Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Is At Its Best When It's Weird and Original

Another live-action Disney remake, cool! We haven't gotten any of those this year. Despite being like the umpteenth slice of chocolate cake eaten at an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil actually stands out as narrowly the best of these movies we've gotten in 2019. Though still just average as a movie itself, it's got more energy to it than Dumbo or The Lion King and both its production design and costume design stand out as genuinely enjoyable. It's a pity the script is a mess by, among a number of critical faults, failing to deliver on elements general family audiences would want to see if they're shelling out cold hard cash to see a Maleficent movie.

Teen Spirit Is a Mechanically Made Musician Movie

Over in the Isle of Wrights, there lives a teenage girl named Violet Valenski (Elle Fanning), who carries dreams of being a singer while going to school and working shifts at a local tavern despite her mother, Marla (Agnieszka Grochowska), sternly disapproving of her music ambitions. A local singing competition called Teen Spirit (hey, that's the name of the show!) gives Violet the chance to chase her music dreams. Teaming up with a Croatian former opera singer by the name of Vlad (Zlatko Buric) as her mentor, Violet decides to go forth and pursue her dreams. Challenges lie in wait as she struggles to balance respecting the people who have already helped her and embracing the people who could help her career go even farther. Will she ever get the best of both worlds?

How to Talk to Girls at Parties Is An Exceptionally Fun Ode To Punk Rock And Cosmic Weirdness

One of the movies A24 brought to premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival was the new John Cameron Mitchell directorial effort How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Arriving with oodles of hype, the feature debuted to mixed reviews, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone involved in the production considering it was such a strange entity that wasn't going to be for everyone's tastes. Unfortunately, A24 really seemed to have been taken aback by this response and it caused the films domestic theatrical release to constantly get delayed until it got dumped at the end of May 2018 in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it theatrical release.

I Do Declare That The Beguiled Is a Mighty Fine New Effort From Sofia Coppola!

We've had a lot of movies over the past century or so that have dealt with the dramatically potent theme of normal people being forced to do ghastly things in order to survive in a wartime setting. The concept being revisited so many times is understandable given what a thought-provoking idea it is and how constantly relevant it is given the permanent presence of war in every society in the world. Such an idea gets re-contextualized again for Sofia Coppola's newest motion picture The Beguiled, a remake of a 1971 film that starred Clint Eastwood, which looks to the Civil War as a backdrop for what happens when seven ordinary women are faced with the prospect of having to do the unspeakable to survive.

3 Generations Is A Scattered And Clumsy Mess

3 Generations was supposed to come out in a general theatrical release domestically all the way back in September 2015 with the title of About Ray. After it garnered a critical thrashing at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Weinstein Company pulled it from its release schedule and it basically vanished. Then, earlier this year, it was abruptly announced that the studio would be releasing About Ray under its current title and in a smaller theatrical release under their Radius-TWC banner, which had been discontinued for over a year but was briefly brought back to life solely for the purpose of getting this feature finally released.

20th Century Women Brings Weight To Seemingly Inconsequential Moments Of Life

Perspective is a funny thing. We all have different ways of approaching just about anything in this world, all stemming from our own personal experiences, and that includes how we approach looking at the past. For many of the people living in bygone era's we now hold as sacred, there was nothing inherently special about the year they were living in. they were just trying to live out their lives as best they could. The cars we now look at as shining examples of automobile craftsmanship they would just drive around in solely as a means to get from Point A to Point B. The art from these decades we now revere as classics were just the newest movies playing at the multiplex. At the time, what they were going through was just the routine steps of life.

The Neon Demon Is A Glowing Example Of Thoughtful Absurdity

I pity the poor human being tasked with writing out the plot summary that has to go onto the back of the DVD's and Blu-Ray's of Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon. What can you possibly type up that'll adequately prepare a prospective buyer/renter of this title for what they're in for? The Neon Demon isn't just littered with moments that are difficult to recount due to their absurdity, the film practically thrives on seeing how far it can push moviegoers in terms of throwing an ever escalating series of unorthodox images and scenes in their direction.

The Boxtrolls Review

Thinking Inside The Box

I admire the fact that LAIKA seems willing to have a wide variety of tones in their cinematic work. While DreamWorks Animation proudly boasts of trying to make each film emulate the comedic stingily of Shrek as closely as possible, LAIKA has a distinctive atmosphere for each of their three features. Still, that kind of efforts doesn't excuse the prominent flaws found in The Boxtrolls, a film with plenty of charm, but a surprising lack of focus.