Netflix And Chill: Beowulf (2007)

While long the film has languished on my shelf,
I now picked it on Netflix to watch for myself.
Leaving the bluray inside its case,
A sign of my movie collecting addiction disgrace.

Ere I was soon feeling slightly remiss,
Being presented the vision of Robert Zemeckis.
An epic poem is translated for the layman,
By writers Roger Avary and that Neil Gaiman.

Things start with Anthony Hopkins and Robin Wright,
Crispin Glover plays Grendel, who gives them a fright,
There's also John Malkovich, and plenty of mead,
Then Ray Winstone comes along to portray our lead.

The epic tale is told with motion-capture animation,
Allowing Zemeckis to show us his grand imagination,
But the end result is a massive misfire,
Despite showing our heroes fighting monsters with ire. 

Brendan Gleeson is here, and Angelina Jolie too,
Alison Lohman plays Beowulf's secret boo,
But none of them work as well as they could,
The technical gimmickry not doing them good.

There's a decent score here from Alan Silvestri,
I'm not sure how to judge the cinematography from Robert Presley,
Darkness and light are used to impress,
But the technique's not perfected, it's a bit of a mess.

There's no real sense of grandiose scale,
Most viewers will mark this as one giant fail.
Zemeckis is now much more devoted to tech,
His film-making style now a glossy pile of dreck.

Here there be dragons, and golden men born of flame,
But it's lacking in thrills and the director's to blame.
I knew when I bought this years ago it was a bit of a risk,
But now I know it won't be long until I resell my disc.

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Tourist (2010)

A remake of a French film from five years earlier, The Tourist is a film that somehow gained a notorious reputation for just how bad it was. And I'm here to say that it's not actually that bad. It's not very good either, but it's a relatively easy watch with a couple of photogenic stars trying to deliver star turns amidst a number of plot twists that feel increasingly ridiculous as we hurtle towards the welcome relief of the end credits.

Angelina Jolie is Elise, a woman being constantly surveilled by people who want to catch her communicating with her ex, Alexander Pearce. Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) is heading up the surveillance team, and he answers to Chief Inspector Jones (Timothy Dalton). Pearce is responsible for stealing billions of dollars from a mobster, Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff), but he's wanted by the authorities because he owes hundreds of millions in back taxes. As a ploy to keep the police on their toes, Elise chooses a random stranger (Frank Tupelo, played by Johnny Depp) to befriend on her travels. That starts everyone thinking that Tupelo is actually Pearce, which puts him in a lot of hot water.

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Julian Fellowes and one Christopher McQuarrie, The Tourist is arguably most hampered by the fact that it's not really any one thing. While it was nominated in the "musical or comedy" categories at the 2011 Golden Globes, it's not exactly a laugh-riot. It's also never too tense or thrilling, despite the director himself calling it a "travel romance with thriller elements" (according to Wikipedia, so feel free to take that with a pinch of salt). That's a real shame, especially when you have two stars who are more than capable of looking as if they can adequately deal with numerous onscreen death-defying escapades. It also makes it harder to be distracted as one coincidence piles upon another in each subsequent scene.

I didn't mind it though, and I'm used to watching films that I don't rush to place in any one category. There's something enjoyably old-fashioned about the structure, although it's harder for films to be sold as travelogues in an age when seeing the sights of the world is easier than it was back when every early Bond movie was the absolute height of the thrilling and the exotic.

Depp and Jolie are both decent enough choices for the lead roles. The former can do the slightly bumbling and befuddled act, the latter can seem graceful and beautiful and dangerous with seemingly very little effort. Bettany has to become more and more agitated as the film plays out, but it would have been better to see the mess around him increase exponentially with his irritation and anger. Dalton is used sparingly, but is an ever-welcome presence in movies, and Berkoff is unsurprisingly believable as a hard-hearted gangster out for vengeance. Rufus Sewell also has a couple of scenes, but his role could have easily been played by absolutely anyone, and the rest of the cast feels quite bland and anonymous (perhaps just to my unobservant mind, although it would seems like a decision was made to save money elsewhere to give the leads a bumper payday and pay for the scenic locations).

I'm never going to rewatch this, unless forced, and it's not one I'll ever recommend to others. I didn't find it a pain to watch though, and the 103-minute runtime passed by easily enough. It's light, daft, and completely implausible, but I could name you 100 other films that are similar, but with just enough minor improvements to help them avoid the reputation that this has. 

5/10

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Eternals (2021)

If you want some wholesome and enjoyable content to make you smile then you should check out the many photos of Lia McHugh on her IMDb page. Most of them have clearly been out there by McHugh herself, complete with contextualising text descriptions that show how much she loves her acting career.

If you can spend two hours browsing that selection of photos then you will probably have a better time than you would if you actually watched Eternals, a Marvel movie that feels more redundant than any others we have seen so far.

Described as Earth’s first superheroes, Eternals are a group of people with different powers who work together to help care for the human race. They can only ever intervene when humans are being attacked by monsters called deviants, which conveniently explains why they never tried to help when “the snap” happened, and most of their time is spent just observing people and trying to act like one of them. There hasn’t been any deviant attack for a long, long time. And then there is one, one unlike the others. This deviant may be able to absorb powers while it takes lives. And it may reveal a truth about the Eternals that they will struggle to accept.

Although it’s not actually a bad movie, in many ways, I can feel my enthusiasm for this film ebbing away with every word I write. There is a mildly interesting development in the second half that takes things in a slightly unexpected direction, but the end result is still a group of people dealing with some giant CGI. What’s worse is that the more enjoyable characters seem to be too quickly dismissed from the action.

Director Chloé Zhao, who also helped write the screenplay (Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo being the other writers on this), does what is expected of her, trying to liven things up enough with an action sequence here and there to distract from the fact that these are the dullest superheroes we have seen in a long time. Sadly, she cannot do enough to make up for the central problem.

At least the cast help, although the lead being played by Gemma Chan leads to the big problem of, well, the lead being played by Gemma Chan. Richard Madden does a bit better, as does the aforementioned McHugh, but the best cast members are Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kumail Nanjiani. Barry Keoghan plays an interesting character, but plays him as if he can barely be bothered to stay awake. I don’t blame him, it’s a tough job to stay energised with such a mix of deja vu and plodding mediocrity. Even Salma Hayek cannot help, although her relatively small amount of screentime was better than no Hayek at all.

There is a nice cross-section of characters here (Lauren Ridloff is a deaf Flash-like character who speaks in sign language), but the bad outweighs the good. By far. With the pacing issues, the inability to engage viewers properly, and the tired feeling the material has, I have to say that this is the weakest big MCU movie so far. I hope it is an anomaly.

4/10

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Gone In 60 Seconds (2000)

A slick Bruckheimer-produced action movie from the year 2000, Gone In 60 Seconds is an easy film to dismiss when you think of some of the other bombastic vehicles he has put his name to (two of those, Con Air and The Rock, also starring Nicolas Cage). But it holds up really well for what it is, which is a fun 2-hour film with lots of nice cars being stolen.

Giovanni Ribisi is Kip Raines, a young man trying to steal a load of cars for a major criminal, Raymond Calitri AKA The Carpenter (Christopher Eccleston). He fails, which enrages The Carpenter. With a ticking clock, he arranges to get Kip's older brother, Memphis Raines (Cage), on the case. Memphis left that life behind a long time ago, but, as the life of his younger brother is on the line, he reluctantly puts a team together. That team includes 'Sway' (Angelina Jolie), Otto (Robert Duvall), and The Sphinx (Vinnie Jones, in a largely non-speaking role). The plan is to scope out the cars and grab all fifty in one night. That's a tough order, made even tougher by the two cops (Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant) who sense something big about to go down.

Based on the 1974 movie by H. B. Halicki (I've not seen it, no idea how closely the two match up), Gone In 60 Seconds has a decent script by Scott Rosenberg and solid direction from Dominic Sena. They know the right level of passable implausibility to go for, and keep things moving in between nice car moments with some great exchanges of dialogue between characters (particularly any scene involving Lindo and Olyphant). And then, despite taking such a long time to get there, the cars get to shine when they're onscreen. Especially in the finale, involving a Shelby Mustang GT500 given the name "Eleanor". 

There are some good montage moments, a soundtrack that has some fantastic choices to accompany the visuals (The Chemical Brothers are on there, as are Apollo Four Forty, Moby, and War), and enough great stunt sequences to please most action movie fans, although they are sparingly spaced out throughout the third act.

Now let’s get to that cast. Cage has fallen out of favour in recent years. I am still a big fan, no matter where on the Cage spectrum of craziness his performance falls, and he became a surprisingly good action movie star once given a shot. The same, more or less, could be said of Jolie, who works very well here as the cool female really into her cars. Duvall, Jones, Scott Caan, Chi Mcbride, Scott Caan and all of the other crew members fit their roles perfectly, Ribisi gets to be slightly bratty, and Will Patton once again delivers some fine Will Patton-ness. Eccleston is the weak link, not as charismatic and intimidating a villain as he could be, but he’s okay. The bigger threat comes from the “heroes” being caught by the cops, headed up by Lindo and Olyphant, who complement one another brilliantly, making a very entertaining double act. 

Maybe not as rewatchable as some other movies in this vein, Gone In 60 Seconds is still a very fun ride, using a great ensemble cast to keep everything ticking over nicely before it finally puts the pedal to the metal.

7/10

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Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil (2019)

Although I really wasn't a fan of the revisionism of Maleficent, the strengths in that movie were still strong enough to ensure that I would watch a sequel (well . . . the strengths in the movie and the fact that I have to try and watch every film ever in a never-ending quest for completionism). From the very start of the film, Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil sets itself out as superior to the film it follows. The groundwork has been laid, the characters put in place, and this quickly turns into an entertaining mix of dark comedy and fairytale characters at war.

Angelina Jolie is, once again, the main character, and once again she's a villain allowed to prove that she doesn't have to remain in that box. Elle Fanning returns as Aurora, the young woman who happens to now have Maleficent as her guardian/godmother, and everything starts to move along at a rapid pace when Aurora accepts a proposal from Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson). What could lead to peace between humans and non-humans instead leads to a confrontation, and it's one that was planned by Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer).

The main returning name behind the camera here is writer Linda Woolverton, now working with Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, and she seems to enjoy being freed from the obvious constraints of the twisted familiarity required for the first film. The character of Maleficent gets to enjoy her powers while also, in a few amusing moments, wrestling with more civil interactions with people she would have previously avoided at all costs.

Director Joachim Rønning has a relatively easy life, considering the cast and crew at his disposal. That transfers to the screen, with every fun performance taking place in a fantasy land realised by top-notch, and often beautiful, CGI.

Jolie is still perfect in her lead role, whether she's fighting back against scheming humans or practicing a polite smile that hopefully won't terrify anyone she is trying to be nice to. Pfeiffer is equally perfect in her role, the Queen with the scheme, and she proves to be a worthy opponent to Maleficent, happy to make many sacrifices on her way to a greater good. Fanning is very sweet and likeable, Dickinson is as you'd expect a Prince to be (meaning he's not given all that much to do), and Sam Riley once again tries to steal a couple of scenes as Diaval, a "sidekick" to Maleficent. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ed Skrein work quite well under a lot of make-up, Robert Lindsay is a King who is put out of action quite early on in the proceedings, and there are enjoyable little turns from Jenn Murray, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, David Gyasi, and Warwick Davis. (of course . . . is there a big-budget fantasy film that doesn't decide to use Davis?)

It's not up there with the best of these movies, and still has an air of predictability about it, but Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil is surprisingly enjoyable from start to finish. And it's easily much better than the first film.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Wanted (2008)

James McAvoy plays Wesley, a frustrated loser stuck in an office job he hates, living with a girlfriend who is cheating on him (with his "friend", Barry, played by Chris Pratt), and generally feeling as if his life has amounted to absolutely nothing. That all changes one day when he is caught up in a shoot-out involving a woman (Angelina Jolie) who can perform a number of seemingly-impossible acts. She is part of a team of assassins, a team that wants Wesley to join, because they know he has the skills required. Led by Sloan (Morgan Freeman), this team is tasked with eliminating people who are picked by a fate-deciding loom. If you think that is silly, just wait until you see the rest of this film.

Based on a comic book series by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones, Wanted is absolutely ridiculous from start to finish. The characters are superhuman, every major set-piece has at least one stunt too many added to it, and the ending is laughably demented. And I love it. The screenplay, written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan, is juvenile stuff, complete wish-fulfilment for young men who sit around and daydream of being someone important and brave, but the energy and flair ensure that you'll have a hell of a good time, as long as you don't overthink things.

Director Timur Bekmambetov is at ease with the kind of action on display here (having previously delivered wonderfully imaginative, and memorable, moments in the Night Watch and Day Watch movies) and he keeps the tone consistent throughout. If you're wanting something with any hint of realism then look elsewhere.

McAvoy has a blast in the main role, especially when he first transitions from mild-mannered cuckold to badass who realises he can shed his old life. Jolie is in her top badass phase, which gave us films as varied as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, this, and Salt (to name a few), and she's about as cool as they come. And then you have Freeman, once again playing god, in a way, and doing well in his supporting role. There are also decent turns from Terence Stamp (in a cameo role), Thomas Kretschmann, Common (if you have a script about assassins then send it to him, because he seems to love 'em), Marc Warren, David O'Hara, Konstantin Khabenskiy, as well as that amusing turn from Pratt, playing the disloyal friend.

This is a film that wants you to believe that the rules of the physical world around us are more flexible than we have been led to believe. It tries hard to ground the main premise in a theory that seems possible, but utterly fails to do so. The whole thing, from the superpowers to the grand design of it all, is just far too outlandish. So the best thing to do is relax and enjoy the action without overthinking things. And then enjoy the grand finale, which I absolutely love (although I can see why some will find it a step too far). Basically, if you've gone along with the film up to that point then you should find the ending as wonderful and hilarious as I do. If you've not been able to get on board with the film at all then, well, I guess you may not even make it to the end.

7/10

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Ani-MAY-tion: Shark Tale (2004)

An animated film that mixes elements of the classic "Jack The Giant Killer" tale and numerous aquatic puns and gags, Shark Tale doesn't reach greatness in any individual aspect, but the silly jokes and excellent voice cast make it a fun way to pass some time.

Will Smith is the voice of Oscar, a small fish that dreams of big things. He works in a whale washing business, employed by a puffer fish named Sykes (Martin Scorsese). So preoccupied is Oscar with his dreams, he is oblivious to the fact that another employee, Angie (Renée Zellweger), seems quite smitten with him. Meanwhile, a mob boss shark (voiced by Robert De Niro) is struggling to get his youngest son, Lenny (Jack Black), to think and act like a proper shark. All of these characters are about to collide as Oscar turns his fortunes around after a major incident involving his close proximity to a dangerous shark that ends up dead.

It's hard not to see a couple films from this time as cynical attempts to grab some of that Finding Nemo money. You had this film and you had The Reef AKA Shark Bait (2006), and neither of them managed to be as good as the Pixar film that seemed to birth them. Thankfully, however, this is closer to the first movie than it is to the later one, which is just cheap (at least it certainly looks cheap), lazy and visually ugly.

That's not to say that directors Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman do much to garner praise here. The visuals are fine throughout, although sometimes it can be easy to forget that things are set under the sea (despite all of the main characters being fish), and the script, co-written by Letterman and Michael J. Wilson, is simple and amusing, keeping everything bright and lively for the intended younger viewers.

But the cast is where the movie shines. Smith is in fine form, all smiles and cockiness even as he looks to move further and further out of his depth, no pun intended. Zellweger is a sweet friend/potential romance, even if her character doesn't get to do much beyond helping Oscar and making heart-eyes at him. Scorsese and De Niro are both wonderful, their voices fitting their very different characters nicely, and their every interaction a treat for film fans. Black is a bit weak in his role, as is Angelina Jolie, also suffering from the fact that her character is shallow and only interested in someone with plenty of money, but the other people lending their voices to the proceedings include Michael Imperioli, Peter Falk, Ziggy Marley, Doug E. Doug, Vincent Pastore, and one or two others you should enjoy.

You'll probably never prioritise this in your viewing schedule unless you have little ones to entertain but you could do a lot worse. It has a decent soundtrack, plenty of colour, and one silly little gag involving a hammerhead shark and a piece of cutlery that makes me laugh heartily every time I see it.

6/10

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Hackers (1995)

You know what all the cool kids were up to in the 1990s? They were showing off their computer hacking skills, whizzing around on rollerblades, listening to The Prodigy, and playing pre-release versions of Wipeout (not the gameshow, the classic Playstation game). How do I know this, despite not being one of the cool kids at that time? Because that's what every one of the leads does in Hackers, and this is a film populated almost exclusively by characters deemed to be cool.

There's a dangerous virus that threatens major harm to a big corporation, unless a payment of $25M is made, and things have been set up to pin the blame on a bunch of teenage hackers. Jonny Lee Miller is Dade, Angelina Jolie is Kate, Jesse Bradford is Joey, Matthew Lillard is Cereal, Laurence Mason is Nikon, and Renoly Santiago is Phreak. They're the good guys. Fisher Stevens is a man who works for the big company being threatened, and he likes to go by the name The Plague. He's not with the good guys. Nor is Agent Dick Gill (played by Wendell Pierce). To be fair, the hackers don't do much to make themselves look innocent as the authorities try to get to the bottom of this major, dangerous, security breach.

Hackers is ridiculous. It's a number of cool and funky moments strung together by an unbelievable plot that surely felt dated just a few years after it was initially released. The script by Rafael Moreu alternates between amusing and cringe-inducing, and director Iain Softley doesn't do anything in half measures, whether it's the fashion choices, soundtrack, or graphic design displaying the hacking sequences (main headshot of character, camera rotates around, and keystrokes and symbols are illuminated around them). But that's not necessarily the wrong way to treat this material, which is why the ridiculousness of it all ends up making it a fun viewing experience.

The relatively young cast helps, with a lot of likable performers on the cusp of reaching the next level in terms of success and recognisability (both Miller and Lillard would do very well just a year later, with Trainspotting and Scream, respectively). Miller is a lot of fun in the lead role, the cocky outsider who quickly gets in with the hacking clique, Jolie is some kind of ubercool cyber-pixie, and everyone else does their best to show that they're separate from the non-hacking plebicites that surround them. Fisher Stevens is also a lot of fun in his role, all arrogance and disdain for those around him, Wendell Pierce does well, and Lorraine Bracco is good with her underwritten role. And you even get a small role for Penn Jillette, and a fleeting cameo from Dave "Eurythmics" Stewart.

Although it's never going to be a film that you first think of when wanting something to watch for an evening, you could do a lot worse than this. It knows exactly what it is, it is very much of the time it was made, and it's difficult to hate. I enjoyed it, and I wouldn't rule out rewatching it at some point.

6/10

YES, I just pre-ordered this release.
Americans can pick up this one.

Unbroken (2014)

Jack O'Connell stars in this look at the incredibly tough life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete who was shot down during WWII, survived for 47 days in a raft, and then ended up in a Japanese POW camp where he became the target of a particularly vicious authority figure there. It's a story that shows the very best and worst of human nature, and the movie is highly recommended, even to those already familiar with the tale.

Directed by Angelina Jolie, this is a film that ticks all of the boxes. There are many moments here that we've all seen before, but they all add up to an impressive final product. And I guess this is one of those many occasions when truth seems stranger than fiction. It certainly has moments that feel very much like traditional Hollywood moments, but this is almost necessary to outweigh the darker sequences.

Using the book by Laura Hillenbrand as a template, the screenplay has been put together by William Nicholson, Richard LaGravenese, and the Coen brothers. Yes, you read that right. The Coen brothers. While no part of this ever feels like a Coen brothers movie, it's interesting to wonder just how much they contributed, and whether their presence is the reason that the film doesn't gloss over some nastier incidents that will make viewers flinch.

O'Connell is fantastic in the lead role, even if his accent isn't exactly spot on. Going through an incredible transformation between the beginning and end of the movie, he manages to keep showing inner strength and some kind of hope (sometimes for rescue and sometimes, I guess, for death), and keeps you rooting for him even as the odds of him surviving look to grow bigger and bigger. Domnhall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund and Finn Wittrock do well in their supporting roles, and Jai Courtney even manages not to irritate me during his brief time onscreen, but the other major figure in the movie is the nasty Watanabe, played by Takamasa Ishihara. He does superb work, creating a monster who has no real rhyme or reason to his actions. He takes a dislike to Zamperini from the very beginning and that is that.

Jolie does a fine job in the director's chair. As by-the-numbers as it is, there are a number of ways in which she refuses to go for the most obvious approach. The score by Alexandre Desplat is used more sparingly than you'd expect, for example, and the material is supported mainly by those central performances and some reliably fine work from Roger Deakins.

Unbroken doesn't rewrite the rulebook. It's a great story, and it's told well.

7/10

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Bonus Review: Maleficent (2014)

Maleficent, for those who may have forgotten, is the main villain in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, a film that remains an undeniable high point amongst so many animated classics from the House Of Mouse. This film is all about her, and allows people to see a different side to the famous baddie. Apparently, the story that we all thought we knew didn't play out quite as we were told. Maleficent changes that, giving viewers the other side of events. It is to Sleeping Beauty as Wicked is to The Wizard Of Oz, to make the obvious analogy.

I don't want to give too much away, as there are a number of pleasant surprises here in the way that the plot unfolds, so all I will say in my summation of the storyline is that Maleficent is introduced as a happy, winged fairy (played by Isobelle Molloy) and then experiences something that turns her into the scary adult that cursed a princess named Aurora. The scary adult version of Maleficent is played by Angelina Jolie, and the Aurora who is due to suffer on her sixteenth birthday is played by Elle Fanning.

Let me start with the positives here, because I liked a lot of aspects of Maleficent. The first, and main, ace up its sleeve is Angelina Jolie in the lead role. There may be scenes in which her cheekbones are far too distracting (no, really, I'm serious, I thought they were going to rip through her skin at some points), but her performance is almost perfect throughout. She puts on a decent British accent, looks superb in the costume and make-up, and manages to move from scary to funny to sad as the scenes demand. I know, I know, that's a basic requirement for many actors, although you wouldn't always know it, but she really dances through all of the mood changes with ease. The rest of the cast also do good work, although Sharlto Copley is left to go overboard as the distraught king/father who becomes obsessed with destroying Maleficent before any harm comes to his daughter. Fanning is very likable, and Sam Riley is an absolute standout as Diaval, a crow transformed into a man. Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, and Juno Temple are fine as fairies (although they are given far too many comedy moments that aren't really all that funny), and Brenton Thwaites is perfectly acceptable as the bland Prince Charming type, Prince Phillip, to be exact.

The production values, and the design of the world shown onscreen, are also excellent. There are often an over-abundance of FX shots in each sequence, but they're pretty gorgeous. This is eye candy, and it's eye candy that many will find most satisfying when things move from the sweetness and light of the opening scenes to the darker visual style of the next hour.

Unfortunately, that's about all I have in the way of compliments.

Director Robert Stromberg, enjoying his first time in the big chair, fumbles things from the very beginning. I have little doubt that many decisions were dictated to him, and I should have expected a final product like this from Disney (damn my eyes for letting the trailer deceive me), but the bright, colourful moments don't feel as if they belong in this movie. When things darken, however, they don't go dark enough. This isn't a twist on familiar material. This is an entire rewrite to make everything sweeter, which makes the movie lazy and clumsy when it should have been interesting and much more impressive.

Thankfully for Stromberg, he can quickly point a finger at screenwriter Linda Woolverton, because this is one stinker of a script. Oh, there are some great lines here and there, mostly made great thanks to the delivery by Jolie, but it's 95% awful, made worse by the fact that it's clearly meant to be clever and fun throughout. The voiceover narration, by Janet McTeer, is especially bad, often relating information that could have been shown onscreen. In fact, it's occasionally describing exactly what IS being shown onscreen. At the start of the movie I thought it was irritating, but acceptable, as a shorthand way to throw viewers into the world. But I soon wanted McTeer to just shut up, which she doesn't (okay, she does, but the narration keeps cropping up at various points throughout the movie).

This is a film made enjoyable by the sheer force of Jolie's adopted personality in the main role, and even she can't always do enough to improve the lines that she's given. That would take real magic, and there's none of that here.

5/10

Enjoy Maleficent's original appearance when this is released in the UK in a few days - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sleeping-Beauty-Blu-ray-Ken-Anderson/dp/B00JGTSWBK/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1401307120&sr=1-2&keywords=sleeping+beauty

I WILL keep reminding people that every copy of my book sold gets a few pounds in my pocket, and gets you a good read (if I say so myself). So please feel free to remember me whenever you're visiting Amazon.

The UK version can be bought here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395945647&sr=1-3&keywords=movie+guide

And American folks can buy it here - http://www.amazon.com/TJs-Ramshackle-Movie-Guide-Reviews-ebook/dp/B00J9PLT6Q/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395945752&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=TJs+ramshackle+mov

As much as I love the rest of the world, I can't keep up with all of the different links in different territories, but trust me when I say that it should be there on your local Amazon.