Maleficent

Maleficent (2014)

Starring Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Leslie Manville, Sam Riley, and Brenton Thwaites

Directed by Robert Stromberg

Written by Linda Woolverton

Click here for my current Letterboxd review

Click here for the original RyMickey Rating

Current RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Ride

Ride (2015)

Starring Helen Hunt, Brenton Thwaites, and Luke Wilson 

Directed by Helen Hunt 

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Every review of a Helen Hunt movie I write begins with some form of the statement that I had a huge crush on the actress when I was growing up.  While jokes have been slung her way about her appearance in recent years, in those Mad About You days, I fell for her looks and (character's) wit.  Hunt actually looks pretty good and proves that she's still a darn good actress in Ride, her second attempt at theatrical directing, but the film itself (which she also wrote) is a ride not worth taking.

Here, Hunt is Jackie, a book editor based in New York City who is prepping her teenage son Angelo (Brenton Thwaites) to head off to college in the Big Apple.  Much to her surprise, when she attempts to deliver something to her son's dorm, she is told that Angelo has dropped out of school and she soon discovers that he has moved to California to live with his father whom Jackie divorced several years ago.  In an attempt to knock some sense into him, Jackie hops on a plane and covertly follows Angelo around California discovering that he has a knack for surfing.  As she tries to reconnect with Angelo, Jackie tries her hand at surfing as well, meeting an instructor (Luke Wilson) with whom she starts a little romance.

The acting by all parties and the direction are perfectly fine (though nothing more than that), but it's the script that fails Ride.  The story just meanders for ninety minutes floundering in repetition and some odd mother-son dialog that creates a relationship that never feels believable.  Interactions between Jackie and Angelo are always awkward and while that oddness sometimes works in comedic moments, as the film shifts to the dramatic towards the end, I frankly can't even comprehend the emotional notes Hunt is attempting to hit.  A seemingly pivotal confrontational scene between Jackie and Angelo is wasted because of both a lack of investment from us in the characters and a disappointing screenplay that does the characters no good.  And lest I forget that Hunt stoops to that least favorite movie go-to of mine -- old people smoking pot for comedic effect.  Ugh...

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - The Signal

The Signal (2014)

Starring Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Beau Knapp, Lin Shaye, and Laurence Fishburne

Directed by William Eubank

Nic, his girlfriend Haley, and his best friend Jonah (Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, and Beau Knapp) are traveling cross-country to take Haley to college.  Nic and Jonah are MIT students who are admitted computer nerds, both of whom are irritated when a hacker successfully breaks into MIT's student database, stole a bunch of data, and nearly placed all the blame on the two friends.  When they discover that the origin site of the hacker's computer appears to be on their route in a town in Nevada, Nic and Jonah want to check it out and confront the guy who nearly got them expelled.  However, the location of the computer is an abandoned old house and upon exiting, all three youngsters are greeted with a phenomenally bright light and immediately lose consciousness.  Upon waking up, a researcher in a HAZMAT suit (Laurence Fisburne) informs Nic that they believe he and his friends have been in contact with an extraterrestrial life form and their current quarantine situation is for their safety as well as the entire planet's.  What in the world happened in that abandoned house?

While the premise of The Signal is certainly intriguing, director and co-screenwriter William Eubank has crafted a film that looks really good (and surprisingly expensive given what I must assume was a relatively low budget), but lacks any real substance.  His eye for images is impressive, but Eubank's film drags.  There's not enough here to warrant a feature and a few inconsistencies in the story make the climax feel a bit too far-fetched.  The three younger actors are all charismatic enough to carry their scenes, but overall there's just not enough positive here to place this in the recommendation column.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - The Giver

The Giver (2014)

Starring Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Odeya Rush, Cameron Monaghan, and Taylor Swift

Directed by Philip Noyce

I never read The Giver growing up so despite the Lois Lowry book being a staple of many folks' youth, it held no revered place in my mind.  I thought that may help things given how the general public opinion of director Philip Noyce's adaptation was that of disappointment upon the film's release this summer.  Unfortunately, it didn't.  While visually appealing, The Giver fails to deliver anything new on a science fiction premise we've seen before.  (Granted, perhaps the novel The Giver gave us this premise first...but in the cinematic world, this movie feels like old news.)

The year is 2048 and following some horrific events, a community has decided to erase all memory of its inhabitants in an attempt to create a "perfect" city in which everyone lives peacefully together.  The experiment is seemingly working as sixteen year old Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is assigned his career at the annual graduation ceremony.  Jonas is deemed "special" and is granted the right to visit The Giver (Jeff Bridges), the only member of the community who retains the memories of the past.  These memories are utilized by the Giver to advise the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep) to shape the community's actions.  Aging, however, the Giver begins to pass on his memories to Jonas who finds his community's robotic and sterile atmosphere disturbing and decides to do something to shake things up a bit.

Unfortunately, this "utopian" society thing feels so played out nowadays and The Giver comes at (one can only hope) the tail end of this sci-fi subgenre.  While visually appealing (director Philip Noyce begins the film is stark blacks, whites, and grays and only introduces colors as Jonas begins to receive memories), the film feels simplistic and childish at times.  It lacks the metaphorical messages that I assume it wished to espouse.  The young Thwaites is fine, but he's really quite emotionless and his character's romantic subplot with a young gal just weighs the film down with unneeded teenage angst.  Meryl Streep is okay, but certainly nothing special, and Jeff Bridges mumbles so incoherently at times that I felt like I wanted to put on the subtitles.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Oculus

Oculus (2014)

Starring Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane, Annalise Basso, and Garrett Ryan

Directed by Mike Flanagan

An evil mirror causes the members of the Russell family to fall apart and become horrible versions of themselves in Oculus, a horror film that had potential but failed to deliver any bit of scares to make it worth your time.  Bouncing back and forth between the 1990s when the Russell kids Kaylie and Tim (Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan) were young and the current era when they're grown (played by Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites), Oculus begins in the modern day with Tim being released from jail and Kaylie stealing a large mirror from an auction house.  Odd, yes, but we soon discover that Tim killed his father (hence the jail time) with Karen believing that this hundreds-year old mirror changed the perspective of their parents Alan and Marie (Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff), causing them to become wicked to one another and their children.  With Tim's help, Karen hopes to document the mirror's supernatural powers and destroy the glass before it harms anyone else.

While the premise is silly, I must admit that it pulled me in.  Unfortunately, after I was enticed by the lack of ghosts and blood and violence, the film never really went anywhere.  Surprisingly, tension never mounts in the "past" story as we're told almost from the beginning how that pans out, and unfortunately the "present" story wears a little thin.  Oculus attempts to blend the two tales together in a way I won't delve into here, but I found that this didn't work after the film's initial attempts.  All of the actors are of a high quality, but they can't elevate this story which just didn't scare me in the slightest.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Maleficent

Maleficent (2014)

Starring Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Sam Riley, and Brenton Thwaites

Directed by Robert Stromberg

Perhaps it's faint praise to tout Maleficent as being better than Disney's recent live action interpretations of Alice in Wonderland and Oz: The Great and Powerful considering that the former was horrendous and the latter was nothing to write home about.  Still, if Disney's going to insist on reinterpreting family classics, they're gradually starting to learn from their previous disappointments.

Moreso than their previous attempts, Maleficent draws greatly from Disney's animated classic Sleeping Beauty (yes, the Disney Discussion will be returning in September after a very long hiatus), twisting that story to its own whims.  In the animated film, Maleficent was pure evil, but here this formerly friendly fairy only turns fiendish when a neighboring kingdom's ruler tries to take over her home.  Years later, still hellbent on revenge thanks to an additional subplot involving stolen fairy wings (naturally), Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) hears that King Stefan and his wife are expecting a baby.  When the young Aurora is born, Maleficent appears at the festivities and curses the girl to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into an unending sleep upon her sixteenth birthday only to be awakened by true love's kiss.  Sound familiar?  The remainder of the tale follows the storyline of Sleeping Beauty quite closely -- three fairies Knotgrass, Flittle, and Thistletwit (Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple) -- raise the growing Aurora (played by Elle Fanning as a teen) in the woods away from all civilization in hopes that this will keep her safe.

However, unlike the previous Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent keeps a careful eye on Aurora and begins to feel sorry for what she's done to the girl who played no part in harming her.  This gentle, kind, magnanimous Maleficent is the change -- and it's not necessarily a change for the better.  For starters, Angelina Jolie is fantastic when she plays the title character for all her deliciously over-the-top scenery-chewing evilness.  Let's face it -- Maleficent is a quintessentially evil character and Jolie really embodies that aspect of the role.  However, when the film forces her character to downplay the nastiness and embrace niceness, things begin to falter a bit and become much less interesting.  Jolie certainly still is a presence, but it's not quite the presence we really long for her to be here.  Fortunately, as Jolie's Maleficent turns disappointingly kind, we're also able to see the innocence of Elle Fanning's Aurora which she displays perfectly to a tee.  You can almost see why Maleficent decides to befriend Aurora -- almost -- until you realize that this bastardization of a true cinematic villain is kind of boring to watch.

Still, despite my qualms which I admit are rather important in the grand scheme of the film, I liked Maleficent.  Maybe it's because I went in with such low expectations, but Jolie's performance certainly is solid.  I only wish she was able to be as gloriously evil as her title character should've been allowed to be.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+