Oz the Great and Powerful

ACTION/ADVENTURE, SCI-FI/FANTASY

The Start of the Yellow Brick Road

8.0 out of 10 | Movie and DVD

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Rated: PG Sequences of action and scary images, and brief mild language.
Release Date: March 8, 2013
Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes

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Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Mitchell Kapner, David Lindsey-Abaire, from the novel 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' my L. Frank Baum
Cast: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff, Joey King

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SYNOPSIS:  A small-time magician arrives in an enchanted land and is forced to decide if he will be a good man or a great one.

REVIEW: Sam Raimi, creator of the original Evil Dead and the director of the original Spider-Man trilogy, moves from horror and superhero action/adventure to a fantasy/adventure of epic proportion. The world created by L. Frank Baum, Oz, has spawned a beautiful 1938 film, several cartoons, graphic novels, and even a SyFy mini-series. Romeo Must Die writer Mitchell Kapner and Rise of the Guardians screenwriter David Lindsey-Abaire combine their knowledge of action and good storytelling to tackle the origins of Oz the Great and Wonderful.

Oz (James Franco, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), a small time traveling carnival stage magician, leads a scoundrel and con man's life for pennies per performance. Using his act to try to 'get the girl', Oscar Finds himself at the wrong end of a disgruntled co-worker. He lifts off in his hot air balloon as an escape, finding himself caught up in a Kansas tornado that whips him to an enchanted world of color and strange creatures. He meets a young, beautiful woman Theodora (Mila Kunis, Ted) who feels that Oz is the prophesied Wizard who will save the citizens of Oz from the Wicked Witch. Evanora (Rachel Weisz, The Bourne Legacy), Theodora's sister, does not believe Oz's claims and sends Oz on a quest to kill the Wicked Witch by stealing and destroying her wand. On the way to the Dark Forest, Oz the Wizard is accompanied by Finley the Flying Monkey (Zack Braff, Scrubs) and met by a China Girl (Joey King, Crazy, Stupid, Love) who wants to join them on their witch hunt. When Oz discovers that he has been duped by Evanora into an attempt on Glinda the Good Witch's (Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn) life, Oz realizes that he must try and live up to the faith of lands' citizens to rid The Emerald City of two Wicked Witches.

In Oz the Great and Powerful, James Franco is a young magician traveling through Kansas and yearning to be a greater man than he is. But one needs to be careful what one wishes for. When a tornado sweeps his hot air balloon up and to the enchanted world of Oz, he finds himself in a strange and magical world that he can barely comprehend. Oz the Great and Powerful is a snappy prequel, giving us a glimpse of the young man who became the man behind the curtain we know from Dorothy's travels through The Emerald City. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz he is an old man just trying to keep up the vestige of his station more legend than fact. So, in this prequel, does that mean that the wizard was not a figment of Dorothy's imagination?

The world of Oz that L. Frank Baum created early in the 20th century served as both social commentary and fantasy, spawning many versions of itself over the years. With rich source material from Baum, the Oz universe has created graphic novels, television shows, movies cartoons, and now a prequel to the original 1938 film where we were swept away again to a world so unlike our own.

James Franco, as the traveling carnival magician and illusionist Oscar, claims he wants to "be a great man, not just a good man". The same could be said for Franco's career, With Franco snagging roles in oddball drug filled comedies, soap operas, and the acclaimed 147 Hours, Franco continues to work hard to be a great actor, not just a good actor. He reteams with his Date Night costar Mila Kunis as the witch Theodora, re-sparking an already strong chemistry on screen. Mila, no stranger to strange dramatic performances - Black Swan - plays up her strengths in her fantasy role as a young witch of Oz. Rachel Weisz serves as the councilor to the king, a throne left empty due to the assassination of Glinda the Good Witch's father until Oz appears in his hot air balloon. Her motives are suspect, but her connection to her sister Theodora is true. Or is it? Speaking of Glinda the Good Witch, Michelle Williams steps into the good witch's shoes as if she was made for the role. Supporting Franco's Wizard are the voice talents of Zach Braff as the flying monkey Finley and Joey King as the China Girl. Braff keeps the mood light, in addition to Franco's signature quirky expressions and manners, while King gives the tale the heart it needs - even if her heart is made of china.

Director Sam Raimi, certainly no stranger to special-effects films with his work on the Spider-Man trilogy and known for his creative and inventive work on his Evil Dead franchise, gets a broad palette to work from with this large big studio production. Creating this fantasy world is much more involved than any of the films Raimi has done to date, sometimes rivaling what Cameron had to do with Avatar. With armies of flying monkeys, China girls, and landscapes that could only be dreamed up in Ozian detail, Raimi certainly has his cinematic hands full. Raimi and his team keep the whimsy that we would expect from the land of Oz, with rich cinematic color, while adding his own sense of danger and adventure. The perfect scene to demonstrate Raimi's mesh of fantasy and adventure comes to fruition as Franco's character finds himself plummeting from the sky in his hot air balloon, racing down raging rapids, and over craggy waterfalls. The landscapes are breathtaking and stunning - everything we would hope for in a return to live-action return to Oz.

Oz the Great and Powerful is a wild, wicked ride for both older kids and adults alike. Funny and action filled, the tale is faithful to the ideas and stories of the wonderful world of Oz created by L. Frank Baum. Remember that all roads led to the Emerald City.

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The Bourne Legacy

New Origins

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Rated: PG-13 Violence and action sequences.
Release Date: August 10, 2012
Runtime:  2 hours 15 minutes

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Director: Tony Gilroy
Writers: Tony Gilroy, Dan Gilroy, based on the Bourne series by Robert Ludlum and Eric Van Lustbader
Cast:  Jeremy Renner, Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach, Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz, Joan Allen

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SYNOPSIS: Aaron Cross, a genetically altered government military product, finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that extends beyond both Trendstone and Blackbriar programs.

REVIEW: Tony Gilroy, director of George Clooney's Michael Clayton, has made a living adapting the Robert Ludlum books that centered around the amnesic assassin Jason Bourne. He has written the screenplays for the first three Bourne films The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum, all written by the late Robert Ludlum. Eric Van Lustbader took up the mantle of writing more for the Bourne series, completely seven more novels. For The Bourne Legacy, Jason Bourne/David Webb takes a distant back seat to a new action hero named Aaron Cross.

For a summary of the first three Bourne films, check out The Road So Far.

)Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner, The Avengers) goes through spec training in the Alaskan wilderness, trying to get to a base camp with minimal supplies and resource. Each day he takes blood samples from his arm and ingests one blue and one green pill he calls 'chems'. Back in the continental United States, Director of the CIA Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn, Sucker Punch) informs Retired Admiral Mark Turso, USN (Stacy Keach, Machete) that a London Guardian journalist is looking into the government projects known as Treadstone, Blackbriar and the individual known as Jason Bourne. With Jason Bourne at large and evading capture, Turso sets in motion an investigative body to figure out just how far the damage may have spread due to Bourne and the failed assassins' projects, with Retired Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton, Moonrise Kingdom) at its head. When Byer and his team find out that the fallout from Bourne extends to other current government programs due to several connection points between forward thinking Dr. Dan Hillcott (Neil Brooks Cunningham, You Don't Know Jack) and Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney, The Bourne Ultimatum), Byer makes the call to dismantle as many of the government agency programs as he feels may be jeopardized by the fallout, including project Outcome. One by one, every facet of project Outcome is eliminated, the high-ranking project managers, the scientific team, and the field assets. Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, Dream House) is the only one to escape the shooting spree of co-worker Dr. Donald Foite (Zeljko Ivanek, Heroes), while Aaron Cross is the only one to evade the missiles from unmanned remote-piloted drones. Finding themselves thrust together against Byers and his agents, Shearing and Cross must work together so that Cross can continue without losing the cognitive and physical enhancements that the Outcome program had instilled in him.

The Bourne Legacy marks the fourth Robert Ludlum title in the Bourne series to be adapted to the big screen. Like The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum before it, The Bourne Legacy drastic deviates from the original story. Where in the original story, Jason Bourne / David Webb (Matt Damon, We Bought a Zoo) still remained center stage in the plotline, The Bourne Legacy film recasts the main protagonist as Aaron Cross. With Matt Damon leaving the franchise as Jason Bourne, the studios take a chance with Jeremy Renner as a new character with some of the same problems as Bourne without trying to reboot the franchise with a new Jason Bourne. Some of what made Matt Damon's Jason Bourne so good as a character was because he was forced to solve the puzzle of his life without the aid of any idea of whom he was. Jeremy Renner's Aaron Cross is all that Jason Bourne was - and more! There are no more worries of memory gaps as Aaron Cross retains all of his faculties and has fighting skills enhanced by chromosome gene manipulations. But having fewer complications in one way simply leads to complications in other ways. Written by Tony and Dan Gilroy, and directed by Tony Gilroy, The Bourne Legacy is indeed a film that should be considered as a legacy to the franchise. With the switch to Renner from Damon, the Gilroy’s had a huge challenge in front of them. How can they continue in the fine tradition that Matt Damon established with his portrayal of Ludlum's signature protagonist? One way the Tony and Dan tie The Bourne Legacy in with the first three films is an opening shot where Aaron Cross lies prone in the water with a camera shot from below. He isn't unconscious, but the parallel to Jason Bourne floating in the Mediterranean Sea from the original Identity does not go unnoticed by fans of the franchise.

Like its predecessors, the story is both intricate and kinetic. With many moving parts, the audience must pay attention to both locations and dialogue to follow along. What some may not understand fully are the references to the earlier films. If you have not seen the first trilogy, some plot points and dialogue may not fully register for a while. The story is written with a complete inclusive story, but fans of the franchise will get a little more out of the story than newbie’s to the series. Is it imperative to view the first three movies to enjoy The Bourne Legacy? No. But it will help improve the experience.

Some will speculate and defend Matt Damon as the better protagonist. There was no question that Damon could handle the hurt, broken psyche of a man that was Jason Bourne. But he did surprise audiences with his honed fighting skills on the screen. Jeremy Renner is a different story. He has already proven he can kick ass with his stints as the antagonist to Colin Ferrell in S.W.A.T. and as the archer Hawkeye in The Avengers. His pedigree includes the dramatic turn in The Hurt Locker, but he still needed to sway audiences with another dramatic role. He can be compared to Matt Damon but shouldn’t be. The roles are only similar in that they are government assets being hunted down and that they have something missing that they are trying to reclaim – memories or medication.

The story may be kinetic and involved as stated earlier, but the film’s 2-hour length does lend itself to a little aerodynamic drag. Like a Tom Clancy or the other Bourne film, all of the pieces slowly move themselves into place before any of the high-octane action really gets underway. Sure, there are pockets of action throughout the film to add onto the political and covert intrigue, but some of the elements take too long to get there.

Jeremy Renner is a good choice to carry on the Bourne legacy in spite of any misgivings some may have. As more of the series come to screen, he will definitely become as synomonous to the series as Damon is now. Renner brings his own pain to the role, his eyes giving away the hurt of the character as well as Damon did. Adding a female protagonist to the mix, Rachel Weisz is just as scared as any that came before her, even if she has a more professional and classified-cleared position. Sometimes residing within the government machine allows one to know more of the atrocities that an outsider could conceive. Edward Norton is the perfect pick for the efficient and expeditious Byer and his patriotic mission to keep the country and its government covert programs out of harm’s way. The rest of the cast is numerous, but those three are the most critical. Even the activated LARX-3 agent is more of a footnote than a main player, in spite of his major role in the last action chase and fight sequence. It doesn’t matter who is chasing Renner’s new Bourne front man. It only matters that he is able to prevail against insurmountable odds.

The Bourne Legacy is a slow building tale, building on the foundation and elements from the original Bourne trilogy, as well as presenting a new origin story in the same vein as the original… with a twist. The burned government asset with his own moral code is the same, while most everything else is just a little different.

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WORTH: Matinee or DVD

Dream House

Buyer Beware

Director: Jim Sheridan

Writers: David Loucka
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Elais Koteas, Taylor Geare, Claire Geare

SYNOPSIS: After a family moves into their new house, they soon come to realize that their dream home is not as perfect as they thought after learning that brutal crimes were committed there.

REVIEW: Jim Sheridan, director of such Daniel Day-Lewis films as The Boxer, My Left Foot, and In The Name of the Father, takes on the suspense genre with a screenplay from Eddie and Dream Team scribe David Loucka. Entitled Dream House, the film walks the fine line between the supernatural and madness.

Will Atenton (the newest James Bond Daniel Craig) gives up his editing position at a publishing house to spend more time with his wife Libby (Rachal Weisz from The Mummy trilogy) and two young girls, Trish (Taylor Geare) and Dee Dee (Claire Geare) in their new house. As Will starts work on his novel, Libby renovates and paints the house they now call a home. Soon, though, strange occurrences start, beginning with Dee Dee seeing fuzzy strangers outside the windows, and continuing with a group of goth teenagers partying and vandalizing their cellar with claims that the previous family were all brutally murdered by family's husband and father, Peter Ward. Found discarded in boxes in the cellar, Will finds microfilm from the library outlining Peter Ward's stint in prison, a psychiatric hospital and a halfway house. The more Will tries to uncover the truth about Peter Ward, the more questions he uncovers about Ward an about himself. Even the neighbor across the street, Ann Patterson (Naomi Watts - The Ring), seems to show concern for Will while hiding secrets of her own.

Dream House is both a ghost story, a murder mystery, wrapped in the uncertainty of a man wrestling with his own sanity. The story runs along at a tidy clip, efficient and focused. Wavering between the warm tones of the welcoming fantasy that Will creates for himself and the hard decayed blues of what could be his harsh reality, director Sheridan creates two distinct motifs with the same house - inside and out. Craig is serious and driven, his square jaw and piercing eyes eating up every scene. The rest of the cast, Watts, Weisz and the young Geare girls, weave a solid story. Ann Patterson's ex-husband Jack (Marton Csokas) and seemingly sinister Boyce (Elias Koteas) also prove pivotal participants to the tale.

Dream House is solid storytelling in and of itself, but has shades of other films that have scared us better, provided more suspense, or kept us in the dark as to what is reality and what is fiction. I have seen it all before and better, for the most part anyway. As entertaining and well-crafted as Dream House is, this film may end up in foreclosure.

WORTH: Matinee or Rental