Father and son.  Is there anything more adorable?  Well, maybe a puppy licking ice cream.  But really, the theme of father and son is something that tends to warm the cockles of anyone’s heart.  And since warm cockles is a good thing (so I’ve heard; as I don’t know what a cockle is, I’ll take that as truth) wouldn’t the team of Jaden Smith and his father Will be just a cute fest of awesome?  Well….

Cute fest?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Awesome?  Um, not so much.  Their new movie After Earth isn’t bad.  The problem is After Earth isn’t particularly good either.  Sorry M. Night Shyamalan, you’ll have to look to your next directorial effort for redemption from The Last Airbender.  Or The Lady In The Water.  Or The Happening.  Perhaps a vacation to rejuvenate is in order?  I hear stone massages are the bomb.

Speaking of bombs, After Earth takes place after we humans crapped up the planet we call home.  And much like locusts, we then flew off to someplace else (and probably crapped that up too), leaving Earth to go do it’s own thing.  A thousand years later, Earth is Darwin’s theory come true, with all sorts of evolved beasties turning our once habitable planet into a danger zone of the highest order.  Heck, humans can’t even breathe the air comfortably anymore, as Earth’s atmosphere is too low in oxygen to support the current crop of folks.  Meanwhile, on the planet humans now call home, there are dangerous beasties too; aliens called Ursa that can carve us up like deli meat and sniff us out based on our fear are hunted by the Ranger Corps.  Nobody embodies the Ranger Corps better than living legend Cypher Raige (Will Smith).  Problem is, his young wanna-be Ranger son Kitai (Jaden Smith) lacks the discipline necessary to “Ghost” — turning off fear so the alien beasties can’t find you — and isn’t making the grade.  But Cyper decides to bring Kitai on a training mission or something (honestly, it’s tough to care enough to remember) and when things go wonky, guess where they crash land?  With a captured Ursa on board?  That totally gets loose?  With Kitai the only one that can save his dad?  Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

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Don’cha just hate when a movie looks like it’s going to be really amazing and show a side of life that you’ve never seen before, only to whip a 180 and bore you to tears?  Well, if that’s you then At Any Price doesn’t have much to recommend it; it’s a film that starts off with all sorts of promise only to get mired in so many “important messages” that it loses itself and it’s audience.

Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid) is a corn farmer in Iowa.  He’s also a salesman for GMO (genetically modified organisms) corn seed, and is making a pretty darn good living at it.  Son Dean Whipple (Zac Efron) is the obligatory kid who wants to get out of the sticks, and he’s got a good chance of that thanks to his skill at auto racing.  When the Whipples aren’t busy squeezing Charmin with the farm, they’re doing the usual things that folks in Corn Country seem to do in movies; party out in the middle of nowhere, cheat on their wife with the secretary/former prom queen, drive to the nearest town (two hours away) to steal stuff, and try to cheat the system.  But for Henry and Dean things start to fall apart, and when they do you know it’s going to affect everyone around them.

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Oh please, let this not be Vanilla Sky.  

That was the thought that ricocheted through my brain at the start of Oblivion.  With it’s sleek, hip visuals and promise of Deep Dark Secrets, I worried that it would be an echo of that head-scratcher.  I needn’t have worried.  Oblivion isn’t a retread of Vanilla Sky, it’s a retread of just about every other Sci-Fi movie you’ve seen lately.  It’s also a lovely way to waste a few hours.  Like a chocolate-covered pill from Miracle Max, damn if it doesn’t go down smooth.

In 2017, the Earth gets a smackdown from an alien race.  But all ended well, sorta; the humans won, but in order to do so we had to unleash the nukes.  So now the bulk of surviving humanity lives on Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons.  A small handful of survivors are the “clean-up crew”, extracting what little viable resources earth has left for use in our new planetary digs.  How does war veteran Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) know that’s true?  Because that’s what he was told after a “mandatory memory wipe” a few years back.  Does anyone else think that’s kinda fishy?  That’s an affirmative, y’all.

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I hadn’t heard much about this film before I saw it.  Just a tidbit here and there from various fests, but nothing that stuck in my head.  Which is apt, considering Trance is a tale about the twisty-turney ways our minds can play tricks on us, and how easy it can be to manipulate what’s in your head.  Or what you think is in your head.

Simon (James McAvoy, X Men: First Class) is a high-class auctioneer.  His job — outside of trying to sell really, really expensive stuff — is to make sure that the most expensive item on offer during an auction gets dropped off into safe storage if there’s ever a robbery attempt.  The number one rule?  “No painting is worth a human life.  Don’t be a hero.”  So when suave art thief Franck (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan) comes for an extremely expensive Goya, what does Simon do?  Yeah, you guessed it.

Simon gets a severe bang on the noggin for his trouble, and he goes to hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson, Rent) but that’s only the start of this story.  To discuss more would ruin the crazy Inception-meets-Memento storyline.  Who’s really the bad guy, why are characters doing what they’re doing, and are they in fact even doing them; that’s the meat of this tale.  Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) gets off to a choppy start — it’s hard at the beginning to continue caring about what’s going on when the story begins to shivers and spiral — but it pays off at the end.  Remember when M. Night Shamalan was fantastic?  Trance harkens back to the payoff of Unbreakable.  No superheroes here; McAvoy doesn’t turn into Professor X (though that’d be awesome).  But that same sense of wonder and pleasure at being let in on the final secret rings true here.

 
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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!  Oh, but in Oz the Great and Powerful, he’s brought in for his close-up, and it’s an interesting look at how a con man from Kansas became the most powerful wizard in all of Oz.  Though this movie may not be “great and powerful”, it’s a lovely romp for fans of the original film, and a fun escape for children of all ages.  Well, except for perhaps the very young’uns, who may get scared of the flying gorillas.  What?  They creeped me out.  Don’t judge me.

Franco is cast well as a steampunk wizard prototype, a young con-man named Oz — his full name being Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs — who accidentally lands in the Land of Oz after a run-in during his stint as a circus magician.  When I say “run-in”, I mean “running away from”.  And when I say “running away from”, I mean “running away from a jealous strongman whose girlfriend Oz was macking on”.  Because this Oz is a pimp.  A weasely mess of a magician whose dreams of becoming a great inventor are always sidetracked by his inability to do more than dream and pick up chicks.  If those of you that were non-plussed by Franco’s turn at the Oscars — and I’ve gotta say I figured he was riding the Pineapple Express the entire ceremony — doubt that he can pull off this character, let’s just say that Franco has an interesting combination of fecklessness and candor that works well here.

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