Oz, it’s great, but not powerful enough

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFULWhen I was a kid, CBS would show The Wizard of Oz every March, and my parents would let my brother and me stay up way past our bedtime to see it. (We had to brush our teeth and get into our pajamas first.) While Star Wars, Superman, and ET were all released and re-released during my early childhood, they did not – and no other movie has – match the sheer wonder and joy that The Wizard of Oz brought to me. The moment that Dorothy opens the door of her house, after it was been thrown through the sky by a Kansas tornado and landed in Oz, and the black, white, and very gray world becomes not just Technicolor, but incandescent and utterly alive is, to me, one of the greatest moments in film history. That Sam Raimi, in his quite wonderful and extraordinarily gorgeous prequel Oz the Great and Powerful, is able to pay homage to that moment and nearly equal its experience is the greatest surprise I’ve had at the movies in many months. Continue…

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Turns out, you already know Jack

jack-the-giant-killer-04During the first third of so of Jack the Giant Slayer, among the battalion who accompany Jack on the quest to rescue the princess and kill some giants is one particularly handsome, rather strapping bald-headed knight who has a couple of lines before meeting his demise. While I was reading through the IMDb page for the film, I saw his picture, discovered the actor is named Mingus Johnston, and his character is named Bald. This, in a microcosm, is what wrong with Jack the Giant Slayer: it’s as obvious as its fairy tale source and as creative as, well, naming the one bald character “Bald.” With a budget of $195 million, I would think producer and director Bryan Singer would have been able to afford an original idea. Continue…

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Beautiful is a rather strong word

Beautiful-CreaturesOne of the most repeated complaints about Hollywood is its lack of originality. (Others include: It’s too liberal, it’s too conservative, it’s homophobic, it’s pro-gay, it’s too populist, it’s elitist, and so on.) Considering the number of remakes, reboots, and rip-offs of great or popular movies we’ve been offered in recent years – from Clash of the Titans to Footloose, from The Amazing Spiderman to The Bourne Supremacy, and Harry Potter wannabes from The Seeker to Percy Jackson & The Lightning Thief – this criticism is not unfounded. With the exceptional financial, if not artistic, success of the Twilight films, supernatural teen romances have shown up everywhere. It’s how we got The Vampire Diaries and Red Riding Hood. And it’s how we ended up with Beautiful Creatures. The authors of the book the film is based on even brag about its similarities to other work, hyping a quote from School Library Journal claiming, “Give this to fans of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight or HBO’s True Blood series, and they will devour all 600-plus pages of this teen Gothic romance.” The good news is that the movie is neither extremely long, nor terribly acted, nor soft core horror porn. Continue…

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Just die already

A-Good-Day-to-Die-HardIn case you forgot, the reason we have Bruce Willis is Die Hard, John McTiernan’s ridiculously entertaining 1988 action film about a wise-cracking lone cop trying to save his wife from a hostage-taking gang of criminals in an LA skyscraper. (Yes, it was his Emmy-winning role in Moonlighting that got him Die Hard, but Die Hard is what made Willis a movie star.) There have been four sequels, two in the 90s that were not as great as the original but were still funny and thrilling popcorn films. Then they rebooted the franchise in 2007 with Live Free or Die Hard, which was absurdly plotted and featured equally absurd action sequences, such as a chase scene between a fighter jet and a car and a bunch of highway overpasses. It was a great ride, and I loved it. I was thrilled that they decided to make another Die Hard, but A Good Day to Die Hard is unfortunately the worst of the series.

Like the previous movies in the series, the plot of A Good Day to Die Hard is jumpstarted by the familial duties of John McClane (Willis). In this version, he is trying to reunite with his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who has been arrested for murder in Moscow. As John travels from New York to Russia, we discover that Jack is not the ne’er-do-well John seems to think he is; rather he’s a CIA agent charged with rescuing a Russian political prisoner. Because it’s a Die Hard movie and Die Hard movies don’t operate in the real world, John runs into Jack as Jack is trying to make his getaway with the prisoner, Komarov (Sebastian Koch). Then there is a really long chase scene through the streets and highways of Moscow. One thing leads to another, and we end up at Chernobyl. Continue…

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One of the Side Effects is sleepwalking

628x471The fake Ablixa causes sleepwalking. Which seems to be what Soderbergh was doing while directing the movie.

Steven Soderbergh has announced that Side Effects will be his last Hollywood film. At 50, he’s done; he’s said that he’s going to turn to painting and, maybe, directing television. But after directing Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Out of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Oceans 11, Che, The Informant, and Magic Mike, I would want to go out with a bang. Side Effects is a whimper. It’s basically a long, relatively well-acted Law & Order episode, complete with discussions of double jeopardy and a “shocking” but offensively retrograde ending. Continue…

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