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.

The Prince of Egypt Is An Outlier In DreamWorks Animations Filmography Very Much For The Better

Today, DreamWorks Animation is known for one thing and one thing only: computer-animated movies with pop culture references and pop songs a-plenty. That's a touch unfair to their entire catalog of the studio that also includes deviations from that norm like How to Train Your Dragon or Kung Fu Panda, but there's also no denying that it's an apt summarization of most of their output. The trailer for their newest film, Abominable, feels like a microcosm of all the stereotypes associated with DreamWorks Animation, from an extended belching joke to the closing gag of a yeti dancing around to the tune of Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. That's a DreamWorks Animation movie right there, through and through.

Stardust Is A Good Old Fashioned Fantasy Romp And A Highly Entertaining One At That!

Among his numerous hallmarks as a director, Matthew Vaughn loves to play fast and loose with the comic books and graphic novels he adapts into movies. More often than not, Vaughn will basically just run with the core concept of what he's adapting into a film to better suit his own interests and desires most notably in turning Mark Millar's grim Kingsman graphic novel into a breezy Bond homage. Even X-Men: First Class, his feature most faithful to its source material, took liberties with what it was adapting and this tendency of Vaughn's is on full display in his first ever directorial effort, Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel that's far more family-friendly than its source material.

Mother! Is Mighty Interesting But Also Mightily Plagued By Pacing Problems (MASSIVE SPOILERS WITHIN)

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW OF MOTHER! IS SOAKED IN SPOILERS BECAUSE I'VE FOUND IT IS DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT MOTHER! WITHOUT DELVING INTO PLOT DETAILS THAT CONSTITUTE ACTUAL SPOILERS DUE TO THE SECRETIVE MARKETING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

Batman Returns Is Weird For Sure But It Doesn't Add Up To Much

Boy howdy, is this ever a weird movie.

What Lies Beneath Review

What Lies Beneath is a departure for Robert Zemeckis, a director whose inhabited many different genres in his multiple decades as a filmmaker, but only delved into the world of horror two other times in his career, with the 1992 horror/comedy Death Becomes Her and the feature that traumatized me as a youth, The Polar Express. What Lies Beneath may not be as terrifying as his 2004 Christmas-themed motion picture, but hey, it works on its own merits as a spooky ghost story with some appropriately bombastic twists that feel like they should be told around a campfire via an adult holding a flashlight under their face.