tauhidra-blog - Tumblr blog

tauhidra-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil review – there's no panto joy in practice

This sequel has a large cast. It's not just Angelina Jolie who reprises her post-fairytale turn from the 2014 movie as Maleficent, the wicked witch from the story of Sleeping Beauty who isn't as wicked as all that and whose reputed wickedness may simply be a patriarchal mythology trick. Also, like Aurora, the demure heroine who has now made up with Maleficent, there's the estimated Elle Fanning back as a godmother. Plus we now get Michelle Pfeiffer as Queen Ingrith and Robert Lindsay as King John in a decent form–the rulers of the country, and Prince Phillip's family. The three digitized pixies are back–Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville–and Chiwetel Ejiofor now have a cameo as one of the Moors ' horned, winged monsters, the contested land adjacent to the realm of humans, where Maleficent is housed.

But the terrible truth is that Maleficent 2 is a bit weak, given all this star-power, and runs out of narrative steam before the halfway mark. Maleficent is not the mistress of evil: most of the evil has now been deconstructed out of her, and the mistress-of-evil role will obviously be usurped by someone else from Maleficent, someone who will be portrayed to us as genuinely bad, but whose apparent depravity can still be explained or backed up in Maleficent 3. For now, it's a matter of being simply evil, and therefore a bit of a scene-stealer. Maleficent has become as scary and revisionist as one of the Addams Family films. Gradually, when she comes from the Moors, Evil's girlfriend defines her image: a cultural or racial difference: alienated, embarrassed, and otherwise.

The situation now is that the boyfriend of Aurora, young Prince Phillip (played by Harris Dickinson now, taking over from Brenton Thwaites) has now proposed marriage, furious with Maleficent, and somewhat disconcerting with King John and Queen Ingrith. I propose a happy engagement-celebration dinner at their castle with some misgivings, at which Aurora and Maleficent will be the guests of honor. This diplomacy, though, ends in disaster.

The main problem is that the film gradually collapses into a final battle, like a terrible lot of MCU movies, as if in a kind of storytelling entropy. Which started as a dramatic personality contest, with actors having to say or do interesting or funny stuff, becomes a big CGI fighting scene: a clash of digitally created armies creating a huge ho-hum spectacle. This time around, too, Jolie's character is less interesting, and the digitization of her head, with its flat cheekbones Max-Headroom-type, further flattened her efficiency. This Maleficent is disappointing, but Jolie definitely sells it well, as does Fanning, who in her profession takes it as seriously as anything else.

#maleficent #maleficent 2

0 notes

tauhidra-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Jeremy Renner’s Ex-Wife Sonni Pach

Jeremy Renner’s custody battle with his ex-wife, Sonni Pacheco, over their 6-year-old daughter, Ava, has escalated. In new court documents, Pacheco claims that the Avengers star talked about killing her and put a gun in his mouth that same night, according to TMZ.

In documents obtained by the site, Pacheco, 28, alleges that Renner, 48, was under the influence of cocaine and alcohol at a club in November when he told someone that he “could not deal with any more” and “just wanted her gone.”

Later that night, the Hawkeye star put a gun in his mouth and threatened to kill himself before firing the gun into the ceiling while Ava was asleep, according to the documents. A nanny overheard him say that he was going to kill Pacheco and then himself because “it was better than Ava had no parents than to have as a mother,” the Canadian model attests.

Pacheco also claims in the documents that Renner has a history of substance abuse and of verbal and emotional abuse. She alleges that he once left cocaine on a bathroom counter where Ava could reach it.

#Jeremy Renner #Sonni Pacheco

0 notes