Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York with an illegal cargo of magical animals, which are banned in the United States. Newt is trying to prove that there is nothing to fear from these magical animals and they should be protected. However, the animals escape and with help from Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and muggle, or No-Maj, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), Newt tries to return the animals back to the suitcase and to safety. Meanwhile, in the muggle world there is anti-magic sentiment brewing which threatens to lead to war.

The Innocents

At the end of the Second World War, a young French doctor, Mathilde (Lou de Laâge) finds a Covent home to a group of nuns some of whom are in different stages of pregnancy. Because of these women’s faith, the discovery is forced to be kept a secret which hinders Mathilde’s ability to do her job as she can’t seek assistance from fellow doctors, leaving her with a difficult job in very testing circumstances.

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies

There’s literally hundreds of zombie movies out, some of which stink out the genre with its foul, rotting stench so strong that the film was probably dead on arrival. With Night of Something Strange, The ReZort, Train to Busan, and Viral all coming out in the same year you could probably make a comprehensive top 10 Zombie films of 2016 alone. Joke titles are a thing too, think Cockneys vs Zombies or Juan of the Dead (even the Cuban film industry are getting on the act) and now we have The Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies…with a distinct lack of lederhosen.

Thursday Movie Picks #123: Westerns

 An easy week this week as there are hundreds of superb films to choose from. Please visit http://wanderingthroughtheshelves.blogspot.co.uk/ for more information on Thursday Movie Picks.

Café Society

Bobby Dorfman (Jessie Eisenberg) leaves his family in New York to live in Los Angeles to work for his Uncle, Phil (Steve Carell), a busy talent agent. In LA, Bobby is introduced to Paul’s secretary, Veronica (Kristen Stewart), who Bobby is instantly smitten with. Veronica, however, has a boyfriend who she claims is a journalist named Doug, in reality the boyfriend is Bobby’s uncle, Paul.

2016 Triple Bill

The four horseman are kidnapped by a tech genius (Daniel Radcliffe) who asks them to steal a microchip in one of their more daring heists.

Nocturnal Animals

Susan (Amy Adams) is an art gallery owner married to a philandering husband (Arnie Hammer), she is lonely and unhappy with her life. This is her second marriage, she left her first husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), and the pair haven’t spoken for almost twenty years. So when Edward sends her a violent novel, which was dedicated to her, she feels a little uneasy and wary when reading the novel’s most brutal passages.

Arrival

In twelve locations across the globe an alien spaceship touches down just above the planet’s surface, what they want is a mystery. One such ship touched down in Minnesota, not far from where linguist professor Louise Banks works. Having security clearance due to previously helping the army in an earlier job, and being one the best linguist experts in the country, Banks is the ideal person to try and help translate the alien responses.

The Neon Demon

Nicolas Winding Refn is a divisive filmmaker among critics with his detractors labeling his films as style over substance and those who celebrate him proclaiming his films as visual masterpieces. The best example of Refn’s divisiveness as a filmmaker is Only God Forgives which was booed and cheered in equal measure at the Cannes Film Festival. One is just as likely to think Only God Forgives is a tedious waste of time as much as one would think it a visually hypnotic, deranged and violent masterpiece. I’m in the latter camp, and The Neon Demon has been described as a similar film to Only God Forgives, so I should love it right?

The Legend of Tarzan

There's a small trend where movies tend to come in pairs, back in 1971 there were two movies in which an ordinary person (or persons) savagely kill intruders in their house. In 2010, there were two movies heavily based on Ancient Greek mythology and in 2013 there were two films about a foreign invasion of the White House. 2016 saw two films about a boy raised in the jungle by animals, these were The Jungle Book and The Legend of Tarzan both of which were based on classic literacy works.

Warcraft

Inspired by the Warcraft franchise, Warcraft is set in the land of Azeroth where orcs are arriving into the world via a portal that transports them from their dying world. The races of Azeroth get wind of this and decide to leave it to the humans (and some dissenting orcs) to deal with.

Thursday Movie Picks: Films from the Middle East

I haven’t seen many films from the Middle East, but now is a good time to start I guess. This week is films from the Middle East. Please check out http://wanderingthroughtheshelves.blogspot.co.uk/

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World

In recent years Werner Herzog has been a prominent documentary filmmaker exploring the sparseness of the Artic, the ancient history of the Chauvet Caves and the controversy of the death penalty, in fact the guy has two documentaries out this year alone (his other film is called Into the Inferno). Herzog has explored different environments which include the Artic and the Amazon Rainforest and now he looks at the connected world and the internet, an environment with just as many dangers. Herzog’s film is about the rise of the internet, from its origins in the late 60s to the benefits and threats the internet poses today.

2016 Catch Up

It’s the third film of the holiday franchise from the late Garry Marshall with New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day receiving the same saccharine treatment as Mother’s Day did in the third film of an unofficial trilogy. Like the last two films, Mother’s Day follows a number of loosely connected people on Mothering Sunday and their varying relationships with their mothers.