This has been a movie I wanted to see for a while and then sort of dropped off the radar until I got to view it inflight, when the choice was limited.
It is J K Rowlings first real screen venture since the Harry Potter series and takes plenty of elements from that magical world to New York in 1926. Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, correct) has come to town to liberate a rare magical bird
and brought with him an attache case full of weird creatures who escape and cause havoc at regular intervals
. Meanwhile the city is under siege from a strange creature that is destroying buildings and scaring the life out of people. Scamander is quickly sniffed out by the “Magical” police force who don’t like his presence but his chief pursuer Katherine Waterston
takes a shine to him anyway. A subplot her involves a romance between Queenie (Alison Ludol),
her sister and a non-magician, Kowalski, an aspiring baker who gets caught up in all the adventures. Dan Fogler is a good comic face in this role. Then, we have the magicians league trying to catch this force but not reveal themselves in the process and one of their leaders is Graves, played by Colin Farrell
, who is also trying to stymie Scamander. As you might guess, there are plenty of chases, plenty of battle scenes, some lovely moments with the fantastic beasts and some humour.
The portrayal of the beasts is one of the best features and we could have had more of this and quite a bit less of either the chases and the romance. There is a sort of predictable formula at work here and it does produce a watchable movie
with some observations to make a out life but it also does drag somewhat at times. Jon Voight, Johnny Depp and Samantha Morton have effective cameos. Philippe Rousselot produces dark photography
for the time with loads of effects thrown in and James Newton Howard contributes his rather blustery score. Ok all round but a bit short of a classic.
♦♦♦+
as an intelligent leftish, unkempt journalist and Charlize Theron as a lonely and ambitious Secretary of State pitching for President was an inspired one. In this romantic comedy about unlikely matches,
we do actually get several good laughs and a host of tricky situations as people in the public eye try to do the right thing and not offend any potential voters.
The hypocrisy of modern politics is put under the magnifying glass and shown up for what it is.
Whether this will sway voters is another thing and not so well addressed. Theron
has immense presence and Rogen matches her for sweetness. June Diane Raphael
as her assistant Maggie, Bob Odenkirk as the President and Alexander Skarsgard
as a somewhat creepy Canadian Prime Minister all add their bit. Funny for the most part, convincing and a good commentary on sexism,
Long Shot turns out to be a satisfying movie.
an impossibly academic Sicilian, a confident ladies’ man from Tuscany and a shy complex daughter of a Roman politician. On the other, we have the old film makers,
their agents, lawyers, helpers and concubines, a real hotchpotch of people with different motives. The death of one of these provides the starting point for the movie as we flashback to the varied encounters the young trio
had with them.
Some parts drag while there are some excellent scenes in amidst those with the type of magic that made Italian cinema shine. Giancarlo Giannini as the deceased director
and Ornella Muti as a not so retired vedette are a pleasure to watch and Marina Rocco as the director’s muse is very amusing. 
Irene Vetere, Mauro Lamantia
and Giovanni Toscano are rather more predictable and slightly overact. The recreation of the period is impressive.
This event gave birth to the concept of the Stockholm syndrome whereby captives end up “falling in love” with their captors.
Here, Ethan Hawke plays a Bob Dylan loving bank robber who has an unorthodox way of bargaining and carrying out the heist. Hawke goes to town with this crazy cowboy of a role and is always entertaining. 
Noomi Rapace
is also good as Bianca Lind, a plucky mother-or-two bank clerk who ends up falling for her captor.
Charles Heyerdahl as the local police chief is another whose straight-faced seriousness covers up a different reality. The unexpected and the way Brudeau milks the humour makes this a better experience than it might have been.
Not to be taken seriously at all.
and being lodged in a commissioned mansion where the German hosts, father, daughter and staff continue to live.
There is no love lost between the two sides apparently. Life is bleak there with the city heavily bombed and the remnants of Nazi sympathisers providing resistance. We soon discover that Rachel and Leo (Jason Clarke)
have a sad history – they lost their son in the war and Leo escaped by throwing himself into war work. Rachel is still grieving.
an architect widower, the daughter starts to fraternise with a Nazi teen and plots against the British increase.
and the ending is somewhat lame. 
All in all a rather artificial melodrama, well photographed with overly dramatic music and actors trying to be meaningful.
is competent as ever and gets some nuance into her role but the rest is nothing special.
As such, it has some very narrow opinions and one or two nauseous speech scenes, but it is not all bad and some reasonable acting and camera work help the film rise up a little.
has just discovered she is pregnant and Charlie rises to the occasion by using a waitress’s hairband to serve as an engagement ring. They get married, have the baby, Alice is a nervous wreck most of the time and over the years have two more and adopt a Chinese girl. The scenes show them “parenting” over the years, much of which is trying to micromanage their kids. Hardly surprising that the oldest one, bolts as soon as he can, never to return.
Any problems or issues are solved by going to Christian parenting groups and reading the bible at home. 
To handle their adolescence, Dad stops working such late hours and doubles the family time on the Bible. Most of the kids put up with it but can see through it.
A final coda sees the older son Ronnie rejoining the flock at his parents 50th wedding anniversary!! All the kids bar him have numerous children and seem prosperous, Ronnie has one son by accident. It would have been nice to see some real debates about their strategies and some real defiance from the kids, and while there is no doubt that the parents meant well, their overplayed naivete seemed off. Alan Powell and Micah Lynn Hannon hold the centre as the leads.
We learn something of what happened in the course of the film. Meanwhile, she is a resentful, difficult woman, making life difficult for those around her and refusing to play the game.
She is expelled from her chronic pain support group, develops a fascination for a fellow group member who has killed herself and even takes it upon herself to visit the widower. She is addicted to painkillers and spurns efforts to help her get better. Mostly, she drives her maid Silvana, a middle-aged Mexican
crazy with her self-pity and whims. And yet, this is a film about dealing with grief and pain so she can afford to be difficult.
Aniston takes a challenging role and nails it. You can feel her physical pain and her refusal to address her emotional distress. Her relationship with Silvana is very well drawn, Adriana Barraza 
shining in her role and Sam Worthington
adding charm as the widow. I’m not sure if the film is quite up to the quality of the acting but it does portray an aspect of life in these circumstances.
delivering loads across the US to his home state of Illinois.
He also directed the film, a vast improvement on his last effort, and produces a watchable reasonable movie. Earl Stone is a cantankerous and maturing man, estranged from his family
(ex-wife is Dianne Wiest and daughter is Alison Eastwood, his own daughter), but realizing that as he gets older
he needs them and owes them a debt. So, it is easy to get ready money from the drug run
and nobody looks twice at a man his age with a clean driving record. Apart from the family melodrama,
we get a few chase scenes and tension as the police headed by a DEA detective (Bradley Cooper)
close in on him and we get a look at the mafia with Andy Garcia playing a Mexican godfather about to suffer an internal coup.
knows how to tell a story and where to point the camera. It drags a bit towards the end but is watchable throughout.
nuclear bomb threats, the collapse of the banking system, plagues, artificial intelligence and transhumanism,
the redundancy of many jobs and….populist politics.
Almost too much stuff in each episode, sometimes I had to slow down and rewind to catch up with all the details.
, T´Nia Miller as her granddaughter-in-law, Rory Kinnear
as number one grandson, Russell Tovey as gay grandson
and Jessica Hynes as activist granddaughter.
the populist politician is excellent, repulsive and yet somehow appealing and sense-making all at once.
passionfilm 