Much like Alice Through the Looking Glass before it, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil has been too long coming to truly still warrant its own existence. The ever welcome screen presence of an on-form Angelina Jolie aside, this is that vogue of follow up that no one asked for and fewer still needed. Indeed, Mistress of Evil has all the drably conceived hallmarks of a sequel that Buena Vista would have shipped straight to video twenty years back. It is, at least, no worse than its predecessor, which was itself a deeply inconsistent beastie.
From Columbian director Alejandro Landes, Monos might wear a dozen cultural references on its increasingly ragged sleeve but still carves a brutally distinct, and entirely unique, identity. It is surely, by that virtue alone, among the very best films of the year to date. A little bit Lord of Flies, a touch more Apocalypse Now and with nods also to all from Women in Love to Apocalypto, the film is at once dreamy and dreadful. It exhilarates and terrifies. There is tenderness in abundance but venom in every heart beat. Sensorily, it is a triumph, whilst, as far as the narrative is concerned, Monos will take a long time to exit the dark depths of the imagination.
You can tell Amma Asante, erstwhile director of Belle and A United Kingdom, means well by Where Hands Touch. That’s why it hurts so to label it a misfire, which it surely is. Much akin to her work on this year’s mixed series of The Handmaid’s Tale, Asante displays here an evident eye for the cinematically seductive but proves less skilled in pairing such with hardline narrative. Indeed, it is a persistent niggle of the film that Nazi Germany should not enjoy so romantic a reminiscence.
The Film Blog 