Eddie Redmayne

G is for The Good Shepherd (2006)

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) loves and believes in America and will sacrifice everything to protect it, but as one of the covert founders of the CIA, Edward’s youthful idealism is slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of everyone around him.

The Good Shepherd is Robert De Niro’s sophomore film and it sure is a well-directed film and De Niro has an eye for detail that’s impressive. However, good direction doesn’t necessarily make an interesting film.

The Good Shepherd is set in the 1960s as Edward looks for a mole inside the CIA but there’s a lot of flashbacks to his father’s death, his student days, and how he’s recruited and works in counter intelligence in Europe during the Second World War. So, while The Good Shepherd is framed as the origins of the CIA, it’s more about Edward’s life and how he’s involved with various elements of the CIA and historical events. I had to google to see if Edward was a real person and he’s not but apparently the character is loosely based on a man called James Jesus Angleton who was chief of counterintelligence in the CIA from 1954-1974.

Angelina Jolie plays Clover, Edward’s wife, and she’s given the thankless task of being the typical dutiful wife at home that’s kept in the dark about everything her husband does. It was pretty jarring having Eddie Redmayne play their son in the 1960s. Considering Jolie is only six years older than him and Damon is 11 years older than him, it looks weird every time the three of them are on screen together as he looks too old/too close to their own ages to be their university-aged son.

The Good Shepherd is juggling a few things with Edward’s life story, family drama and life in the CIA, but it doesn’t really make any of them particularly interesting. In fact, for a so-called spy thriller, it actually becomes quite tedious. The hunt for the mole storyline has a few decent moments and Michael Gabon as Edward’s university professor and mentor is one of the most engaging characters, but overall, it’s not a film that really grabbed my attention for its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. 2/5.

REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

After Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) escapes from justice and starts to amass his followers, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) tasks magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) with finding the powerful but dangerous Credence (Ezra Miller) before Grindelwald does.

Amazingly, a lot happens in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald but at the same time, the many characters and their actions do little to further the overarching plot. The main plot could take up less than an hour, everything else is loose plot threads that have the potential to come to fruition in future films but in this one they leave you confused and cold.

As well as many new characters being introduced in The Crimes of Grindelwald, Newt’s American friends return too – even though characters like Jacob (Dan Fogler) and Queenie (Alison Sudol) seemed to have a completed story arc at the end of the first film! You meet Newt’s older brother Theseus (Callum Turner) who works for the Ministry of Magic and is engaged to Newt’s childhood friend Leta (Zoë Kravitz), both are interesting but have little to do.

There’s so many scenes where characters just dump exposition and usually not in a compelling way either. There are also flashback scenes of when Newt and Leta were studying at Hogwarts together. These are sweet and the younger actors do a fine job but through previous dialogue between adult characters you got that they used to be good friends and Leta had a tough time at school. These scenes, while nice, weren’t needed and added little to the film.

The special effects are stunning, though the opening chase sequence is hard to follow, and when Newt is with his fantastic beasts, those scenes are a lot of fun and cute. However, going forward it’s hard to imagine if future films will keep featuring magical creatures (or even keep the “Fantastic Beasts” title) as these scenes while more light-hearted and show off what a truly wonderful character Newt is, do little to further the convoluted plot.

There’s some very odd and potentially insensitive choices as well throughout the film but especially when it comes to the future Grindelwald predicts. In his quest to show his followers how bad and dangerous Muggles are, he insinuates that the Second World War and all the horrors that come with it can be avoided if wizards were in charge. It is a sequence that is weird and almost unbelievable.

The Crimes of Grindelwald is just messy. None of the characters have a satisfying or complete character arc, very few of them achieve their goals, and the story as a whole is convoluted. The way some scenes are edited leads to confusion too as characters seem to suddenly appear or move from one location to another without much set up. Also, there’s so many connections or easter eggs relating to the original Harry Potter series – some of them are great whereas others seem to make little sense with what we already know. It’s as if J.K. Rowling is throwing in all these references, whether it’s a characters surname or an object, and hoping that these cool things will detract from the fact that the new story is overstuffed and chaotic.

My main takeaway from Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is Newt is a sweetheart, I love his brother Theseus and I hope there’s more of their relationship in the next film(s). There is a lot of set up in this film, for so many characters and plot threads, and little pay off so hopefully future film(s) will be more exciting and satisfying. But that does mean Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has little about it that’s memorable or important. 2/5.

REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York with a suitcase full of magical creatures and when some of them escape he has to find them before they get hurt. Unbeknownst to Newt, he’s chosen the worst time to come to New York as there’s strange things happening in the city and trouble is brewing as a group of No-Majs (non-magical people) stir up fear and hatred in the city.

This was the first time I rewatched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them since I saw it in the cinema two years ago and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed it more than I remembered.

It’s interesting to be reintroduced to the magical world of Harry Potter but it’s different to what you know from the books and the film series. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set in 1920’s New York, it follows adult characters and is about witches and wizards in America and how their rules, ideas, and terminology is different to what we’ve seen British witches and wizards know.

Newt is a wonderful character. He’s sweet and awkward and loves his creatures so much. He forms a friendship with No-Maj Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who gets pulled along for the ride and their friendship is quite lovely. Seeing the magical world through Jacob’s eyes reaffirms that awe-inspiring feeling magic and everything associated with it can bring. The other two main characters are sisters Porpentina (Katherine Waterston) and Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), both are witches and work in the magical law enforcement agency. These four all fit together nicely and their scenes together are sweet though they sometimes can wander into the realms of cheesiness – Queenie especially is a character that appears sugary sweet.

The titular fantastic beasts are indeed fantastic. They are all interesting and different and some of them are truly stunning. These creatures all have their own personalities and Newt’s relationship with them all is delightful.

A lot of the film shows off the magical creatures and the world. In fact it’s more like a sequence of animal rescues than a film with an overarching plot. There’s little hints and murmurings of things sprinkled throughout, Colin Farrell’s Auror Graves being a part of that. He is a great character and Farrell shines whenever he’s on screen, but it does mean the finale is rather sudden and rushed. That’s probably where Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them suffers, the pacing is inconsistent. There’s definitely some slower scenes that could’ve been tightened up and have more of a balance between the creatures and the mystery, however having such a likable main character in Newt makes some of the films faults easier to ignore.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has the beginnings of a great new franchise. It has interesting characters, a cool world and some fantastic creatures. 4/5.