Film Review: Oz The Great and Powerful (2013)

"I stumble into town, just like a sacred cow..."

While the ending is not always the most important part of a film, it is the one that most often shapes the audiences' overall impression of it. An unsatisfying or poorly handled ending can sour everything good that built up to it, whilst a great ending can help smooth over the rough edges of a flawed film. This holds especially true for Oz the Great and Powerful, Disney's new take on the work of L. Frank Baum directed by Sam Raimi, an inverse bell curve of a film which opens and closes strongly, but falls into a pretty bad trough while trying to connect those two peaks.

Film Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012)

Robert Ludlum only wrote three novels featuring the character of Jason Bourne (1980's The Bourne Identity, 1986's The Bourne Supremacy and 1990's The Bourne Ultimatum) yet the character has had a remarkably virile literary and cinematic afterlife. Following the success of Doug Liman's 2002 film adaptation of the Bourne Identity (which admittedly bore almost no resemblance to the original novel) and with the permission of Ludlum's estate, Eric Van Lustbader revived the character for a subsequent five novels, with a sixth due later this year, continuing the story of the character far beyond what his creator intended.