Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is another lackluster movie of this new franchise that, especially when we go to Hogwarts for a short time, made me wish I was watching the Harry Potter franchise instead of this one.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is my least favorite of the series yet it’s still entertaining with a compelling enough mystery surrounding the plot and it was nice seeing the young cast becoming comfortable in their respective roles while the addition of Kenneth Branagh gives the darker tone, compared to Sorcerer’s Stone, some levity.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone might not be perfect, it was however the perfect way to introduce audiences to this world and characters we would follow for the next several years. Even so, I was thoroughly entertained and they really did a great job casting the three unknowns and surrounding them with some excellent talent.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is a good start to the final film in the series that started a decade ago and I can only hope it ends in the bang most have promised it would. It’s certainly the darkest of the franchise but also one of the best especially with the performances of the three leads.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the type of movie one can admire the technical aspects more so than the story or characters, but that admiration only goes so far. Like The Hobbit before, this just seems like a needless spin-off and I cannot imagine how the material can be stretched into a sequel let alone FOUR more.
Although the Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection is quite expensive ($345 on Amazon as of this writing), for fans of the series, it might be worth it. I know fans will have already owned it but there might be enough here to make it worth your while. As for the set itself, there’s an enormous amount of features including some new featurettes which expands on the behind-the-scenes world and how the franchise was made.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix isn’t great but still quite good and highly entertaining. As to whether or not this Ultimate Edition is worth the money to upgrade is, at best, questionable. The only addition to the set, in terms of actual features, is the hour-long documentary which is well done no doubt but I highly suspect that once Deathly Hallows Part 2 is released, Warner will release a separate documentary with all 8-parts on one disc with some new extra thrown in.