Maleficent

I’ve been looking forward to Maleficent for a long time. Even my girlfriend told me that she would love to see it at the cinema. That was a proof to me that we simply have to go see it and so we did. The result turned out very well. Although it is a digital parade, everything is so honest and beautiful that it can be easily forgiven. Angelina Jolie couldn’t be better. Her character has wonderful mood swings and I enjoyed her feelings like never before. But I also enjoyed the locations to which the Americans put great care. It is an absolutely amazing fantasy world, where it is immediately clear who belongs to whom and what the map of it would probably look like if you decided to draw it. This movie is just like that. It seeks strength in simplicity and I simply enjoyed it. I wouldn’t be angry at all if there were more such fairytales. (06/11/2014)

A very atypical 180 million-dollar budget affair that is shorter and more concise than it may seem at first glance. It is surprising how Robert Stromberg builds it from scratch, going straight to the point, without beating around the bush and letting Angelina Jolie fool around with horns and mischievously giggle to add to it all. Unfortunately, the story suffers quite a bit, so if you manage to catch onto the hackneyed plot and see it through the barrage of visual effects and camera flyovers and zooms like in Avatar, you will see that it is very generic and visually polished – maybe even excessively so. Some of the visual effects are aweful, and there’s also the madman Sharlto Copley. (02/21/2015)

I was expecting a good fairy tale, but this exceeded my expectations. It's a beautiful story that truly is a fairy tale, but there are dark passages and it's quite gritty in places, yet it's pieced together with humor, tenderness, and also the excellent performance of Angelina Jolie. Here, my experience was only marred by people in the cinema who felt the need to loudly express how much they saw and understood the story. And no, I'm not talking about children, I'm talking about adults. The visual aspect is absolutely captivating, and the creators truly excelled with it. The monsters are awesome. (07/03/2014)

Avatar style. Maleficent really looks like she is off to fight Pandora, and in modern Snow White style, she tries to persuade us that she was right to be mad at the king. And it works. Angelina’s acting is excellent and so I found the rather lackluster Sharlto Copley disappointing (although in truth he didn’t have much of a part to play). I don’t know if incessant updating will work with all fairytales, but so far it seems to be going well. (08/26/2014)

A very stylish, dark, visually stunning and entertaining fairy tale with Angelina Jolie dominating. The downside for me was the highly unlikeable main character as Sleeping Beauty, and the overall retelling of the story in the American way didn't sit well with me, as I know the original story template almost by heart, but moving beyond those two issues, I was still entertained beyond measure. Handled with style and clarity. 75% (08/23/2014)