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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
This movie is suffering from affluenza.
I have tried several times to watch this movie from front to back, but could only handle it in half hour sessions.
It is simply too busy. Too many leading actors, too much CG, too many plot devices, too many scenes.
The scenes are short and rapid fire. Your senses are attacked from very angle. The director is obviously of the opinion that audiences have ADD and cannot focus on a single scene for more than a few seconds.
It was obviously very expensive to make this movie. It drips with glistening commercialism. Almost as though it was produced by an ad company rather than a film studio. There is an underlying cynicism to its format: just cram as much pretty acting and special effects as possible in there, and the audience will buy it.
I honestly could not follow the plot, nor do I think it had one. The stroboscopic scene changes and over-saturated audio tracks seem to be deliberately designed to distract from the lack of story.
We seem to have entered an algorithmic age of film making. Directors have become financial analysts looking to maximise profits by aggregating previously successful movie elements into denser and denser content.
This movie seems to prove there is a limit, and that more has finally become less. Every franchise has an end, and I hope this is it.
Beyond White Space (2018)
Good effort from Ken Locsmandi
Ken Locsmandi has a long and impressive background as a special effects master. Beyond White Space (BWS) was a very ambitious project for a first time director, since the story is essentially Moby Dick.
I personally love the idea of rebooting classics into the SF genre. The only problem is that they will inevitably be compared with the classics - very risky.
Moby Dick already has several excellent cinematic incarnations, most recently Heart Of The Sea. These have been big budget, big name productions able to attract seasoned directors and actors.
The special effects in BWS are top notch, as to be expected from Locsmandi. The acting however is hit and miss. This has to be laid on the director, since the actors do prove they can hit their mark occasionally.
I have a feeling too much of the budget went into CG, not filming the endless live takes of inexperienced actors required to hit the mark every time in the final cut.
Perhaps he should have cast at least one seasoned and proven actor to lead the others. It likely would have improved the overall performance. The acting seemed rushed, impatient even.