Tag: fantasy

Warigami

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★★★½
“Card sharks”

This feature-length entity is the omnibus edition of a series created for Canadian streaming service, CBC Gem. Originally 10 x ten-minute episodes, they’ve been combined into one entity, though the joins are still pretty visible. It is, however, a brisk and generally entertaining work, with a good twist to the usual martial-arts shenanigans.

Wendy Ohata (Piggford) lives with her grandfather, a martial-arts master who is the guardian of a scroll that potentially will confer great power on its owner. Wendy has never been able to tap into her talents, until one day she meets Vincent (Bradbury) and his pal Mark (Julien) – while they are burgling her house. Their choice was not a random one: Vincent felt a strong pull towards the house, and it turns out he and Wendy are long-lost siblings. More significantly, when they are within 50 feet of each other, they both become kami-jin. Those are people who are able to manipulate the density of paper at will, turn it into a lethal weapon in their hands.

Unfortunately, when these talents are used, they attract the attention of the villainous Teramoto clan, who want to use the scroll to return Japan to a more pastoral state, blaming technology for the evils of modern life. Their leading agent is another kami-jin, Sadako (Suzuki). She kidnaps Wendy’s grandfather and holds him hostage, demanding the scroll for his release. Can she, along with her new-found brother and his pal, locate the Teramoto lair, and rescue Gramps?

The show got my attention with an opening scene where Sadako is detained at the airport – it doesn’t end well for the agents trying to hold her – and didn’t let go for much of the way thereafter. This does a good job of balancing between the serious and the silly, no small task given the potentially ludicrous nature of the skill at its heart. About the only moment where it descends into full-on silliness is when Vincent dons a complete outfit of samurai armour made from paper – and even there, you can only admire the effort involved from the costume department. Wendy and Sadako make for a solid yin and yang at the center of things, with both acquitting themselves well on the martial-arts front. Director Lapeyre also deserves credit for not letting their talents be obscured by frenetic editing.

There are a couple of plot moments which have questionable plausibility: both the Teramoto lair and its underground entrance are discovered way too easily. And the ending is rather obviously pointing towards a sequel, though it’s one I’d be interested in seeing, and hopefully the makers are given the chance to deliver it. For, given its origins, this was better than I expected from a web series. That’s especially true for the way the talents of the kami-jin are portrayed, which varies from okay to flat-out impressive, on occasion. I was left with a strong urge to find a pack of playing cards and start working on my wrist strength.

Dir: Jason Lapeyre
Star: Emily Piggford, Kai Bradbury, Miho Suzuki, Akiel Julien.

Angelbound, by Christina Bauer

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Literary rating: ★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

It’s nice to be reminded of why I’m generally averse to romance in my reading – particularly poorly written and unconvincing romance, like we get here. An interesting scenario with potential gets bogged down in gooey mush during the second half: let’s just say, there are phrases such as “my tummy goes all tingly again.” Yes: again…  If I wasn’t already committed by that stage, being more than half-way through a 500+ page book, that sentence might well have led to this ending up as a Did Not Finish. Instead, I figured I’d at least get a review out of it. You’re welcome.

As noted, the setting isn’t the problem. It takes place in Purgatory, which in this rendition is basically a clearing house for souls with no particular destination. Will that be heaven or hell? One of the ways this can be decided is trial by combat, and on the opposition team responsible for dispatching them in the arena there is Myla Lewis, a quasi-demon 18-year-old, whose combat skills belie her years. It’s supposed to be a neutral location, but is increasingly coming under the thumb of Armageddon, the King of Hell, whose forces staged a velvet glove occupation around the time Myla was born. And speaking of which, who was her father anyway?

It’s populated by a whole host of supernatural tribes. Deoms, quasi-demons, angels, ghouls and the thrax, who are demon hunters, as well as a whole host of cross-breeds between them. This makes for a murky diplomatic situation, in which the various groups struggle – both overtly and covertly – for power. Myla really just wants to kick ass in the arena, but life and the deteriorating political situation have other plans. Not least in the well-muscled shape of Lincoln, a thrax prince. Which, of course, makes things tricky given Myla’s partly demonic ancestry. 

And that’s where the whole thing falls apart. We go from mutual disgust to tingly tummies, on both sides, without apparently passing through any of the intervening stages, and is not in the least bit convincing. Meanwhile, Myla is being drip-fed information about her heritage and past events through angel-controlled dreams, even though it seems everyone – not least her mother – knows exactly who her father was, for example. It’s contrived purely for the sake of drama, and isn’t exactly subtle about it. Equally inevitably, we end up discovering that Myla isn’t just a normal teenage girl – or normal teenage part-demon, anyway. It’s likely no spoiler to reveal that her flowering abilities end up with her going toe-to-toe with Armageddon.

Bauer does have a decent handle on the action, and the moments where she gets to let rip in that direction are effective. Some imagery will stick in my mind, such as the torture Armageddon inflicts on Myla’s father just before their final face-off. But this doesn’t come anywhere close to balancing the cringeworthy romance, and I’ve absolutely no interest in going further. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my tummy is going a bit tingly too. Just not for the same reasons as Myla’s…

Author: Christina Bauer
Publisher: Monster House Books, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 8 in the Angelbound Origins series.

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

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Literary rating: ★★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

“Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”

There can’t be many fantasy novels based on the events of World War II. But here we are, and Kuang has done an amazing job of taking historical events and weaving them into a saga of gods, magical powers and monsters, that works very well, even if you have no clue about the background.

At the beginning, Rin is a young orphan girl in a remote village in the South of the empire. Abused ceaselessly by her foster parents, they’re about to sell her into marriage. Her only hope of escape is to pass the exam which grants admission to the military academy of Sinegard. Even though she succeeds, she remains an outcast there, except to the equally derided Master Jiang, professor of lore. He helps her tap into powers largely forgotten by the Empire, but warns that if she doesn’t control them, they will control her. Her studies are brought to a sudden end when the Federation invades, laying siege to Sinegard. With the city about to fall, desperate measures have to be taken. But some doors, once opened, are an awful lot harder to close.

“This is what you have to tell yourself,” Qara said fiercely. “You have to believe that it was necessary. That it stopped something worse. And even if it wasn’t, it’s the lie we’ll tell ourselves, starting today and every day afterward.”

The above quote is a good depiction of the dilemma at the core of the book. Is it permissible to do evil deeds to stop evil deeds? But that’s just part of the moral quagmire in which Rin finds herself, where a desire to protect her country merges with a quest for vengeance – both personal, and for previous genocide. There’s no denying the abilities into which she can tap are increasingly powerful, bordering on the divine. But she’s no “Mary Sue”: the cost mounts alongside them, to the point where her humanity is in danger of being entirely scorched away when she uses them.

And even if it doesn’t, the drugs necessary – both to reach the Pantheon where the gods reside, and to numb the pain of life following her awakening – won’t necessarily help Rin retain her sanity. There’s a gigantic stone prison, inside which are entombed, in a state of living hell, the thousands of previous shamans, who were driven completely insane by what they unleashed inside themselves, and had to be contained or they could destroy the world. The dangers here are very real, and only escalate the further Rin develops.

“I will die on my feet,” she said. “I will die with flames in my hand and fury in my heart. I will die fighting for the legacy of my people, rather than on Shiro’s operating table, drugged and wasted. I will not die a coward.”

Kuang has constructed a great heroine in Rin. From the very beginning, she is driven to escape a situation many would accept as hopeless, and demonstrates enormous resilience, and an utter commitment to do whatever she feels is necessary. She succeeds, not through some innate ability (hello, Harry Potter), but by working her butt off. Yet it’s that same willingness which ends up taking her, both physically and mentally, to some appalling places and experiences. The descriptions of Federation atrocities are all, apparently, backed by historical fact, matching what the Japanese did during the occupation of China in the thirties and forties. Most notably, the sacking of one city is based on the Rape of Nanking, and even a hardened soul like myself had his stomach flip on occasion. Kuang doesn’t pull her punches. There also seems to be a scientist based on the infamous Unit 731, who carried out human “experiments” on the locals.

But it’s all severe unpleasantess which is very necessary to the plot. Because it’s the only way through which Rin can justify her own reactions, and the extreme measures which she unleashes, along with the rest of the Cike [the Imperial shaman troop to which she is conscripted, and who are used to take on the Federation by unconventional means] There’s certainly no shortage of awesome-if-horrific set pieces, such as the Cike’s luring in and destruction of an enemy fleet. I’d love to see Peter Jackson or Guillermo Del Toro take on a cinematic adaptation, though the entire $200 million budget would probably end up going on digital flames…

“She was no victim of destiny. She was the last Speerly, commander of the Cike, and a shaman who called the gods to do her bidding. And she would call the gods to do such terrible things.”

The general tone is one of increasing darkness, and by the end, I was as much scared of Rin as in awe of her or concerned for her fate. About the only weakness I can think of, is that she’s rather distant and unlikable. Not exactly fun to be around, shall we say, and given some of her later acts, the term “heroine” seems dubious at best. But she’s going to need to be an ultimate, supernatural bad-ass in future volumes – not least to deal with a potentially equally-lethal shaman, who escaped from the stone prison, partly through Rin’s actions. There’s also the little matter of the Empress, who may not be the honourable subject of veneration she initially appeared to be.

It all sets up very nicely, without needing to create an artificial cliff-hander. As time permits, I definitely look forward to reading the next installment, The Dragon Republic.

Author: R.F. Kuang
Publisher: Harper Voyager, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Poppy War series.

Immortal Wars: Resurgence

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★★
“Let there be light!”

First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.

It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.

There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.

It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…

And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne 

Immortal Wars

  By

★½
“Batteries not included.”

For whatever reason – presumably misguided stylistic reasons – the great bulk of the film is buried in darkness. Seriously, three-quarters of the film feels like it’s illuminated solely by natural lighting. And given it mostly takes place underground, in rooms with no windows, this is a major problem. The movie reaches its literally darkest moment during an early scene where the camera pans over an underlit set to an even more underlit door where someone has entered to deliver a message. You cannot see who it is. You just hear a disembodied voice, before the camera pans back. It’s a horrible mis-step, whether due to poor shooting, a poor transfer, or a bit of both. It largely dooms the movie, to the point where even an energetic final third is unable to rescue proceedings. For how can you begin to enjoy something you can’t see?

The story takes place in a future world, now divided into ten sectors. A small fraction of the population, known as “deviants”, have developed superpowers, becoming the subject of fear and hatred by regular humans. For popular amusement, there’s an annual competition in which each of the ten sectors capture and nominate their top fighting deviant. They are then taken to a central location and made to battle each other to the death, in a globally-televised contest run by Dominion Harvey (Roberts), which is watched by just about everyone else. So, basically: The Hunger Games crossed with X-Men. On a very, very much smaller budget.

The main heroine is Trikalypse (Gerhardy), one of the ten combatants taking part in this year’s model. Though for the first hour, it’s more chatty, as she bonds with another of the fighters – inevitably, of course, one she ends up fighting later on. But it is refreshingly female-oriented, with both of the finalists being women, as well as the super-boss that the winner then has to take on. However, the film then ends – literally going to the end-credits – just as that fight starts. Fortunately, I didn’t watch this until after the sequel was also available, otherwise I would have been very annoyed. It’s the sort of cliff-hanger you expect from a free e-book on Amazon, not an actual feature film.

Despite the lack of originality, it’s a decent concept and I’d have forgiven this, if the fights had actually been better than mediocre. Instead, as well as the lighting problem, they’re not very well-choreographed, though do have occasional moments which are somewhat effective. I was most impressed with Cruz as bad bitch Dekay, who had the presence, the look and the apparent skills, to keep me at least somewhat interested. But this was small consolation for something which, far too often, crossed the boundary into being genuinely unwatchable. It even managed to waste the talents of Bill Oberst, who shows up for exactly one scene – though at least that’s in daylight – while Tom Sizemore also manages to cameo his way through the darkness. I’m not exactly eagerly looking forward to the sequel, but it’s there…

Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Lindsey Cruz, Eric Roberts, Taylor Kilgore

Queendom of the Seven Lakes, by A B Endacott

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆½

There is an interesting set-up here: unfortunately, it’s one which truly doesn’t get developed far enough. Elen-Ai is a 21-year-old woman, who has been brought up since birth to be an assassin for hire, part of “The Family.” Her latest commission is a little different: it’s not to kill, but to protect. For she is hired to make sure that Gidyon, the teenage son of Latana, Queen of the Second Country, stays alive. This is a matriarchal society, where power passes down the female side. But Latana has only her son, and is set to upset the traditional apple-cart by proclaiming Gidyon as her heir apparent. This decision will potentially be rejected by some among the seven clans who comprise the queendom, and may make him a target for those who’d rather see him out of the way. Hence, Elen-Ai’s presence, to make sure that doesn’t happen, as he begins a national tour around their estates, seeking support for his position.

I suspect it’s pretty obvious where this will end up going, based on Gidyon’s plan to defuse the clans’ concerns by marrying someone outside of the nobility entirely. I would bet his bride ends up being Elen-Ai, given by the gobbets of unresolved romantic tension which pepper proceedings, together with the wild swings between like and dislike. Given his age though, we’re probably a few volumes away from that. For now, this is more of a travelogue than an action novel. There’s one assassination attempt on Gidyon while they’re on the road, but otherwise, Elen-Ai’s skills are more seen in the stealth department. As well as her abilities with weapons, she can make herself invisible, a useful talent when it comes to obtaining information regarding the conspiracies against Gidyon. However, she’s far from infallible; indeed, her momentary inattention proves to have tragic consequences.

Despite some interesting wrinkles, e.g. the identity of Gidyon’s father is a closely-guarded secret to avoid political repercussions and enforce neutrality, this doesn’t capitalize on the worldview. Indeed, by using a male heir instead, it largely negates much of the role reversal which has gone before. I’m also hard pushed to imagine Latana is the first ever queen who failed to have a daughter. The main issue though, is I really would have liked to know more about Elen-Ai. The very concept of the Family – a tacitly-accepted guild of assassins – merits considerably more exploration. How she reached the point of being commissioned by royalty as a bodyguard, seems considerably more interesting than her traipsing across country as some kind of lethally mobile baby-sitter. This seems like a sad waste of her talents, a bit like reading a Sherlock Holmes book devoted entirely to his post-retirement life as a bee-keeper. While I didn’t feel like I’d wasted the time, there wasn’t enough here to convince me to go further into the series.

Author: A B Endacott
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 6 in the Legends of the Godskissed Continent series.

Satan’s Sword + Elven Blood, by Debra Dunbar

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

The first volume in the Imp series, A Demon Bound, was one of the most entertaining books I’ve read of late. It told the story of Samantha Martin, the human vessel occupied by a demon “who has chosen to spend her life among us mortals, rather than in the underworld… largely because it’s more fun up here.” I was thus stoked to read the next two entries in the series, with Sam’s further adventures. She’d ended the series having been “bound” to an angel, Gregory, and in the subsequent parts, this is now causing issues for both of them. He is getting flak from his colleagues for his association with her, while she is experiencing unfamiliar emotions, such as loyalty and kindness.

It makes sense to cover both of these as one volume, as they combine to represent a significant story arc. The main thread in that is her hell-spawned brother, Dar, has got in the bad graces of upper-tier demon, Haagenti. Unfortunately, that escalates into Haagenti putting out an infernal hit on Sam – as well as those she cares about, in particular her all-too human boyfriend, Wyatt. To deal with that, she ends up taking on a job for an elven lord, locating the offspring of an unfortunate liaison between an elf and a succubus – the latter just happening to be Sam’s foster sister, Leethu.

The main problem, I felt, was Dunbar over-stuffed these books with ideas. If she’d stuck to the basic concept above, and developed it properly, it might have worked a bit better. Instead, there are any number of threads which feel undercooked, to a greater or less degree. For example, the serial killer targetting Sam’s slum tenants, or the teenage boys who managed to summon her, courtesy of a ritual they found on the Internet. The latter feels especially rife with potential, sadly never realized. Or the heavenly bureaucracy in which Sam gets entangled, complete with committee meetings and detailed reports. I’d rather have heard more about these fascinating and amusing ideas, than the detailed discussion concerning the breeding habits of elves we get.

Fortunately, the heroine remains as wonderfully twisted a character as ever. Though I must confess, the angel influence is a little worrying, given what made Sam so deliciously bad was her complete lack of scruples. For when you are all but immortal, you can afford to push other entity’s buttons – such as when she manages to goad another angel into an all-out brawl during one of those committee meetings. There may have been a stale Danish pastry involved. If this sardonic edge becomes dulled due to the angelic influence, it would be a real shame, since it’s one of the main things which makes Sam stand out in the field of literary action-heroines. We’ll see what happens as we go forward in the series.

Author: Debra Dunbar
Publisher: Volumes 1-3 are available as an omnibus from Anessa Books, available through Amazon, as an e-book
Books 1-3 of 10 in the Imp series.

Ghost Squad

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★★★½
“The real female Ghostbusters…”

I’ll confess, the headline above is a bit click-baity. This is perhaps closer to a female version of The Frighteners, the early Peter Jackson film in which Michael J. Fox could see dead people, and had to learn to work with them. The conduit in this case is Rika (Yanagi), a young woman who has been able to see ghosts since a young age. But an encounter with a trio of ghosts, all murder victims who are seeking revenge on their killers, opens a whole new realm. For, it turns out, whenever Rika is in a life-threatening situation, the spirits can take physical form. They can also draw energy from her, which can be used to create weapons, which range from the merely strange (the “meat hammer”) to the bat-shit insane. None more so there, than that of Akari (Mikado). She has a tendency to go into puppy mode when stressed, which involves her becoming… a bit licky. So inevitably her weapon transforms Akari’s hand into Grudge Dog, capable of ripping the face off her opponent.

For I didn’t yet mention, the director is also responsible for some of the finest examples in Japanese splatter, perhaps peaking with The Machine Girl (which may well have informed one of the weapons here, as shown in the trailer). But also including a hand in Mutant Girl Squad and Robogeisha. This is relatively restrained, though the key-word there is “relatively.” There’s certainly the same degree of lunatic inventiveness at work, although the arterial spurting is considerably lower pressure than you’d expect: the comparison above to early Peter Jackson is entirely deliberate.  For the most part it’s goofily endearing rather than outrageously offensive, and quite well thought out. Even if Rika is more a pipeline for vengeance, she tries to act as the group’s moral compass, for example refusing to let the ghosts take vengeance on the daughter of one culprit.

There are still a few scenes which seem a bit sleazy. Not least, that the energy transfer mentioned above is lip-to-lip. Basically, it’s a shallow excuse for some lesbo makeout sessions, which feels at odds with an approach which sometimes seems closer to Disney than extreme gore. And there’s some dancing in underwear which made me feel mildly uncomfortable; it seemed gratuitous, even by Iguchi’s standads. I was also surprised by the way the vengeance largely ended up compacted into a single battle; if this had been paced throughout the film (like Kill Bill), it might have been more effective and enjoyable. However, I still watched the vast bulk of this with a grin on my face, and laughed out loud more than once. It perhaps helped that, going in, I didn’t know who the director was; indeed, the poster above was about all I had to go on. My expectations were closer to a light comedy with action elements, and the imagination here definitely came as a pleasant surprise.

Dir: Noboru Iguchi
Star: Anna Yanagi, Sumire Ueno, Minori Mikado, Yuni Hong

Giantess Attack!

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★★★
“Large and in charge.”

Diedre (Tacosa) and Frida (Riley) are the fractious stars of low-rent superhero show, Battle Babe and Combat Queen. When the series is canceled, they go on a bit of a binge, ended only by the appearance of two tiny aliens from Metaluna (Nguyen), who give the pair of very drunk Earth women devices that will turn them into Team Giantess Attack. These are intended to be used to rid the planet of evil. Needless to say, things don’t quite work out that way. The military, under Gen. Smedley Pittsburgh (Rowen), want to get their hands on this alien technology. But D+F won’t give it up and, instead, use it to go on the rampage and take revenge on those who previously wronged them.

When a film goes out of its way to be deliberately crap, this largely makes it flame-proof, since a legitimate defense against any highlighting of its shortcomings becomes. “Well, it’s supposed to be bad.” There’s no doubt this is a parody of.. well, everything from Japanese sentai shows through B movies such as Attack of the 50-Ft Woman and on to TV series like The Bionic Man. As such, there are chunks which work remarkably well: Nguyen’s dual performance as both Metalunans (a name itself taken from This Island Earth) is delightful, especially if you’re familiar with the Mothra movies which inspired the twins. It just needed a little song-and-dance number to make it perfect.

However, there’s a weird inconsistency of tone, and as the above should suggest, a lot of potential left on the table. At times it seems almost like this is aimed at kids, Then you get a lengthy sequence about Team Giantess Attack sticking the General into various orifices, which seems to have strayed in from some creepy fetish movie (I’m not Googling it, but… Rule 34). There’s also a funny spoof commercial for cereal… and just the one. That they failed to go full Amazon Women on the Moon there, peppering the film with fake adverts, trailers, etc. seems like a lost opportunity. The whole thing runs only 61 minutes, so it’s hardly as if they were strapped for time. And there’s still padding: we’re 22 minutes in before the Metalunans show up.

Yet all told, it remains a good-humoured and generally entertaining piece of work. The effects are all over the place, throwing stock footage, model work and green screens together in a thoroughly low-budget mess – which is, of course, the point, just as much as the women’s clothes conveniently expanding to keep them covered. If you don’t smile at the thought of two bikini-clad behemoths wrecking Hollywood landmarks like the Capitol Records building, then it’s probably safe to say this isn’t the movie for you. However, I have seen more than my fair share of the content which this is lampooning. So I must admit, I probably have more anticipation than I expected, for the impending sequel, Giantess Attack vs Mecha-Fembot, whose trailer is below.

Dir: Jeff Leroy
Star: Tasha Tacosa, Rachel Riley, Jed Rowen, Christine Nguyen

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

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★★★
“An industrial sized box of eye-candy.”

Dear god, the scenery in this is almost unutterably lovely to look at. It’s the kind of film which left me wishing I’d seen it at the cinema, even if I fear my head would have exploded at the beauty of it all. Right from the opening sequence, featuring an insane swooping shot which seems to last forever, it is just gorgeous. The final battle is so lush, a war occurring in a castle the approximate size of Bavaria, against a back-drop of exploding red-clouds made from fae genocide dust, it should be bottled and sold in the skin-care aisle.

The other big positive comes from leading ladies Jolie and Pfeiffer. As we mentioned in our original review, Angelina was born to play Maleficent, and that hasn’t changed. Here, Michelle gives her an excellent foil to go up against. I couldn’t help feeling Pfeiffer’s performance was influenced by Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons – a film in which she also appeared, apparently taking notes. Their scenes opposite each other, such as the Most Uncomfortable Dinner Party Ever, are a delight to watch.

The problem? Uh, basically everything else, beginning with Fanning and Dickinson as the world’s blandest couple, who manage to suck the life from every scene they inhabit. The former is Aurora, now monarch of the magical kingdom, the Moors. She falls for Prince Philip (Dickinson), heir to the throne of Ulstead, and everyone is delighted that their impending marriage will seal peace forever between the two realms. Everyone bar Philip’s mom, Queen Ingrith (Pfeiffer), who has other plans. Basically, starting a war and blaming it on Maleficent, whose PR person must have been asleep since the first film, since Mal is now back to being generally despised. Ingrith then intends to use the fae genocide dust mentioned above to emerge victorious, allowing her to sweep in and annex the Moors.

Meanwhile in a sub-plot which is both superfluous and ham-handed, Maleficent is reconnecting with the family she never knew she had. Their leader is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a fine actor. However, remember what I said about Jolie being born for the role? Ejiofor isn’t, and looks more embarrassed than anything else, to be stomping around in those oversized horns. It’s all filled with Obvious Commentary on bigotry, diversity, racism and so forth. Poor Maleficent is largely relegated to a supporting role in her own franchise, before returning to hurl green lightning at the end, and engage in some behaviour which can only be described as Christ-like. Have you a moment to talk about your lord and saviour, Angelina Jolie?

You can’t argue the $185 million budget was ill-spent though. Rønning was previously co-director on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the [pauses to check notes] fifth installment in that franchise, and clearly knows his way around a nine-figure price-tag. It’s not enough to match its predecessor: more the kind of film I’ll dip into if I see it on cable, rather than rush to embrace on Blu-Ray.

Dir: Joachim Rønning
Star: Angelina Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer. Elle Fanning, Harris Dickinson