Maleficent (2014)

3/5

Disney's Maleficent stars Angelina Jolie as the titular character, and her casting is the best decision the filmmakers' could have made. She gives a spectacularly complex performance as the kind-hearted Maleficent, a fairy who places a curse on Sleeping Beauty as revenge for being stripped of her wings and the power of flight. She brings depth and gravitas that has felt absent in most Disney characters and she alone is the reason to see this movie.

Although the story is full of surprising twists, it is laid out and presented with such unoriginal style as to make it feel old and overused. We start with a voice-over explaining that there are two worlds: the world of fairies and the world of humans. We are introduced to Maleficent's childhood and the magical world she inhabits. She swirls and swoops in extravagant 3D as if to show off the prowess of Disney's CGI programmers. Then she meets a human, falls in love, and gets her heart broken. And on and on it goes in such an unsurprising and familiar progression as to make the whole movie feel like something we've seen a hundred times before, except this time they've recycled familiar names and placed them on opposite sides of the moral compass from the first time they were in a Disney movie.

Now, to be fair, I am far from an expert on Disney and far from an expert on Maleficent. I haven't seen Sleeping Beauty and I've barely seen Maleficent (I was extremely tired and found myself nodding off several times during the movie)! So I suppose it is a little unfair that I am reviewing this movie. But looking at this movie from a purely cinematic perspective, I see a lot of missed potential. Although the art direction and costuming are fantastic, Maleficent feels like even more of a money-making operation than most of Disney's products. They are cashing in on the Wicked train by turning a bad guy into a misunderstood good guy and passing the bad guy buck onto some other poor schmuck. Whereas Wicked felt fresh, original, and textured, Maleficent just feels like a copycat. I wanted this movie to be as phenomenal as Wicked was, but I didn't get that. A good movie that disappoints you is worse than a mediocre movie that meets all your expectations.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587310/

Taking Woodstock (2009)

3/5

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock is a curious film because it seems to have an uncertain target audience. The plot follows Demetri Martin and his crazy mother Imelda Staunton who run a cheap hotel on the countryside. At risk for defaulting on their mortgage, they attempt to convince the music festival Woodstock to host in their city in order to gain heavy hotel traffic. Suffice it to say, the plot is not the film's strong suit. My favorite aspects of the movie were the characters and the acting. They were all fascinating personas, adeptly portrayed, but I feel like I have no idea why they did the things they did. I didn't really understand their motivations; their "complexities" remained wholly nebulous to me. I also enjoyed the comedy, but it felt very subdued and infrequent, as if it were not the main focus of the movie. I am not sure what the main focus of the movie was, in fact. Most of the filmmaking was not particularly memorable, including cinematography, editing, and music. All in all, I didn't find this to be a particularly impressive film, especially coming from Ang Lee, but it's not bad per se. I'm just confused as to its purpose.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127896/