Maleficent

Disney continues its live-action fairy tale ride with Maleficent, a centerpiece for the evil fairy of the studio's Sleeping Beauty. At least we think she's an evil fairy. But just like in Wicked, we see that the old fairy tale wasn't telling us something.

Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) used to be a happy fairy in the magical Moors. Next door is a kingdom of evil humans; one of which, Stefan (Sharlto Copley) grows up from peasant to scheming soldier. The evil King Henry tries to invade the Moors, but Maleficent stops him. So Henry tells his men that whoever beats Maleficent will be the next King. Stefan, who happens to be Maleficent's former childhood only human friend, does the deed. He only cuts off her wings, but that's enough ...

Maleficent promptly reinvents herself into the Evil Queen of the Moors. She crashes the Christening of Stefan's newborn daughter, Aurora, to give her the all-familiar sleeping curse. But the curse will break with true love's kiss. She watches over the Princess to pass the time before the curse is to take effect. That comes with the unfortunate side effect of Maleficent actually caring for her. 

It's the directorial debut of production designer Robert Stromberg (Avatar, Alice in Wonderland). His production designers, Dylan Cole and Gary Freeman, populate the film with plenty of visual splendor. It's especially so with the Moors, a land populated with many unique creatures. When Maleficent "corrupts" it, the only bad thing that happens is that there's no day. That eternal night is a luminescent wonderland. 

But what about the star of the movie? As portrayed by Jolie, Maleficent's evil side is subtly hammy. Her best scenes are her awkward encounters with her intended victim. She just doesn't know what to do around that little princess. Her shift back to good makes dramatic sense.

Maleficent is a good twist on some old fairy tale cliches. Though flashes of other modern fairy tales may come when watching it, particularly near the end. Especially Sleeping Beauty; the cursing scene is recreated here almost word to word. 

As for a verdict. Whether in 3D or Flatscreen, it's a good family matinee. But be careful that certain scenes in the opening are beyond disturbing.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The mid-credits of last summer's The Wolverine hinted at something big. Now we see that something big. It's X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which sees the return of director Bryan Singer and a few alumni from the first three films.

It's the near future which means it's not good? How not good? Robots. That kind of future. These robots are Sentinels, originally built to get rid of the perceived threat of mutantkind. But they also went after humans who'd one day have mutant kids. The Sentinels can adapt to any mutant, so any fight with them is a no-win scenario.

And how'd this get started? Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), formerly known as Raven, assassinated Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) in 1973. The Government caught her and studied her to give the Sentinels their adapting ability.

So in future-time, Shadowcat (Ellen Page) beams back Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) consciousness to 1973. He has to get disillusioned Professor X (James MacAvoy) and mean Magneto (Michael Fassbender) back together to sway Mystique from her plan. It's not that easy.

There's much to Marvel at in the visual department. The Makeup department creates not just wild mutant looks, but 70's hairstyles as well. The Visual Effects team render a wide array of awesome mutant powers such as teleporting, elemental shapeshifting and super speed. That last power belongs to Quicksilver (Evan Peters), who puts it to good use to break out Magneto from his specially designed prison and then to stop a potentially lethal showdown (hilariously). He exits the movie after this, most likely because he'd resolve the plot right away.

The rest of the movie builds up the stakes. There's only three X-Men in 1973, and the "best there is" isn't yet. Meanwhile, scenes back in the future emphasize the deadline of their situation. It's one of those movies that you know things will go well but you can't help but tense up.

X-Men fans dissatisfied with the results of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine may be happy to know that this movie kicks their events to the curb. As for me, it irks me in hindsight as to why not much thought went into those movies' creative process in the first place.

As for this one, it's simply the best of the X-Men films. It's the most fun I've had with this franchise in a long time. This one is worth remembering.

Stay all the way to the end and you'll meet the titular antagonist of the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse.

Godzilla

The King of the Monsters has returned.

Ten years after his last Toho adventure in a model city, Final Wars, Godzilla is back to stomp on a real town. Of course, there was that American version, but not a lot of people want to talk about it anymore.

In 1999, something destroys the Janjira Power Plant in Tokyo. The Government says it was a natural disaster, but scientist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), whose wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) died in the disaster, thinks it was something else. That something else is a MUTO, a flying, city stomping thing that eats radiation for lunch. It was in hibernation, but now it's free and is ready to feed. Even more, there's two of them.

The two MUTOs decide to make San Francisco their nesting grounds. The Government decides to nuke them before that happens. Of course, that would screw them up even more than they already are. So, Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) suggests they conscript something capable of beating up a set of city stomping monsters.

That something? The very city stomper whose name is the title. What more can there be said?

Let's talk about the visual effects. Needless to say, they're nothing like Toho's man-in-suit in model city formula. Whether or not you find this a good thing depends on how much you like the older films. As for me, someone who's into the older films, the visual effects are amazing. Especially in its designs of Godzilla and the MUTOs.

His name may be the title, but Godzilla only first appears fifty minutes into the film. Before then, there's plenty of human drama that may disinterest many a monster fan. I wasn't bored by the drama; at the very least, they did establish what threats the MUTOs were in-between scenes of Godzilla. At least there was one benefit of minimum Godzilla: the climactic unveiling of his signature Atomic Breath was utterly spectacular.

Those looking for a monster stomping through cities won't be disappointed. Godzilla may take a while to get to the "good stuff," but when it does, it gets good. Per usual, I'll let you decide on seeing it on Flatscreen or 3D.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

His Broadway adventure didn't pan out in the end, but Spider-Man's film career is still going strong. His latest film adventure, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 once again has Andrew Garfield in the familiar costume.

Peter Parker's life as the swinging superhero is going well. But his love life with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) isn't doing good. He wants to commit to a relationship, but he also wants to honor her father's (Denis Leary) dying wish to keep away from her. Because if any super-villain found out Peter is Spider-Man and he's dating Gwen ...

Meanwhile, nerdy scientist and number one Spidey fan Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) gets into an accident involving electric eels and becomes the super-villain Electro. Peter's former best bud Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns from boarding school to take over his father's company, Oscorp. Oscorp is up to no good, as Peter's dead father, Richard (Campbell Scott) realized. And Harry decides to put the no good to (his) good use.

Director Marc Webb's second swing with Spidey looks and sounds good. Spidey's web-swinging is awesome, but Electro's appearance, which combines CGI with makeup, is just as impressive. Meanwhile, Daniel Mindel's cinematography has some amazing use of the color blue. The music department, headed by Hans Zimmer, contributes a pretty good score.

There's a lot going on and that's the film's biggest problem. A few of the plots aren't adequately developed to their fullest extent. Take Electro for example. He starts out as a nice guy before becoming a bitter super-villain. He's defeated like a standard super-villain, rather than a tragic super-villain. There's a large difference between them. Still, a major end twist leaves the audience wondering about Spidey's future.

Book-ending the film is Paul Giamatti as a thug named Aleksei, who gains the super-villain identity of the Rhino. He's delightfully hammy both as bad man and super bad man. But Spidey's wisecracks are the comedic highlights of the film.

As it stands, Spidey's latest film adventure gives the audience a good ride. The plot-line could've used more work, but the amazing set-pieces make it worth it. Let's just see how Spidey's next adventures, which include a super-villain get-together called The Sinister Six, will play out.

Stay tuned mid-credits for a scene from another upcoming Marvel movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past.