of its world building.  Hopefully future films are a little more focused.  The only other downside I could see is that this Potterverse movie felt a little more grown up, and it may be a little too dark and feature themes (physical abuse for instance) that are hard for younger children to deal with.  Though as for me, I had a blast, and I cannot wait to see where Newt and his gang end up next.

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And Now A Movie About A Monster In A Truck!

This is one of those movies that I have no idea how it got green-lit.  Made for TV special? Maybe, but Monster Trucks is a full fledged release, and a misleading one at that since there is only one monster and he is not a truck, he is living in a truck.  It looks like someone in California started smoking weed before it was legal, but hey I am all for more kids adventure movies, so hopefully Monster Trucks pans out.

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No One Called These Ghostbusters!

ghostbusters

This summer we finally got a new Ghostbusters movie, and audiences largely ignored it.  The losses for this film are an estimated $70 Million dollars.  Was it because the movie was bad?  No it is pretty good in fact, but it was because the movie studio didn’t listen to its fans and made a movie they didn’t want.  A warning other studios would be wise to listen to.

Ghostbusters is a complete reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise.  The equipment, “science”, and setting are largely the same, but the characters are new and have different motivations.  Though in the end they pretty much play gender swapped versions of the original cast, and if you are just going to play different versions of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson that comparison is not going to end well for you.

I think the lack of originality was the main problem with this movie.  You can tell that they wanted to do something different, but then they just kept re-doing things from the older movies, and what we learned from Star Trek Into Darkness is that it is always better to do something original instead of re-doing the classics.  You will never be able to make those classic moments better.

I have kind of been hard on this movie, but Ghostbuster’s saving grace is its fantastic cast.  Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon are all hilarious.  Especially Kate McKinnon.  Instead of being a bad copy of Egon she decided to go full blown crazed super scientist, and I loved every scene she was in.  She and Leslie Jones provided most of the laughs.  Which kind of left McCarthy and Wiig to be the straight women which is not their strong suits.  They were still good, but I think they all should have followed McKinnon’s lead and found some way to change up their characters.

I laughed a lot with Ghostbusters, but it just couldn’t live up to the original.  Not that I am condoning the sexist things that were said about this movie, but sometimes the fans are right, and maybe this franchise should have been left alone.  Still, if you are looking for a decently funny movie to watch you could do worse than the new Ghostbusters.

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The Most Controversial Thing To Happen This Weekend Was A White Woman Playing A Japanese Cartoon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxeR9Nu0nQs

Okay it wasn’t the most controversial thing to happen this weekend, but Twitter definitely wasn’t happy with it, and honestly I get the backlash.  Scarlett Johansson is playing a Japanese woman in a very Japanese looking movie, and this is the time and age where if you have a Japanese character they should probably be played by a Japanese person.  Though it is easy to see how this happened.  Hollywood is just now getting on board with women leading action movies, so to sell this movie Paramount got the most bankable woman they could find to star in it.  I am not saying it is right, I am just saying this shouldn’t have been a shock.

Hopefully women staring in action flicks becomes more common, so that we will have a larger and more diverse group of ladies to pick from in the near future, and this doesn’t happen so often.  All that being the case this movie looks pretty good, and 2017 is shaping up to be a good one for blockbusters.

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The Guy That Gave Us The Fifth Element Is Bringing Us Back To Space With Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets!

Luc Besson is known for making crazy and fun films, and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks no different.  It is easy to see that this movie shares DNA with the Fifth Element.  It is always great to see Sci-Fi that is not Star Wars or Star Trek out there, and I can’t wait to watch this movie next summer.  Oh, and I almost forgot it has Rihanna in it, so for all you people who were on the fence that should help you out!