Oz the Great and Powrful

A classic novel from author L. Frank Baum that was turned into a classic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz is about as iconic as any film out there. No matter the age, it seems everyone's seen it at some point, and for a reason. It is iconic, classic, influential and most of all entertaining. Watching the story, it leaves a lot of ground for background information, how things came to be the way they are.....and you know what that means!!! Prequel!!! Away we go down the Yellow Brick Road with 2013's Oz the Great and Powerful.

It's 1905 Kansas and magician, con man and all around ladies man Oscar 'Oz' Diggs (James Franco) is working with a traveling carnival, typically staying one step ahead of his past troubles. His troubles have caught up to him this time, and he's forced to escape by the only means in front of him; a hot air balloon. Oz escapes, but he's swept up into a tornado and finds himself in a world unlike anything he's ever seen. Full of color, flowers and trees and creatures that just shouldn't be, Oz also meets Theodora (Mila Kunis), who reveals she's a witch along with her sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz). He's informed that he's the answer to a longtime prophecy, the man who will save the Emerald City.....if he can kill Glinda (Michelle Williams), an evil witch. Seeing the treasure that awaits if he can do it, Oz agrees, setting off to kill the evil witch, but everything isn't quite as it seems in the wonderful land of Oz.

The little touches here linking the 2013 film to the classic 1939 film are evident. The appeal is obvious, and judging by the box office of almost $500 million worldwide, audiences ate up that appeal. Director Sam Raimi does a fine job bringing to life an incredibly stylish world, full of adventure and fantasy. The movie begins in black and white, the frame small and focused. When Oz arrives in this new world, the frame expands to widescreen, colors literally bursting off the screen. It's a nice nod to the 1939 classic without being too obvious about it. Beyond that, it's cool to see the flying monkeys, the Emerald City, the poppy fields, the Oh-We-Oh palace guards, the munchkins, they Yellow Brick Road and so much more. On top of that, we see how Oz becomes the Wizard, how the Wicked Witch of the West becomes the Wicked Witch. Just a lot of little things and forebearers that any fan of the 1939 film should appreciate.

Now I write this next criticism admitting I didn't see 'Oz' in 3-D, IMAX, or 3-D IMAX, just a regular old flat-screen at home. The visuals are insanely good-looking here....but it went a long way for me. At a certain point, it became overkill. We see Oz exploring this world full of flowers, plants, trees, beautiful hills and mountains, caves and forests. Eventually, it felt like the story gets left by the wayside to focus far more on the stylish aspects of the movie. So as good as the visuals are, they come at the expense of the story, and it's the rare occasion that is a positive for me. As Oz assembles a motley crew of helpers and assistants, the story lags while the focus remains on the background visuals. It's pretty flawless, Franco, Kunis and Co. blending seamlessly into the computer-generated images. I just wish there could have been more of a balance between the two, a happy middle ground.

Where I can't really find a weakness is in the casting. Fresh off a really odd Franco flick -- Spring Breakers -- comes this far better part, far more suited to his strengths. His Oz is a smooth-talker, a pretty decent magician, and generally a troublemaker who always manages to get out of said trouble. Franco gives him the right dosage of roguish charm mixed with a guy who wants to do the right thing. As for the witches, these are three very talented actresses working together (and they're easy on the eyes so that doesn't hurt). Williams does a fine job as the calm, almost angelic Glinda, Weisz similarly very good as the manipulative Evanora, and Kunis gets the biggest transformation from lovelorn Theodora to lovestruck and angry Wicked Witch. My only real complaint is that when Kunis transforms her voice talents remind me far too much of her voice work as Meg Griffin on Family Guy. Regardless, it's a very solid quartet working together.

The rest of the cast includes Zach Braff providing his voice talents as Finley, a small flying monkey (a good one, not a bad one) dressed like a doorman who pledges a life debt to Oz for saving him from certain death at the hands of a lion. He also plays Frank, Oz's loyal assistant in Kansas. Bill Cobbs plays the Master Tinker, a handyman of sorts who helps Oz to victory while Tony Cox is Knuck, the herald of the Emerald City, always ready to sound off a welcoming hurrah. Also solid is Joey King as China Doll, a broken doll Oz fixes who tags along on the adventures. Even look for Bruce Campbell as an Emerald City guard.

While I didn't love 'Oz,' I did like it a lot. The positives mostly outweigh the negatives in a movie that's a tad long at 130 minutes. My favorite moments were the funny ones -- surprisingly funny -- as Oz, Finley and China Doll navigate the twists and turns of the Yellow Brick Road. It's a visual treat with solid characters, surprising action and some good laughs. Not a bad combination at all.

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013): ***/****

Jack the Giant Slayer

Let's give credit where it's due. Disney has done its best to make fairy tales at least moderately politically correct, but there's something that is often odd, unsettling and pretty uncomfortable about them. Weird to dulled down to....well, movies have gotten their greedy paws on the genre again, making them action movies? From Snow White to Jack and the Beanstalk, they're all ripe for the picking, like 2013's Jack the Giant Slayer.

Living in the kingdom of Cloister, a young farm boy, Jack (Nicholas Hoult), has grown up idolizing the legend of an ancient king, Erik, who saved the kingdom from the wrath of man-eating giants. Unfortunately, living with his uncle on his small farm in the countryside, Jack doesn't seem destined for any sort of heroic deeds or royal crown. Selling his uncle's horse though in town through an odd set of circumstances, Jack comes into possession of a bag of small beans....powerful beans (oh no!). That night, Jack is stunned to find the king's daughter, Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), on his doorstep, but in a driving rain, he loses the beans and they immediately sprout up, blasting away to the skies....with Isabelle in tow. The next morning with help from the king, his men, the Guardians, and the treacherous Lord Roderick (Stanley Tucci) along, Jack climbs up the immense beanstalk to the land between Heaven and Earth where the giants reside. Can they rescue Isabelle in time?

A solid performer at the box office upon its release this spring, 'Jack' earned almost $200,000,000 in theaters. It's easy to see why. It takes a familiar story -- Jack and the beanstalk -- and has some fun with it, injecting a whole lot of energy via lots o' action and cool characters. Getting it to theaters proved to be not to easy, but director Bryan Singer does a very capable job in the end. It's tightly paced, running an action-packed 114 minutes, and never gets too bogged down in any one scene or character. If there's flaws....and there are....it's hard to have too much of an issue with them because we're onto the next scene with the snap of a finger! Composer John Ottman's score is a good one too, a big, booming fantastical score that fits in well with the non-stop action.

Box office success considered, it's all that more impressive because there isn't one huge headlining star here. There's no one that screams out "GOTTA see this!!!" Good actors just the same, but no sure thing. Start with Hoult, the young English actor who holds his own as the titular Jack. He's a teenager growing up, not some muscle-bound hero. Most importantly, Hoult's meek nerdiness plays well, and he's very likable. One of my favorite actors currently working, Ewan McGregor is clearly having some fun as Elmont, the captain of the king's guard, a tried and true and very capable warrior. The always fun, always reliable Ian McShane isn't given a ton to do as King Brahmwell, the aging ruler who worries for his daughter's well-being but must measure it against the well-being of the Kingdom and his people, but it's Ian McShane, just go with it. The same applies for Tucci, a great actor who makes the most of his part as the greedy, power-hungry Lord.

Playing the damsel in distress who...........gasp.......likes Jack (how could this be?!?), Tomlinson is decent as Isabelle, but she simply isn't given enough to do. Shallow guy mode, but she's a cute princess so that's good. Eddie Marsan plays Crawe, Elmont's fellow guard and a longtime friend, while Ewen Bremner is a solid backup villain as Wicke, Roderick's equally treacherous accomplice.

Enough with the positives, bring on the negatives! As fun as some of the characters are, you don't always feel especially connected to them. It's a fun, diverting script but the focus seems to be entirely on big, broad strokes of characters and the spectacle of what we're watching. Character development? Eh, overrated. My biggest concern (on top of those things) was what I'd seen in trailers, what appeared to be an overindulgence of computer-generated special effects. Yeah, I was spot-on there. While it was filmed in the English countryside, it never feels/looks like it. Just about every scene feels like a very polished, very at a distant CGI shot. It gets repetitive, and the giants look tolerable I suppose, but it's not the highest of quality CGI. Bill Nighy lends his voice talents to play General Fallon, the leader of the vengeful giants. For me at least, CGI is best used in small doses that fits in effortlessly with a story. Not the case here where basically the complete visual look of the movie depends on the CGI.

That said, I thought the movie was a lot of fun. The backstory of how the giants ended up in their purgatory above the clouds is pretty cool, and the adventures to said purgatory provide for some cool backdrops to the story. It's always fun, always exciting, and the finale with the giants descending on Cloister and Brahmwell's castle is quite the wrap-up. Sure, there are times I wish it connected a little more, giving us more investment in the characters or the story. 'Jack' can be a little heartless, feeling like we're watching from a distance at times, but I'm not going to get too analytical here. It's fun. Enjoy it, and DONE.

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013): ***/****

Hook

Let's face it. Who among us actually wanted to grow up? It's just more fun being a kid. Less responsibilities, no obligations, and basically? Do what you want. That's part of the long-lasting charm of the Peter Pan character, a mischievous boy who never grows up, causing mischief and enjoying himself wherever he goes. What if Peter did grow up though, forgetting about what he used to be? So goes 1991's Hook.

A ruthless businessman who can scoop up struggling businesses effortlessly, Peter Banning (Robin Williams) takes his wife and kids, Jack (Charlie Korsmo) and Maggie (Amber Scott), to visit his grandmother, Wendy (Maggie Smith), in London. Obsessed with a merger, Peter has lost touch with his family, and one night, they're mysteriously taken from Wendy's home, an ominous note from a JAS Hook left on their bedroom door. It defies a 'Peter Pan' to come back to Neverland and rescue his children. Peter has no idea what to make of it until Maggie reveals a secret; Peter is in fact Peter Pan all grown up, his "childhood" lost since forgotten when he chose to grow up. How can he get his kids back? By embracing who he used to be, visiting Neverland and tangling with the nasty Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman). 

As a literary character, Peter Pan first appeared in author J.M. Barrie's 1902 book The Little White Bird. Peter would appear in several other Barrie books and since then has become an instantly recognizable literary character from books and plays to stage plays and feature films, even the iconic Disney classic from 1953. It is a character most kids are aware of at least a little, and there is a charm to the boy who refuses to grow up. A story delving into a 'what if?' about said character is an interesting, unique idea. Peter decided to grow up when he fell in love with his future wife, Moira (Caroline Goodall).  And what if a full-grown Peter doesn't remember his past life as the infamous Peter Pan? Well, away we go.

I watched the movie and enjoyed it only to get a rather large surprise as the credits rolled. Directed by.....Steven Spielberg?!? I couldn't and didn't believe it. Not one of Spielberg's best films, Hook is nonetheless a good film. What struck me most was the distinct look of the film, giving an appearance of almost being based on a stage. The sets are all clearly indoors -- especially the outdoor ones on Neverland and on Hook's ship -- but they're busy, cluttered and claustrophobic. There's always lots of action and movement around, filling the screen to the point it looks like it may burst. John Williams' score is okay if not particularly memorable, never rising above the action on-screen.

What I liked most though was the casting, almost from top to bottom. Who better than to play wild man-child Peter Pan than ultra-goofy Robin Williams? He brings the character to life; a business suit executive who can't be bothered with anything fun. Then, he starts to remember what he used to be and watch out! Let the fireworks ensue. Hoffman is a scene-stealer as Capt. Hook, the infamous pirate leader with a hook for a hand after a crocodile bit his hand off. Julia Roberts plays Tinkerbell, the tiniest of fairies who guides Peter on his rediscovery of who he is. Bob Hoskins too is very good as Smee, Hook's right hand man. Of Peter's Lost Boys, the ones that stand out the most are Dante Brasco as Rufio, the new leader of the Boys, and Raushan Hammond as Thud Butt, the rather....round, jovial Lost Boy. Even look for singer Phil Collins in a small part and Gwyneth Paltrow as a young Wendy in a flashback.  

Far from perfect, the movie does have its flaws. At 144 minutes, it's far too long. Here's my issue. The movie never really slows down from its London intro to the majority of the time being spent on Neverland. It isn't really the pacing's fault, but the movie feels incredibly long at times. Some scenes go on for too long without knowing where to cut it off. As well, the use of some computer generated images looks dated now some 20-plus years later. Hard to criticize it too much, but it's certainly noticeable. Still, it's an entertaining story with an iconic character, an interesting visual look, and a deep cast.

Hook <---trailer (1991): ** 1/2 /****

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

First released in 1997 from author J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter franchise in both literature and film has taken the world by storm. The seven Potter books have sold 450 million copies -- actually think about how many books that is -- and the films to date (I'm writing this before the final film is released) have grossed six billion dollars worldwide. Now partially because I don't like being told to read/watch something, my only experience with the Potter books comes from reading the first story during a college English class.

While there was nothing about the series that turned me off, I just wasn't pulled in like so many of the devoted fans that love everything about the character(s), the series and this whole new world. I enjoyed the first book -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone -- but got through it more because I needed to for the class as opposed to wanting to read it.  So now 14 years later as the final movie is about to hit theaters tomorrow, I finally looked into the first movie, watching 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Better late than never, right?

Growing up with his aunt, uncle and cousin after his parents died when he was a baby, 11-year old Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) has always been a little different, but he has no idea why. As weird things start happening around him, he gets a strange visitor, an immense man with a gigantic beard, Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), who tells him he should get ready to travel to Hogwarts, a school for young wizards. Not sure what to make of everything, Harry goes along, thrust into a world of oddities, magic, and spells where everyone seems to know him, but he has no idea why. He meets Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), fellow first year wizardry students, and starts to learn the ways of being a wizard. As he learns all he can though, Harry begins to see that there's more to his past than he knows, and he may be destined for bigger and better things.

A whole new crazy wizard world aside, I think a big selling point of these movies/books is actually the simplicity of the Harry character. He's a young kid trying to find out who he is and what he should do to grow up. Granted, he's going to a wizard school and not just grammar school, but what person in the audience can't appreciate that feeling of butterflies as you step into something new?  Over the last 10 years and all the movies that followed, Radcliffe has grown up in front of our eyes, and as a 12-year old here in the opener, he shows what a great actor he can be.  Child actors are incredibly hit or miss, but he shows off his impressive talents.  The same goes for Grint as Ron, Harry's best friend and partner in crime, and Watson as Hermione, the know-it-all who wants to be the best wizard ever. It's this friendship among the three youngsters that keeps the movie grounded in the coming movies because through all the craziness, they're still just three good friends.

On to bigger and better things though, a whole world devoted to being a wizard. Director Chris Columbus has the unenviable task of turning a hugely popular book into a movie that fans will approve of, and more than that, live up to expectations.  Visually, the movie is a stunner, a beautiful story to watch all the way through. Hogwarts looks like an English castle from the Middle Ages as the wizard students are separated by house. It's a clean slate though to create this world because Rowling creates everything from the ground up. We're introduced to the game of Quidditch, a cross-breed of hockey and soccer on brooms, school houses with names like Griffindor and Slyterhin, a school that literally moves around in its architectural form as needed, teachers and professors with all sorts of specialties, creatures and objects that are unique and interesting in their weirdness. It's fun to watch and easy to keep up with, the movie almost serving as a guide for what is to come in the series.

Credit goes to the child (and now adult) actors in Radcliffe, Grint and Watson for making the series what it is over the last 10 years. But one of the things that helped legitimize the series in its film form was the ridiculous talents involved in filling out all these great supporting roles.  Ready to get some serious acting chops dropped on you?  Start with Richard Harris as Professor Albus Dumbledore, the head master of Hogwarts and wisest of all the professors. Some of the other professors include Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, Ian Hart as the squirrelly Prof. Quirrell, John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick, and Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, head of the Slytherin House. Coltrane is a scene-stealer as the gigantic, somewhat dim Hagrid who is almost Harry's guardian angel, and John Hurt even makes a one-scene appearance as Olllivander, a wand maker. What works though is that these don't feel like unnecessary cameos, instead being little parts brought to life by immensely talented actors and actresses. They're characters, not movie stars.

Having not seen the rest of the movies -- yet -- I've still kept up with the series over the years. It was hard not to keep up even by accident with the wave of media attention devoted to Harry Potter. The series has changed quite a bit in the years since its debut, and mostly for the better. I read a surprising amount of critiques that ripped this movie pretty good because it was aimed so much at kids while the later movies went to a darker, more cynical place. This is the movie that had to be made to introduce the series though, a fun, exciting adventure that introduces all the players and puts everything where it needs to be.  I've tried to keep the review tight and know I missed a fair amount of stuff that I could have mentioned.

What's worth knowing? It's a good movie, and a great introduction to an extremely popular series that has gotten bigger and better since.  A very good start.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone <---trailer (2001): ***/****

Avatar

When I first heard about James Cameron's Avatar, I can honestly say I wasn't interested in the least.  Sure, I saw Titanic twice in theaters while in grammar school, but this new project he'd been working on for years held little appeal to me.  The story sounded weak at best, and the attraction of some new technology did little to impress me.  It got worse when the movie actually hit theaters and was a huge success, lots of friends and family saying I'd love it, just go see it.  Well, that sealed the deal. I wasn't going to watch it. Most of a year later, I caved, getting it from Netflix this week.  Final result? Good but not great movie, one that's definitely not one of the greatest movies ever made regardless of how many bajillion dollars it made in theaters.

Going in with as open a mind as possible, I wanted to give Avatar a fair shot...even if that voice deep down inside wanted me to hate it.  I couldn't help it.  I saw all this craze last winter and thought it was ridiculous how much fans got into it.  I read stories that some fans were even going through variations of depression and withdrawals since they couldn't visit the fictional planet of Pandora where the story takes place.  It just all added up.  It was Harry Potter, Twilight, and any number of other popular series in pop culture rolled into one.  Still, I buckled down and tried to enjoy it, and overall, I did.  But that doesn't mean there weren't flaws along the way, major flaws.

Sometime in the future, a paraplegic Marine, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is sent to the far-off planet of Pandora in place of his recently deceased twin brother. On Pandora, a corporation is struggling with how to handle the indigenous population, the Na'vi, a humanoid race of creatures, who sit on a hugely lucrative element needed back home called unobtanium.  Through an extensive, expensive scientific process, Jake can become a Na'vi as an avatar, looking like them and eventually living with them.  His superior, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), wants to learn about the Na'vi and their culture and way of life, but Jake receives pressure from the corporation's head (Giovanni Ribisi) and the head of security (Stephen Lang). Living among them, Jake begins to become one of them, even falling in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and is torn between his duty as a former soldier with his desire to do what's right.  A fight is coming, and Jake's right in the middle.

Props to Cameron right off the bat because he basically invented a new form of technology to film this movie, taking existing motion capture software and making it ridiculously better.  The whole movie is basically CGI (which I despise), but it's so good, so perfectly handled, that you don't even process that you are watching anything completed by a computer.  If you can convince me CGI is a good thing, you've done your work.  Point to Mr. Cameron.  The movie is beyond gorgeous.

That's by far the strongest aspect of the movie, the first 90 minutes or so as Jake explores Pandora and all it has to offer.  The storyline is similar to Dances With Wolves -- except in the future and in space -- so we see Jake learn how the Na'vi live from day to day in the jungles of Pandora with all its plant life and vegetation and various sorts of wildlife, some friendlier than others.  The sequences that blow you away are phenomenal, like Jake flying through the suspended mountains that hang in mid-air, the exploration of the immense tree the Na'vi live in, and many more.  It's all new to Jake as he takes advantage of his new legs, and it's all new to us as we see the ins and outs of this idyllic planet somewhere in the galaxy.

One of the rising stars in Hollywood, Sam Worthington is an ideal choice in the lead to play marine Jake Sully.  He's been in Terminator Salvation and Clash of the Titans, but he's still a new face here in Avatar.  He needs to be a new face because if you've seen this guy/character in various other roles, it loses some of the appeal, the wonderment as Jake transforms into something else. Saldana is the equally strong-willed Neytiri who fights Jake but comes to love him.  The technology that makes Saldana into a Na'vi is obviously something special, but credit to her for not getting lost along the way as she makes Neytiri a very strong female character.  Weaver and Ribisi are solid in supporting parts, Lang is hamming it up for all he's worth as the evil security head, and also look out for Michelle Rodriguez, Wes Studi, and Joel Moore in supporting parts.

Now for the disappointing part of Avatar.  With a budget of over $300 million, Cameron apparently didn't spend much on a well thought out, well written finished script.  The dialogue is embarrassingly bad at times with some lines that made me cringe hearing them and more so now just thinking of them.  I mentioned earlier the story is similar to Dances With Wolves.  That's not true.  It is Dances With Wolves with the Na'vi filling in for the Sioux and evil white men filling in for...oh, wait...that one is the same.  Cameron clearly went to town on the special effects, and good for him because they're amazing, but at 162-minutes the movie feels incredibly long in parts and could have been tightened up or at least been better utilized.

The finale is a combination of all this good and bad as Lang and Co. launch an all-out offensive on the Na'vi and their villages.  It is an inspiring sequence full of scope and a truly epic feel that is also limited by a heavy-handed ending that I hoped wouldn't be there.  SPOILERS For awhile, it looks like the Na'vi are going to lose only to have a naturalistic, spiritual ending of the Pandoran ecosystem work together to fight off the intruders.  SPOILERS It of course leaves the door open for a possible Avatar 2 -- God help us -- but doesn't ring true at all.  But that's the movie.  Lots of good and lots of bad, but in the end the amazing technology wins out.

Avatar <---trailer (2009): ***/****

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

I take it for granted sometimes when watching movies that computer generated images – yes, CGI – didn’t always exist. Before computers could crank out some ridiculously cool images, moviemakers had to improve in a lot of ways to get the necessary images to fill out their movies. Just like I pointed out in my review of 1965’s Jason and the Argonauts, one of the best ways to improvise was special effects master Ray Harryhausen who over a long career created a long line of special effects creatures. Now in 2010 they may look a little dated, but that doesn’t take away from their iconic status.

Of course, they’re not all winners that Harryhausen was a part of. But just because a movie overall is below average doesn’t mean Harryhausen’s effects aren’t worthwhile, 1975’s Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger a prime example. It was the rare movie where his effects were a part of that can’t be included somewhere in the horror/monster/sci-fi/fantasy genres.  So even with the stop motion filming technology, the effects still work and serve almost as a time capsule of a pre-CGI world. Unfortunately for this entry, Sinbad doesn’t have much else going for it. Bad acting, little to no story, and if anything, an overreliance on the effects.

Sailing into port, adventurer Sinbad (Patrick Wayne) is prepared to ask for the hand of Princess Farah (Jane Seymour) in marriage.  Instead, Sinbad and his crew find a city torn apart by an evil curse. Prince Kasim – about to be crowned prince in a week’s time – has been cursed, supposedly by his evil stepmother Zenobia (Margaret Whiting). If Kasim isn’t able to take power, her son Rafi (Kurt Christian) will step in for him. To reverse the curse, Sinbad can think of only one person to do the job, a mysterious man named Melanthius (Patrick Troughton) who may not even exist.  With time working against them, Sinbad, Farah and his crew embark on an adventure that will take them halfway around the world to a place of legend and myth, Zenobia not far behind.

Let’s get the positives out of the way first. Other Harryhausen movies I’ve seen used his effects and skills but sparingly, here and there with the tension building up to their reveals.  That’s not the case here as director Sam Wanamaker goes to town with an abundance of special effects creations.  Just some include three demon fire creatures, a primitive cave man, a giant prehistoric killer walrus, an unfrozen tiger, a Minotaur, and a couple more I might be forgetting. There is A LOT of them. If anything, there’s too many of them. It’s hard to appreciate how cool each individual creature creation is if the second they’re off the screen another is appearing.  Still, in a movie as bad as this, that is THE positive.

If the budget for this movie was $100, I feel safe saying at least $98.50 was spent on paying Harryhausen to create his effects. Everything else is lacking, starting with the script.  The premise of finding a mysterious man with special powers is nothing new and has been used in countless other mythology and fairy tale stories. That’s fine because it opens the door for all sorts of adventures, but that’s it. In between Harryhausen creations, we get long, extended scenes of Sinbad’s ship sailing across the seas or his crew walking across desert and winter landscapes. It feels like there wasn’t much of a script at all so instead of thinking something up, we see shots like that over and over again. Then there’s the whole green screen effect where the cast is shown in close-up clearly on a studio with a digitalized backdrop, then a cut to a 2^nd unit crew of stuntmen walking off into the actual desert.  Cheap, cheap, cheap, this movie reeked of it.

Right up there with the lack of script is the next casualty, lack of character. I like Patrick Wayne, but he’s best suited for supporting roles where he can play off bigger stars with more acting ability. As Sinbad, he’s supposed to be courageous, honorable, and a bit of an eccentric. Playing Sinbad though, Wayne is incredibly stiff and his line deliveries always have the same inflection whether he’s in trouble or trying to woo his bride to be. As much as I like Wayne, he just wasn’t cut out for this part. Seymour hadn’t developed as an actress so early in her career, but her part is basically eye candy. She is scantily clad every time she’s on-screen and screams like a champ whenever danger arises.

None of the rest of the supporting cast registers in a positive way, ranging from neutral to bad to just awful. And that's about all I can say.  The movie on a whole is pretty awful, and even Harryhausen's special effects can't save this dreck. If you're feeling adventurous, give the movie a try via Youtube, starting here with Part 1.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger <---trailer (1977): */****

Jason and the Argonauts

If there's one thing I hate in movies, it would have to be computer-generated images or as we all so affectionately call it...CGI. I don't really hate all uses of CGI because sometimes it's necessary, but instead I'm more sick of directors, producers and studios overusing it to the point where I want to smash the disc apart rather than watch another minute. Movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy are supposed to dazzle audiences with the spectacle of what they're watching, but usually for me it's always on my mind that 'hey, a computer made that.' "Cool."

That's one huge reason movies pre-CGI appeal to me. If a director wanted to do something spectacular with a scene, here's a novel thought, he actually had to do it or in some cases find a way around it with a green-screen, miniatures, matte paintings, things like that. One always reliable solution was Ray Harryhausen, a special effects master famous for his use of stop-motion animation, who specialized in all sorts of crazy creatures and creations. So when directors couldn't turn to computers to save the day, they turned to Harryhausen.

In most of the movies Harryhausen worked on, the stories required creatures of one sort or another that could not actually be replicated in real life...most of the time because they didn't exist. Greek mythology had hordes of such creatures, half-man and half-horse, species with six heads, harpies harassing people from the sky. And in director Don Chaffey's 1963 Greek mythology epic Jason and the Argonauts, Harryhausen turned in some of his greatest work that may seem dated now over 40 years later but at the time was groundbreaking.

The story itself is one of the more well-known adventures to come out of mythology as young Jason (Todd Armstrong) is trying to revive his home Thessaly to the power that it once was. He has heard of a golden fleece at the end of the world that if recovered, Jason believes will help inspire the country to regain its power. With backing from Greek gods Zeus and Hera (Honor Blackman), Jason goes about acquiring a ship, the Argo, and a crew of the strongest and smartest men Greece has to offer, including the greatest of Greek heroes, Hercules (Nigel Green) himself. But as Jason and his crew travel to lands where no Greek has gone before, they face a long list of foes and obstacles, both human and other-worldly.

Where movies like Troy tried to do away with anything godly or mythological, 'Jason' embraces everything of the sort. The gods, like Zeus, Hera and Hermes, interact with humans all the time, appearing here and there in a cloud of smoke as needed. Zeus even gives Hera just five chances to help Jason grow up because he fears she'll interfere too much in his development. The portrayal of Mount Olympus is actually pretty funny, very 60s stylish, and it made me chuckle they show Zeus and Hera as a bit of a bickering old married couple.

The treat here is of course Harryhausen's stop-motion special effects, especially the finale as Jason and two of the Argonauts engage in a sword fight with six skeltons brandishing shield and sword, check it out HERE but SPOILERS of course. It's an inspired sequence that took Harryhausen weeks to film because each skeleton had to be moved separately just to have one frame of shooting. One second equals about 24 frames so do the math, that's a long time playing with skeletons. But all around, the scene jumps off the screen both because of the skeleton warriors and the actors mimicking fighting these non-existent enemies.

'Jason' will always be remembered for that sequence but two others are almost as impressive thanks to Harryhausen. One has a man blinded by the gods attacked by two harpies, watch HERE, and the second has an enormous statue, Talos, coming to life and attacking Jason and the Argo, check the Talos scene out HERE. Sure, all these stop-motion scenes are obviously miniatures inserted into the movie so creature and actors never actually interact, but there's something nostalgic, something very cool about these sequences. Harryhausen spent months on things that could probably be done in a few days or hours today, all of which is a testament to his talent 30 years before computers started to take over.

The scenes without the Harryhausen creations do drag at times, but it's not long before another adventure comes around. Armstrong is a capable Jason -- although as an American his voice was dubbed because let's face it all Greeks speak proper old English -- and his supporting cast is good, especially scene-stealing Green as Hercules. Nancy Kovack joins the cast late as Medea, the requisite love interest, and Gary Raymond plays Acastus, the treacherous member of the Argo's crew. A fun movie all around, available to watch on Youtube starting with Part 1 of 11.

Jason and the Argonauts <----trailer (1963): ***/****

The Golden Compass

Is there a harder task when it comes to making movies than turning a book, a respected and much-loved book, into a big screen movie? First, there's almost no way to appease all the fans because there's no way you can do everything right. Second, many books would be better presented as a miniseries with plenty of time to develop plotlines and characters. Unfortunately, 2007's The Golden Compass falls into the category of a less than successful translation from book to big screen.

Just last week I finished the first book of author Phillip Pullman's trilogy dubbed His Dark Materials on a recommendation from my aunt and cousin. I typically avoid series like this, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Twilight, but this one sounded interesting. It takes place in a universe similar to ours in a time that's hard to classify (Victorian England, early 1900s maybe?) that is full of great characters, an exciting story and a darkness to the proceedings that surprised me. Unfortunately, the movie struggled to deal with the story.

For one, director Chris Weitz says he shot enough footage for a 2.5-3 hour movie, but the final running time is a crisp 113 minutes. In other words, a lot of the story got left on the cutting room floor. There is a ton of potential in Weitz's movie, but it never lives up to what it could be. A 3-hour movie could have helped remedy this, but as is the story is muddled at best, characters go in and out for long stretches of time with little development, and the ending is changed pretty drastically from the book's ending which comes as a complete surprise and a perfect springboard for the rest of the series, which I am looking forward to reading. The plot description's going to be a doozy so brace yourself.

Living at Jordan College in England, Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) is an orphan, a young girl growing up without a care in the world as she explores the college and city with her friend, Roger (Ben Walker). One day her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) comes to visit her but to also ask the college for funds for a trip to the North Pole to explore a route to other worlds. Lyra desperately wants to go along, but Asriel refuses and leaves her behind. But strange things are happening, children are disappearing, including Roger, with no clues left behind as to what happened. For Lyra, a beautiful, polished woman of the world, Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) shows up asking if she'd like to be her assistant. Before she leaves, the president of the college pulls Lyra aside and gives her something, a Golden Compass, a device that can reads people's true intentions.

Everything is not so rosy as it seems with Mrs. Coulter, and it's not long before Lyra and her daemon (soul in animal form) Pantalaimon (voice of Freddie Highmore) must escape and head to the north in search of Roger and the other lost children. Along the way, she meets a variety of characters including John Faa (Jim Carter), Farder Coram (Tom Courtenay) and the Gyptian people, Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), a Texan aeronaut, Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green), a helpful witch, and Iorek Byrnison (voice of Ian McKellen), an armoured bear exiled from Svalbard, home of the bear kingdom.

Overwhelmed much? I read the book, and I'm a little overwhelmed at the amount of information thrown out there in the story. The obvious difference is that Pullman's book has a lot more time and space to introduce these many characters whereas the movie has about 2 hours to get this all accomplished. It's a shame because the casting is strong across the board. As Lyra, 13-year old Richards was a perfect choice. Craig makes the most of a small appearance as Asriel, and Kidman as Coulter is a nice twist on the typical character she plays. McKellen's voice didn't work for me as Iorek, but an armoured polar bear? Still cool. Sam Elliott is as always, very cool, as Scoresby.

Reviewing this movie is tough because there is A LOT going on, and a lot I could complain about from the overuse of CGI to the alterations to the story and the order it is dealt with to the different ending. Big picture is this, the movie as is in its 2-hour form is not very good. I don't know how much better a 2.5 or 3 hour movie could be, but it certainly couldn't hurt. I'd say give Pullman's book a try and then give the movie a try, not the other way around.

And I feel like I have to mention the Catholic Church's objection to this movie which I think is ridiculous. The Catholic Church is that paranoid guy who thinks everyone is always talking about him regardless of whether they actually are. In this case, a thinly veiled dig at the Church has a "Magisterium" trying to make its believers follow blindly with no thought. Like I said with the objections to the Da Vinci Code, if anyone takes their beliefs from a movie or a book, basically a work of fiction, the Church has bigger issues to worry about. End of rant.

The Golden Compass <----trailer (2007): **/****