Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

I Don’t Want to be a Good Man … I Want to be a Great One.

It’s Tuesday (as I’m writing this, not as you are reading this), which means it was $5 movies at my local theater. Most of the times I get to go to the theaters on Tuesdays, I try to make it a double feature. And, if possible, I try to make the movies I pick be one for me and one for you, my audience. Today was only different in that I accidentally created a theme with the two movies I saw, tied together by the director of today’s movie. But the movie I wanted to see for myself was the other movie. Today’s movie was the one that was requested on Facebook, and it’s also a movie I probably never would’ve seen on my own. The first thing that drew me to the movie was my roommate Richurd telling me about how awful it was. That always makes me want to see something. But I do like the director, so let’s see how Sam Raimi did with Oz the Great and Powerful, based on a series of novels by L. Frank Baum, written by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire, and starring James Franco, Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Zach Braff, Joey King, Bill Cobbs, Tony Cox, Abigail Spencer, Tim Holmes, Stephen R. Hart, Bruce Campbell, and Ted Raimi.

We are in Kansas once more. Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) is a magician at a travelling circus who is down on his luck. He is forced to make a hasty retreat when the circus strongman (Tim Holmes) attacks Oz for flirting with his wife. Oz is thoroughly satisfied with himself for escaping in a hot air balloon … until he realizes it’s being drawn into a tornado. He crashes and, when he reawakens, he is in color and in the Land of Oz. He meets Theodora (Mila Kunis), a good witch who believes him to be the wizard prophesized to overthrow the Wicked Witch that terrorizes the Land of Oz, and she quickly develops romantic, and unrequited interest in Oz. On the way to the Emerald City, they rescue a flying monkey named Finley (Zach Braff) from a lion of questionable bravery. When they reach the Emerald City, Oz meets Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who tells Oz that the Wicked Witch poisoned the previous King of Oz, and to defeat her he would need to destroy her wand. But all may be only slightly different than it appears…

I was not a fan of this movie. It wasn’t horrible as my roommate suggested, but there wasn’t much in the movie that was able to win me over. I have a lot of experience with the original Wizard of Oz movie since it was one of my mom’s favorite movies, which meant that I would be forced to watch it several dozen times in my youth. This movie captures a lot of what they accomplished in the original movie, but neither one of them were particularly strong on story. The original movie was all about a girl making friends on her road to meet the Wizard of Oz. This one is Oz making friends on his road to defeat the Wicked Witch. They have a couple of twists in the plot that were admittedly ruined for me by my knowledge of the previous movie. But, though you know where it’s going to end up since it’s a prequel to the original movie, it’s still a little interesting to see how they get there. But it felt like it should’ve been much more interesting. I understand Theodora’s motivation for becoming the Wicked Witch, but I don’t understand the love at first sight thing she had going on. She just dives right into being all the way devoted to this guy and why? Because he’s going to be king? Because he’s a wizard? Because you realize that you’re a witch, right? You can throw fireballs out of your hands but you’re going to be really impressed that he can pull fake flowers out of his sleeve and throw a smoke bomb on the floor? But then she gets pissed enough to commit her life to evil because the relationship she committed to too quickly turns sour. I suppose that’s a thing that women do, but my problem with that situation is that I didn’t see any reason that Evanora should’ve even bothered to conceal her wickedness. When she unveiled it, the soldiers of the Emerald City were still on her side. I also didn’t understand why Glinda was the only one that had the wand as her weak point and crutch? Neither of the other witches even used wands, let alone would die if theirs was broken. Also, “China Town” being a city made out of fine porcelain? Come on…

The look of this movie is by far its most appealing aspect. Once we get to Oz, the movie is beautiful, colorful, and visually striking. As much as seeing the original film in Technicolor must’ve delighted audiences in 1939, I was delighted by the look of this movie. But with the relative lack of story, I started feeling like I was watching a demo video for some new Nvidia graphics card. There were still a couple of issues I took with the look in this movie though. The first I noted was that Finley was not nearly cute enough to be tolerable. The people in the movie acted like he was supposed to be cute, but I found that role was occupied by the tiny China Girl, who was unforgivably and relentlessly adorable. The second was the look of Theodora after she turns evil. I understand what they were trying to do by making her look like a younger version of the same character in the original movie, but I just thought it looked goofy. She had Mexican chola eyebrows for crying out loud! I would’ve felt better about it if they had just Hulked Kunis up with some green paint and let her do the rest with her performance. I would just assume that her appearance changed over the years.

A lot of the performances worked for me, but sadly the main character mostly did not. I’ve liked James Franco in things before, but he was a little too wacky for my tastes in this movie. One could say that he was chewing the fantastic scenery, as they say. I was fine with Mila Kunis in the movie right up until she turned green, and then she kind of lost me. It was possibly the makeup, but also the over the top wicked witch laugh. I don’t know how much you can knock her for it since it was obviously an homage to the original movie, but judging this movie on its own, that was just pretty goofy. It may also have been the fact that she wasn’t wearing those tight pants that made her butt look so good anymore. Rachel Weisz did a good job throughout the movie, and I felt like she was giving a better performance to this movie than it had earned. Had I been in the movie, I would’ve seen Kunis and Franco goin’ nuts and decided to take it easy. On the other hand, she didn’t do a very good job of concealing her wickedness. I kind of had an idea of it from the first time we met her. Michelle Williams brought it to the movie as well, and I found her extremely charming as Glinda. I was trying to figure out what it was I liked so much about her. She had something similar to naiveté, but she was smarter than being considered naïve. Perhaps it’s just extreme optimism. I did feel like Kunis and Weisz should’ve had a Kansas counterpart like Braff and Williams did, though. That’s kind of a staple for the Oz movies. Or at least the one I remember.

Oz the Great and Powerful didn’t really work for me as a movie, but it still has some very watchable parts. They took a cue from the Wizard of Oz in having a super simplistic story, and at least half of the performances were off-putting in how over the top they were, but Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams gave more to the movie than it had really earned. The movie was inarguably beautiful, though the combination of the visual spectacle and lack of story made it feel too much like a demo for a new graphics card. I like watching the video demos when I get a new graphics card, but I won’t recommend that you pay $10 to see it in theaters. Check it out at a RedBox eventually. Oz the Great and Powerful gets “I don’t want to die yet! I haven’t accomplished anything!” out of “You’re capable of more than you know…”

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My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Marilyn, Is It True You Wear Nothing in Bed but Perfume?

I had wanted to see today’s movie for a long time, but I don’t think I had first known about it until it was out of theaters.  But I kept seeing videos about the movie on the televisions at Best Buy and my interest was captured.  I didn’t have the greatest of reasons to have any interest in this movie, though.  It seemed like a drama, so that would generally be a turn off.  I also have little to no knowledge of the actress that this movie is based on.  What I did have was a supreme interest in seeing the actress they got to play her be really sexy in the role, and I also had some deeper interest in the movie beyond the superficial that I could never put my finger on, but I’m going to try to put my finger on it right now in my review of My Week with Marilyn, written by Adrian Hodges and Colin Clark, directed by Simon Curtis, and starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Dougray Scott, Julia Ormond, Zoe Wanamaker, Emma Watson, Judi Dench, Dominic Cooper, Derek Jacobi, Philip Jackson, Toby Jones, Geraldine Somerville, Michael Kitchen, and Peter Wight.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) has always been obsessed with film and, fresh out of university, resolves to get a job on a film.  He goes to the office of Hugh Perceval (Michael Kitchen) and waits until a job comes available.  Eventually, that job comes in the form of Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and his wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond), when Vivien talks Laurence into giving Colin a job as third assistant director on his upcoming production of The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams).  Colin begins to handle a few odd jobs around the set and starts to court a wardrobe assistant named Lucy (Emma Watson).  Marilyn’s acting coach, Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), begins to make the set a hostile workplace because Olivier does not find merit in her particular brand of coaching.  He’s also not too fond of Marilyn’s tardiness and trouble with the lines.  Colin and Marilyn begin to develop a friendship that seems to help her on set by making her a little more cheerful, but her business partner, Milton H. Greene (Dominic Cooper), warns Colin that she will break his heart.

I think I had found myself building this movie up in my head a lot before I finally got to see it.  Something about the movie intrigued me so much that I was actually very excited for it, and counting the days until it arrived at a RedBox.  Now that I’ve watched it, I’m pretty sure I liked it, but I’m still working through why.  I felt like the story may have been a little confusing to me, but there’s also a chance that they went into this movie expecting everyone to be well aware of the life and times of Marilyn Monroe.  All I really know about her is that she sang Happy Birthday to a president once.  That being the case, there was back story that I had to rush to piece together as I watched the movie, and then more things to figure out during it.  I kind of felt as if I should have done some research going into this movie.  I understood basically what was going on, but there were a couple of things that I’m still a little confused about.  At one point, Marilyn wakes up and complains of pain, saying she doesn’t want to lose the baby.  This was about an hour and 10 minutes into the movie and I was previously unaware that she was pregnant.  Even now, I can’t say for sure.  They never came out and said in the movie if she actually did have a miscarriage or if she was just hopped up on pills and confused by a dream or something.  At the end of the movie, Marilyn apologizes to the crew of the movie right after it wraps, and I’m not really sure why about that either.  I thought she was trying to say that she was unable to get the film released or something, but I looked it up online and that movie came out.  And the Wikipedia page (the one true source of all knowledge) did nothing to shed light on the situation.  There were a couple of side stories that seemed to deserve a little more weight, and a couple that never really got tied up.  For instance, what happened with Lucy?  Did they try again after Marilyn left?  I don’t know.  I guess there’s a certain point where a movie has to end and the rest of the character’s lives are open for interpretation, but I sometimes don’t appreciate being confused by a movie.  Generally, it’s a sign of poor writing, but in this situation, I blame it on the subject matter.  The story’s written from one person’s point of view, so the rest of the story could only be his speculation.  Also, I may just be dumb.  All that being said, I tended to find myself fairly riveted by this movie and was paying close attention to it, so I can’t really blame my confusion on my lack of attention.  But I could say that I enjoyed it because the movie invoked some emotion from me, as well as being genuinely interesting to watch.  It was also a beautiful movie to look at.  They seemed to go to all the most beautiful places in the movie, and they were also using the same places, such as Pinewood Studios.  Also, the scene that mainly made me interested in seeing the movie in the first place (a pretty beautifully filmed bit of singing and dancing by Marilyn/Michelle Williams) was right in the opening of the film.

I think the performances in this movie are probably what deserves most of the credit for my fondness for it.  Michelle Williams was pretty amazing as Marilyn.  Not only did she seem to embody the public persona of Marilyn Monroe, but she knocked it out of the park when she was just trying to be herself as well.  She had some good emotional parts and some decent comedic moments as well and, more importantly, really gets you to connect with her and Marilyn Monroe and begin to understand what she was going through.  Kudos should also be given to what I assume is her body double, who got her butt out twice in the movie and it was spectacular.  Spellbinding, really.  I didn’t feel like the male lead, Eddie Redmayne, did very much for me.  He didn’t have a lot of heavy lifting to his performance, and I didn’t like the look of his face, but his performance was pretty real.  Kenneth Branagh was as good as he typically is in movies, getting a couple of opportunities to freak out.  Emma Watson was good (and I’m also in love with her), but her part in the movie wasn’t that meaty.  Another thing that caught my attention about the movie was that it had some pretty huge names in supporting roles and a relative unknown in the lead.  I didn’t know who Eddie Redmayne was before I saw this movie, but Dougray Scott, Julia Ormond, Judi Dench, and a couple other big name actors were in some of the smaller roles in the movie, and I thought that was interesting.  Apparently not that interesting though.  I have a headache, give me a break!

Though I admit a large degree of confusion from this movie, I still walked out being pretty fond of it.  The story lost me in a few parts, but was almost always something I couldn’t take my eyes off of.  It was probably mostly due to a couple of outstanding performances, namely Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh.  Also, Emma Watson is gorgeous.  Michelle Williams is too, but from this point on I would demand she wear her hair Marilyn Monroe style if she wanted to date me.  Make your choice, Williams.  I could understand some people not having that much interest in this movie, but it might surprise you.  I picked it up from RedBox and enjoyed it for slightly more than a dollar, and now I’ll probably be purchasing it.  I think you’ll get more than a dollar’s worth of enjoyment out of it.  And, with that, I give My Week with Marilyn “Come to the set on time tomorrow and show everyone what you can do.  Show Larry that you’re a great actress” out of “Oh, you have that word in England too?”

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