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By MANOHLA DARGISMAY 29, 2014
Angelina Jolie makes a fabulous monster. As the title character in “Maleficent” — a divertingly different rethink of an awfully old story — she breezes through the movie, part superstar, part superfreak.
Her red mouth slashes across the screen while her clothes billow like storm clouds, her body framed by enormous shimmering wings and her head capped by a pair of majestic horns. The wings allow her to soar, but the horns mainly give her character a distinctly Freudian kink, some phallic enhancement to go with the fairy tale enchantment. And, my, what big
She wears them like a crown in this live-action postscript to the visually stunning 1959 Disney animated musical “Sleeping Beauty.” This time, the focus isn’t on the beautiful, blond Aurora, who falls into a deep, bewitched sleep after pricking her finger on a spindle, but rather on the sinister scene stealer who cursed her in a fit of pique and a puff of acid-green smoke. As it turns out, Maleficent (it rhymes with magnificent) had her reasons and a back story to go with them. Soothingly introduced in voice-over by Janet McTeer, Maleficent’s story opens when she was a happy young fairy (Isobelle Molloy and Ella Purnell) living in, and flying over, the moors, a lush, computer-generated wonderland populated by cute uglies and delicately mossy, twiggy giants.
Angelina Jolie makes a fabulous monster. As the title character in “Maleficent” — a divertingly different rethink of an awfully old story — she breezes through the movie, part superstar, part superfreak.
Her red mouth slashes across the screen while her clothes billow like storm clouds, her body framed by enormous shimmering wings and her head capped by a pair of majestic horns. The wings allow her to soar, but the horns mainly give her character a distinctly Freudian kink, some phallic enhancement to go with the fairy tale enchantment. And, my, what big
She wears them like a crown in this live-action postscript to the visually stunning 1959 Disney animated musical “Sleeping Beauty.” This time, the focus isn’t on the beautiful, blond Aurora, who falls into a deep, bewitched sleep after pricking her finger on a spindle, but rather on the sinister scene stealer who cursed her in a fit of pique and a puff of acid-green smoke. As it turns out, Maleficent (it rhymes with magnificent) had her reasons and a back story to go with them. Soothingly introduced in voice-over by Janet McTeer, Maleficent’s story opens when she was a happy young fairy (Isobelle Molloy and Ella Purnell) living in, and flying over, the moors, a lush, computer-generated wonderland populated by cute uglies and delicately mossy, twiggy giants.
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