... FOR "DISNEY'S 'MALEFICENT' AND THE FARCE OF THE FEMINIST FAIRY TALE"

"In any event, we know what's really going on in the scene.... It's a symbolic assault with sexual overtones, specifically an attack that occurs after a woman has passed out. Maleficent doesn't just lose her wings; they're stripped from her, against her will."

  — Matt Zoller Seitz, rogerebert.com

"[A]fter the brutal attack, Maleficent quickly retools itself, heading into a whirlwind of tones while ignoring the darker implications of its opening story. In a brisk 97 minutes, decades of narrative are distilled into boilerplate genre elements: The chills of a rape revenge fantasy, the mirth of slapstick, and the adrenaline of action."

  — Monika Bartyzel, Girls On Film

"[W]elcome to Walt Disney's I Spit On Your Grave."

  — Drew McWeeny, HitFix.com

So intoned the critics of Disney's Maleficent, which (so far) has managed to gross over $756 million since opening May 30th. Many reviews, as a matter of fact, touched on this rape-as-metaphor idea in some form or another, to the dismay of many moviegoers/overprotective parents who outright refused to believe that the Mouse House would sneak such subversively sinister material into one of their patented family entertainments. Never mind that Angelina Jolie herself admitted as much during interviews ("The core of [the movie] is abuse, and how the abused have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people," she told the BBC on June 10). The cold hard truth is that, from Hans Christian Anderson to Charles Perrault to the Brothers Grimm, even our fondest fairy tales have always been metaphors for something. What matters is how those metaphors are presented to the eyes and ears of anyone old enough to comprehend them.

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE/MARKETING PLOY OF THE DAY (LIAM NEESON EDITION)"

I may be jumping the gun a bit, since the film doesn't officially open until September 19th, but there's just something about Liam Neeson's latest paranoid thriller, A Walk Among The Tombstones, that seems awfully familiar. Check out one if the earlier ads for the movie, still making the rounds on TV, and you'll see what mean:

Did you catch it? True, the plot (adapted from the novel by Robert Block) could be taken from any number of films, about an "off the books" detective hired to find the missing wife of some affluent rich guy in the city. And the action beats are practically recycled from Neeson's recent string of adrenaline-pumping, career-redefining hits. More specifically, though, I'm talking about 0:20 through 0:26, which should be enough to drive Taken fans into an absolute frenzy.

... FOR "DETAILS YOU PROBABLY NEVER NOTICED IN POPULAR FILMS BEFORE ('GHOSTBUSTERS' EDITION)"

In celebration of last weekend's 30th-anniversary re-release of Ghostbusters (not, thankfully, in 3D), we take a deeper dive into one of the movie's biggest and most memorable gags...

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. You know the name. You know the face. You know the portly, pillowy body. From the moment he stepped onscreen, walking out onto that New York City street to battle the 'busters, Mr. Stay Puft became an instant part of our pop culture lexicon, like a cross between the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Michelin Tire Man. The genius of his conception, though, is how it perfectly captured the spirit of the movie in one glorious iconic image - the promise of the supernatural mixed with gut-busting belly laughs brought to life by larger-than-life special effects. (Even today, three decades later, I can still hear the peals of laughter rippling through the theater when the audience first caught a glimpse of him.)