FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (12A, 133 mins) Fantasy/Adventure/Action/Drama/Comedy/Romance. Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Ezra Miller, Johnny Depp. Director: David Yates.

Released: November 18 (UK & Ireland)

The pixie dust may have settled on Harry Potter's cataclysmic battle with Lord Voldemort, but author J.K. Rowling isn't ready to cast an Evanesco vanishing spell on her world of warring wizards just yet.

Inspired by a faux textbook, written in 2001 to benefit Comic Relief, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is a rollicking spin-off set several decades before the escapades of the boy wizard, with a lightning bolt-shaped scar.

It's also the first film penned for the screen by Rowling and is a surprisingly bleak affair about tolerance, prejudice and integration that strikes an ominous chord following the racially divisive rhetoric of the US presidential election.

"I know you have rather backwards laws about relations with non-magic people," British magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) tells an American counterpart.

Tensions between No-Majs (the clunky Americanism for Muggles) and spell-casting folk underpin every scene of David Yates' visually sumptuous picture - the opening chapter of a five-film franchise that will be apparating into cinemas until 2024.

As origin stories go, Fantastic Beasts... is a crowd-pleasing doozy.

Zealots called the Second Salemers, led by Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton) and her adopted son Credence (Ezra Miller), preach hell and damnation in 1926 New York, following a reign of terror perpetrated by dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp).

Newt Scamander (Redmayne) arrives in the Big Apple at the height of this paranoia, carrying an enchanted suitcase with hidden pocket-dimensions full of endangered critters.

A No-Maj called Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) accidentally picks up Newt's luggage and releases otherworldly species in breach of the Statute of Secrecy.

Beasties go on the rampage and Newt attempts to recapture them aided by Jacob, a former Auror called Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and her mind-reading sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol).

Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), Director of Magical Security, is convinced that Newt's illegally imported creatures are responsible for a brutal attack.

He declares war on the fugitives in a city where dark forces are gathering.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them reunites director Yates, who helmed the last four Harry Potter films, with other Hogwarts alumni, including editor Mark Day, production designer Stuart Craig and visual effects supervisors Tim Burke and Christian Manz.

The look and feel of this opening instalment is comfortingly familiar, including John Williams' iconic theme, which composer James Newton Howard appropriates for his score.

Redmayne is a charmingly ill-at-ease hero, whose unerring dedication to creatures in his care draws fond parallels with Hagrid.

Waterston is a spunky, if underserved, foil, while Fogler and Sudol - channelling the sex bomb naivete of Marilyn Monroe - illuminate their swoonsome romantic comedy subplot.

The beasts are a menagerie of the weird and wondrous, including an emotionally needy woodland biped called a Bowtruckle and a long-snouted burrowing mammal called a Niffler, which hoards shiny things.

Set and costume design, embellished with digital trickery, are flawless and No-Maj Jacob speaks for all when he first glimpses behind the wizarding curtain.

"I don't think I'm dreaming," he tells himself. "I don't have the brains to make this up!"

:: NO SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8/10

YOUR NAME (12A, 106 mins) Animation/Sci-Fi/Drama/Romance. Featuring the voices of Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Masami Nagasawa, Etsuko Ichihara, Ryo Narita, Aoi Yuki, Kanon Tani, Masaki Terasoma. Director: Makoto Shinkai.

Released: November 18 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Boys will be girls and vice versa in writer-director Makoto Shinkai's charming animated drama about two awkward teenagers - a boy from the city and a girl from the provinces - who wake one morning to discover they are inhabiting each other's bodies.

Initially, this fantastical life swap is played for laughs: the boy gropes his host's pert breasts with hormone-addled fervour while the girl is horrified by a limp appendage between her hairy legs.

Once the characters overcome their physiological curiosity, Your Name elegantly cuts back and forth between these journeys of self-discovery, building a richly detailed portrait of growing pains, adolescent longing and aching regret.

A seemingly incongruous plot device - a comet, which passes Earth every 1,200 years - nudges the film into the realms of science fiction without sacrificing emotional investment in the teenagers, and catalyses unexpected dramatic momentum.

As the ghosts in Shinkai's precisely engineered machine are revealed, Japanese rock band Radwimps crank up the volume on the propulsive soundtrack.

A moving second act, which hinges on the magical properties of twilight as a fleeting divide between light and shade, possesses a heartbreaking sting in the comet's tail.

Mitsuha (voiced by Mone Kamishiraishi) is a schoolgirl, who lives in the mountain town of Itomori with her grandmother Hitoha (Etsuko Ichihara) and younger sister, Yotsuha (Kanon Tani).

The girls' father is mayor Toshiki (Masaki Terasoma) and they honour the gods by performing religious ceremonies in flowing robes at the family's Shinto temple, which cruel classmates watch with pitying sneers.

Yotsuha ignores the taunts, but Mitsuha's teenage pride is bruised with each insult.

"I envy your pre-pubescent lack of concern," she tells her sister.

Mitsuha yearns to escape her backwater life for the thrum of the city.

She gets her wish when she is magically transported into the gangly frame of Tokyo schoolboy Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who works part-time as a waiter and has a crush on fellow server Ms Okudera (Masami Nagasawa).

Taki is simultaneously transported into Mitsuha's body and relies on her friends Tessie (Ryo Narita) and Sayaka (Aoi Yuki) to blend in.

In their gender-swapped guises, the teenagers experience each other's worlds through inquisitive eyes.

As Mitsuha and Taki criss-cross back and forth, seemingly never destined to meet, they leave notes on each other's mobile phones to keep track of their out-of-body exploits.

Adapted from Shinkai's novel, Your Name is an engrossing, heartfelt and dreamlike yarn that leaves a small lump in the throat.

The conflation of genres works well and a deceptively tangled plot doesn't tie itself in knots until the head-scratching conclusion.

Hand-drawn animation is beautiful, emboldened with digital lens flare.

Snappy subtitling encapsulates the internal strife and ensures we're not distracted from the gently escalating action.

None of the radiant tenderness or turmoil is lost in translation.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7.5/10