Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them review – JK Rowling goes steampunk

We’ve never needed cheering up more; though on the strictly escapist level, this film is maybe compromised by making one of its characters an obnoxious rich New York chump, a charmless lump, or do I mean grump, reliant on his father’s money and nursing political ambitions. “He’s been mentioned as a future president,” says someone. Surely not...

That entertainment enchanter JK Rowling has come storming back to the world of magic in a shower of supernatural sparks - and created a glorious fantasy-romance adventure, all about the wizards of prohibition-era America and the diffident wizarding Brit who causes chaos in their midst with a bagful of exotic creatures. It’s a lovely performance from Eddie Redmayne who is a pretty fantastic beast himself. There’s a moment when he has to “whisper” an errant animal into submission and his contortions would put Andy Serkis to shame.

His Newt is a connoisseur, scientist and scatterbrained magic-beast taxonomist who is not far from the scarf-swathed Dr Who, a specless Potter or beardless Darwin. Redmayne’s distinctively breathy voice even has something of the young Attenborough. With the openness and likability of his screen presence, and the sheer generosity of movie-making energy, he and the cast are giving us an early Christmas treat.

Potter veteran David Yates directs and Rowling has adapted the Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by one Newt Scamander: the first name is short for “Newton” and nothing to do with the witch’s ingredient. This was a fictional work of magical scholarship first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and which Rowling herself wrote out and published in aid of Comic Relief a couple of years later. So who was Scamander? Rowling gives us the answer by converting this static encyclopaedia into a spectacular action-adventure about the origins of his book, set in New York City of the prewar era, 70 or 80 years before Philosopher’s Stone. Does that make it a prequel? Sort of. There are a few hints and allusions, including a namecheck for Dumbledore.

It promises to be the first of a series and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Rowling already has every detail sorted out for the entire saga in architectural detail – and that she got it straight in her mind before writing the first Potter.

Fantastic Beasts is a rich, baroque, intricately detailed entertainment with some breathtaking digital fabrications of prewar New York City. This is Steampunk 2.0, taking its inspirations from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday but the New York she creates also has the dark, traumatised look of Gotham City. The American wizards themselves are subject to an internal debate about their attitude to the civilians; in America a muggle is known as a “no-maj”. It’s a schism that threatens to reach X-Men proportions.

The donnish and unworldly Newt arrives in New York on the hunt for some rare species, and just so happens to be carrying quite a few exotic specimens himself in his battered suitcase with its worryingly insecure clasps. But the city in which he has just arrived has been threatened by some kind of dark poltergeist-whirlwind of dark magic, smashing its way through streets and buildings, which is called an obscurial.

Daft Newt causes calamity almost immediately on arriving by creating a rumpus in a bank with his animals – and a quirk of fate means he forms the unlikeliest of friendships with a no-maj, Jacob Kowlaski (a beguiling performance from Dan Fogler) an ex-soldier stuck in a factory job but nursing big dreams about opening his own bakery. But Newt, our sweet-natured gentleman amateur from across the pond, exasperates the US wizard authorities and in particular their tough operative Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) who herself has issues with her superiors. Tina finds herself having to protect Newt and Jacob and brings our two amigos back to the apartment she shares with her telepathic sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) who gets the hots for Jacob. And might there also be a spark between Newt and Tina? Meanwhile, creepy anti-witch activist Mary Lou (Samantha Morton) and her adopted son Credence (Ezra Miller) appear to have a disquieting connection with top wizard-apparatchik Percival Graves (Colin Farrell).

It’s a very Rowling universe, dense with fun, but always taking its own jeopardy very seriously and effortlessly making you do the same. The Beasts movies may actually make clearer Rowling’s under-discussed debt to Roald Dahl. They also show that her universe with its exotic fauna is in the best way, a cousin to that of George Lucas.

There is a strange pleasure of seeing how her magic itself is as potent as ever. The muggle or no-maj world we are seeing is nearly a century old, but the basic language and furniture and procedure of magic is not in any way older or rudimentary. It is the same thing. They have moving pictures on newspapers in the same way as the present day. As ever, magic is a state within a state, a secret in plain sight, and part of the fun is being let in on the secret.

Katherine Waterston is great as Tina and perhaps gives the Rowling universe what it never quite had until now: a really strong young female lead who could tackle the bad guys on equal terms with the man - as well as having the chops for romance.

Rowling and Yates have given us a terrifically good-natured, unpretentious and irresistibly buoyant film. There’s a scene in a speakeasy where someone orders “six shots of giggle-water.” This film felt to me like twelve.

An Alexander McQueen Movie Is on the Way

The award for best decision of the year goes to whoever's in charge of casting the hotly anticipated Alexander McQueen biopic. On Tuesday, it was announced that actor Jack O'Connell will star in the film, which is an incredibly good call.

That's not just because O'Connell, who was one of GQ's men of the year in 2014, looks a lot like the late, great designer—dude's already got the goatee!—but also because he has a rough charm and a rakish sensibility, which are two of the qualities that helped make McQueen a beloved figure all over the world.

The film will track the creation of McQueen's Fall 2009 ready-to-wear show, a highly controversial demi-retrospective of his own work—the models wore what Style.com called "sex-doll lips and sometimes painfully theatrical costumes." Nevertheless, it's remembered as one of his greatest collections.

"It was a show that he dedicated to his mother and one in which he tried to make sense of his life and art," said a statement from Pathé, the production company behind the movie. "The film explores McQueen's creative process in the months leading up to the show, providing an intimate portrait of the man behind the global brand—a moving celebration of a visionary genius whose designs transcended fashion to become art."

It's a lot of history to live up to, but after watching O'Connell act his face off in projects as wide-ranging as Skins and Unbroken, we're confident he can do the work. (Jack, if you're reading this, know that we're rooting for you. And in the immortal words of RuPaul Charles, don't fuck it up.)

Oscars 2017: best foreign language race stacked with auteurs and provocations

This year’s Academy award for best foreign language film went to Hungary’s daring Holocaust drama Son of Saul, the universally lauded yet undeniably difficult to watch debut from director László Nemes. Next year, it’s doubtful a newcomer will once again take gold.

On Monday, France made the somewhat surprising decision to place its Oscar bets in the hands of the master provocateur Paul Verhoeven, an auteur known for boundary-pushing populist fare.

The film-maker, whose work includes Showgirls and Basic Instinct, has never made it his mission to pander to the Academy. His film in question, Elle, does star Isabelle Huppert, one of the most celebrated actors of all time - but the thriller, about a steely businesswoman caught in a game of cat and mouse with her rapist, refuses to tone down the director’s confrontational style. In France, where the film opened in May following its debut at the Cannes film festival, there was nary a hint of controversy. That’s likely to change when Elle arrives on these shores on 11 November.

It’s notable that instead of going with François Ozon’s Frantz, a period war drama that plays more to the Academy’s often cautious sensibilities, France went for this year’s most button-pushing Cannes selection (each country can only nominate a single film). Verhoeven, who is from the Netherlands, has made fewer films than Ozon over the course of his career, but he’s indisputably better known, and his film higher profile – all of which highlights a trend that’s emerged in this year’s race for the foreign award.

Frequent competitors - such as France, Spain, Iran, South Korea and Chile - have opted to bank on festival favorites from directors with significant art-house clout.

As tried-and-tested as this method of attack sounds, it’s in fact not a given occurrence. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain’s most renowned living film-maker, has made more than 15 films, but has only represented his country in the category five times. With Spain’s decision to support his latest melodrama, Julieta, that tally has now grown to six. It marks the first time Almodóvar’s been nominated by his country since 2006’s Volver, despite the fact his fans in Spain largely shunned the drama, resulting in smaller-than-average homespun numbers for the prolific director.

Similar to Spain, Italy doesn’t seem too concerned with box office clout, having chosen Gianfranco Rosi’s refugee-crisis-themed documentary Fire at Sea over some of the country’s splashier, star-driven output. The film opened to paltry figures in Italy over the spring. What seems to matter for Spain, however, is that the film has a proven hit at festivals, having won the Golden Bear at the Berlin international film festival (a rare feat for a documentary) and garnered acclaim at several more.

Germany and Chile have followed suit, placing their hopes in Maren Ade’s Cannes favorite Toni Erdmann and Pablo Larraín’s festival darling Neruda, respectively. Ade isn’t as established as the bulk of directors vying for the prize, having helmed four features prior to the family comedy, but as many critics would wager, Toni Erdmann is distinctive enough to warrant her the auteur moniker.

The same goes for Larraín, who is in the midst of a remarkable run this year, having premiered Neruda, his metafictional portrait of the celebrated poet and politician Pablo Neruda, at Cannes, followed mere months later by the debut of Jackie at Venice. Both films confirm him as a world-class film-maker.

Other big-name players in the mix this year include South Korea’s Kim Jee-woon (The Age of Shadows), the Iranian Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi (The Salesman), Canada’s wunderkind Xavier Dolan (It’s Only the End of the World), and the Philippines’ Brilliante Mendoza (Ma’ Rosa). Like the aforementioned talent, all produce singular work that’s often brazen and uncompromising.

As far as the 2017 Oscar race for best foreign film goes, one thing’s for certain: the competition is bound to be a clash of the titans.

Tickled review: fetish documentary goes from giggly to grim

Tickled, the first documentary from New Zealand TV personality David Farrier (co-directed by Dylan Reeve), caused a sensation at the True/False documentary film festival in Columbia, Missouri, where it played this weekend.

It became the talk of the event not just because of its content – eye-popping though it is – but due to the peculiar occurrences surrounding its screenings. Police reportedly interrupted the first showing to remove a person attempting to pirate the film via a camera hidden in a Starbucks coffee cup, while the following day Farrier was apparently served a subpoena.

One viewing of Tickled explains the hullabaloo. The film starts out with Farrier, who’s “made a career looking at the weird and bizarre side of life”, stumbling upon a Facebook page advertising a “competitive endurance tickling” event in Los Angeles. Male participants are offered an all-expenses-paid trip plus substantial compensation to take part and be videotaped by a company named Jane O’Brien Media.

Intrigued and baffled, Farrier reaches out for an interview, only to receive a hostile emailed response attacking his homosexuality – ironic, given the intensely homoerotic nature of the “sport”.

In no time, Farrier is threatened by absurd lawsuits for inquiring into the business, leading him only to dig deeper into the fetish empire with the help of Reeve, his computer-savvy (and straight) collaborator, in the hope of creating a full documentary on the subject. To uncover more and confront the people behind the threats, the pair travel to the US. It’s there that Tickled morphs from an offbeat caper to a disturbing exposé on the dangers of cyberbullying.

Speaking to the only former tickling-video participant willing to do an interview, Farrier and Reeve are horrified to learn about the control Jane O’Brien Media attempts to exert over its models. The man they speak to reveals how he became the victim of a vicious online slander campaign that threatened his career as a pro footballer, after he objected to Jane O’Brien Media posting his footage on YouTube.

The revelations that follow are too juicy to spoil – the pleasure in watching this documentary is derived from its countless twists. Along the way, Farrier serves as his audience’s conduit, going from amused to enraged as his journey progresses.

The film doesn’t look down its nose at those who like to engage in tickling. One extended sequence sees the directors stop in Orlando for a lighthearted visit with Richard Ivey, an entrepreneur who runs a similar fetish empire – the key difference being that Ivey fully owns its intentions (his site advertises itself as “gay foot fetish heaven”). He also doesn’t spook his models.

Biopic of Obamas' first date and Ellen Page baby swap drama among Sundance competition titles

Following the announcement of its Midnight horror-themed section, the Sundance film festival has unveiled the lineup for its competitions, in both dramatic and documentary formats, as well as its non-competitive Next selection, of promising experimental work. Some 65 films have got the nod from the programmers of the influential festival, which is designed to showcase independent and unconventional film-making.

The US dramatic competition has settled on 16 films, with the most attention-grabbing projects including The Birth of a Nation, an ironically titled account of the early-19th century slave rebellion led by Nat Turner; Goat, a fraternity-pledge drama featuring musician Nick Jonas; and Southside With You, a chronicle of Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date in 1980s Chicago. Familiar Sundance faces will be on show in other films: Ellen Page plays the lead in Tallulah, about a woman who passes off another’s child as her own; Jena Malone features in Lovesong, from For Ellen director So Yong Kim; and Rebecca Hall stars in Christine, about the TV reporter Christine Chubbuck, who killed herself on air in 1974.

Chubbuck is also the subject of a film in the US documentary strand: Kate Plays Christine, directed by Robert Greene, in which actor Kate Lynn Sheil prepares to take on a role as Chubbuck. Other major names in the 16 films in this strand include Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (The Hamster Factor) with The Bad Kids, a study of an unconventional school in the Mojave desert; Josh “Gasland” Fox with How to Let Go of the World, an examination of the effects of climate change, and Jeff Feuerzeig (The Devil and Daniel Johnston) who returns with a profile of mystery author JT LeRoy.

The World sections will feature 12 films each, with the Ireland-based director Rebecca Daly’s Mammal selected for the dramatic competition, alongside India’s Brahman Naman (about a quiz team from Bangalore university) and Israel’s Sand Storm, focusing on a Bedouin mother and daughter whose lives are upended when another wife arrives.

Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi leads the World documentary competition with A Flag Without a Country, chronicling the lives of Kurds attempting to survive harsh conditions. Also selected is The Lovers and the Despot, a UK-produced account of film director Shin Sang-ok and his movie star ex-wife Choi Eun-hee, who were kidnapped by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il; Plaza de la Soledad, directed by photojournalist Maya Goded, about Mexico City’s long-established prostitute community, and Sky Ladder, from British director Kevin Macdonald, a profile of celebrated Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

The Next programme, designed to showcase innovative and “forward-thinking” films, has pulled together 10 selections, all US-produced. These include First Girl I Loved, about a girl-girl-boy love triangle at high school; Dark Night, a study of a cinema shooting in suburban America; and The Fits, about a mysterious fainting attack that affects a midwest dance team.

• The Sundance film festival runs from 21-31 January in Park City, Utah.