Oblivion Review

It’s rare these days to see a science fiction movie come along that actually shows some originality, instead of being a sequel to a previously established franchise.  It seems that for every District 9 or Inception that comes out, we have to sit through an entire Transformers trilogy until a breath of fresh air comes along.  Oblivion is that breath of fresh air, but it falls just short of being the modern science fiction classic that lies within it.

The setup for Oblivion is brilliant: In the not too distant future, the Earth has been ravaged by a war with an alien race.  The aliens, known as the Scavengers or “Scavs” for short, destroyed the moon, causing worldwide natural disasters, before invading Earth.  Earth fought back with nuclear weapons, winning the war but leaving the planet’s surface virtually uninhabitable in the process. 

Oblivion takes place a few years after the end of this war, where teams of humans are sent by a corporation to harvest what’s left of Earth’s natural resources, while also repairing drones that deal with the remainder of the Scavengers.  One of these humans is Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), who along with his assigned partner Victoria(Andrea Riseborough) are about to finish their service time and rejoin the human survivors on Titan, a moon of Saturn.  However, Jack is haunted by dreams of the past, and of a woman he once knew, despite having a mandatory memory wipe prior to the events of the movie.  Jack and Victoria’s seemingly routine life is interrupted when a capsule from 60 years past crash lands, containing Julia (Olga Kurylenko), the woman Jack has been dreaming about.  To make matters more complicated, Jack is captured by an underground colony of human survivors, who seem to know more about Jack’s operation than he does.  From there, a conspiracy is uncovered, the real villains are revealed, and Jack must find out who he can trust and piece together his past if he is to ensure the survival of the human race. 

Like I said before, the premise and setting of Oblivion is excellent.  The actual story, however, is a bit of a letdown in comparison as it quickly goes into been-there-seen-that territory.    The complexity of the story also creates more questions than answers, leaving quite a few aspects of the plot unresolved.  Not that this kills the movie or makes it any less interesting.  Oblivion definitely held my interest and kept me guessing throughout, but I can’t help but find it a little frustrating when the story starts off really strong but never reaches those same heights for the remainder of the movie.

The selling point for Oblivion  is its visuals.  The movie is directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously helmed 2010’s TRON: Legacy, and the visual flair from that film seems to have carried over to Oblivion.  This is a movie that begs to be seen on a large theater screen.  Oblivion is gorgeously filmed and almost every set piece is borderline awe-inspiring, from the crumbled remnants of the moon to the barren wasteland that is Earth and what remains of its landmarks.  Joseph Kosinski has proven that he can successfully juggle his actors on top of his fantastic scenery, and I feel that if he was given a stronger script to work with, Oblivion could have been much more than it already is.

Another strong point of Oblivion is the performances of its lead actors.  Love him or hate him as a person, Tom Cruise has proven to be a great actor, and it certainly shows here.  The leader of the human colony is played by Morgan Freeman, and though he isn’t given much to do, he makes the most of his character and is clearly enjoying the role.  The other actors do fine, but the focus is mainly on Cruise, and they are mainly kept in the background.

There’s a fantastic science fiction film in Oblivion, it just isn’t fully realized.  The setup is wonderful, the performances solid, and the visuals outstanding and close to jaw-dropping.  However, it’s all hindered by a story that is littered with a sense of familiarity and is sometimes too complex for its own good.  For my money, though, I was pleased with what I got.  I don’t know if I would buy the movie when it comes to home video, but I can definitely see myself returning to Oblivion sometime in the near future.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Roger Ebert: 1942-2013

Today, the world lost a titan in both the journalism industry and the film industry.  Film critic Roger Ebert, whose reviews have been read and published all over the world died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 70.

Ebert was the main film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times for almost all of his professional career.  He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, the same year that he and Chicago Tribune film critic, Gene Siskel, began their long television career on the locally broadcast show Sneak Previews.  In 1978, the show was picked up by PBS for national broadcasting, and in 1982, the two started a new nationally syndicated show entitled At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.  In 1986, the two critics entered into a partnership with Buena Vista Television to create the most popular of their shows, Siskel & Ebert & The Movies.  Tragedy struck the show in 1999 when Gene Siskel passed away after complications from a surgery to remove a brain tumor, but Ebert pushed on, bringing in guest reviewers before announcing fellow Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper as his permanent co-host.

Ebert was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in 2002, and cancer in his salivary gland in 2003.  Ebert remained dedicated to his work even after his years of treatment rendered him unable to speak in 2006, but began to slow down in 2010.  For the past year, he had Roeper and other guest critics write for his site in addition to his own reviews.  On April 2, 2013, he announced that his cancer had returned, and that he would take a leave of absence from his work.  He died two days later.

Roger Ebert was an inspiration to many, and he will be missed by countless more.  Farewell Mr. Ebert.  I give your life and career "Two Thumbs Up".

Here is Ebert reviewing one of my favorite movies of 

all time, Spirited Away.

Is Pixar Running Out of Ideas?

Earlier today, Disney and Pixar officially announced the sequel to 2003's Finding Nemo, complete with an official title, logo, and release window.  Finding Dory is set to be released on November 25, 2015 (it's worth noting that this will be the first Holiday Season release for Pixar since The Incredibles in 2005).  While the  full cast has yet to be announced, you can rest easy knowing that Ellen DeGeneres will be returning as the title character along with the original director, Andrew Stanton.  While I'm hopeful for this movie, it makes me nervous for the future of Pixar, as they seem to be coming out with more and more sequels as opposed to original stories that made Pixar such a powerhouse in the first place.

Finding Dory could prove to be a success, but what does the announcement say about Pixar's future?

Pixar is no stranger to sequels, with three Toy Story films, two Cars films, and now two Monsters Inc. films under their belt.  But while Toy Story and Monsters Inc. had justification for sequels and prequels, Cars and  Finding Nemo don't.  The original films didn't leave openings for sequels, but Cars made a ton of money through merchandise tie-ins so a sequel to that was inevitable.  In addition to this, there are rumors of a fourth Toy Story film, but neither Disney or Pixar have said anything about it.  All of this makes me wonder if Pixar is finding themselves having to rely on older properties for upcoming projects.

Another reason for concern is the mixed reception their recent films have received.  Cars 2 received a mostly negative reception, netting Pixar their first "Rotten" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes (38%, which is pretty bad considering almost all of Pixar's previous movies scored in the mid-to high 90's).  Brave, on the other hand, showed a 78% rating along with Rotten Tomatoes' "Certified Fresh" title.  Much better than Cars 2, but still not up to Pixar's previous standards.  As it turns out, that's exactly what most people thought of the film itself (myself included).  Monsters University is going to have to be as well-received as Pixar's classics in order to alleviate people's worries about the studio's future.  After seeing the trailer, I'm not entirely sure that's going to happen, at least not for me anyway.  For now, time will tell if Pixar can recapture the magic that captivated us time and time again.

Oz the Great and Powerful Review

I'll admit, when I saw first saw the trailer for Oz the Great and Powerful, I thought it was going to fall flat.  The first trailer made it look like Disney was just trying to bank on the success of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (which I liked the first time I saw it, but the novelty really wore off after repeat viewings) by taking the elements of that movie and putting The Wizard of Oz on it.  However, when the second trailer came out, I was more optimistic but not completely sold on it.  It looked like Disney was learning from the mistakes of Alice in Wonderland, but at the same time falling victim to some of the same problems.  Now, after initially writing off the movie all those months ago, I can say that Oz the Great and Powerful not only met my expectations but in some ways exceeded them.

Oscar Diggs (James Franco), known to his colleagues as Oz, is a simple Kansas carnival magician who wants to become more renowned in his work. The problem is, he's a self-centered, egotistical con-artist.  This all changes when Oscar is whisked away to the magical land that bears his nickname.  There, he encounters the witch Theodora (Mila Kunis) who believes that he is the great wizard that will free the land of Oz from the rule of the Wicked Witch.  Oscar is then charged with the task of killing the Wicked Witch by Theodora's sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who tells him that he will become ruler of Oz after he completes this task.  During Oscar's journey, he encounters Glinda the Good Witch of the South (Michelle Williams) who reveals a great conspiracy between the witches, and it is up to Oscar to find out who to trust if he is to free Oz and become a better man in the process.

The real highlight of Oz is in its characters.  The new characters, Finley the flying monkey (don't worry, this flying monkey isn't child nightmare-inducing) and the China Girl, are welcome additions.  In fact the scene in which Oscar and Finley meet the China Girl is one of the best scenes in the entire movie.  The China Girl is the sole survivor of an attack on China Town by the Wicked Witch, and voice actor Joey King does a great job with the material given to her.  The classic characters are also given unique spins.  The Wicked Witch of the West has become more of a tragic villain in recent years, thanks to Wicked, and her story here is certainly of a tragic nature.  In this version, she's the result of falling victim to her unstable emotions and her sister's trickery.  Speaking of which, the Wicked Witch of the East, an often overlooked character, is put more front and center here and proves to be quite a threat, with her sly wit and silver tongue.  Think of her as the female Loki from The Avengers.  The only two characters that were disappointing were Glinda and Oz himself.  It's not that I didn't like Glinda as a character, it's just that nothing different was really done with her.   As for Oz, I don't think James Franco was the right choice for this character.  He's certainly trying hard, but maybe a little too hard.  He goes over the top and comes off as pretty corny sometimes.  At least he doesn't go off the deep end like Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter.

Sam Raimi was an interesting choice of director for this movie, but he manages to blend his unique style with the Oz name and makes it work, for the most part (the trademark Bruce Campbell cameo is pretty funny). The movie starts off pretty slow, and doesn't pick up until the introduction of the China Girl.  I guess it's better that the movie got started then rather than later, but I was starting to get worried that the movie would fail to pull me in.

The movie is being described as a prequel to the classic 1939 version, which I don't agree with, but it honestly doesn't feel that way most of the time.  It's actually closer to L. Frank Baum's original book than the 1939 film was.  There are several nods to the original, and even a few jabs at it.  If you've ever shown disdain for the singing Munchkins, you'll probably be amused by Oscar's reaction to them in this version.

Oz the Great and Powerful isn't nearly as good as the original, but it was never meant to be.  It's very entertaining and occasionally pretty creative, the traditional signs of a Sam Raimi-directed feature.  It's got a few major problems, but they are partly overshadowed by the great characters and creative visuals.

Score:
4/5 Stars

Oz the Great and Powerful suffers from inconsistent performances and pace, but the characterizations, creative visuals, and respect for the original are more than enough to warrant a recommendation.

2013 Oscar Winners and Reactions

The 85th Academy Awards have come and gone, and this year featured many surprises and a disappointment here and there(at least for me).  The overall show was pretty good; Seth MacFarlane did a great job hosting and actually managed to hold back but still stay true to his brand of comedy.  The show itself was quite a success, with the exception of a pointless appearance by Michelle Obama. Now onto the awards themselves.

Best Picture:
Winner: Argo
I don't want to say this was a surprise, but in some ways, it was.  Argo didn't win any of the other Big Five awards and wasn't even nominated for Best Director.  Despite this, it managed to take home the grand prize as the Academy's best movie of the year.

Best Director:
Winner: Ang Lee for Life of Pi
Probably the biggest curve-ball of the awards, I don't think many people expected Ang Lee to beat out Steven Spielberg for Best Director.  Ang Lee has had quite a diverse career and hopefully this will get him more recognition in America and have him be known for more than that terrible first Hulk movie.

Best Actor:
Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln
No surprise here.  Presenter Meryl Streep didn't even have to open the envelope for this award.  I really liked the fact that despite all of the praise surrounding Day-Lewis' performance, he still sounded very humbled in his acceptance speech.

Best Actress:
Winner: Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook
The second biggest surprise of the night, Jennifer Lawrence has made quite a name for herself in this past year alone.  Hopefully, this Oscar will give her an extra boost in the future of her career.

Best Supporting Actor:
Winner: Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained
A big and much needed win for Christoph Waltz.  Hopefully he'll be able to get some better roles outside of Quentin Tarantino films following this award.

Best Supporting Actress:
Winner: Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables
Again, no surprise on this one.  Anne Hathaway picked up yet another award for her excellent performance as Fantine in Les Miserables.

Best Cinematography:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Editing:
Winner: Argo

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Winner: Argo

Best Original Screenplay:
Winner: Django Unchained

Best Foreign Language Film:
Winner: Amour

Best Animated Feature:
Winner: Brave
This is the only winner that I'm actually upset about.  Don't get me wrong, I liked Brave(I even own it), I just thought that the other nominees were much more deserving.  Wreck-It-Ralph and Frankenweenie had more creativity and originality in them than Brave did.  Brave was just put together using pieces of many other, and better, Disney movies.  Again, I liked Brave, it just didn't deserve to win in my opinion.

Best Documentary Feature:
Winner: Searching for Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short:
Winner: Inocente

Best Costume Design:
Winner: Anna Karenina

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Production Design:
Winner: Lincoln

Best Original Score:
Winner: Life of Pi

Best Original Song:
Winner: "Skyfall" from Skyfall

Best Animated Short Film:
Winner: Paperman

Best Live Action Short Film:
Winner: Curfew

Best Sound Editing:
Winner: Tie between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty

Best Sound Mixing:
Winner: Les Miserables

Best Visual Effects:
Winner: Life of Pi
This would be kind of expected from a movie people are hailing as "the next Avatar".

In the end, while Argo may have won the big award, Life of Pi swept the show, picking up four awards.  Argo and Les Miserables followed with three awards each.  Lincoln, Django Unchained, and Skyfall all took home two awards each.  Bringing up the rear was Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, and Zero Dark Thirty each taking a single award.  The 2013 Oscars were much better than last year's with many more surprises than I was expecting.  I'd say it's time to look forward to the movies for next year's show, but with the movies that are out right now we may have to wait a little while.  In the meantime, I've got some catching up to do with these movies.

2013 Oscar Predictions

The 85th Academy Awards are this coming Sunday, and they're already looking to be a lot more interesting than last year's.  The results of past awards shows this year have made it virtually impossible to say exactly who will take home the big awards, but I'll still make my predictions anyway.  Please note: I have not seen many of these movies so most of these are blind guesses.  Also, I won't talk about Best Short Film-Live Action, Best Documentary as I know next to nothing about the nominees in these categories, nor will I talk about technical awards.

Best Picture:
My initial pick for Best Picture was Lincoln, but now that Argo has been a hit at the awards shows, I'm thinking that the Ben Affleck film could take the show.  Again, it's very hard to say exactly but out of all the films nominated, I'm going with a toss-up between Lincoln and Argo.

Best Actor:
Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln.  This is one of the easier predictions seeing as Day-Lewis has been garnering so much recognition for his portrayal of America's sixteenth President.  The only other person I can see winning is Denzel Washington for Flight, but that would be a long-shot.

Best Actress:
While I would love to see Jennifer Lawrence or Quvenzhane Wallis win for Silver Linings Playbook and Beasts of the Southern Wild, respectively, I have a feeling that Emmanuelle Riva will win for Amour.  Again, this is mostly due to the fact that she has gotten widespread acclaim for her role, and has been sweeping awards shows.

Best Supporting Actor:
This one is also a toss-up.  While it's more likely that Alan Arkin or Philip Seymour Hoffman will win for Argo and The Master, respectively, I would love to see Christoph Waltz win for Django Unchained.  He was easily one of the best parts of the movie, and it would really help him gain some more recognition in America.

Best Supporting Actress:
This one's a no-brainer; Anne Hathaway for Les Miserables.  Again, her portrayal of Fantine was easily the best part of the movie.  With the recognition she's gotten and the awards she's already picked up, it's easy to see her winning this award with no problem.

Best Director:
This one is also very easy: Steven Spielberg for Lincoln.  It would have been harder to decide if Ben Affleck had been nominated, but enough has been said about his snub.  As it is, I am fairly confident that Steven Spielberg will take home the award.

Best Writing:
In the Original Screenplay category I would love to see Django Unchained win.  This was some of Tarantino's best writing I've seen yet.  However, Zero Dark Thirty and Amour seem more likely to win.  As for Adapted Screenplay, it's another toss-up between Lincoln and Argo.

Best Foreign Language Film:
Amour will win this one.  There's not much else to say about this this category or the other nominees so let's just move on.

Best Animated Feature Film:
Yet another category where I have absolutely no idea who will win.  It would be great to see Frankenweenie or ParaNorman win as it will be a tremendous victory for stop-motion animation.  I wouldn't be displeased if Wreck-It-Ralph wins as it will be the first time a video game based movie will have won an award like this.  The only nominee I don't want to win is Brave.  Not that I didn't like the movie, I just thought the other nominees were much better.  Studio Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty was much more deserving of a nomination.

Best Animated Short Film:
I'm really hoping Disney's Paperman will win this award, as it was very creative and, in some ways, groundbreaking in mixing traditional animation with computer animation.  I was also hoping to see Pixar's La Luna get nominated, as I thought that was much better, but I still enjoyed Paperman.

I could be completely right, or I could be completely wrong in these predictions.  My guess is as good as yours.  The 85th Academy Awards will take place Sunday, February 24 at 7 pm Eastern and 4 pm Pacific on ABC.

Review: Dr. Seuss' The Lorax

As I sat in my room, one rainy March day, I decided to see what movie critics had to say.  A brand new movie was about to come out, Dr. Seuss' The Lorax was making people shout.  "It's atrocious! Abysmal! Dr. Seuss would be ashamed!" "But it's well-meaning and cute, it's really not that lame!"  I was sitting confused as I ever could be.  Was this a film that I should go see? Myself unsure and the reviews quite mixed, I avoided the film, until it popped up on Netflix.  I was still unsure, as I went to click Play. Would I find enjoyment in the film, or dismay?

Unfortunately, despite good intentions and some great ideas to make the original story work as a feature length film, The Lorax is another miss in the series of film adaptations of Dr. Seuss' works.  All the pieces were in place for the movie to join Horton Hears a Who as one of the better Seuss adaptations, but somewhere along the way the filmmakers lost sight of not only Dr. Seuss' vision, but of their own vision as well.

Dr. Seuss' story of a boy who goes to the Once-ler(voiced by Ed Helms) to hear the story of the Lorax(voiced by Danny Devito) and the destruction of the Truffula Trees remains largely unchanged. Except for the addition of an entire second plot involving the boy, named Ted(voiced by Zac Efron), and the citizens of the entirely-made-of-plastic Thneedville.  Ted wants to find a real, organic tree to get the attention of his neighbor Audrey(voiced by Taylor Swift). Led to the Once-ler by his grandmother(voiced by Betty White), Ted discovers that Thneedville lies in the center of a wasteland of smog and dead tree stumps.  Ted's actions attract the attention of Aloysius O'Hare, a powerful bottled air magnate who keeps the citizens Thneedville unaware of their surroundings.  As Ted listens to the Once-ler's story, he discovers that restoring the Truffula Trees may be more important than he could ever imagine.

As you can see, there's a lot going on in The Lorax, and that's it's biggest problem.  In stretching the material to feature length, the filmmakers ended up adding too much additional material.  There are too many sub-plots and side characters, and the movie actually devotes more time to these than the main story.  On top of that, a lot of the extra characters are just unnecessary.  Too much time is spent with the families of Ted and the Once-ler.  They're just included for more jokes that didn't do much for me.  The new villain O'Hare is about as boring a villain as you can get, he just wants money and power, and the movie would have greatly benefited from his exclusion.  Also, the pacing can be pretty off at times.  The movie alternates from Ted's story to the Once-ler's throughout most of the movie, and it's a good balance at first.  However, the final part of the Lorax's story is reduced to a two minute song(yeah, The Lorax is also a musical), and the last 20 minutes of the movie focuses on the boring sub-plot with the boring villain.

Also lacking is the voice acting.  Not that it's bad, it's just that I can tell that these are celebrities talking into a microphone.  Also, some of the actors have such distinct voices it's hard not to be distracted.  Every time Ed Helms speaks or sings, I just hear Andy from The Office or Stu from The Hangover.  However, his voice for the much older Once-ler is very good.  By far the weakest link in the chain of celebrity voice actors is Taylor Swift.  She's trying her best, but half the time her voice acting doesn't match with the animation in the expressions on her character and it's really distracting.  The rest of the cast does a fine enough job, but you can tell they were cast for marketing reasons.

And that's how a lot of The Lorax feels; like the filmmakers got more concerned with making the movie more marketable, and that really betrays the message of the original story.  The message is still there, in fact it felt like the movie was trying to force it down my throat half the time, but it gets lost in the movie's huge Hollywood production values.

If there's anything good that came out of The Lorax, it would be the animation and design of the movie.  Everything looks like it was plucked right from the brain of Dr. Seuss.  The comedic timing is also very good, with character's expressions getting more laughs than the jokes that come out of their mouths.  The scenes involving the Once-ler's story are pretty good, as they're the parts that are the most faithful to the book, and I'm fine with giving Ted his own story, but there was just too much time devoted to it.  As the credits roll, artwork from the book is shown, which I'm sure was meant to pay tribute to the original, but to those who cherish the book and original TV special, it feels more like a slap to the face.  Everything looks like Seuss' original vision, but pretty visuals can't make up for the bad choices on the part of the filmmakers.  Just like the Once-ler got caught up in "biggering and biggering" his Thneed industry, the makers of The Lorax got caught up in biggering and biggering the movie's profits.

Score:
2.5/5 Stars

The Lorax means well and has some good moments as well some great animation, but everything the original stood for gets lost in the larger-than-life production values.