Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Fun-filled but utterly unmotivated catch and release expedition terminates abruptly into a confusingly contrived political horror story. Complexity of Potter disapparates in favor of tired arc where boys end up liking girls and vice versa. Imaginative vfx float their way through an unimaginative plot to explode at an unexpected Imaginarium.

Pacific Rim

Hunnam’s weak performance pierces the armor of this VFX juggernaut allowing excessive cheesiness to seep in and saturate the coolness.  Honey I Built the Robot eliminates any scientific credibility.  Clones, pregnancy, barcode scanner… boom.  Easily the biggest crap creature ever to crawl from the oceanic butthole in Del Toro’s head. 

Season of the Witch

Nicholas escorts caged girl through mountains in this confused horror-fantasy, Kingdom of Constantine, should have been straight to DVD, movie-thing. A crusade of genre regulars like Thomsen and Perlman can’t carry this heavy load across the bridge of poor writing. Ultimately a foolish but fun looks at Cage’s career’s afterlife.

Drive

Winding Refn revs up for the gold after Bronson’s disappointing bronze. Gosling proves you can’t judge a notebook by its cover in a film that’s crazy and lovely but far from stupid. Brooks and Hellboy have their careers resurrected. Unbelievably beautiful and not because of Mulligan and the frozen strippers.

Tangled

Disney returns to princess stories, and to making good movies sans Pixar, with this original Rapunzel adaptation. Picturesque paint style, rock-n-roll, and action adventure fuse into an odd animated Emperor’s New Knight’s Tale. Excellent film despite excessive voice-over, overly likeable and talented bad guy and weepy deus ex machina ending.