Tag: Bruce Campbell

It turns out, more than one movie came out this weekend. That is right. The very strongly advertised and anticipated Oz The Great And Powerful. Really, I feel bad for any other movie trying to make money. It’d be like coming out vs The Avengers.

Of course, there is also the potential for naysayers. You can’t touch The Wizard of Oz after all. It is too nostalgic to be remade, re-imagined, or even associated with anything. Okay sure. Maybe the classic was based off of a book and not original. But at least it was the only one, right?

Fuck to the no. That classic was at least the 6th or 7th movie version of it, in a 30 year span. I just like to point this stuff out to people, who are quick to say Hollywood is no longer original, always rebooting. The movie you love was a reboot on its own.

So if they want to make up a prequel, with a lame china doll girl, by all means, I say let them!

Go figure, it takes place in Kansas. Oz (James Franco) is working at a traveling fair, being quite the ladies man. Maybe too much of a ladies man. His assistant Frank (Zach Braff) he treats like a trained monkey! Foreshadowing. Either way, he makes the Strong Man angry. Has to run, hops in a hot air balloon. Oh no, Tornado! Boom, Oz.

Shit is all in color and widescreen. Potentially dangerous as well.

Good thing he was found by Theodora (Mila Kunis) and not some creepy flying monkey. She is a witch, but thankfully not wicked. Nor is her sister, Evanora (Rachel Weisz), the current pseudo-ruler of Oz. They are all stoked, that the prophecy is coming true! An Oz will save the day, destroy the witch, and he will rule the land. Yay!

Or you know, shenanigans. Greed. Oz isn’t really the nicest or most honest man. Not to mention not actually being a wizard. Can he, will he, kill the witch? Well, just think about the fact that this is a prequel, then figure it out.

Featuring Michelle Williams as Glinda the Good, Joey King as china doll girl, Tony Cox as a helper, Bill Cobbs as a “Tinkerer” and Bruce Campbell. Why Bruce? Because its a Sam Raimi film.

Plot Twist: Bruce Campbell is the wicked witch!

I watched Oz on the opening night, in 3D, of course. It opens with a long title sequence, and its pretty fantastic. Really sets the mood. If you couldn’t tell from the trailer, the Kansas scenes are in a brown tinted lack of color scope, and squarely in the middle of the screen. Thats okay.

But Oz? Oz kind of turns into a CGI slugfest, over the top and extraordinary. I should have known it when I saw it was Alice In Wonderland producers, which might have had 2 real actors the whole movie as far as I could tell. Nothing wrong with special effects, but most of the time, the cast felt out of place or up against a green screen.

The acting in the movie isn’t the best either. Franco seemed like he wasn’t trying, nor did really any of the witches. Kunis plays some odd naivety, Weisz typical angst, and Williams felt like she had nothing to work with.

I might have been a bit bored halfway through, waiting for the eventual plot changes.

But you know what? The ending is kind of amazing. The attack on Oz, to the playful tricks (some of which are obvious, but not all of them), to the resolution, all feels pretty dang great. Not to mention a small part where Sam Raimi actually threw in an Evil Dead reference, which made me as giddy as a school girl.

Was this movie a lot less spectacular than advertised? Yes. But the ending almost made it super worthy to me.

Hooray! Another Super CGI movie based on a kids book. Only remotely of course. At least this kids book had a real plot, so making a movie made sense, unlike some others.

Fingers crossed that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is more than just a random kids movie!

Although it might be his goal, dude should watch out. Burger might cram itself right in that mouth.

Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is a scientist in Swallow Island, or something like that. But no one likes his inventions, think they all suck! Like Spray on Shoes. But he also just makes a mess. Well, while he was a kid the local sardine can factory went out of business, meaning the town lost its prosperity. They then had to pretty much eat only sardines because of no tourists. His dad (James Caan) doesn’t really approve, show little emotion, and has the most killer moustache / unibrow combo ever.

Well no worries! The mayor (Bruce Campbell) and the Sardine factory mascot (Andy Samberg) are opening up Sardineland to get tourists and prosperity back. But after a tussle between Flint the local police guy (Mr. T), his new invention that turns water into food (kind of sick of sardines) blasts off into atmosphere…and destroys most of Sardineland. Unfortunately this is all also reported on a national weather news channel, by Sam Sparks (Anna Faris), so they are a laughing stock agian.

But eventually, burgers rain from the sky. Everyone is happy! They taste so good! But can it be repeated?

Yes. It can. 3 meals a day (or more), and everyone can be happy! Not the dad though. Thinks it is wasteful. Oh well, scientist becomes the talk of the day. They change the town to ChewandSwallow (from the book) and people even start to like his monkey (Neil Patrick Harris). Blah blah, eventually bad things happen, have to fix, learn lessons, also junk food is bad.

But the coolest person in the movie is this guy, Joe Towne. He is in almost every scene (small town?) and pretty hilarious. Voiced by Will Forte, and he deserves his own spin off.

So the plot was predictable, more or less. Morals and what not. The first half was a bit better than the second half (which seemed “too long” post disaster). But the dialogue was killer. A lot of the lines in the movie are hilarious. A movie parents wont also mind watching. At one point when he makes it snow “ice cream” and has admitted he has never been in a snowball fight. So once he figures it out? A great scene of him destroying so many kids right in the face. Hilarious.

I laughed a lot more than I expected. Not just at Flint’s inability to be social, but they made fun of a lot of things, including normal disaster movie tropes. Also, cutscenes when he was doing “Science!” were very well done indeed.

Hooray! The long awaited sequel to Cars is Cars 2! And by long awaited, I mean both never expected in 2006 and also, since a couple days ago, when I reviewed Cars.

I say this in an exaggerated way obviously, but Cars 2 is nothing like Cars. Sure, both of them are still in some creepy ass world with only cars (and other transportation vehicles) being their own entities that are alive, but Cars is better than Cars 2. Cars is about slowing down, appreciating the finer things in life, and finding true happiness.

Cars 2 is just some big James Bond Spoof.

But unfortunately, when I think Cars + James Bond, I think KITT from Knight Rider. This was KITT-less.

Owen Wilson and his bad voicing habits are barely in this movie. This movie is all about Mater, the Tow Truck, voiced by Larry The Cable Guy. Yes. They changed leads and put the comic relief in the first film as the main character. Yes. This is as bad as it sounds.

The actual beginning of the movie I assumed was a “movie” in this car land. It was just nothing like the first film, with Michael Caine playing the James Bond like car, spying on an oil rig? Or something? But this film is “deeper” than that. It involves Lightning going on a world grand prix, and racing against a french car (voiced excellently by John Tuturro) sponsored by an alternative fuel source dude, voiced by Eddie Izzard. This is of course the only way Izzard can play someone who isn’t evil. Because if he had to show his face in a movie, you know he always is the evil dude. Yay voicing!

But yeah. There is some big conspiracy happening. This takes up most of the movie, and of course Mater ends up being mistaken for an American spy. Thanks to Bruce Campbell, who’s few minutes is the best in the movie, because he is Bruce Campbell.

“Voice a car? Boom boom boom. Sorry, I’m fighting deadites here. Can the car just be backfiring? Boom boom boomstick.”

It is stupid that this movie got a G rating, with all of its “violence”. But who knows what goes on in those rating meetings. The reason for all the bad cars is laughable too. They are a bunch of “lemons”, or cars that break down a bunch. Yes. I’d hope you read my first review, but in this world, cars are created and forced to live certain rules. You’d be pissed off too if you were made with defections and forced to just, live that life out while other cars never break down. You can only handle being stuck on the side of the road so many times before you’d snap too.

So, likers of the first Cars movie would probably call this one worse. I am going to actually find a shark and throw it over the shark, to represent my point more. This movie is just a cash-grab for merchandise. But at least they called Bruce Campbell.