Grab your wands and broomsticks, and get ready for one big adventure. “Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald” has been released.

The movie takes place a few months after the conclusion of the previous film, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”. The movie follows magical animal expert Newt Scamander as he travels to America to do research on these creatures.

While in America (specifically New York City), many magical terrorist attacks occur. Newt uses his abilities and the help of his creatures to solve the mystery, and ends up finding the famed criminal Gellert Grindelwald.

The reason for all of these attacks was that Grindelwald believed that magical people should no longer be in hiding, and that the only way to do that was to wage war on the muggles (non-magical people). In “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”, the audience once again follows the main character Newt Scamander, played by Eddie Redmayne, as he is tasked with hunting down the criminal Grindelwald (played by Johnny Depp).

When the movie begins, the audience finds out that Grindelwald had just mysteriously escaped custody and was on the loose, trying to fulfil his promise of bringing magical people to greatness.

The film is very fast-paced with lots of twists and turns. The directors did an excellent job of building off of the first movie. All of the characters developed, and the audience got to see a different side of each one. With most J.K. Rowling based films, the casting never fails to impress, but with “Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald”, the casting was exceptional. Depp found another persona that was very well done, Redmayne did an excellent job of reprising his role as Newt, and Jude Law did a phenomenal job portraying the famous Albus Dumbledore.

One of my biggest concerns with the movie before watching it was how Law would do trying to explore the depth involved with Dumbledore, but he accomplished that goal.

The other thing that impressed me with this movie was the ability to connect “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” to the rest of the Harry Potter series. There were many cameos and motifs throughout the movie that pointed back to the original work done by Rowling. They found a way to give the audience the same feel of magic as was done with the first eight movies.

The visual effects were also stunning with “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.”

The special effects department did a fantastic job of using brand new technology to better show the audience how the spells that the characters use should look. The team also wonderfully came up with new creatures for Newt to take care of in this movie.

The writers and designers phenomenally showed off 1920’s culture to modern day audiences. From the clothes the characters were wearing to the references that they were making, watching it really made me feel like I was living in the 1920’s.

“Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald” left the door open for future movies. The filmmakers signed a deal to make three more movies in the series, and this one did a wonderful job of continuing the plot and setting up for the final movie. As stated earlier, the cinematography helped make this movie so great. The acting and character development was also superb. I would give it a 9.5/10.