Movie review: Oz: The Great And Powerful

Welcome back to the wondrously and imaginative magical land of Oz, before the time when Dorothy wandered along the yellow brick road and things were a bit ...less wondrous and imaginative.

A poster depicting the incredibly beautiful scenery of Oz: The Great And Powerful

The movie begins in black and white and in the old 4:3 format as we see Oscar "Oz" Diggs (played by James Franco) in the time before he ventured to the land of Oz.
Here he is a womanizing con-man and a magician who has his own magic show on a traveling circus, bossing around his underling, Frank (played by Zach Braff), and dreams of becoming more than a good man - a great man. He is so intent on becoming one that he even gives up the woman he loves, Annie (played by Michelle Williams), for his goal.
However, as a result of his debauchery, he is forced to flee in a hot air balloon from one the men whose wife/girlfriend he has romanced. Once up in the air, he's caught in a tornado where he pleads to be saved and swears he will become a great man if he survives.

He is then transported to the magical land of Oz.

Movie review: Se7en (rewatch)

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi.

Movie review: Looper

In 2072, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent 30 years into the past, where a hired gun awaits. Someone like Joe. But Joe makes the biggest of mistakes when his older self gets sent back and manages to escape.

I went into Looper with extremely high hopes. I'm not fully sure where these expectations came from, but ever since I've heard about this movie, I've wanted to see it. And the more I noticed people and critics praising, the more I wanted to see it. I was so eager to see it I nearly wet myself. So it's no surprise why I came out of the theater a tad let down.

That's not to say that it was a bad movie. Not at all. In fact, it was a good sci-fi sction thriller. It had suspense, action, good characters, human drama, and even some comedy, and it didn't get tied up in the whole time travelling aspect.

Movie review: The Invention of Lying

I caught The Invention of Lying on TV yesterday. It started out great, the basic idea for it is really interesting. The world they live in where everyone tells the truth without holding anything back is hilarious in a refreshing, yet horrible way. This hilarity factor is of course greatly aided by Ricky Gervais' comic timing.

However, it does become quite a bit less entertaining the way it unfolds. That's not to say that it becomes terrible - just less enjoyable. But while it does take that route, the development of the main characters, and even this entire world is both well done and believable. The ending was also better than I expected.

All in all it's a decent and comfortable film.

6/9

Movie review: Prometheus

An exploratory team follow ancient directions to a distant planet in search of mankind's origin. It doesn't take them long to discover something much more dangerous than they expected.

Before I went to see this film I had barely heard a single thing about it. All I knew was that Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender starred in it, Ridley Scott directed it, it would most likely have some connection to the Alien franchise. That's about it. And yet I was really excited to see it. I'm not even sure why. Great advertising I guess.

The movie itself is quite a slow burner. It takes it's sweet time building up the setting and some of the cast before finally delving into the action. I'm not saying this as a complaint, but as a compliment. I tend to like these types of movies, if the payoff is good enough. And it is here. While not being excellent, it do deliver entertaining and exciting action packed sequences throughout the second half. However, what it lacks is the deep character introspective it pretty much promises by the way the movie starts. That's not to say that the cast is filled with nothing but shallow stereotypes. Far from it. Several of the characters are interesting and engaging. But outside of Michael Fassbender's character - David - the movie doesn't really delve far into the psyches of the crew. We get a peek, but that's it. In fact, that's an issue with the movie all together. For a movie that's ultimately about finding answers, we don't get that many answers. The movie teases us by bringing up a heap of questions, but sidesteps us with the answers.

Unfortunately, the movie isn't without it's stupid moments as well. Where the two dumbest scenes both revolve around the geologist and the biologist. In these scenes they act so confoundingly idiotic - especially for crew members on an expedition like this - that they're nothing more than the equivalent of dumb blonds in a teen slasher.

David (Michael Fassbender)

On the technical side it certainly succeeds. It looks and sounds great and the acting occasionally shines. Noomi Rapace does a solid job - although her swedish accent peeks it's way through here and there, and Charlize Theron is great as the seemingly cold authority figure whose humanity still well up to the surface during harsh moments. But the stand out performance is definitely by Michael Fassbender as the robot, David,  whose curiosity is oozing out of his entire being. It's also aided by the fact that David is by far the most interesting and multi-layered character in the whole movie.

In the end I felt like it could have been quite a bit better. I was hoping for a smarter movie that's more character driven with the way it was set up. But as it is, I still really liked it as a theater experience. It was explosive and entertaining. And despite it's flaws I still think it's worth a watch.

P.S. The 3D is absolutely pointless. There is not a single scene in the entire movie that warrants a 3D viewing. In fact, I often took off my 3D glasses and noticed that quite a bit of scenes didn't even have 3D in them.

The good
Exciting entertainment
The visuals
Michael Fassbender/David

The bad
Lacks answers it sets out to provide
Not as character driven as it initially seems
Some dumb and unnecessary scenes
3D

Score: (weak) 7/9

Movie review: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (re-watch)

This is my third time re-visiting this comedic murder mystery story. I still think it's impressively written and executed with it's 4th wall breaking style and witty dialogue and narration. However, like with all mysteries, it can never be as intriguing as it was the first time around and the comedy does lose some of it's edge once you know what's coming. But the fact that I'm still so entertained by it at this point goes to show just how well told the film is.

The strongest aspect of the movie is the interaction between Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. Their characters are already funny and interesting on their own, but it's when they're together the movie really shines. The differences between these two characters make for such hilarious banter that one can't help but to laugh out loud whereas most movies with similar kind of witty banter merely make you chuckle. The banter is however not the only hilarious aspect. There's also Robert Downey Jr.'s narration which breaks the 4th wall so often that by the end there's nothing left of it except crumbs.

Even though I keep hammering in how funny this movie is, don't go into it thinking that's a pure comedy. Because it's not. It may have plenty of comedy, but it has no shortage of action, mystery and drama. It's also very effective in those areas. It's very well rounded and it's the kind of movie I think a lot of people will love, and those who doesn't will at least enjoy it. I recommend that anyone why hasn't already seen this should go watch as soon as possible.

Despite my so far never ending praise for this film, I'm not going to give this my highest score because it somewhat lacks what my all time favorite films have - re-watch value. Granted, I do still like it despite that this is my third time watching it. But I don't love this time around. It's incredible on the first watch, but - like I said earlier - it loses a lot of it's edge after that. 

Score:  8/9

Movie review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

It's a story about British spies in the 70s where George/Smiley (Gary Oldman) tries to flush out a Russian mole among the top chain of MI6.

I really wanted to like this movie. It seemed like the kind of film I'd enjoy. Spies gathering information on one another not knowing who to trust, filled with a cast of phenomenal actors and directed by Thomas Alfredsson, who directed "Let The Right One In" which is one of my all time favorite films.

Sadly, I didn't enjoy the movie particularly much. It's all too slow and yet kind of hard to follow even though I really payed attention to it (I even re-winded it here and there because I missed a line or two of dialog), there's a major lack of emotion in the film and it has no weight behind any of it's revelations. Even the big final one concerning who's the mole. When they revealed that I simply reacted 'oh... ok'. I didn't get exactly how they found out it was him, or why he did it outside of "the west is so ugly these days".

As for the emotional aspect of the film, there were only like 5 to 10 scenes (scenes, not sequences) where a character expressed any emotion, and it was still very downplayed in half those scenes. The acting is very good though, especially by Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch. Thomas Alfredsson also manages to give us great visuals and a strong atmosphere. But that's just about all the praise I can give it.

I can understand why people like it, and I'm not saying that it's a poorly made movie, but it simply failed to entertain me. So I don't care for it.

Score: 4/9

Movie review: Hamilton: In The Interest Of The Nation

This is one of the few Swedish action films made to look like a Hollywood action flick, like "The Third Wave". In that regard it succeeds, and while it is worse than several of it's Hollywood counterparts, it's also much better than plenty of them. In the end, it places itself right in the middle of it all. Unfortunately, this means it's very forgettable. Just like "Hamilton" from 1998, starring Peter Stormare, which I honestly can't remember a thing about.

As for the film itself, it has a fairly straightforward plot; Bad guys have heavy weapons and a 'sinister' plan, hero is sent after them, some 'twists' ensue and the hero takes care of it all whilst dealing with his/her inner demons.

That's pretty much the extent of it and it's something we've all seen loads of times. So, the thing to consider is not what is done, but how well it's handled. And for the most part, it's handled nicely. 

Hamilton's personal conflict comes out of left field which is very welcome, but it's not handled any better than simply 'adequate' when it could have amounted to so much more. The antagonist is somewhat of a blank slate until the end where it's hastily touched upon that he really thinks that what he's doing is the right thing. That's something I truly appreciate in movies but is unfortunately and surprisingly not done enough despite being something so simple.

One thing that's really distracting when watching this the Swedish actors' english accents. Especially Mikael Persbrandt's. Downright terrible. He really should have worked more on it. 

I don't feel like writing much more about it. Whoever is reading this obviously gets my overall opinion this movie and why by now, so I'll end it with a summarizing line;

For a Swedish action film, it's great, for an action film overall, it's decent.

Score: 6/10