Maleficent

Walt Disney Pictures

Rated PG

Running time: 97 Minutes



Click below to watch a movie trailer of Maleficent.




Walt Disney Pictures Maleficent is the story of the fairy queen Maleficent, Angelina Jolie, who curses the baby daughter of a king into a death-like sleep on her sixteenth birthday.

In this live action version of Walt Disney's 1959 animated movie Sleeping Beauty and released on Sleeping Beauty's 55th Anniversary in 2014, Maleficent is told from the point of view of the queen fairy Maleficent - who was the villain in Sleeping Beauty and is considered to be the greatest villain in Disney history. In this 2014 movie you get to know who Maleficent is. In a similar style to Walt Disney Pictures Oz the Great and Powerful, both visually and story-wise, in that Maleficent is also a tragedy such as in Oz the Great and Powerful. The movie Maleficent is a tour de force for Actress and Executive Producer Jolie as you feel for Maleficent as she goes through a very personal dark and painful time in the movie. Jolie worked closely with the costume designers and special make-up effects artist Rick Baker to maintain the scary look of the animated Sleeping Beauty. It is curious that all the actors were chosen in part for their likeness to their characters in the animated Sleeping Beauty. Fairy actresses Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, and Juno Temple were guided by the artists of Cirque du Soleil to give the proper feeling of featherweight and agility when Manville, Staunton, and Temple are the tiny fairies.

As the king, Sharlto Copley appears to show any love to his daughter Aurora/Elle Fanning. King Copley is so obsessed on his plans of destroying Maleficent/Jolie, that he has no time or interest for family. In fact, you do not know the queen/Hannah New at all. She only has a couple of lines and then you do not see her at all anymore. Queen New is basically just there in the movie as a cameo of Aurora's/Fanning's mother and you do not care about her at all.

It should be pointed out that the movie Maleficent is not exactly the same story as Sleeping Beauty. While the movie has elements of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent does not follow the story that everyone has grown up with. Although Aurora's/Fanning's baby christening sequence is word for word from the movie Sleeping Beauty - because Jolie felt that this sequence was the core and setup of the entire movie of Maleficent, and the movie is really about what happened before this scene - the first time that I had realized that the story of Maleficent would be a different story was when a minor plot point was not revealed. I kept expecting that particular plot point would be revealed later on in the movie, but it never was.

It was great to hear the song "Once Upon a Dream" from the 1959 Sleeping Beauty film as the end credits song for Maleficent, which was sung for the movie Maleficent by Lana Del Rey, who was chosen to sing the song by Jolie.

There are so many wonderful movie trailers of this movie. It was hard for me to pick a movie trailer for this review. For this review, I choose the movie trailers that compared Maleficent with Sleeping Beauty, as people would be familiar most with Sleeping Beauty. Click here to watch the Maleficent movie trailers.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Maleficent.

 
Rated PG for violence and intense scenes. Running time: 97 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

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The Tourist

Columbia Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 103 minutes





























Click below to watch The Tourist trailer.



In Columbia Pictures The Tourist, Angelina Jolie is under observation by Interpol in order to track her boyfriend - who stole millions of dollars from a gangster. Ravishing Jolie picks up innocent American tourist Johnny Depp on a train in order to convince Interpol and the gangsters following Jolie that Depp is the criminal they are searching for.

This is not the action-packed suspense movie that the trailers might lead you to believe. In fact, all of the action that you see in the movie is shown in the trailer. The movie is more of a 1940's or 50's film noir movie, the kind of movie of which I have not really seen since I was in film school. There is a certain amount of elegance in this type of movie that I miss when compared to the over-the-top action films. While there are elements of James Bond in The Tourist, especially with former James Bond Timothy Dalton as a chief inspector, The Tourist is more like Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest. The movie being like North by Northwest, I am sure, is due to German writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's influence on the film.

In one of his rare more normal roles, Johnny Depp is great as the befuddled American tourist caught up in a world of intrigue by femme fatal Angelina Jolie, while Interpol, Scotland Yard, and the gangsters close in on Depp and Jolie. Jolie and Depp have some steamy scenes together as Jolie draws Depp more and more into her dangerous world. As a result of Depp's and Jolie's intriguing relationship, The Tourist makes for a great date movie.

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 103 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.