Sam Raimi (the Spider-Man trilogy) tackles the backstory of the greatest and most powerful wizard this side of Gandalf; that would be Oz (James Franco), who starts off as a small-time magician before landing in an enchanted land in dire need of rescuing.   

ReelAbilities: Cincinnati Disabilities Film Festival (March 9-16, 2013), in its second year of programming, continues to offer alternative stories featuring performers and characters with disabilities actively and artfully engaged with mainstream society.  

During my off-hours, I ventured out to museums, theaters of all types, clubs, bars and the homes of friends and co-workers who hosted parties and events. I never worried about being able to get anywhere.

  

I have to admit to a little critical bias here. Having grown up in the 1980s with Porky’s and Meatballs, Risky Business and the whole oeuvre of John Hughes, I’m finding it hard to get excited about any teen debauchery comedy since Project X swept through theaters because, in my estimation, that’s the new raunchy standard-bearer.  

From found footage to more conventional narrative filmmaking, the saga of Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), the tortured victim of both a sadistic demon and an exorcism gone wrong, continues in compelling fashion under the guidance of co-writer and director Ed Gass-Donnelly.  

That tagline — “You don’t know Jack” — is going to be run into the ground over the course of the next week or so, as director Bryan Singer’s latest feature about a farmhand named Jack, some magic beans and an army of angry giants threatens to overtake the multiplexes.  

Boasting of the presence of a producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious, the new movie from writer-director Scott Stewart (Legion and Priest) forgoes the spiritual horrors for something more akin to the extraterrestrial.  

Dwayne Johnson no longer has to affix the moniker “The Rock” to his name because we all know that he’s become a rock-solid force in movies.   

Two-time Academy Award nominee Kirby Dick wages a timely battle with this War, highlighting several soldiers, mainly female, but altogether these precious few are only a handful next to the thousands of cases of rape in the military (both reported and unreported) that occur every year.  

An extraterrestrial astronaut named Scorch Supernova (voiced by Brendan Fraser) gets trapped when he responds to an SOS from an alien planet —some third rock from its sun.