Tag: Lesley Manville

Maleficent stormed onto the scene many years ago, one of the first of the Disney live action titles, outside of that bad Alice one.And it was pretty forgettable. A weak plot, a lot of time of just watching a kid grow up, and then some terrible CGI fight battles.

But hey, the whole reason for doing it is to say that someone with the name of Maleficent,meaning to cause harm supernaturally, isn’t actually bad. Oh okay. And sure, they made her seem misunderstood, and basically a revenge film about a rape, metaphors aside.

So why is this sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, doubling down on the badness? But she isn’t bad. Just bad looking. Now she is also the mistress of evil? I uhh, don’t know why they want to do this?

I’ll go ahead and say this early enough, that they don’t have a good plot reason for this title.

Ah, green fire magic. Magic-y. Evil. 
Alright, so Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) was a sort of hero, killing a king who was a liar and a bad person, and I guess everyone agreed? She magically got her wings back and restored some sort of order, and went back to her magical forest to chill with magic forest people.

But apparently in like, a year or two, the story changes so much that she is a bad guy again. Cool.

Well, Aurora (Elle Fanning) wants to get married finally though, to Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson), who was definitely recast between movies. So they get their parents together, Aurora finding Maleficent, and Philip getting King John (Robert Lindsay) and Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Neither set of parents like this at all, especially not Ingrith, who sets about immediately being a bitch. This leads to a curse being cast on a King, Maleficent noping the hell out of there, and then a war against the fey, again.

But hey, this time there are going to be lots of people like Maleficent this time, so you know, bigger stakes, and lots of CGI warring.

Also starring Sam Riley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, David Gyasi, Jenn Murray, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, and Imelda Staunton.

The king has huge look of regret about this whole thing.

Without a doubt, this is a two hour movie that feels like four hours. On the first day of the year, ready to watch a bunch of films, I was completely warn out after this one, my 2nd film of the day, because of how much this movie dragged.

This felt like more of the same, with worse reasoning for existing. This time, the big CGI fest battle happened for a bigger chunk of the movie, if we start it with the very obvious double cross that started against the magical creatures.

This film tries to do more world building this time, but it is building a world, answering questions none of us had. Maleficent is stronger and better than others because. Just because.

Pfeiffer’s character is completely stupid in this film. An antagonist without a good reason. And honestly, Pfeiffer does nothing to really elevate the role at all, she is here for a paycheck.

Maleficent 2 is a movie with more CGI that is exhausting in his excess without being worth looking at. It has acting from all fronts that is forgettable. It tells a story that is very, very similar to the first one, but with “bigger scales” that don’t really matter either. It is a waste of what felt like four hours of my life.

0 out of 4.

Phantom Thread does not have any stories about magically cutting out an actor and replacing him a month before release. It is not relying on controversy with its casting decisions or pay decisions at all. Hell, it barely has any actors.

It only has one bit of PR buzz going for it. Daniel Day-Lewis, famed character actor has announced it will be his last film. He already mostly keeps to himself, coming out every few years to give an incredible performance before presumably hibernating for another two years. What would a man like this do with his retirement?

Get into metal music? Get into painting? Start murdering hobos on the streets of Chicago?

Who knows! I just know that DDL is capable of doing anything he puts his mind to, so we should all watch out for him in the future.

My money is on murdering hobos. Secretly of course.

Reynolds Woodcock (DDL) is a dress maker and pretty good at his job. He makes the best dresses, is super rich, and everyone in London loves him. Not his exes, because apparently he can be a dick. But everyone else.

His sister (Lesley Manville) runs the day to day operations of his business. But he still feels alone and often distant.

Well, one day he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps). A country waitress. He takes an interest in her, invites her to a date, and sure enough they hit it off. Once she moves in with him, she finds out that she is going to be treated like all the other ladies he brings home. She will be abused emotionally while he uses her as a muse, demanding of her more and more.

Well Alma is not the type of girl to just roll over and take it.

He basically invented the trope about making a women feel bad to fit her into a dress.
Wait is that a thing?

I will be honest from the forefront. Phantom Thread put me to sleep.

Paul Thomas Anderson I can readily admit is a fantastic director. He has his visions, he writes his films, and he puts it on camera. He can usually get wonderful acting performances out of it too, hopefully telling a story others will care about.

But it was really hard for me to care about Phantom Thread. His last movie, Inherent Vice, really turned me off, being hard to follow along with not capturing my interest. But hey, I was fine with The Master. I was fine with There Will Be Blood. But his last two pictures were hard for me to care at all.

The acting performances on the main two fronts were really strong of course. DDL always delivers, and it was good to see Krieps, who I have not seen before, match his level. That is the saving grace of this movie. Acting wise, sure, it should be considered great.

This might be one of those films that takes multiple views to really appreciate. But I just know I probably will not ever go out of my way to try to watch it again. I know the twists, I know the oddities, and now I reluctantly say the only thing I got out of it is a few notches on my “watch all the things nominated for Oscars!” list.

2 out of 4.

“Hey, it is that guy!”

Those were my first thoughts seeing anything about Mr. Turner. An actor who normally plays a weasel-y villain character, never really a main dude. But clearly that dude is playing the main dude in this role!

And that role is Mr. Turner. Uhh, apparently some sort of guy who is some historical person who is popular enough to have a biographical film about the end of his life. Yeah, I don’t know anything about this guy. I don’t think I have ever heard his name. But I do know it was one of the movies hacked from Sony and placed online, like Fury and Annie. So if it was going to make any money, it probably lost like, 5% of its sales thanks to it.

I am just saying, if it is going to be hacked and put online, hopefully it is good enough to be worth the effort.

He painted those bitches a painting. Bitches love paintings.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (Timothy Spall) was an artists in Britain. That much you probably already know. I mentioned he was a loyalist, because he apparently left a lot lot of his artwork to the British people, so they can be hung up in museums for people to see. He avoided selling them for outrageous wealth and fortune.

He never married, but he had some sweet mistresses. Also brothels. Also relationships with maids and neighbors.

And you know, he liked art in a weird way. And went to great expanses to get some nice scenes to paint later I guess.

And then you know, eventually he died.

Also with Marion Bailey, Lesley Manville, Dorothy Atkinson, Martin Savage, and other British people.

This shit right here? This is my shit. This is good shit.

Shit. Mr. Turner is another 2.5 hour long movie, and it is another 2.5 hour movie that tends to drag forever. Mr. Turner was so long and unbearably slow that I actually questioned my hobby as a movie watcher and review writer. I didn’t want to finish the film 90 minutes in and I didn’t want to watch any movie ever again. I had such extreme disappointment while it was on the screen that I thought the movie could fall down and kill me.

I had to convince myself that Mr. Turner couldn’t be the death of me. I was like, “No, this movie will not be the final one for my site. Boo! Boo! Boo!”

Which is why most of my discussion here isn’t even about the film.

But yes, overly long and drawn out. Who the fuck is Mr. Turner? A famous British painter? Apparently he was a dick and loved to paint boats. But he was a loyalist to his country. I guess. But if you don’t care about this guy or his paintings, this movie won’t convince you to care. You might learn a little bit, but it won’t be something you remember forever.

I think this movie is for only people who like him and want some sort of biography film. I have said many times that just because someone was famous or had a true story that there doesn’t need to be a movie about it, and this seems to be one of the strongest cases I have ever came across. Fuck Mr. Turner.

0 out of 4.

Ah, another re-imagining. I think the last one recently was Jack the Giant Slayer, but I probably forgot a few other ones recently. This time, Maleficent, we are tackling the Sleeping Beauty tale. Instead of just telling the story a different way, we are getting it from Maleficent’s point of view.

So, at this point, the movie could go two directions. They could show us that Maleficent was really a good/misunderstood character (which is hard, being one of the more evil Disney villains ever), like what Wicked did, or they could give us a movie about a bad ass mother, who don’t take no crap off of nobody.

Do we get the awesome force of evil doing awesome things? Hell no, this is a Disney related property. You are getting a PG movie, Maleficent won’t be evil, tables will be turned. I mean. Wicked did it. Of course it is going the Wicked route.

But now there are some changes.

This film begins when Maleficent is but a young girl. She is also a fairy. Some dumb war between the fairy kingdom and human kingdom going down. She meets a human boy, finds him sweet, they frolic, he leaves to do human things and they grow old apart.

Now, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is an adult fairy, protector of the forest because she is better than the other fairies. The human kingdom is at war now with the magic land. Maleficent pisses some people off. Long story short, a metaphor that strongly resembles rape occurs, and her long lost child hood friend, is now the new King Stefan (Sharlto Copley).

So that curse thing happens, basically just like in Sleeping Beauty. But now, instead of Maleficent searching for Aurora (Elle Fanning) for sixteen years, she finds her like right away and becomes her silent guardian, protecting her from harm. Why? Not really sure.

Then a whole bunch of events happen, nothing at all like the events in Sleeping Beauty, and everyone lives happily ever after.

We have the three fairies again, but they have different names now, for some reason. They are now Thistletwit (Juno Temple), Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), and Flittle (Lesley Manville). We also have Sam Riley as the raven boy thing and Brenton Thwaites as Prince Phillip.

Oooh, there is the Maleficent we know. Even if it is for just a short while.

Here is one difference between Wicked and Maleficent. Wicked, more or less, took the aspects of the original story, kept them all basically the same, and added in a lot of new material and made it great. Maleficent had one aspect of the original story the same (the baby girl scene), then changed everything else about Sleeping Beauty and called it a day.

If it was a “misunderstood villain” story and they actually did it in the context of the original story? Great. If they decide that she is misunderstood because someone told the story wrong? Boring and pathetic almost.

“But movie reviewer! You don’t take the source into context!” Well, that is true. Unless they bring the source material into context for me. Thankfully this movie includes in the actual film one of my least favorite things of the last few years, telling me the story I heard was wrong and this is the real way. Or that I don’t know the truth. It is one of the worst things to hear, and it just keeps happening.

Maleficent had some cool special effects. Her awesome magic powers were vague with what she could actually do. Sometimes really awesome creation magic and spells? Cool! Destruction? Yeah! But that was like, only once, all used for the trailer. Her magic became something that could do basically anything for her, unless it would have made the plot lame. The movie isn’t really dark like the trailer suggests. The middle chunk of the movie is just Maleficent standing around, peering behind bushes while the theater sleeps.

There is a lot wrong with this film, in my eyes. They took a beloved villain and made her a metaphorical rape victim. They made her really powerful, with out displaying any of this power. They made her wear a catwoman like jump suit at one point.

I think that last line really makes my points clear.

1 out of 4.

Mannn.

Fuck Romeo and Juliet.

There, I said it.

The story is terrible. People think it is a romance, and a story about eternal love, when it is a dang tragedy. So then people overly romantisize it. Then we get the fiftieth movie version of it. And…and…and for SOME REASON. ALL OF THE MOVIE VERSIONS ARE THE SAME.

Well. Most of them. Some take the basic tale and put a unique spin on it. Thank you, Romeo + Juliet, West Side Story, and Warm Bodies.

Everything else just feels like the same dang thing every time, and this remake is abso-fucking-lutely no exception. Shit, even Gnomeo and Juliet tried to do something different.

100% of this is all the same and boring at this point.

When I first heard they were doing this new new new version (which no one gave enough shits about to even let it go to most theaters before getting its DVD/Blu-Ray release), a blurb described it as “The Romeo and Juliet for the Twilight generation!”

What?! Oh god no.

That means it for sure would be heavily romanticized, with like, darker filters to make them seem so dang tormented. But I had hope with that description. I had hope that it would mean that this movie is slightly different. Maybe it won’t take the actual Shakespear script, and just have people talk normal? Maybe it will put it in a more modern setting and relate to the kids of today.

Haha. Hahaha. That’s another big fat nope. This is just another dang Romeo and Juliet, same dialogue, same plot, just slightly different production value. Nothing new or redeeming.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Juliet and Douglas Booth plays Romeo. Paul Giamatti the friar!

We got a Tybalt (Ed Westwick), a Mercutio (Christian Cooke), and a Nurse (Lesley Manville).

We got the Capulets (Damian Lewis, Natascha McElhone) and the Montagues (Tomas Arana, Laura Morante). We even have a Benvolio (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and I definitely don’t remember his importance.

Shit, even Paul Giamatti looking creepy is still the same.

Dang it, Hailee Steinfeld. You were so so good in True Grit. You were. Then you did this movie. And 3 Days To Kill. And a pointless role in Ender’s Game. You are probably one bad movie away from losing any of your acting cred.

To everyone else involved with the making of this movie, fuck you guys. Seriously. You are who people are talking about when they say Hollywood has run out of ideas and try to defend you guys. This shit is unacceptable. All of it.

And yet it is still a 1 out of 4. Why? Because despite my outrage towards its existence, I still realize it isn’t bottom of the barrel stuff, it is just entirely pointless stuff. The acting wasn’t super bad, it was mostly just indifferent. I can’t complain about the plot, because its Shakespeare. I can say however that it is worthy of being avoided just for contributing nothing new to society.

This might read as a big rant, but I won’t even edit this one. I am done with this damn movie.

1 out of 4.