Four years after its last appearance in the Wizarding World franchise, the Great Cheekbone Swap opens in theaters this weekend as cheerleader Mads Mikkelsen takes on malaria’s former lover Johnny Depp in “Fantastic Beastum: The Secrets “.
Set in the 1930s, the real world, or Muggle, prepares for World War II.  In the world of magicians a different battle is being prepared.  Gellert Grindelwald (Mikkelsen), a dark wizard and former lover of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), is back after creating global chaos with a renewed belief in the superiority of magicians and a plan to create a new Magician.
Freed from his crimes by the International Confederation of Magi (ICW), Grindelwald’s first step towards world domination comes with a plan to steal the election (ICW) and take control.  He wants to burn the Muggle world.  “There is nothing you can do to stop me,” she told Dumbledore’s ex-boyfriend.
As Grindelwald storms approach, Dumbledore recruits British Ministry of Magic employee Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmain) and company – including returning characters such as older brother Therne Kellbach Therne Assistant Buddy Broadacre – pick up their sticks and fight.
The stakes are high.  Dumbledore believes it has been the biggest threat to both the Magi and the Muggles for over a century.  “Things that seem unthinkable today,” he says, “will inevitably appear tomorrow.”
Politics in the world of magicians, it seems, is just as full as ours.
If you’re going to see “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” for a Harry Potter-like magic solution, you’s lucky.  The film has stunning graphics that enliven the world of magicians, some mystical creatures such as cute dragons that can recognize the pure in heart, killer books and a suitcase that grows legs and walks.
It is full of CGI wonder, but so loaded with effects that the characters play a second violin after the bits and bytes.  It is a top project, but after a while it becomes drowned.  You crave something organic, but this is the world of magicians and all this is an illusion.
The story has an old-fashioned sense of action adventure, but like CGI, it seems exaggerated.  The great moments are huge, accompanied by an inflated orchestral score.  But even the small moments are big.  A simple story of world domination is filled and combined in a huge time of two hours and twenty minutes, inhabited by many, many characters, most of whom have little to do.
Under the watchful eye and scanning cameras of veteran Harry Potter director David Gates, “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” is a large, beautiful film about magic, but unfortunately it is not so magical. .


FTHER STU: 2 ½ STARS 
“Father Stu”, a new, inspirational film by Mark Wahlberg, now playing in theaters, is the incredible but true story of an insignificant, rough boxer whose path to redemption begins with a detour to the Catholic Church.
When we first meet Stuart Long (Wahlberg), he is an amateur boxer with visions of the great era.  He is good, but not good enough to become a professional, as his mother (Jackie Weaver) wants to emphasize.  “Do not be careless with your life,” he says.  “You are the age that most people pack.”
He is an angry guy.  Angry with his dead father (Mel Gibson).  Angry with his little brother who died young.  Angry with himself and the world.
He is a bad drunk with a hair-causing temperament, but when a medical condition forces him to retire from the ring, he turns his eyes to Hollywood.  “I will redeem my face,” he says.  “Not my fists.”
A calm interlocutor, he manages to find a job in a grocery store where he hopes to meet actors and directors who will give him a concert.  Instead, he meets Carmen (Teresa Ruiz), a devout Catholic who reluctantly starts dating the raw Stu, but only if she is baptized.  It is, as one of her friends says, “as universal as the cross itself.”
His journey to redemption begins as he helps Carmen teach Sunday School.  His simple way is a success with the children, Carmen and even her strict father, but he needs a drunk motorcycle accident to literally see the light and dedicate himself to the church.  “God saved me to show that there is a reason I am here,” he told Carmen, intending to become a priest.
In a life full of dramatic twists and turns, he has one more in store for Stu.  Something that can stop him from realizing his dream of becoming a priest.  “God has to do with chance,” he says, “to have the strength to endure a difficult life.”
“Father In” has inspiration.  It’s a movie about the power of religion to heal and motivate, which many will say “Amen”, but the storytelling is like a movie of the week, with predictable plot points and an accelerated timeline that accumulates too much in too little time.
Even at two o’clock, the pace is jagged as director and writer Rosalind Ross tries to cover as many aspects of Stu’s personality as possible.  It takes the saying “everything happens for a reason” to extremes and, as a result, the film feels hurried in some scenes, very relaxed in others, but rarely gives us the deep picture that would make Stu’s motivations resonate.
Wahlberg, who also produced the film after hearing Stu’s story over dinner with a group of priests, is undergoing an extreme transformation to play the character – and I do not mean his ridiculous mustache.  His charisma shines through the pounds and makeup and it is in these scenes that he highlights Stu from the cartoon bad boy of the first half of the film, in a fascinating character.  It’s very bad that Ross is trying to tie some of the loose threads of history just as personal history really finds its humanity.
“Father Stu” is released around Easter, so due to its themes and messages, it seems to be a movie for the whole family, but beware, Stu’s language is authentic, that is, quite turbulent throughout the movie. .
“Father Stu” is a film about change, overcoming obstacles and living with purpose.  Good messages all, it is very bad that they are tied in a clumsy movie.


ALL MY SACRIFICES ARE SAD: 3 ½ STARS 
As you can imagine from a movie that starts with the voice, “In the history of mankind there has never been a more obvious truth than the statement, ‘Will we all die?’ And yet in our bones, how many of us can realize this?” “All My Puny Sorrows” is not intimidated by the subtle theme of death.
The struggling writer Yoli (Alison Pill) and the Elf concert pianist (Sarah Gadon) – short for Elfrieda – are sisters who abandoned a strict, rural Mennonite upbringing to forge lives in the arts.  There is a deep bond between them, even though their lives took very different paths.
Yoli is in the middle of a divorce after 16 years of marriage.  As daughter Nora (Amybeth McNulty) erupts, Yoli wonders aloud if she handles things right.  “The end of 16 years of monogamy with Dan has provoked some kind of strange reaction from animals,” he says.  “To be honest, the last few months have not been the proudest for me.”
Elf, although internationally successful and happily married, has lost her longing for life.  When she tries to commit suicide for the second time, Yoli comes to her side, hoping to help her sister escape the same fate as their father Jake (Donal Logue) who committed suicide as a child, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.
“Will you take me to Switzerland?”  Elf asks.
“Yes, we’ll get Swatches,” says Yoli.
But Elf wants to go to an assisted suicide clinic, “where death is legal and you do not have to die alone.”
Writer-director Michael McGowan, in the adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel of the same name, tells a story of grief and death that examines the purpose of life.  McGowan sensitively shows how life decisions make an impact on everyone in the circle and beyond.
These issues are reinforced by the interpretations of Pill, Gadon and Mare Winningham as their besieged mother.  The literary script often sounds like the characters speak in carefully crafted prose, but in the mouths of these performers one can feel the love, the frustration and the acceptance of the situation.  Pill and Gadon click as sisters, bringing to life a life of love and petty quarrels.
“All My Puny Sorrows” is an emotional film that embraces all the sadness at the end of life, resentment, sadness and even occasional humor.