Video review: "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"

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.

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Review: "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"

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.

Video review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

Some think the introduction of wholesale comedy into the superhero genre was a poor match with the generally dark tone of these films. But I welcome movies like “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” which aims for funny first, exciting second and perilous a far distant third.

After the shock-and-awe of “Avengers: Infinity War” and other flicks, we needed a dose of funny as antidote.

You may recall that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a charming but loveable loser of a thief who suddenly found himself a super-hero after stumbling across the suit built by scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). It allows him to shrink down to insect size, though gaining strength in the process, as well as command the bugs that bear his name.

His brief stint with the Avengers landed him on the wrong side of the law, and as the sequel opens he’s spent two years under house arrest. He’s determined to go the straight and narrow path for the sake of his daughter. But that all comes tumbling down when Hank and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), come calling to recruit his help.

Hank and Hope are searching for their long-lost wife and mother, respectively, who was cast into the quantum zone 30 years ago while committing some derring-do. Essentially, she got shrunk down so small that she’s stuck in another dimension -- and they want Scott to go after her.

Hope has her own suit, which also boasts wings and several other add-ons, and goes by the moniker of the Wasp. Soon they’re a duo.

Spoiling the mix is the Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a young woman with the ability to phase in and out of solidity. Her aims clash with Hank’s crew, and she’s also being helped by an old science rival of his, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).

Walter Goggins shows up as a villainous technology dealer whose role is to turn up whenever the plot slows down to kick off some more thrown-downs.

Rudd is his usual twinkly self. There’s something about the innate amiableness of the actor that just makes you want to smile. God help us he never wants to go down the “I’m a serious artist” path and start cranking out doom-and-gloom Oscar bait movies.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is just what it looks like: a purely entertaining film that won’t ever bring you down.

Bonus features are decent. There are gag reels and outtakes, deleted scenes with commentary by director Peyton Reed, who also offers an introduction. Plus there are four making-of featurettes: “Back in the Ant Suit: Scott Lang,” “A Suit of Her Own: The Wasp,” “Subatomic Super Heroes: Hank & Janet” and “Quantum Perspective: The VFX and Production Design of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp.’”

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Extras: B

Review: "Ant-Man and the Wasp"

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is, “When do you think the superhero genre is going to burn out?” And my answer is always the same, “When the movies get crappy.”

I’ve seen a subpar flick here and there (*cough* *cough* “Green Lantern”), but overall the state of the superhero movie remains strong. Marvel in particular seems to consistently have their ducks all in a row, with nary a stinker in over a decade. And, with “Avengers: Infinity War” earlier this summer, they still possess the ability to surprise and overwhelm us.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp” is the perfect counterprogramming -- or, if you will, antidote -- to all the downbeat energy that’s been dominating the genre lately.

Here is a fun, frivolous and amusing movie featuring a hero who’s several steps down from the world-beaters like Thor and Hulk. And the stakes are not the usual end-of-the-world scenarios, but simply a small group of people striving to meet personal (though largely benevolent) goals.

You may remember that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was a petty criminal who stumbled into the super-suit of scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), which has the ability to shrink him to the size of an ant, where he gains strength and the ability to command the insects. Long story short, he got in trouble and ended up losing it all.

As this movie opens, he is nearly finished with two years of house arrest, having to wear an ankle bracelet and being annoyed by the uppity FBI agent assigned to watch him (Randall Park). But he again falls back in with Pym and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who wears her own version of the suit that includes wings.

Their mission is to bring back Pym’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who disappeared 30 years ago when she had to “go sub-atomic” to defuse a nuclear missile, and as a result was trapped in some quantum netherworld.

The villain is Hannah John-Kamen as Ava, aka the Ghost, who wears an alien-looking white suit and has the ability to phase in and out of solidity, so she can walk through walls and have bullets or fists pass right through her. Turns out her powers are more a curse than blessing, so she’s working on a cure along with Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), an old scientist rival of Pym’s.

The two groups soon butt heads, along with the X-factor of Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a criminal technology dealer who wants to steal Pym’s machines and sell them to the highest bidder.

Pym and Hope are officially on the lam, but are able to move around with the help of a multistory laboratory they can shrink down to dollhouse size, pick up and go. They also have a fleet of vehicles they keep shrunk down in an old Hot Wheels carrying case.

Rudd is a twinkly, funny presence as the lovable cad. His greatest desire is to spend time with his daughter, though he’s holding out hope for Hope. Michael Peña supplies much of the comedic energy as Luis, Scott’s right-hand man at the security company startup they’re running. Apparently it’s a novel idea to put a bunch of ex-cons in charge of protecting you.

Directed by Peyton Reed from a script by an overlarge bunch of writers, who I’ll not mention other than to say Rudd is among them, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” boasts lots of energy and action. You kind of have to wade through a bunch of scientific mumbo-jumbo -- quantum entanglements, diffusers, etc. -- to get to the good stuff, but fortunately the boring stuff doesn’t linger.

This is not the sort of movie you savor and think about long after. It’s more of a breezy popcorn flick that does its job, entertains you and then gets out of the way.

"Mother!" and the Coat of Many Colors

I was finally able to catch up with "Mother!", Darren Aronofsky's ambitious new meditation on... something that has sharply divided critics and largely estranged audiences. Just a few thoughts.

All this is VERY spoiler-y. So desist if you desire to experience the film's surprises on your own.

First off, unlike many others I don't think giving a complete analysis of the movie necessarily gives everything away. It has not so much plot twists as a labyrinthine pit of meaning that grows more intense and more amorphous the deeper you go. Once you know it's a descent, it's just a matter of pondering where you're going to end up and what meanings you're going to take away from the journey.

And I think they are multitudinous. People have come forth with all sorts of interpretation of what the film "means," and I believe they're all right. Star Jennifer Lawrence herself has posited that her character is Mother Earth and her husband, called simply Him and played by Javier Bardem, is God. But it's clear this is Lawrence's opinion, not Aronofsky's.

I don't think the writer/director actually intended any single vision of "Mother!". It is literally all things to all people... and nothing to some, who will find it overly mysterious and arty. It's less a portrait or a parable than an impression, and we put as much of ourselves into the vision as the artist did.

Certainly there are plenty of religious themes. The interlopers barging in their secluded mansion, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, never named but credited as Man and Woman, are representations of Adam and Eve. Him is tickled with their presence, especially Adam, while Mother is irked at any intrusion. Aren't I enough for you? she asks Him repeatedly. He responds with protestations of love, but there's always a "but."

Man and Woman's sons, who show up and immediately get into a fight that results in one's death, are obviously Cain and Abel in this telling. The crowds of people who show up after are the rest of mankind -- messy, violent, worshipful of Him's poetry. The outcome of Mother's pregnancy follows pretty obvious Christ parables.

But I think there are also a lot of themes about parenthood, and the chasm between male and female gender roles. These take place on a simple humanistic level, where the characters cease on some level being allegorical and are simply who they appear to be.

I also believe the film has a lot to say about the role of the artist in society, and their relationship to their fans/followers. These types of movies can quickly become tiresome, particularly in the prism of Hollywood -- 'Oh please, tell me more about your struggles with fame, adoration and all those millions of burdensome dollars.'

But Aronofsky lays out his tale without a lot of obvious egotism, showing how the creative process starts as a singular act and the work ends up becoming something that is shared and dissected and stolen. The artist gives and gives, and takes and takes. Like Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation," "Mother!" is a Gordian knot that inextricably ties up the story being told and the role of the storyteller.

In a lot of ways, the movie is really about itself.

Review: "The Family"

"The Family" is a goof, a recycle of a rehash, a sort-of sequel to "Goodfellas" in which we find out what happens to the gangster after he snitches on his pals and goes into witness protection. It features Robert De Niro, who has largely spent the last 20 years of his career spoofing on the first 20 years of his career as a cinematic tough guy.

He still plays tough, but now it's for laughs. Or at least it's supposed to be. This inert comedy just lies there, intermixing horrific violence with jokes about more violence. It tries to skate by on the charms of De Niro and co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones. But it's essentially a one-joke movie, and that joke gets old pretty quick.

De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, a one-time mob boss who's now living in France with his family: wife Maggie (Pfeiffer, doing a screechy retread of her "Married to the Mob" role), daughter Belle (Diana Agron, pushing 30 and playing 17) and son Warren (John De'Leo). They're a collection of Italian-American stereotypes in search of a set-up to deliver the obvious punchline.

They move from place to place whenever they cause any trouble, which is frequently. When they roll up to their new place in a tiny village in Normandy, Gio -- who goes under the name Fred Blake -- already has a body hidden in the back of the car. Gio seems cool as a cucumber on the outside, but the minute he feels disrespected, someone's going in a hole.

Unfortunately, being an American in France, the clan gets disrespected a lot. Director and co-writer Luc Besson wades into a whole lot of "ugly American" territory, with the added irony that "Fred" and company really are homicidal thugs. Maggie blows up a grocery store on her first day in town when the locals snicker at her request for peanut butter, and both kids lay severe beat-downs on classmates.

The strangest thing about the movie is there really isn't any reason for the story to be set in France. None of the family speak the lingo very well, even after living there for years. Would the FBI handler (Jones) really take the trouble and expense of setting them up in a foreign country when the good ol' U.S. of A is begger than 10 Frances?

The answer is "The Family" is based on a novel by a French author, Tonino Benacquista, and Besson is another Frenchie. It's basically their homage to "Goodfellas" -- there's even a scene where "Fred" gets invited to a film club meeting and that's the movie playing. So it's De Niro poking fun at one of his own iconic roles.

This sort of self-indulgence might be more tolerable if the movie were funnier. But between the geysers of blood, repetitive jokes about boorish Americans and snooty French, "The Family" was better left dead and buried.

Video review: "Dark Shadows"

The long, painful decline of Tim Burton from one of America's freshest filmmaking voices to hack-for-hire director has been going on for over a decade now. Other than the occasional, fleeting return to a semblance of his former form -- "Big Fish," "Corpse Bride" -- he's mostly spent his time remaking musty intellectual properties like "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Alice in Wonderland."

Sad to say, but audiences have happily followed him down the rabbit hole of mediocrity. His recent films have made exponentially more money than his previous, more personal work.

That is, until "Dark Shadows." With this remake of the cult favorite TV show from the 1960s, audiences couldn't wrap their heads around Johnny Depp as a fish-pale vampire awoken during the 1970s and forced to co-exist with his less-than-groovy descendants (Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloë Grace Moretz among them).

Meanwhile, he must renew his battle with the witch (Eva Green) who imprisoned him long ago out of a twisted sense of love.

Gothic themes and macabre elements have always been part and parcel of the Burton package. But here it often seems like he and Depp are making a strange movie just for the sake of being strange.

The result is a curiously flat affair, not particularly scary and even less funny.

Here's hoping Burton's next movie -- yet another remake, but at least of his own short film "Frankenweenie" -- will fly higher. If not, it's time to put a stake through the heart of his career.

Video extras are a barely a step above so-so, and virtually non-existent of you don't spring for the Blu-ray edition. The DVD comes with only a single feature, a making-of featurette about the cast and their characters.

Go for the Blu-ray and you'll get eight more featurettes, focusing on such topics as the town of Collinsport, the extensive makeup process to turn the winsome Depp into a creepy bloodsucker, recapturing the fashion and music of the '70s and the film's special effects.

You also get six deleted scenes.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "People Like Us"

"People Like Us" is a tearjerker, and is pretty straightforward about it. I don't have an issue with movies that don't pretend to be something other than what they are. Where I do have a problem is when they aren't successful at it.

To wit: no tears of mine were jerked by this movie.

Speaking of jerks: "People Like Us" is filled with them. At some point during the film I kept thinking, "Wow, I really hope there aren't a lot of people like them in the real world." If there are, this is one sad, bitter little globe we're riding as it hurtles through space.

This wannabe-weepy drama is about a young jerk who is the son of an old jerk who up and dies, leaving young jerk with only bitter memories of old jerk. That, plus a shaving bag filled with $150,000 in cash and a terse note instructing him to deliver it to a single mother who turns out to be the sister he never knew he had.

Young jerk, whose actual name is Sam, is in a tough spot because he could really use the money himself. His gig is "corporate bartering," which means buying up overstock of various goods and sundries and trading it for something else. Except Sam bartered a little too fast and loose, and now the feds are breathing down his neck about some rotten tomatoes, or something.

(Quick aside: the federal inquiry is instigated by an unhappy client -- the one with the tomatoes -- and the investigator starts calling Sam and his boss the very same day it's reported to tell them they're being investigated. That's a pretty responsive bureaucracy.)

Anyway, rather than telling the woman, whose name is Frankie, the whole deal and plopping the money down, Sam start following her around, and also her 11-year-old son Josh. He does said stalking while driving his father's fire engine red 1972 Mercury Marquis convertible, a great flaming beast of a car, which somehow does not attract anyone's attention.

Soon Sam has ingratiated himself into their lives, becoming a father figure to young Josh and a support system for Frankie, who's a recovering alcoholic working as a bartender (a Hollywood fabrication, if ever there was one).

The problem with this plot is that it's one of those stories that pivots entirely on the fulcrum of the One Big Lie. An untruth is told -- or as in this case the truth is withheld -- and the rest of the movie turns into an exercise in waiting around until the moment when everything is revealed. So the only real surprise is in seeing how extreme the reaction to the truth will be. (In this case, it's over the top.)

The screenplay is by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert, who inform us this was "inspired by true life." Kurtzman, a TV veteran, directs with little sense of rhythm. The movie turns into a push-pull of characters coming together, then pushing each other away, then back again. It feels like a collection of encounters rather than a knitted whole.

The cast seems a little too perfect for their own good. Chris Pine as Sam brings little to the table that we haven't seen from other rogue-with-good-intentions characters. Elizabeth Banks plays Frankie with more success, as a tough woman putting up a good front over her nagging fears that she's a terrible person and a worse mother. Both are made-up to look scruffy and well-worn, but in a gorgeous Hollywood sort of way.

Michael Hall D'Addario is convincing as Josh, using spot-on facial expressions to show how he reacts to the adults around him with disdain or enthusiasm, depending on what mood strikes. Kids that age are like a combination safe, and few parents get it right more than once in a while.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Olivia Wilde have underwritten roles as, respectively, Sam's mom and girlfriend. They're composed less as flesh-and-blood people than as tools to facilitate Sam's emotional journey -- even if they have to behave illogically to do so.

"People Like Us" is the sort of story that would have worked better as a tiny-budget indie film with actors you never heard of. It feels like a meal that's been jazzed up with too much flimflam and unnecessary seasoning, instead of concentrating on blending a few key ingredients well.

Rather than making the audience sad, it makes us feel sad for it.

2 stars out of four