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Who was Professor Marvel, long before he met Dorothy in the sepia-toned opening of “The Wizard of Oz”? He is Oscar Diggs (James Franco) in “Oz The Great and Powerful,” directed by Sam Raimi (“Spider-Man,” “The Evil Dead”). Set in 1905, this delectable 3-D fantasy adventure starts in black-and-white. Oscar is a cad of a carnie magician who knows Dorothy’s future mother prior to her marrying Dorothy’s future father. To flee a furious circus strongman, Oscar boards a balloon and lands in a colorful widescreen Oz. (That’s the same balloon that Professor Marvel refurbished to leave Oz at the end of the 1939 film.) Three characters from Kansas are doubled in this new “Oz.” One is a girl in a wheelchair (Joey King) who implores Oscar: “Make me walk.” He cannot, blaming “a distemper in the ether tonight.” Later, in Oz he will succeed in gluing the broken leg of a plucky China doll voiced by King. Inhabitants see in Oscar’s name and descent from the sky a prophecy come true. “You are going to fix everything,” exclaim the oppressed of the kingdom. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ray Pride

The great nineteenth-century Romantic painter of sky, water and tempest J. M. W. Turner wanted to lash himself to a mast  to get a full faceful of sea. There’s some of that giddy danger in the splendid surfaces and 3D depths of Ang Lee’s “Life Of Pi.”

The ferocious swells and intent visual beauty Lee has brought to Yann Martel’s best-selling seeking-of-the-spiritual yarn quickly evokes a second thought: “Kitty, kitty, kitty, nice kitty, here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty,” in response to a gorgeously rendered digital Bengal tiger named “Richard Parker.” From a shipwreck-and-survival story with lots of God bits studded within—the ship that sinks, Tsimtsum is named for a Kabbalistic concept that God must withdraw from a world he creates—Lee conjures something richer than Martel’s magical somnambulism. And David Magee’s script adaptation mocks overreach. A novelist who met his uncle back in India visits an older Pi: “He said you had a story that will make you believe in God.” And Pi says, smiling, “He would say that about a good meal.”

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“Finding Nemo,” in memory, feels like one of the more genial of Pixar’s movies, but I was surprised to discover Newcity’s original May 25, 2003 review, was so direct and to the point: “Pixar: bottom-line behemoths who do no wrong fiscally or funnily. The top-of-the-line, terabyte-heavy animation of the comic creatures under “Finding Nemo”’s sea is a joy unto itself: an ever-undulating Lava Lamp tapestry suitable for both moppets and potheads. The voices include Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres, and both are swell, writers and directors alike adept at exploring and exploiting the contours of their comic personalities, as much for range as for possible familiarity to an audience. The jokes are terrific, families are reunited, the gags continue through the end credits, and Apple stock will remain buoyant.” Read the rest of this entry »

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(Une vie de chat) Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s hand-drawn, hand-colored “A Cat In Paris” is a slinky noir of art deco adult animation, and one of the 2012 nominees for Best Animation Academy Award (a roster that notably omitted the toy-centric “Cars 2″). The story’s old-fashioned—cat follows cat burglar along the roofs of Paris, leaving behind young owner Zoe—but illustrated and illuminated with classic panache—plus no 3D within a hundred kilometers. (It’s also the best-looking stylized animation I’ve seen since the underrated “Brave.”) Read the rest of this entry »

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A mother-daughter story with mischievous boy triplets underfoot and a forest full of big bad bears and bitter witches, “Brave” may be the most traditional of Pixar’s thirteen features, but the production’s sheer physical beauty and creature-comfort bumptious comedy still manage to impress. Set in a mythical Highlands of Scotland of some century or other, the computer-animated textures are more organic-seeming than any I know: the skies are blue, the shadows of night are dense, and greenery is more lush than nature ever bothered to calculate. Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald), a skilled archer and even more skilled tomboy, rebels against her fate: there are lessons but suitably subtle in their unfolding, as we realize her tutoring in education and elocution prepare her for the attainable, doable challenges that will face her soon enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz

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“Hugo” is Martin Scorsese’s most personal film, a pop-up picture book of a metaphor for his own childhood. He, as a boy, small, asthmatic, watched from a Little Italy window the goings-on on the street below, captivated by the narrative that he could construct in his mind but never fully participate in, swept away by the power of movies that his father took him to. Here, his protagonist Hugo Cabret is an orphan who tends the clocks of a vast train station in 1931 Paris, peering through window and frame and trapdoor and crevasse down onto the teeming to-and-fro of passengers and merchants, a human comedy he can only witness with wide eyes. Read the rest of this entry »

Eleven-year-old loner plus wounded critter equals movie tears in the affecting, if formulaic “Dolphin Tale.” “Family is forever,” preaches this PG-rated kids drama based on a 2005 incident in Florida. Sawyer’s (Nathan Gamble) dad left five years ago. Now his champ swimmer cousin Kyle (Austin Stowell) heads off to war somewhere, telling Sawyer the U.S. Army will pay for his Olympic training once his tour of duty is over. Meanwhile, the withdrawn kid with low grades bonds with a beached dolphin dubbed Winter. Read the rest of this entry »

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This lovely fare for the read-to-me set teaches a life lesson: illiteracy can lead you to needless fear, yet crafty arranging of the letters of the alphabet can build a ladder to freedom for your pals in peril. Walt Disney Animation Studios preserves the interplay between screen and storybook page found in 1977′s “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” where the narrator intervened at one point to wake up the title’s dozing bear, a small-brainer with an endearing oral fixation on honey. This time the narrator (John Cleese) tilts the page to slide slumbering Winnie along the edges of paragraphs. One of the toy animals belonging to the boy Christopher Robin, whose misspelled and misread note triggers the plot, will ask what happens next. “If I told you that, I’d ruin the rest of the story, wouldn’t I?” chides the storyteller. Also reprised is the gentle hand-drawn style of animation. Instead of three episodes that comprised the earlier seventy-four-minute film, this fifty-four-minute morsel bears the heading “Chapter 1, In Which Winnie-the-Pooh Has a Very Important Thing to Do,” phrased in the manner of author A.A. Milne’s original chapters in 1926. Co-directors Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall share story credit with six others. Tender ears will detect the quaint imprecation “Oh, bother” during the winsome adventures of Tigger, Owl, Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga, Roo and Eeyore. With tunes by Zooey Deschanel and the voices of Jim Cummings, Craig Ferguson, Tom Kenny, Travis Oates, Bud Luckey. 74m. (Bill Stamets)

Director Joe Nussbaum (“Sydney White,” “Sleepover”) directs a debut script by Katie Wech for an uncommonly bland story of high school students getting ready for the prom. Oh darn, all the “Starry Night” decorations go up in flames! Only three weeks to go! The tweedy principal forces working-class, motorcycle-riding bad-boy-with-attitude Jesse (Thomas McDonell) to help Nova (Aimee Teegarden), the straight-A class president and head of the Prom Committee. He sneers that she is “winning the award for most awards.” She recalls: “You were the guy who cried when the hamster died in third grade.” As they fall for each other, various classmates pick their dates. Co-producer Justin Springer calls the spring rite of passage “a magnifier that allows teenage emotions to come out.” Although affectionate towards its well-scrubbed cast, the PG-rated “Prom” is no lens on adolescence. Acne and alcohol are absent at Brookside High School where kids take AP, not STD, tests. At Walt Disney Pictures’ press and promotional screening, ‘tweens in attendance seemed outnumbered by twentysomethings who loudly mocked afterschool cliches that hardly qualified as camp. With Danielle Campbell, Yin Chang, Kylie Bunbury, Nicholas Braun, Jared Kusnitz, Jonathan Keltz, De’Vaughn Nixon, Nolan Sotillo, Cameron Monaghan, Joe Adler, Janelle Ortiz, Raini Rodriguez. 104m. (Bill Stamets)