A magical sequel to prequel
DEPENDING on how you look at it, this is either JK Rowling’s second Harry Potter prequel or the second of a proposed new five-film fantasy series. The film mostly sets out the new roster of characters behind two leaders. On one side is Johnny Depp’s fascistic Gellert Grindelwald who wants wizards to step out of the shadows and take their rightful place as the rulers of the non-magical world.
On the other side is Jude Law’s nattily attired Albus Dumbledore, who thinks the spell-casters should live in harmony with the non-magical Muggles.
Eddie Redmayne’s bumbling Newt Scamander lies somewhere in the middle. As his loyalties lie with the magical creatures living in his Tardis-like suitcase, Dumbledore has decided he is incorruptible. So Dumbledore appears on the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral to hand him a mission.
He wants Newt to track down Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the angry young man from the last film who turns into a cloud of black smoke whenever he gets upset.
Grindelwald is also after Credence. If Credence served as his apprentice, the evil wizard would somehow be able to take over the world.
But the film spends so much time setting up soapy sub-plots to play out over the next instalments that the pace stutters badly in the overstuffed middle section.
There is a love triangle involving Newt, his brother Theseus and their former Hogwarts classmate Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz). Leta, who is engaged to Theseus but has had a soft spot for Newt since they were in short capes, also has a dark family mystery to investigate involving Credence and a French-African wizard called Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam).
Meanwhile, New York witch Queenie (Alison Sudol) wants to marry her Muggle boyfriend Jacob (Dan Fogler) who had his memory wiped at the end of the last film.
If you’ve kept up with Potter news, you may also sense a romantic sub-plot involving Dumbledore and Grindelwald. “We were closer than brothers,” admits Dumbledore, staring dreamily in the distance, a subtle reference to Rowling’s revelation that he is gay.
Thankfully, director David Yates manages to keep the story moving. The Harry Potter veteran begins with a thrilling prison break in New York before whisking us to London and then Paris. There he delivers chases, wand fights and a trip to a freak show where Claudia Kim’s shapeshifter Nagini is undergoing a reptilian transformation that should ring bells with Potterheads.
And he doesn’t forget the beasts – which include baby Nifflers popping champagne corks and a manic Chinese dragon creature.
There’s enough here to bewitch hardcore fans of Rowling’s Wizarding World. But Muggles may find it more bewildering than enchanting.
SUSPIRIA HHHH (Cert 18, 153mins)
HORROR fans consider Dario Argento’s Suspiria to be one of the scariest films ever made. Yet I doubt many were clamouring for a remake.
Argento’s film about a witches’ dance academy was camp, gory, sexy and had a thumping prog-rock soundtrack.
Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino has a better cast, a great choreographer and
an artfully creepy soundtrack by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. It could have been heaps of fun if it hadn’t taken itself so seriously.
It’s 1977 and Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) has run away from a Christian community in Ohio to audition for a prestigious dance academy in Berlin. She has had no training but her routine enthrals the director, Madame Blanc (an excellent Tilda Swinton).
Swinton is less convincing when swathed in old man make-up to play the psychiatrist treating what he thinks is a deluded dancer (Chloë Grace Moretz) who claims her teacher is a witch.
Those scenes, along with the shrink’s unnaturally rubbery skin, set our nerves on edge while strange things happen as Susie dances her way to the top.
Suspiria is stylish, quietly creepy and contains some genuinely disturbing images.
But it also feels like a bit of slog. Guadagnino devotes too much of his two-and-half-hour running time to dance routines, gender politics and lessons in German history.
HELL FEST ★★ (Cert 18, 89mins)
SIX US college students visit horror-based theme park Hell Fest which is like a scary version of Disneyland. As punters queue for rides, actors in cheap costumes run at them waving fake knives.
It turns out one of them is a genuine psycho hiding in plain sight and stabbing people to death but, in this increasingly tedious horror, the students are so annoying that you’re always on the side of the maniac.
DEAD IN A WEEK (OR YOUR MONEY BACK) ★★ (Cert 15, 90mins)
DEPRESSED William (Aneurin Barnard) is not only a rubbish novelist but he can’t even come up with an ending for his own life.
He has bungled seven suicide attempts when he meets hitman Leslie (Tom Wilkinson).
Leslie makes him an offer he can’t refuse. He will shoot him dead within the week and if he fails he will return his £2,000 fee.
Shortly after signing on the dotted line, William starts writing a novel about the hitman, lands a book deal and falls in love with his winsome publisher (Freya Mavor). Now that he is about to die, he has a reason to live.
Christopher Eccleston tries to inject some life into proceedings as Leslie’s Cockney boss. But like so many British comedies, this crime flick is dead on arrival.
BACK TO BERLIN ★★★★ (Cert 12A, 79mins)
THE Holocaust documentary goes on a road trip in this enlightening and touching film about a gang of motorcycle-riding Israelis. The 11 riders have been tasked with taking the Maccabiah Torch, symbol of the Jewish Olympics, from Israel to Berlin for the first Games on German soil since the Second World War. Two are Holocaust survivors, seven are descendants of survivors and one is a grandson of the original “Maccabi Bikers” who travelled across Europe to spread the news of the first Games in 1932.
Along the way, they stop to tell little-known stories of genocide and resistance in eastern Europe.