Angelina Jolie has been in far better movies than the “Maleficent” franchise, but they provide an unparalleled platform for her appeal. The same birdlike monstrosity of the first entry, cloaked in ...

Maleficent shifts the spotlight away from the sweet, beautiful heroine and rehabilitates the most maligned figure in the fairy tale canon.... Of all Disney heroines, Aurora, aka Sleeping Beauty, was ...

If we must take a revisionist sledgehammer to our most beloved fairy tales — and if the recent likes of “Alice in Wonderland,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “Snow White and the Huntsman,” “Jack ...

"Maleficent," a Walt Disney Studios release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America "for sequences of fantasy action and violence, including frightening images." Running time: 97 ...

It’s fair to say that Disney’s Maleficent plays to an extent as warmed-over Frozen. Maleficent is the latest dark, subversive live-action retelling of a classic fairy tale — in this case, Sleeping ...

It was a stage mother’s nightmare. You get your 4-year-old daughter a role in the big summer movie “Maleficent” – Disney’s latest take on the “Sleeping Beauty” legend but from the villain’s ...

Maybe the tide has yet to shift definitively. In any case, fairy-tale villains have found themselves in a unique time. Suddenly, after hundreds of years of moral clarity, a new look is being given to ...

It's certainly been a unique time for fairy-tale villains. After hundreds of years of moral clarity, suddenly we're getting a new look at these evil creatures. They are actually turning out to be ...

The trailers teased glimpses of Sleeping Beauty‘s iconic villainess, accompanied by a gothic cover of “Once Upon a Dream.” Gone were the 1959 animated film’s Technicolor wonders, replaced with shades ...

Once upon a time, a Hollywood movie didn’t have to be so many things to so many people. It didn’t have to set a new opening-weekend record, conquer multiple demographics or plant the seeds of a future ...

Stay on top of what’s happening in the Bay Area with essential Bay Area news stories, sent to your inbox every weekday. The Bay Bay Area-raised host Ericka Cruz Guevarra brings you context and ...