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Maleficent (2014)
Great Movie
For a reminder of how wonderful Frozen is, watch Maleficent. This summer blockbuster season, Disney has turned out a live-action reimagining of their own animated version of Sleeping Beauty, from 1959.
As recently as six months ago, this might have felt subversive, even significant, although after seeing Elsa and Anna letting it go on icing-sugar mountains and finding endings happier than any standard-issue handsome prince could provide, the fun on offer here feels relatively thawed.
It is still fun, though, which counts for something – largely because, as with Frozen, the game involves returning to a well- thumbed fairy tale and muddling the distinction between evil and good. Maleficent, played by Angelina Jolie, is the wicked fairy, down to the sleek black-and-purple gown and the hat like two raised scorpion-stings.
Here, though, her wickedness is limited to that famous fit of rage at Princess Aurora's christening – the flash of green fire, the spinning-wheel curse, reproduced here from the 1959 cartoon version almost word-for-word – for which she spends much of this film trying to make amends.
Death Race (2008)
Good
One of the favourite actors of the genre action, Jason Statham, here it comes again in an impossible situation.
In Death Race, British actor must support a scenario arch-known, not only because we are dealing with a remake of a film from the '70s. Somewhere in the near future, the hero is put in jail (wrongly of course) in a maximum security prison, whose main difference from other such "establishment" is the mobile film: a "Death Race" with more cars with weapons of all kinds. Everything is allowed, and prize survivor is even much-needed freedom.
An explosive film, full of action and suspense, twists and beautiful women, what to say, Jason Statham plays only films that you keep you eyes glued to the screen from the first second to the last sound in the film. Sensational video.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
"It's visually pleasing and an easy film to like, even if it never gets out of shallow water as far as its story goes."
Tim Burton's ("Pee-Wee's Big Adventure"/"Beetlejuice"/"Batman") sweet but bizarre fable is a fantasy comedy updated take on the Frankenstein story. It's visually pleasing and an easy film to like, even if it never gets out of shallow water as far as its story goes. The main thrust of the fable is exposing the exotic gentle freak to the boring middle-class suburbs and seeing how they relate to each other, with the monster being the sympathetic innocent and society being the one to fear because of its evil nature. It's taken from a story by Burton and Caroline Thompson. The fantasy tale is set circa 1960.
Edward (Johnny Depp) is the man-made creation of an elderly genius inventor (Vincent Price) who died before finishing his would-be companion and left him with large pruning scissors for hands. Spending many lonely years in a vast musty Gothic castle that sits on a hill atop a suburban town, Edward is visited by an overly upbeat Avon lady, Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), desperate for business thereby taking an alternate route. She feels sorry for the well-behaved, lonely and freakish looking lad (adorned with an electric-shock hairdo and a black leather outfit, and an appearance that is a cross between Michael Jackson and a punk rocker), and takes him home to her 'normal' suburban family that consists of her wry humored husband Bill (Alan Arkin), pretty high school cheerleader daughter Kim (Winona Ryder) and son Kevin (Robert Oliveri). The bourgeois neighbors live in a tidy neighborhood that features assorted pastel-colored tract houses, and all act as stereotypical suburban families with gossiping housewives and dull bread-winners. There's also a fanatical religious nut (O-Lan Jones) and an oversexed lady (Kathy Baker) doing their thing in the 'burbs. Edward's unique scissors allows him to become an instant neighborhood celebrity when they see he's harmless and can carve exotic lawn hedges and do neat hair designs for their pet dogs. The socially stunted teenager quietly falls for Peg's pretty daughter Kim, but she finds him at first monstrous and prefers her insensitive bully boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall). One night Jim tricks the guileless Edward into helping him rob his parents' house. When the cops arrive, he abandons him. Suddenly the once popular Edward is viewed as an outcast and a freak by all his former fickle friends, as they all abandon him except for the nurturing Peg and her kind husband Bill. Kim ends up having a special feeling for him, but never sees him again after taking him back to his castle for safety.
The heartfelt fable is framed around a bedtime story that Kim, now a grandma, tells her grandson. It ends up being a melancholy tale that critiques human nature and conformity; but it's much more hopeful of society than the Frankenstein story, as this time the town might ban together to go after the alien but they are dispersed through deception by Kim before they can act like a lynch mob. Maybe the lesson here is that if one wants to be different or creative (like a Hollywood filmmaker), being cunning is a necessary ingredient for success.