A Million Ways to Die In the West [2014] / Malificient [2014]

As part of my contribution to our parish's participation in the Archdiocese of Chicago's Campaign "To Teach Who Christ Is," I've decided to forgo seeing (and therefore reviewing here) one or two movies a weekend and instead contribute the money I would have spent to the campaign.

I'm trying to be strategic about this, picking movies that would "hurt somewhat" to miss, that is, films that are not "so bad" that I wouldn't see them anyway nor movies that I really would need to see/review or else my blogging effort would cease to be worthwhile.

As per my custom, I will try to provide links to usual line-up of reviews that I also consider as I write my own.

This week, the films I chose not to see / review here are:

A Million Ways to Die in the West [2014] - MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (1/2 Star)  Chicago SunTimes (B-)  RE.com (1 Star)  AVClub (C-)

Maleficient [2014] - MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB ()  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)


While I considered seeing A Million Ways to Die in the West [2014] in some solidarity with a fair number of parishioners that I know will probably go see the film (and I have seen / reviewed some fairly raunchy films here in the past, notably Bad Teacher [2011] (in solidarity with our school teachers), Seth McFarland's previous film Ted [2012] and Movie 43 [2013] a almost total gross-out fest) I honestly could not bring myself to shell out the money to see this one, especially since I'd give the money to the campaign.

But since I was going to forgo A Million Ways ..., I couldn't bring myself to see Maleficient [2014] either, as the film seemed to me to be something of a second-tier Disney venture of doubtful purpose.  Question: When, if ever, is the musical Wicked going to be made into a film?  In the past couple of years, Disney has produced not one but two Wizard of Oz [1939] [IMDb] based films (Oz the Great and Powerful [2013] and Dorothy's Return [2013] both reviewed here) and it would seem that the concept behind Maleficient [2014] is basically the concept behind the story of Wicked only that the back-story being told is that of the "wicked queen" from the Sleeping Beauty [1959] [IMDb] story instead of that of the "Wicked Witch of the West" of the "Oz" universe.

However, I'm pretty certain that a number of our younger school / CCD kids are going to see Maleficient [2014] this weekend.  So I'll be asking them what they thought of the film and depending on what they say, perhaps put up a few of their comments about it here ;-).

Anyway, these are the the two films that I'm forgoing this weekend in support of our parish's campaign ;-)