You want fantastic? Good, because you can definitely find it here. David Yates and J. K. Rowling lighten up for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, newly untethered to the demands of a narrative-in-progress, buoyed by the opportunity to riff on material that's so very familiar to them both. If their winsome magic was occasionally all on which the Harry Potter films had to go, it's not necessarily a drawback to note that Fantastic Beasts inevitably loses some such magic in the changes made. What it gains is an equally-agreeable freedom, a looseness in tone and plot in which Rowling appears to delight, and in which Yates follows suit. By now, these two know how to get to where they're going, and so indulge in one cheeky little tangent after another along the route - Fantastic Beasts rollicks from one silly setpiece to the next, and, if anything, it's those scenes which are devoted toward the development of plot that feel like they're intruding. Yates is a fine director of darkness, though, and is once again blessed by the presence of yet another brilliant cinematographer in Philippe Rousselot; as ever, one of the principal joys of these Harry Potter-related pictures is their artistic and technical beauty, and particular, predictable credit must go to the increasingly invaluable Stuart Craig on production design. They bring the fantasy to fantastic life in this uncommonly winning blockbuster, enlivened further by an attractive sense of social conscience and some charming performances. Half a star off for a reproachable twist, for not knowing when to end, and for the single most appalling use of slo-mo 3D in film history.
The weight of expectation bears down upon The Legend of Tarzan, a film that seems all too aware of what kind of film it's expected to be, and not nearly aware enough of what kind of film it ought to be. It feels scrappily pieced together at every stage in its production process, from the scattershot character development to the various muddled thematic thrusts to the glaring continuity errors. If none of this is quite fatal for the film in itself, and if David Yates is altogether too solid a director to oversee anything so disastrous, the cumulative effect of the lack of focus and insight into precisely what is intended of this product at least soddens this ship, though never sinking it. Alexander Skarsgard is an intriguing Tarzan, though not sufficiently magnetic; the film generally appears indifferent to this character, a legendary one indeed, yet his questionable presence as the obligatory white saviour still sours the narrative. Efforts are made to overcome this distasteful quality, though we're ever cognizant of the fact that such efforts are entirely necessary in this context, and not entirely effective. Margot Robbie is Jane, whose portrayal involves half-hearted attempts at modernization whose timidity only helps to highlight how regressive The Legend of Tarzan actually is. Christoph Waltz is the bad guy, and thus you'll likely forgive him for phoning it in; there's one rather rotten reference to his sexuality that the film wisely (or unwisely?) brushes swiftly past. Samuel L. Jackson is Samuel L. Jackson. Djimon Hounsou is 52 and looks better than I ever have or ever will. ngl, I would let Djimon Hounsou do literally anything to me and I wouldn't even press charges.
