Oscar Diggs (Franco) is a small-time circus magician and con artist, duping Kansas audiences with fake sorcery and sweet talking women into bed at every given opportunity.

When he is whisked away to the weird and wonderful Land of Oz, Oscar is mistaken for the strange land’s wizard, who has been prophesized to save the land from the evil witch.

When Oscar’s case of mistaken identity leads to a feud with Oz’s three witches (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams), he must figure out who is good and who is bad and decide whether he wants to be a good man doing the right thing, or a great man living a lie.

Victor Fleming’s lavish The Wizard of Oz has loomed over Tinsel Town for so long now, and has become so ingrained into the consumer subconscious that any subsequent trip to Oz is immediately eclipsed and consumed by Fleming’s iconic movie. In fact, there’s been an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Oz works practically every year since 1960 (just around the time when the 1939 film began enjoying it’s resurgence thanks to the new medium of television) and not one TV show, straight-to-video animation or big screen venture has even come close to making as much of a mark as MGM’s classic.

Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful is no exception. Embedded in Fleming’s world of ruby slippers and cackling witches (yes, writer L. Frank Baum came up with Oz, but this still has more in common with the 1939 movie), Raimi is keen to follow Fleming’s footsteps down that yellow brick road from the outset, opening his movie in 4:3 fullscreen black and white before unleashing a dazzling display of widescreen colour when the protagonist touches down in Oz. Indeed, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that’s cut from the same blue gingham cloth as Fleming’s, with Raimi unable and unwilling to make Oz truly his own.

Though there are certainly moments of that iconic Raimi camera play and slapstick sense of humour throughout the film (a little too long at 130 minutes), it would have been nice if the director rallied against tradition and made an altogether different Oz movie, maybe taking a tip or two from Disney’s bold and bloodcurdling Return to Oz (1985), which, while not perfect, dared to march to the beat of a different Baum drum.

If you can get past the feeling of déjà vu, however (and many will be coming to Oz for the first time with Raimi’s movie), there’s plenty to like and even love about Oz the Great and Powerful.

The dazzlingly bright and colourful land of Oz looks gorgeous and is a place populated with inventive, terrifying (get ready for the flying monkeys to haunt your nightmares all over again) and heart-wrenchingly sweet creations (Zach Braff’s servant monkey and the china girl to name but a few) that are brought to life by some nifty digital effects; while the CGI wizardry isn’t a match for the Technicolor elegance of its ancestor, Oz the Great and Powerful pops with a radiant beauty.

The 3D elements, as always, grow tiresome after about five minutes and aside from the effective opening credits and the odd incident that’ll make you jump back in your seat, you can pretty much take or leave the three dimensional tricks.

The performances are where Oz truly shines. Franco does a fine job as the loveable rogue and accidental wizard, mixing tongue in cheek one-liners with flamboyant showmanship, proving he was a fine choice after all (following rumoured stars including the likes of Robert Downey Jr). Weisz brings class and wit to the ambiguous Evanora, while Kunis is wickedly entertaining as the ill-fated Theodora, evolving from unhinged victim to full-blown, green-skinned mentalist by the final act. And Michelle Williams, brilliant as always, provides a highlight as Glinda, an endearing personification of good and the most likeable thing this Oz has to offer.

Overall Verdict: Though not an entirely original take on Baum’s work, fine performances and some inventive visuals ensure that Raimi’s Oz is well worth a visit.

Reviewer: Lee Griffiths

Frank & Robot is a charming and offbeat film about an aging man and his unlikely friend. This film chugs slowly along, taking it’s sweet time in building a subtle yet strong relationship between our main character Frank (Frank Langella) and his new robot ‘butler’ (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). With great performances by these two, as well as the exquisite supporting cast, Frank & Robot is certainly a real treat.

This film is set in the near future, in a time when robot technology has evolved enough to allow them to work with humans in a complete and interactive way. However compared to the more iRobot-esque films, where this sort of thing is combined with an all-futuristic-super-technology world, Frank & Robot is refreshing in its similarity to our present life.

Frank lives alone in a normal looking house is in a lovely, quiet, woody part of the world. He walks every day to the library to chat to his librarian crush Jennifer (Susan Saradon). However not is all quite right in Frank’s world; he seems to have trouble remembering things, is more lonely than he dares admit, and has a little problem stealing things from his local gift shop. Concerned by this all, his son, Hunter (James Marsden), comes and gives Frank a robot as an assistant to help around the house and, as we learn later, to help Frank lead a more active life.

Affronted by this idea at first, Frank begins to warm to the robot. Again, unlike traditional robot-oriented sci-fi films, this robot seems more akin to what we might actually encounter in the new future. Relatively ‘basic’, Frank’s Robot is quite content to simply help out around the house. However, Frank’s propensity to steal is titillated by the robots deft lock picking skills, and it’s not before long a plan begins to develop in Frank’s mind…

Frank & Robot is a real delight. It’s a slow paced narrative that relishes in developing the characters and their relationships with each other. The cinematography is equally lovely and the environment that Frank lives in almost becomes a character in itself. The new technologies of this future world take a backseat to the natural world that Frank lives in. The cast give great performances and really allow you to empathise fully with the characters. Little plot twists are subtle enough to be unexpected but do certainly tug on the heart strings – as they explore the love within a family that have slowly moved apart.

Overall verdict: Frank & Robot is a real little charmer that explores an old man’s struggle with his aging mind and body and how he comes to be saved by his little robot buddy, who’s simply doing as he was instructed. Great performances make this film a simple delight. Highly recommended.

Reviewer: Kevin Van Der Ham

It’s about time we had a decent political thriller after all of the overlong, pompous Oscar stuff, and this down and dirty story is just that. Although it does lose momentum towards the end, for the most part it is an engaging and enjoyably dark and grubby look at US politics.

Producer Mark Wahlberg apparently offered the role of maverick cop Billy Taggart to Michael Fassbender, but when the Irish actor turned it down he decided to play it himself. The film certainly doesn’t suffer for it. Wahlberg is on good form as a cop with a murky past – he had a drink problem, and wiped out an unarmed known rapist. Facing charges, he gets off with the help of New York mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe), who regards Billy as a hero – the rapist may have been unarmed but he was a serial offender and also murdered one victim.

Seven years later and Billy is now running a private eye business, none too successfully. He gets a call from Mayor Hostetler a week before the elections. Hostetler believes his wife Cathleen (Zeta-Jones) is having an affair and wants Billy to track her. He discovers that her liaisons are with the head of the campaign for Hostetler’s rival in the election race. That’s just the start of it though – there are crosses and double-crosses aplenty to come, involving property scandals, political intrigues and sexual delicacies.

For the first hour at least it’s an engaging and gripping experience. Wahlberg is a fine everyman, shambling about in cheap clothes and trying to keep his business afloat, hopelessly out of depth in the world of million-dollar fundraisers and dinners. Zeta-Jones is suitably aloof and high-maintenance as the mayor’s wife, and Crowe is clearly relishing his role as the seedy Mayor with a dark past, all oleaginous smiles and with a superb Donald Trump-style combover. New York looks filthy and bashed-about, apart from those five-star hotel venues, and the whole thing has a satisfying pace and feel.

However the second hour is nowhere near as fulfilling once the mystery starts to be revealed. Wahlberg’s relationship with his kooky secretary becomes grating, and a sub-plot involving his partner and her debut in an indie film simply doesn’t work – it’s a plot point which could have been done in 30 seconds of dialogue. Natalie Martinez does her best to make it work but it’s a lost cause.

It’s a shame because a lot of the hard work of the first hour dribbles away with a lack of pace and conviction, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact this is still one of the better thrillers of the year so far.

Overall verdict: Flawed but interesting urban thriller with Wahlberg on top form as a cop out of his depth and Crowe relishing his role as New York’s grinning, back-stabbing mayor. It will probably got to DVD fairly quickly where it will find its audience, but for an hour it’s quality stuff.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Now here’s a genuine curiosity. Director Jamue Balagueró, who has given us the superb REC Spanish horror trilogy, turns his attention to another chiller, but this time the tone is much more psychological than gore. It’s extremely well made, brilliantly acted but has at its heart there’s a big flaw – but more of that later.

Balagueró has obviously ‘got a thing’ about apartment blocks – in REC the first two films were set in a Barcelona blocks of flats invaded by zombies, and here it’s exactly the same setting – although in this case maybe the flats are a bit posher. Luis Tosar is Cesar, the lonely night porter of said building. He is a troubled man – he has difficulty sleeping, his hours are tough, his own grubby flat is in the basement with no windows, and the building owner thinks he’s useless. He also has a sick mother, to whom he tells his stories and fantasies – she is too feeble to muster a reply.

It’s probably just as well, because what he relates to her about his nocturnal activities is pretty shocking. He is obsessed with Clara, a beautiful young woman living on her own on the third floor, but his obsession doesn’t stop at sending her creepy letters and texts. Because he has her key he can creep into her flat, hide under the bed until she is asleep, give her a dose of chloroform and, well, do things to her. He rifles through her things, discovers she has a fear of bugs and covers the bedroom with cockroach eggs.

His idea – presumably to make her dependent on him – goes to plan until she turns up one day with an old boyfriend, who quickly works Cesar out. It’s here that the film switches from a psychological horror films, with nods to Repulsion and Pacific Heights, to a more full-blown gorefest.

The main problem is Tosar’s performance as Cesar is so good – too good? He makes the character so sympathetic it gives the film a highly uneasy feel – which may or may not be deliberate. Here is a man doing awful things to an innocent girl, but somehow we are on his side – anxious he may be caught every time he is in Clara’s flat without permission. Even when he psychologically tortures an elderly lady living in the block – for no reason – he remains a sympathetic character, more sad than threatening or psychotic. There is even some comedy, as a very young girl witnesses his behaviour and blackmails him for cash and, bizarrely, an adult movie – nothing is resolved with that.

Overall verdict: Deeply disturbing urban horror film which is certainly effective, although it may leave more questions than answers in your head long after you’ve seen it. Great performances and some superb set pieces are all in its favour, but what its underlying message is you’ll have to work out for yourself. Creepy.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

If you don’t want to feel pretty angry, don’t watch this film. Fire In The Blood is an impassioned plea that’s bound to promote fury among many viewers who’ll barely be able to believe the story it tells about the callous indifference big pharmaceutical companies show to millions of lives. Indeed it’s not even indifference, it’s premeditatedly planning to allow millions to die in order to protect profits.

First time director Dylan Mohan Gray looks at the AIDS crisis after the emergence of anti-retroviral drugs. In the west, the result was that a disease that had seemed like an imminent death sentence became a manageable condition, and as a result public hysteria about the disease dropped and it began to fall from public consciousness.

However in the Third World the problem was getting ever more acute, with tens of millions infected. While medications were now available that could save these people’s lives, virtually nobody could afford them. Despite the fact they were essentially condemning millions to death, large pharmaceutical companies repeatedly refused to provide cheaper HIV medication to the developing world.

While many people may have heard about this and tutted, the facts presented in this documentary really make your blood boil. For example, a generic version of one drug would have cost 5 cents a pill, however the branded, patented version was being marketed for up to $40 a dose – and the company charged the same to Americans as they did to poor Africans for whom $40 represented most of their monthly wage.

Although arch capitalists might argue the big companies had to do this to cover the costs of researching future medications, the film is keen to point out that big pharma mainly spends money on marketing – by a fairly large margin – and most of the actual research is paid for by universities and governments (although the drugs resulting from this are often patented by the major companies). In this case there’s no doubt that the only reason they refused to lower the price for poorer counties was to protect profits, as they were scared that if the third world got cheap drugs, Americans would demand lower price medication too.

As the documentary goes on, the more indefensible big pharma’s position seems. Even worse is the pressure put on poor nations by rich western governments, threatening them with sanctions if they broke the patents and imported cheap generic versions of the drugs – essentially trying to strong arm these nations into letting millions of their people needlessly die, just so that some big companies could prop up a system they were worried would collapse if people in the West realised how much they were overpaying for medications.

While much of the film is likely to make you absolutely furious about the sheer callousness of some parts of the capitalist system, it’s not completely without hope. Fire In The Blood features interviews with those both in the first and third world who stood up and tried to change things. Even many third world governments were reluctantly backing the big pharma system (afraid of what would happen if they didn’t), so it really was a grass roots effort to change things. This movement really started gaining traction when it was revealed that rather than the $15,000 a year the big companies were charging for HIV medication, it could actually be provided for less than a dollar a day by a factory in India.

The film shows what can be done by regular people, even while it infuriates you that something that was so obviously wrong was allowed to go on for so long, and how our governments actively tried to enforce it. While there were many victories in the battle for cheap HIV drugs, the documentary points out there are plenty other medications completely unavailable to billions because of the price, and that in some respects, things are even worse for those seeking a way around extortionately expensive patented medicines than they were a few years ago.

It’s a strong, well put together documentary full of fascinating information that’ll make you furious at the pharmaceutical system we’ve built. There are times when you might feel a little swamped with information and statistics, and the voiceover is a tad monotonous, but largely it’s an absorbing look at a true injustice.

Normally with documentaries about the evils of capitalism, they feel one-sided and as if they’re ignoring some reasonable points on the other side. However Fire In The Blood is about something that is utterly indefensible – the propping up of a ridiculous system that’s all about profiting from sickness, to the extent it’s willing to allow tens of millions to die, as long as it doesn’t affect the share price.

Overall Verdict: A powerful look at a terrible injustice and one of the ugliest aspects of modern capitalism. It shows there is hope that things can be changed, and calls for viewers to get involved in trying to effect real change. It might well succeed in that aim.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

At the beginning of Cloud Atlas Ben Wishaw’s Robert puts a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Three tortuous hours later I wanted to do the same.

Cloud Atlas was on a long list of ‘unfilmable’ books that have become reality on the screen, but unlike Life Of Pi, which garnered many an Oscar nomination, this proves that the novel should have stayed just that. On screen it’s a complete mess – sprawling, often dull, frequently incomprehensible, utterly humourless and with a vaguely eco-message that is presumably supposed to save its faults – it doesn’t.

There are six strands – six! – in this headache-inducing epic, all encountering varying degrees of injustice. Ben Wishaw’s Robert is a student who gets a job with an old, fading composer (Broadbent) helping him write a new piece. However when the old man blatantly steals the piece and threatens to reveal Robert’s homosexuality, Robert seems doomed.

Then there is Halle Berry’s 1970s eco-warrior journalist, trying to reveal the dangers of a nuclear plant run by the seedy and dangerous Hugh Grant. The British actor keeps threatening to retire, and on this evidence the sooner he does the better.

Berry’s other main character – all the actors play multiple roles under make-up – is some sort of scientist from the future helping out Tom Hanks’ dying Hawaii tribe, who keep being attacked by a vicious gang led by Grant again. If this is supposed to be hilarious it’s successful, but Berry and Hanks are so po-faced throughout I suspect we’re meant to take it seriously, including Grant as a savagem knife-wielding nutter.

There’s a slavery story involving a stowaway on a ship, nowhere near as entertaining as Django Unchained, and the tale of what appears to be a Yo Sushi worker in futuristic Seoul who escapes the system and tries to stick it to the man – nowhere near as powerful as Blade Runner.

The stories flit from one to the other, coming to no great conclusions apart from “everything affects everybody” and other such tedious clichés. At one point a character is told his anti-slavery stance is a drop in the ocean, he replies “an ocean is made up of many drops”. If you can stomach that sort of fifth-grade hippie dialogue without laughing this may be the film for you. Personally I felt my soul slipping under the chair with every passing minute.

Talking of which, virtually all of this season’s Oscar films are well over two hours, and this creeps up to nearly three. Since when did films get so long? Over Christmas the BBC aired Of Human Bondage, a film based on a 650-page book which came in at 85 minutes – it was superb, well acted, atmospheric and powerful, and missed nothing from the book. In the hands of the Wachowskis it would probably nudge four hours, and be none the better for it.

It’s the tone of Could Atlas that is so problematic – one minute it’s deadly serious, with Tom Hanks discussing the death of the world in a barely intelligible language, the next minute Jim Broadbent is trying to escape from an old people’s home in a scene not out of place in a Carry On movie. The actors all seem to take it so seriously, apart from Hugo Weaving, who at least looks like he’s having fun playing various Nazis and nasties. Everyone else look like they can’t wait to go home.

The gimmick the film is selling itself on is that actors play different roles, so we can all have fun trying to work out who they all are. The trouble is the stories are so banal we don’t care, and the make-up is truly terrible. Berry’s facial make-up as a futuristic voodoo woman looks like a particularly bad episode of Star Trek, and Hanks as a Maori just looks like he needs a wash. Whishaw is in his comfort zone as a gay student and at least brings some dignity to the role, his battles with ageing musician Broadbent have some conflict and drama.

In 2006 Darren Aronofsky released The Fountain, a multi-layered strand of eco-bullshit in which Hugh Jackman floated through space in a giant lightbulb and Rachel Weisz played the Queen of Spain. It was nonsense of course, played in one cinema in London for a week and disappeared, never to be heard of again. That had three strands and was 96 minutes long – two plus points over this dreadful car crash of a film.

Overall verdict: Indulgent, bloated, incomprehensible, tedious mess of a film with a cast queuing up to give po-faced, stiff performances. There is some decent acting in there somewhere but is it worth wading through three hours of utter nonsense to find it? I’d say not.

Reviewer: Mike Martin