Click the audio player below for Tim Lammers’ reviews of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “La La Land” on “The KQ Morning Show” with Tom Barnard.
Also, visit KARE 11 for Tim Lammers’ reviews of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “La La Land” on “KARE 11 News at 11” with Adrienne Broaddus.
Click the audio player below for Tim Lammers’ reviews of “Office Christmas Party” and “Nocturnal Animals” on “The KQ Morning Show” with Tom Barnard.
Click the audio player below for Tim Lammers’ reviews of “Allied” and “Moana” on “The KQ Morning Show” with Tom Barnard.
Click the audio player below for Tim Lammers’ reviews of “Rules Don’t Apply” and “Manchester by the Sea” on “The KQ Morning Show” with Tom Barnard.
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (PG-13)
The magic of J.K. Rowling is back with “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the first of five planned spinoff films rooted in the author’s “Harry Potter” universe. Forgoing the traditional sequel or prequel route to satiate the legions of fans wanting more from Rowling’s blockbuster book-turned-film series, “Fantastic Beasts” ingeniously taps into Rowling’s witchcraft and wizardry mythology as it examines the adventures documented in one of Harry’s textbooks featured in “Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone.”
The end result is “Fantastic Beasts” feels like a Potter film with no mention of Potter (“Fantastic Beasts” takes place 70 years before the story of “The Boy Who Lived”), and instead concentrates on former Hogwart’s student Newt Scamander (the always great Eddie Redmayne) and his adventures to capture fantastical beasts all over the world.
Listen to Tim’s reviews of “Fantastic Beasts” and “Bleed for This” on “The KQ Mornings Show” with Tom Barnard.
But in an odd twist of fate, a bumbling factory worker (Dan Fogler) accidentally unleashes some of Newt’s creatures during a stopover in New York City – and the exposure creates a panic among a secret society of witches and wizards that fears the persecution of their human counterparts.
While the cast — including Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller and Colin Farrell — is terrific, “Fantastic Beasts” comes off a bit too heavy on the special effects. They’re great effects, no doubt, but unless you’re familiar with the source material (Rowling published the 128-page “Fantastic Beasts” in 2001), you may struggle to keep up with all the wizard-speak amid all of the crash-boom-bang. As for everybody else, they’re in for, well, a magical good time.
Lammometer: 7.5 (out of 10)
“Bleed for This” (R)
Fans of hard-hitting, true-life drama will want to climb into the ring with “Bleed for This,” the incredible true story of champion boxer Vinnie Pazienza and his struggles to get back into the ring after a head-on car collision nearly left him completely paralyzed.
Led by Miles Teller as Vinnie, the cast is stellar all around, including brilliant supporting turns by Aaron Eckhart and Ted Levine, who are barely recognizable as Vinnie’s trainer Kevin Rooney and promoter Lou Duva, respectively.
Even though the film falls into the trappings of the boxing genre (there are only so many ways you can replicate a boxer training for a comeback), “Bleed for This” is an amazing study of character and determination in the face of adversity. For the lack of better words, it delivers a solid knock-out punch.
Lammometer: 7.5 (out of 10)
Click audio player to hear Tim’s review of “Arrival” on “The KQ Morning Show” with Tom Barnard.
“Arrival” (PG-13)
The space alien genre gets a seemingly new twist in “Arrival,” a thinking person’s sci-fi thriller that ultimately is more about questions of humanity than it is the otherworldly beings that initiate first contact. But while “Arrival” feels fresh in comparison to several alien thrillers recent years – it’s about aliens that invade, but don’t attack – it ultimately comes off like a smattering of similar films.
In fact, it doesn’t take long to realize the touchstones of “Arrival” seem to borrow from the plot points of “District 9” (which features hovering ships), “Gravity” (about a protagonist dealing with loss), “Contact” (about a scientist decoding alien messages), “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (about aliens warnings to Earthlings) and “Interstellar” (about the transcendence of space and time).
That’s not to say that “Arrival” isn’t fascinating and thought-provoking. It just can’t seem to get over the hump to approach the greatness of any of its equally-smart predecessors.
Amy Adams is brilliant as Dr. Louise Banks, an expert linguistics professor, who, along with and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), is recruited by a military colonel (Forrest Whittaker) to attempt to communicate with the beings in an alien spaceship that lands in Montana. A saucer-shaped ship that appears to be levitating sideways, it’s one of 12 massive vessels hovering over different parts of the world that gives no clear indication of its intentions.
Louise’s task is to decode symbols that the aliens are seemingly communicating with, trying to figure out why they are here and what they want; and Ian wants to figure out where they came from and how they got here. The problem is the messages of the beings – dubbed “heptapods” (they resemble octopuses, but are one leg short) – are so complex that Louise and Ian may not have enough time to stave off a festering global war. It turns out that countries like China and Russia are perceiving the heptapods as a threat, and an attack on the ships is imminent.
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“Arrival” not surprisingly arrives just in time for awards season, and thanks to the brooding tone and atmosphere set by gifted director Denis Villenueve (“Prisoners,” “Sicario”), the film manages to be cerebral without being pretentious. From the very first frame, Villenueve masterfully constructs a plot of misdirection, which ultimately results in one of the most satisfying payoffs on the big screen this year.
The problem is, up until the big reveal in the film’s third act, “Arrival” plods along and may feel like a bait and switch to moviegoers expecting much more based on the film’s tantalizing trailers. In the end, “Arrival” comes off as a studio-backed sci-fi art-house movie that doesn’t deliver any of the sorts of scenes moviegoers associate with the genre. On one hand, the less is more approach is completely welcome for those pining for originality; but on the other, the film just feels too uneventful running up to the unexpected, hard-hitting climax. In the end, “Arrival” is satisfying, but ultimately underwhelming.
Lammometer: 6 (out of 10)
