Beyond the Rhetoric

Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013) Most of us are familiar with The Wizard of Oz. We’ve gone on that whirlwind journey with Dorothy as she followed the yellow brick road with her ragtag group of companions. We’ve all learned the Wizard doesn’t have any real powers and he’s been a sham this whole time, [...]

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) Continuing on the trend of old fairy tales redone for a modern audience, Jack the Giant Slayer gives us a slightly different take on Jack and the Beanstalk. Instead of simply going up alone and discovering some treasure, he goes up with some of the royal guard to fetch a [...]

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) For some reason or another, we’ve had a recent infatuation with taking children’s fairy tales and giving them more of an adult spin. There have been two movies about Snow White, there are TV shows like Grimm and Once Upon a Time, and now we have this interpretation of [...]

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) The original Lord of the Rings trilogy was positively epic, showcasing the world of Middle Earth on the grandest of scales, providing us with deeply rich characters and satisfying action scenes. With that in mind, I was very excited to hear that they were making another trilogy based on [...]

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012) I suppose you could say that this third official entry in the Madagascar franchise is exactly what I expected it to be. At its heart, this is a children’s movie with a relatively simple plot, eschewing some of the more adult-oriented in-jokes that we found in movies like Shrek. [...]