I’m not sure if we needed another “Maleficent” movie with Angelina Jolie dolled up in demoness makeup and ebony wings. But the truth is the sequel, undertitled as “Mistress of Evil,” is actually an improvement on the original from five years ago.
If you’ll recall they took the villainess from “Sleeping Beauty” and turned her into the star of the show. Here she’s a misunderstood figure, the queen of the Moors, the land where fairies and other oddball creatures live, protected from malevolent human hands by her magic. Aurora (Elle Fanning), aka Sleeping Beauty, is still here and no longer sleeping, and in fact as the story opens she’s about to marry some slack-jawed excuse of a prince.
That means meeting his parents, and it turns out the groom’s mother is Ingrith, queen of the neighboring kingdom of Ulstead. She’s got a major jones for fairy-hate, so pretty soon Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) has managed to stoke inter-family resentments and started a war between their countries.
A side plot involves the discovery that Maleficent isn’t a unique creature, but part of a lost race called dark fey. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays their benevolent leader, while Ed Skrein is the young upstart with just as much bloodlust as the humans.
Despite the dour setting, there’s actually plenty of humor and light moments in “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” which leads to a more enjoyable picture. I don’t know if I’d call it magic, but sequels that surpass the originals is a rare trick indeed.
Bonus features are pretty decent. They include outtakes from the set, two extended scenes and a music video by Bebe Rexha, “You Can’t Stop The Girl.” There are also four making-of documentary shorts: “Origins of Fey,” “Aurora’s Wedding,” “If You Had Wings” and a visual effects reel.
What a good old-fashioned rip-roarer war picture. “Midway” is the sort of movie they made 40 to 60 years ago starring John Wayne or Henry Fonda and a bunch of other guys, but with modern CGI effects for the extravaganza air-and-sea battles.
I went in skeptical that famously schmaltzy conductor of disaster flicks, director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”), would deliver anything more than another soulless special effects showcase. But paired with screenwriter Wes Tooke, a rookie to feature film scripts, and a solid cast of square-jawed actors of varying fame, I left amazed and more than a little shook.
The aerial combat scenes are just flabbergastingly good. The pilots careen and yaw all over the screen, a concerto of impacts and explosions sounding all around them. There are plenty of dogfights with Japanese Zeroes, with cutaways to how it all looks from the ground.
Best of all are the bombing runs, as the Americans tip tail over nose and dive seemingly straight down vertically, the Japanese aircraft carriers blasting a storm cloud of flak into their faces, pulling up at only the very last moment. Their wingtips kiss the ocean surface before climbing again.
It’s like taking a ride on the world’s longest, deepest roller coaster ridden by yowling demons bound straight for the fiery furnaces of hell.
The story actually sets up the war in the Pacific beginning at Pearl Harbor and all through the important military developments before Midway, including the battle at Marshall Islands and the James Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart) raid on Tokyo. The last hour or so of the movie is the titular battle, which is generally regarded as the turning point of the war.
Like a lot of old-school war flicks, the action flips back and forth between the pilots and ship captains on the front lines with the commanders and intelligence boys back at HQ, and does a good job of seeing how one group played off the other.
Patrick Wilson is Edwin Layton, a dweeby intelligence officer who predicted the attack on Pearl, and now has to pluck up the courage to convince the top brass to rely on the info from his team, which includes military band members turned into codebreakers. Woody Harrelson (!) plays Admiral Chester Nimitz, put in charge of the Pacific effort while most of the fleet was sunken or smoking.
Ed Skrein is terrific as Dick Best, the prototypical hotshot cowboy pilot who flies like he doesn’t care about coming back. Then he’s placed in command and has to become the shepherd to a flock of green newbies. He’s got a sort of hunched-over, laconic rascal charm. Think Han Solo by way of Jersey.
Luke Evans is Wade McClusky, the by-the-book commander who clashes with Best, and Luke Kleintank is Best’s buddy, Clarence Dickinson, another crackerjack pilot. Dennis Quaid plays Vice Admiral William Halsey, Mandy Moore is Best’s wife, Anne, and Nick Jonas plays a puckish machinist who gets into the action.
Surprisingly, nearly all of the characters are actual historical figures. The Japanese commanders are even given plenty of scenes so we can size up the strategy from their side. Though this isn’t an “equal sides” type of film production along the lines of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”.
There's even a little ode to filmmaker John Ford, who happened to be on hand at Midway the day of attack, producing some seminal documentary footage.
The film’s a bit long at 138 minutes -- so many are these days, it seems. I long for a time when editors were powers in Hollywood and had agency to tighten, tighten, tighten. Today’s movies are like Robert De Niro’s out-of-shape scenes in “Raging Bull.” They still can pack a punch, but the flab is distracting.
Still, a few talkie scenes that run long and some clanky dialogue aside, “Midway” is a terrific piece of throwback entertainment that actually gets the history right.
I was somewhat ambivalent about “Maleficient” from five years ago, liking the idea of the movie -- the villainess from “Sleeping Beauty” recast as a troubled protagonist -- more than the one they actually made. Certainly visually it was striking, with otherworldly beauty Angelina Jolie done up in horns, death-white flesh and strangely angular cheekbone prosthetics.
It made a boatload of money, so here’s another.
If I sound jaded, it’s because I am. But even though this sequel seems unnecessary and rather ham-handed at times, I found I enjoyed it more than the first one.
It has fewer pretensions about doing a truly dark and brooding movie while still retaining the family film label and PG rating. Jolie still gets to scowl and threaten as the winged witch of the north, though this time it’s played for laughs. At one point someone actually urges her to smile more, but not enough to show fangs.
The expectations society has for fairy demonesses these days! You must smile, but not too much, take a human lover but later kill him.
If you’ll recall the story from the first film, Maleficent is queen of the Moors, the shrouded land of fairies bordered (on all sides, it seems) but human kingdoms. Her human boyfriend betrayed her, cutting off her wings in order to secure the throne of his kingdom. For revenge Maleficent cursed his daughter, Aurora (Elle Fanning), though later grew close to her and even became her godmother.
Five years have passed, and now Aurora is set to wed her comely-but-disposable gentleman love, Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson). This means Maleficent must meet his parents, King John (Robert Lindsay) and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) of Ulstead, in a celebratory feast. And before you ask: Yes, the film milks the obvious “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” joke.
Things.,. don’t go well.
It doesn’t take much thought to realize that John is a wise and peaceable king, while Ingrith harbors Cersei-ish inclinations. Before you can say “poisoned needle,” she has launched a war against the fairies, intending to wipe them all out in one go. It also seems she’s the one who has been spreading nasty rumors about Maleficent all these years so humans will fear her.
It’s basically high school, but with curses instead of gossipy texts.
The really interesting thing is that all though we had thought Maleficent was one of a kind, it turns out there’s a whole lost race of them. Called “dark fey,” they’re sort of a cross between feral hawks and indigenous natives, covering their bodies in paint or scars.
They’ve been exiled for centuries on an island that is apparently just a 90-second flight away from Maleficent’ s kingdom, which shows you how much of a homebody she is. Their leader is the benevolent Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor) while the younger and hunk-ier Borra (Ed Skrein) calls for war.
It’s a bit strange that Ingrith has engineered the creation of an entire war machine of specialized weapons deadly against the fey, despite never having any knowledge that they existed. Warwick Davis crops up as her pet weapons master, experimenting upon captured fairies and using their most sacred flower, “tomb blooms,” in his dank dungeon laboratory.
There are plenty of action scenes, including lots of deaths, though fairies tend to just sort of “phsh” into clouds of dust or pollen rather than bleed out. There’s quite a menagerie of creatures, with my favorite being the giant tree golem creatures with woody skull faces and no eyes.
The “Maleficent” sequel a big, colorful, fun and not terribly plausible movie that weaves its silly spell well.
Few mainstream movies are truly radical. After all, Hollywood is generally a risk-averse place. They make movies that assuage, not challenge conventions. They leave the wacky and threatening ideas to the indies and foreign films.
“Deadpool” is the exception to the rule. A super-hero flick based on a character few non-comics readers have probably even heard of, it’s violent, foul-mouthed and flippant. The protagonist is an unlikeable heel who talks directly to the audience, insults his enemies and makes no pretense at heroic deeds.
Ryan Reynolds – who previously played another iteration of the same character in (one of) the underwhelming Wolverine movies – is a charming cad as Wade Wilson, a mercenary who hurts or kills people for money. He makes no bones about his profession or status on the good/bad scale.
His happiness grows when he unexpectedly finds love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute with a heart of diamonds. But then he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He accepts a longshot chance at a cure by accepting experimental treatment from a mysterious criminal group that promises to turn him into a super-hero. The process works, after incredible pain and suffering, giving him the ability to heal virtually any wound. But it also leaves him a scarred freak.
Redubbing himself Deadpool, he launches a crusade to kill the bad guy, fix his face and get the girl back. Needless to say, there are complications along the way. Opposing, then joining him on this quest are a pair of down-market X-Men. (Deadpool himself quips that they couldn’t afford any of the expensive ones.)
Shot on a $50 million budget – peanuts for super-hero CGI and stunts – “Deadpool” is a four-letter middle finger to the establishment. Rookie director Tim Miller and script guys Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have fashioned a movie that’s a true rebel yell.
Extras are very good. These include two feature-length audio commentary tracks, one with Reynolds and the screenwriters, the other with director Miller and Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld; deleted and extended scenes with audio commentary by Miller; gag reel; photo galleries; and two making-of featurettes: “Deadpool’s Fun Sack” and “From Comics to Screen… to Screen.”
I think it was around the time that Deadpool farted into the face of an elderly black lady that I realized we weren’t dealing with a standard-issue superhero.
If that wasn’t the moment, then it arrived immediately after, when he needled her: “Hashtag: drive by!”
If “Guardians of the Galaxy” set the stage for comic book adaptations that were comedies first, action/adventure second, then “Deadpool” is the next step on the (d?)evolutionary scale: super heroes as gross-out laugh riots.
Golly, this movie is funny. And crude. And lewd. Even as I was watching it I thought to myself: “I can’t believe Marvel made this movie.” But I am very glad they did.
Things start with the opening credits, a freeze-frame journey of the camera around a scene of mayhem, a vehicle in mid-flight as Deadpool takes out some bad guys. As we pan and zoom around to reveal that Deadpool has his fingers poking a dude’s eyes out and the other hand giving another guy a wedgie, the credits mock themselves.
The film, we are informed, stars “a British villain,” “a CGI character” and “a moody teen,” amongst others, and was directed by “an overpaid tool.” A magazine flies by in the swirl, and it’s Ryan Reynolds’ “Sexiest Man Alive” cover of People.
Things continue as Deadpool repeatedly talks to the camera, reminding us that he’s a movie character. He breaks the fourth wall, then quips about breaking the fourth wall, then does a flashback where he again breaks the fourth wall. “That’s, like, 16 walls!” he brags.
The setup is that Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is a badboy mercenary, a smirking ex-Special Forces expert now accepting money to do bad things to people even worse than him. He catches the perfect girl, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who shares his puckish humor and love of exploring every sexual position available. (A montage shows many, and much.)
But then he gets terminal cancer, which sucks, and signs on to a shadowy group that promises to not only cure him, but give him super abilities. This they do – he can heal virtually any wound a la Wolverine -- except it also involves turning him into a scarred freak who looks like Freddie Krueger’s next of kin.
Dubbing himself Deadpool, he resolves to hunt down the dastardly villain who did this to him, Ajax (Ed Skrein), get him to do a face fix, kill him, and win the girl back.
If this doesn’t sound like noble proselytizing about great power coming with great responsibility, that’s because it isn’t. Deadpool explicitly rejects the idea of being a hero, happily kills anyone who gets in his way and drops one-liners while doing it.
Deadpool also criticizes his own movie as it’s playing out, simultaneously acting as protagonist and nitpicking fanboy.
For instance, he has a run-in with Colossus from the X-Men (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and a young trainee (Brianna Hildebrand), then later recruits them to help him. Rolling up to Xavier mansion, Deadpool takes note that despite being such a big place, he’s only ever seen these two members of the team.
“It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man!” he zings.
At a reported $50 million budget, “Deadpool” is indeed a down-market spawn of the Marvel franchise. I will say that director Tim Miller milks every dollar of that budget, resulting in a great-looking film without any obvious cut corners. OK, Colossus looks a little cut-rate, not to mention very different from his previous movie appearances.
I should mention that Reynolds previously played the same character in 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” but the filmmakers are doing a total reboot and hope you’ll completely forget about that iteration of Deadpool. (Don’t worry, guys, already done.)
Also turning up are T. J. Miller as Deadpool’s wiseacre best friend, who supports him but isn’t above betting on his demise; Gina Carano as Ajax’s burly enforcer; and Leslie Uggams as the aforementioned blind lady, who’s also Deadpool’s roommate at a ghetto rattrap.
(Hey, not every supe has Tony Stark money.)
Tim Miller was an interesting pick to direct, a first-timer who comes from a visual effects background. (His salary and tool-ishness are open to debate.) He certainly gives us plenty of eye candy and a brash tone. And screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who previously brought comedy to the horror genre with “Zombieland,” crank the yuks dial up to 11 and then somehow manage to sustain it the rest of the way.
How hilarious is “Deadpool?” You’ll spend the entire time laughing, coming off a big laugh or cursing audience members for laughing so long you missed the next joke.
Welcome to the new age of super hero movies: funny, foulmouthed and farty.
