Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore  Cert: 12A, 2hrs 22mins

Rating:

All The Old Knives                                                                       Cert: 15, 1hr 41mins

Rating:

The Outfit                                                                                        Cert: 15, 1hr 45mins

Rating:

Compartment Number 6                                                        Cert: 15, 1hr 47mins

Rating:

Poor J. K. Rowling – creator of Harry Potter, of course – may have brought pleasure to millions and accumulated a huge fortune in the creative process, but she has not been having the easiest of times of late.

First Johnny Depp was forced to resign from the key role of Gellert Grindelwald with her new Fantastic Beasts film franchise not even half complete, and then she’s been viciously set upon online by trans-rights activists who don’t like her views on being a woman.

So what does she do? She takes all the flak, gets on with her work and, in the case of her new film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore, which she co-produces and co-writes, delivers the sort of Easter treat that gets the franchise firmly back on track.

Yes, after the nasty wobble of the second film, Crimes Of Grindelwald, Fantastic Beasts is back to its magical best. Well, very nearly anyway.

Along the inevitably convoluted way we discover that Albus Dumbledore – once again played by Jude Law – really is gay, or at least bisexual. We also discover that Mads Mikkelsen brings a whole new layer of menace as he takes over from Depp as Grindelwald and instantly makes the part his own, and that Jessica Williams – who plays American magical academic Professor Eulalie Hicks – Lally for short – is a terrific addition to the core cast.

As ever with a Rowling film, there are lots of characters and lots of plot, but the central direction of travel is clear – ‘With or without you, I will burn down your world,’ Grindelwald warns Dumbledore in an early scene – and keeping up is both easier and more rewarding than last time.

And while the tone is darker and the approach of the Second World War and the parallels with Nazification even clearer, there are still fantastical beasts to enjoy.

Yes, along with coin-grabbing nifflers and loyal bowtruckles, look out for the magical qilin (pronounced chillin) that can look into a person’s very soul. Which, with the evil likes of Grindelwald around, places them in great danger. 

Parents be warned: there are a couple of pretty nasty scenes along the otherwise highly enjoyable way.

All The Old Knives is a John le Carré-like spy thriller that sees American intelligence revisiting an eight-year-old cold case – a hijacking in Vienna that went disastrously wrong.

With new information suggesting the terrorists may have had a mole in the CIA’s Austrian bureau, star agent Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) is dispatched to interview former colleagues and now suspects, including his beautiful ex-girlfriend, Celia (Thandiwe Newton).

With Laurence Fishburne and Jonathan Pryce in supporting roles, it’s a starry and stylish affair, albeit one occasionally lacking in a convincing sense of place. But with a timeline that jumps about and inevitable twists and turns, it’s one that requires concentration and will benefit from being seen in the cinema rather than streamed on Amazon at home.

The Outfit is a genuine cinematic oddity, effectively a single-set thriller that spends most of its running time resembling a stage play rather than a feature film. But it’s directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who co-wrote The Imitation Game, and has Mark Rylance playing an English tailor (he prefers the term ‘cutter’) who, in the Chicago of 1956, makes a living making suits for local gangsters.

It’s a brave experiment and Rylance is quietly compelling, but with too many British actors playing American, and plot twists that struggle to convince, it’s one that doesn’t altogether work.

They say it’s better to travel than arrive, which in the case of Compartment Number 6 is certainly true. A young Finnish woman leaves her charismatic lesbian lover behind in Moscow to begin a long train journey to see some ancient stone carvings near Murmansk and finds herself sharing a sleeping compartment with a surly, ill-mannered miner.

I’m not sure that either the stone carvings or the film are quite worth it in the end.