Arts & Entertainment

Movie Reviews: Oz the Great and Powerful, Emperor, Jack the Giant Slayer and More

Find movie reviews and movie times for theaters in St. Peters.

Are you a movie buff or fanatic? Or maybe you just enjoy the occasional dinner and a movie date? Either way, Patch would be thrilled to have you on board as a movie blogger! It's free, quick and easy to do so! All you have to do is shoot a quick email to Brian Feldt at brianf@patch.com.

Oz the Great and Powerful

Mark Glass, Patch blogger: **½ This overlong prequel to the classic Wizard of Oz offers much to admire, but more to regret. Its new screenplay gives us the backstory on how the Wizard wound up there before Dorothy blew into town for her famous adventure. With the resources of the Disney empire and Sam Raimi at the helm, one might expect another fantasy for the ages. One would be severely disappointed. James Franco stars as Oz, a cheesy magician in a seedy little traveling carnival in 1905 Kansas. He has no scruples about conning the rubes, or trying to seduce the local lovelies. While fleeing from an irate husband in a hot air balloon, a tornado swoops him up to the not-so-merry old land of Oz, where he’s believed to be the wizard of prophesy to free the kingdom from the clutches of an evil witch. As in the original, the Kansas setup is filmed in black & white, creating a stunning contrast when he reaches the colorful splendor of the main action. Full Review

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Emperor

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Mark Glass, Patch blogger: ***½ After last year’s Oscar-winning Argo, and its close competitor Zero Dark Thirty, this fact-based military drama gives us another fine entry in the genre. Matthew Fox stars as one of General Douglas MacArthur’s (Tommy Lee Jones) top aides in our occupation of Japan after World War II. One major job was rounding up 30 top military, political and intelligence leaders to try them for war crimes. The biggest question was whether to prosecute Emperor Hirohito, raising a slew of legal, moral, political, cultural and practical with national and global implications. Fox’s character, General Bonner Fellers, was given 10 days to do the investigation of Hirohito’s culpability, with heavy pressure from home and abroad to hold him accountable for all the suffering his forces inflicted on a substantial portion of the world. Full Review

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Jack the Giant Slayer

Mark Glass, Patch blogger: ** Here’s yet another fairy tale stretched into a somewhat more adult action-adventure flick following what Hollywood has done lately to Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel, and perhaps a couple of others. These stem from a couple of irresistible temptations - the ease of creating fanciful worlds and creatures with today’s computer graphics, and the perceived box-office advantage of offering something based on the familiar. The latter also explains the proliferation of sequels in horror, action, sci-fi, animation and comedies. The former unfortunately has led to spending too much of the budget on the sizzle, at the expense of the steak...meaning the script. Full Review

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21 and Over

Mark Glass, Patch blogger: ** Some movies make me feel like Danny Glover’s graying cop character in the Lethal Weapon series, who famously kept sighing, "I’m getting too old for this ...". This grossout comedy about one long night of campus partying gone awry is a real clunker for anyone who has seen many of its zillion predecessors from the Porky’s flicks to the American Pie franchise to The Hangover duo, with plenty of stops in between. Full Review

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