Maria

Maria explores the final days of renown opera singer Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) looking back on her life in a self-medicated haze that blurs fantasy and reality in her quest to rediscover the voice she lost years ago. The standouts here are Jolie's performance, for which she trained 7 months to learn to sing opera (a mix of both Jolie and Callas' voices are used throughout the film), and the film's amazing look courtesy of cinematographer Edward Lachman, set decoration by Sandro Piccarozzi, and costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini.

Given her loose grasp on reality, Maria proves to be an unreliable narrator of her present, creating a would-be biographer (Kodi Smit-McPhee) out of thin air, which potentially also puts aspects of her past, mostly shown in black-and-white, in question. Grounding her, often against her will, are her long-term housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) and butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) constantly worrying about her melancholy and deteriorating medical condition.

Remembered as much for her temperamental nature as her remarkable voice, Maria captures a bit of both in exploring the diva mostly long after her career on-stage had concluded with a lifetime of memories and regrets. In many ways Maria is the embodiment of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" as Maria rages refusing to give in or compromise her remaining days until her heart literally gives out with the aftermath shown in scenes bookending the film leaving the world a bit less musical than it was before.

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• Title: Maria
• IMDb: link