{"id":7449,"date":"2016-12-31T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T00:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=7449"},"modified":"2016-12-31T18:00:12","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T00:00:12","slug":"current-movie-reviews-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/12\/31\/current-movie-reviews-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Current Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them<\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/i>(2016) is a movie with most of the elements of an excellent film, but fails to mix them properly in the test tube. Intriguing characters, excellent visuals, a plot that doesn’t give away the game in the first ten minutes, dialog appropriate to the characters (although sometimes I failed to follow the accent of the main character), magical creatures exhibiting traits both appropriate and comedic, they’re all there.<\/p>\n

What’s missing is a sense of the daring. The sense of exploring an intriguing\u00a0theme. The idea that one should walk out of the theater chewing on the ideas behind the film.<\/p>\n

Those are not in this film. There is plenty of something akin to\u00a0deux ex machina<\/em><\/a>, a sure sign of a failing story, and a main danger of stories involving magic, where the problems may be wished away – especially in a universe where the use of magic doesn’t even seem to require much in the way of resources.<\/p>\n

But don’t let this scare you from this movie. There’s a lot of deliberate comedic elements, some excellent dramatic elements, and the visuals & special effects appear flawless. (Although I will complain that some intercharacter chemistry simply did not work for me.)<\/p>\n

But you won’t be thinking about this movie an hour later. It’s like a luscious meringue, airy and sweet, but no nutrition.<\/p>\n

And I should take them to task for that completely conventional ending. They could have done so much more with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them\u00a0(2016) is a movie with most of the elements of an excellent film, but fails to mix them properly in the test tube. Intriguing characters, excellent visuals, a plot that doesn’t give away the game in the first ten minutes, dialog appropriate to the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7450,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7449\/revisions\/7450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}