Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

This was J.K. Rowling’s first screenplay, and the structure shows it. The creature hunt and the thread around Credence and the fanatics barely touch until the last twenty minutes. For two acts you watch a lost animal chase, then the film turns into a story about child abuse and zealotry. Do not treat that shift lightly; the tone is much heavier than the Harry Potter films. The emotional centre is not Newt but Jacob, a baker with no magic at all. The scenes that see this world through someone encountering it for the first time are the strongest, and the closing does not leave him where it found him; parents watching with children should expect it. Eddie Redmayne plays the lead as a man who avoids eye contact and talks past people, so anyone wanting a charismatic hero who carries the plot will not find one. David Yates’s 1926 New York is not all digital. After two months at Leavesden the production moved to Liverpool, where St George’s Hall and the Cunard Building stood in for the period city. Choreographer Wayne McGregor worked as movement coach, shaping the physical rhythm of Ezra Miller as Credence and building the Obscurus through motion capture. It became the first Wizarding World film to win an Academy Award, for Colleen Atwood’s costume design.