meetingivory

I enjoyed Newt, Jacob, Queenie, and Albus as always, but the rest of the movie is not up to the first and second installments, which is a terrible pity.

Ironically, for a Wizarding World movie, I think we have lost the sense of the parallel, secret magical world, with its quaintness and endless delightful inventiveness. It's mostly people wearing ordinary clothes inside ordinary buildings doing magical things, with, of course, very impressive visual effects which by now feel somewhat generic. When Newt and his fantastic beasts are not on screen it could be just some Marvel movie.

Mads Mikkelsen as Grindelwald would have worked well if he had had the role from the start, but it's difficult not to miss the icy, devilish energy that Johnny Depp had originally bestowed on the character.

I still liked the story, but for the first time it feels like there is not much new to explore in the universe, and it's very sad.

I am still hoping for a 4th movie though.

I seem to be one of the very few people who loved this movie. The eternal oddball, that's me. I didn't like Mila Kunis much, to be honest. I never do. She's one of those actresses who wear the same face from the beginning to the end of amovie (in every movie), but I loved everything else. Visually, it must be one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The costumes, the spaceships, the action scenes, the quirky little details, the photography... everything is magnificent. Amazing: a love story in a sci-fi movie! Amazing: eye candy for female viewers in a sci-fi movie! Amazing: Sean Bean makes it all the way to the end of the movie without being gruesomely slaughtered! I am not in any way enthusiastic about royals and royalty and all that crap, but here it works the same way it works in traditional fairytales. The whole plot of the movie is very much a traditional fairytale, Cinderella becomes a princess, the three adversaries, etc... It may not work for some, but it does or me. Lots of secondary characters that stand out as truly interesting and memorable, unlike so many movies where one or two great characters float in a void of appalling acting. I didn't know Eddie Redmayne before this movie and I know many ridiculed his performance here, but it made a perfectly convincing creepy villain for me. It is a movie that has its own strange purity, and courage too, using traditional narrative shapes that don't belong to the genre, weaving them together with elements of fantasy and comedy and romance... I suppose it could not work in this cynical time. I am sorry that it did so badly because I would have loved to spend more time in this universe, in a sequel (or two). It is such a different and colourful take on Sci-fi, a genre in which so many movies, books and series are basically interchangeable.

This movie was a complete surprise to me, in part because the English blurb is so short as to be almost misleading. I supposed it would be just a little criminal blackmail story, while in fact it is much, much more intriguing than that. All three main characters, Tomek, Zazy and Marianna, are brilliantly written and very well portrayed, and the story truly takes its strength from the complex dynamics between them. Zazy is a young girl so cute and clueless (?) that you are often led to think she's innocent of the whole plot, and her main crime is to be a bit moody and willful... except for a small, knowing sly grin she does at times that makes you sit up and wonder. Marianna is wonderful. She begins as just a rich, somewhat arrogant woman in holiday in Italy, and you almost sort of want her to have some misfortune, but her character deepens and while the slightly arrogant rich-woman attitude remains, there is also a great humanity behind it, gradually revealed. One comes to really care for her as her acquiescence in Zazy's demands seems often due as much to a genuine care of her as to fear of exposure. The character around which the story turns however, is ultimately Tomek, who is the darker driving force behind the blackmail plot and also the weak link in it. Tomek is both very loving and alarmingly unhinged, and as someone who has lived for years with a similarly dysfunctional person I can testify that the writing of it is awfully realistic and the acting eerily convincing, so much so that it was sometimes hard to watch (for me). The plot takes a few unexpected turns, down to the very end and is often moved forward by the duality of Zazy's feelings for both Marianna and Tomek. Like most European movies this does not have the polished, plasticky , all-pretty Hollywood look, but it is beautiful to watch anyway. The beginning in Riva del Garda has a beautiful location to play with, the actors are severely attractive, and the photography is lavish and sensual (the scenes where Zazy is day-dreaming of Tomek are particularly beautiful, and also very touching). Certainly not what I would call a feel-good story, but a beautiful, surprising and thought-provoking movie, with wonderfully nuanced characters.