Oz the Great and Powerful

3 pipes out of 4

James Franco really needs to make up his mind whether he wants to be a serious actor or simply the stoner guy. The man has magnificent talent but when he chooses more sophisticated roles as he does in Oz the Great and Powerful, he almost seems out of place. You are constantly waiting for him to light up and make stupid comments. Franco Plays Oz, a failing circus magician who breaks women’s hearts and is taken in to a tornado, propelling him to Oz. Zach Braff plays his side kick in both Kansas and Oz except in Oz he takes the form of a flying monkey. I typically do not like the movies that Braff tends to lean towards but he is surprisingly good with his witty humor and self deprecating act. Mila Kunis, who plays Theadora is the first person to meet Franco upon his arrival to Oz and almost instantly falls in love with him. Some critics have stated that Kunis is a poor aspect of the film and I would have to agree, only in that her storyline is far too rushed giving very little time for development. I thought Kunis did a marvelous job with what she had but she didn’t have much. Michelle Williams plays Glinda The Good Witch who tries to convince Oz to fulfill the prophecy laid down by her father in that a great wizard will come to Oz, defeat the evil witch Rachel Weis and become King of Oz. Almost all of the signature characters from the old classic Wizard of Oz are either in the film or referenced but with slight variations in order to maintain some kind of legal agreement. The Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow are explicitly referenced but the tin man is oddly left out. Except for some minor clichés and a few cases of obvious foreshadowing, Oz, the Great and Powerful is a wonderful film and does complete justice to the original it is prequeling. 

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

½ Pipe out of 4

Remember Van Helsing? Or The Brothers Grimm? Well Hansel & Gretel is a horrible mixture of the two with the vampires of Van Helsing and the pair of bounty hunters in The Brothers Grimm. To those who say that Van Helsing and The Brothers Grimm by themselves are bad movies, I am not one to disagree but Hansel & Gretel make them look like Oscar Nominees. Unlike the other two films the plot is absolutely horrible and not worth the watch. There is no character development while things move way to fast to actually understand what is happening. The love story that is supposed to develop between two of the main characters is only explained by the fact that one save the other’s life and therefore she is in love with him. There is more sexual chemistry between Hansel and Gretel than this love connection. A scene actually develops so that it looks as if Hansel and Gretel are going start making out. This scene could have been used to push forward the romance so the inevitable conclusion would be more believable but they chose to give it to a brother and sister. This film is the reason why January is the movie dump, demonstrating poor decisions in the movie making process and in order to get it out they release in the industry crapper. Gemma Arterton who plays Gretel has a hard time maintaining one accent and switches between old time and modern day, Renner at least maintained the consistency of the modern day accent instead of switching between that and old timey. From the moment Jeremy Renner enters the screen as Hansel to save a false witch, it is evident that he does not care about this film and does not put his best foot forward. The best parts of the film are just Renner's apparent disregard which comes across as the equivalent of a confused audience member, of which there were many.

Zero Dark Thirty

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Kathryn Bigelow has created another Hurt Locker only under a different name, more realistic and documentary style. She does a decent enough job chronicling the events that led to Osama Bin Laden’s Assassination, not in the thriller format that is advertised but in a scripted documentary that the audience already knows the ending of. The audience is introduced to the film with the audio of the final moment phone calls from the Twin Towers on September 11^th 2001; they are then thrust into a CIA torture scene 3 years later still trying to find Bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty has taken many shots from the military in how it portrays torture, understandably so because the film appears to glorify torture and declare it a necessary evil to fight terrorism. Jessica Chastain plays Maya; a CIA agent who becomes hell bent on finding Bin Laden and somehow happens to be in every key meeting regarding him. She dedicates herself from her deployment into the field until she sees Bin Laden’s body on a gurney demonstrating the drive of one person and the political bureaucracy that governs the CIA. Even though being designated a thriller, Zero Dark Thirty is more of a drama until Seal Team 6 enters Bin Laden’s secret compound. There the audience becomes part of the team not knowing what to expect and anticipating that fateful moment of discovering Bin Laden. To close the film, Bigelow gives the audience a scene of relief, security and uncertainty on what direction to go next. While Zero Dark Thirty is being heavily favored for the best picture at the Oscars to me it failed to live up to such high expectations and is too similar to The Hurt Locker to get my vote but it remains a decent film.

The Hobbit

2 ½ out of 4

Let’s take a ride with Peter Jackson once again into the world of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, this time into the original novel The Hobbit. Broken into 3 movies at close to 3 hours a piece Jackson has plenty of time to expand minuscule details and keep everything from the book. Just keep in perspective, all totaled Jackson’s Hobbit will be longer than the audio book. All that aside, Jackson does a good job of connecting The Hobbit to his other Lord of the Rings films since they came first. There is an interesting cameo for Frodo (Elijah Wood), and the connection to Bilbo’s birthday in Fellowship of the Ring is purely delightful. I will also say that Jackson sure knows how to do a voice over prologue; he did it to introduce the history of the ring in the Fellowship of the Ring and does it again to introduce the history of the dwarfs. There were a couple of scenes that Jackson drags on for no apparent reason other than to keep his tradition of a 3 hour movie. Many of these scenes took place with scenery porn. Granted the scenery chosen is magnificent but there is just too much of it, it honestly took more than half an hour of the film put together. Jackson needs to let go of the 3 hour mold and accept that good movies can be an hour and a half or even two hours and doesn’t have to be three hours every time. Martin Freedman does a wonderful job as a young Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen plays Gandalf in masterful mystical way. But the character that stole the movie was Gollum/Smeagol played by the brilliant Andy Serkis. The dual personality of the tormented mind of Gollum and Smeagol is on full display in the interaction between Bilbo and Gollum. This interaction goes far beyond the small role it had in the book and becomes one of the largest and most anticipated parts of the movie. The scene may be slightly drawn out but Serkis’ performance simply makes it great. The Hobbit definitely doesn’t deserve the 11 Oscar nominations given to Return of the King but is still a fun adventure. 

Django Unchained

1 pipe out of 4

Quinton Tarantino’s past few films Kill Bill 2 and Inglorious Basterds have begun to put me off from his style. Django Unchained smashed that light bulb. I went into Django with the expectation of it being extremely violent and vulgar as is Tarantino’s style but boy was did I underestimate how far Tarantino would go. Django is a throwback to the Spaghetti westerns of the 70’s with the modern twist of it being a modern black revenge but nowhere in the film is there black revenge. So many horrible things occur to the African Americans in the film described in graphic detail, some even done by the main character Django, that the small amount of retribution that two characters attain is trivial in retrospect to all of the harms done. Maybe Tarantino expected us to forget all of the horrors we witnessed by his attempted comedic character of the black slave who thinks he’s white, I mean what’s funnier than a black man degrading another black man because he’s black? That’s hilarious right? Wrong! If Tarantino wanted to represent all of the types of slaves that existed in the south that is fine, but to insinuate that some were better than others by the amount of suffering they went through is terrible. Slavery is evil in any form so to degrade a character in order to get some cheap laughs is despicable. Then to have your main character Django become a Black slaver and abuse other slaves in order to save is enslaved wife completely kills the credibility of the character, eliminating the black revenge and simply turning it into lovers revenge with slavery. The only character that saves the movie from a total failure is Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz), a German bounty hunter who attests slavery and aids Django (Jamie Foxx) in trying to save his wife from Calvin Candie (Leonardo DeCaprio). Waltz demonstrates the one person throughout the movie who has any morals, showing compassion and remorse when slaves are mistreated. Even with Waltz being the one delight in the film there are still wholes in his character, such as what motivates him to help Django with no gain for himself. Leonardo DeCaprio plays the part of a Mandingo fight organizing plantation owner and does it well however he does not come off as a particularly threatening villain. He owns a plantation, he owns slaves, he is brutal to those slaves and is a racist; just like every other plantation owner in the south. For all the talk of DeCaprio finally taking the step towards villainy, he is usurped for the main villain role by Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), the black slave who is a racist against his own race. Simply put, Tarantino tried to show us the horrors of slavery while trying to make us laugh at those same horrors which does not work. 

Taken 2

½ pipe out of 4

Sometimes sequels don’t need to be made and when it comes to Taken 2, this is a definitely the case. When a movie like the original Taken sits on the movie company shelf for 2 years before being released, you can tell it’s not movie gold. That is what happened with Taken but it was released at the perfect time when there were no other action films in theaters and it did huge. You’d think that the movie company would count this as a win and move on. Oh no, not in this day and age. Any time movie companies see dollar signs they immediately think sequel, even if those dollar signs were just dumb luck. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Taken just as much as the next guy but Taken 2 is a whole other story. The movie looses all of the emotional edge from the first film and it looks like Liam Neeson has done this all before, which he has, and simply goes down a checklist of what to do when your wife and daughter are kidnapped. Throw in a number of other inconsistencies and the fact the Neeson rescues his family in less than 12 hours make this a forgettable movie.

Wreck-It-Ralph

2 ½ pipes out of 4

Wreck it Ralph needs no fixing, being a funny movie for both kids and adults. Aiming at the kids are all the cute interactions and characters, such as Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) and Fix-it-Felix (Jack McBrayer). To the adult crowed the movie appeals to the retro gamer in all of us, reminding us of our childhood and the games we used to play. The story follows Wreck-It-Ralph who is tired of being viewed as a bad guy just because he plays a bad guy in his game. He sets out on an adventure to find a medal in order to become a good guy. High jinks ensue and he ends up running into an annoying young girl named Vanellope and they learn they may be able to help each other. There are tons of retro game cameos and adult humor thinly veiled enough to avoid child detection. A few unnecessary slap stick gags bring Ralph lower but he manages to wreck all expectations, giving you a darn good show.