Red-Band Trailer for BAD SANTA 2 Starring Billy Bob Thornton

Is anyone out there really excited or even good at remembering that there is a Bad Santa 2 being released this holiday season? I keep trying to remember, but with all of the annual Oscar season contenders beginning to make their presence known as well as a large amount of tentpoles by way of a Star Wars movie, a Harry Potter movie, a new Marvel movie, and even something as epically original as Passengers on the horizon it seems to be getting more and more difficult to recall the fact we're also getting a sequel to a thirteen year-old R-rated Christmas comedy that probably should have come out a decade ago if it really cared about being anticipated by anyone. Instead, Broad Green Pictures and Miramax are counting on the age of social-media made nostalgia awareness we're all currently existing in at the moment to give them a solid return on their investment in the Billy Bob Thornton/innocent icons talking dirty franchise. Of course, we all saw how this line of thinking worked out earlier this year when Paramount tried the same thing with the fifteen year-later sequel to Ben Stiller's Zoolander. That property was arguably more "viral" than Bad Santa and had developed more of a cult following in the time since its somewhat disappointing initial release. Add to that the fact Zoolander was rated PG-13 as opposed to the very R-rated Bad Santa and we could have a recipe for disaster here. Granted, the original Bad Santa made $60 million domestically on a $23 million budget, but with the lag between sequels I have to doubt the staying power of that original is as strong as some of the other reboots and sequels we've seen trying to ride this wave of nostalgia. In short, whereas something like Anchorman 2 was able to still succeed based on the fact it had defined part of the zeitgeist of the time in which it came out and parlayed that into a new movie that moved past the original Bad Santa 2 looks to be a redux of the original with cuss words taking the place of actual punch lines. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll find out how good of an idea Bad Santa 2 was when it opens on November 23rd, 2016. The film also stars Kathy Bates, Christina Hendricks, Ryan Hansen, Cristina Rosato, and features the return of Tony Cox and Brett Kelly as Marcus and Thurman Merman.

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review

Taking on anything that has occupied such a space in popular culture as massive as The Wizard of Oz is always a risk. When first hearing the news that Sam Raimi (the original Evil Dead and the original Spider-Man trilogy) would be directing a prequel to arguably the most popular film in cinematic history I was both concerned and enchanted by the idea. The possibilities of what it could address seemed endless and the world so large that it might be impossible to capture in a single feature. What Raimi and his gang have ended up concocting though is certainly something of a sprawling epic, but to take a cue from the titular hero it is a good film, not a great one. There is plenty to enjoy here, visuals to entice and characters to laugh and marvel at as references abound to that oh so familiar movie that has an all encompassing track into part of our childhood. Whether it be simple things such as the red smoke and fireballs the wicked witch utilizes or the poppy field that is brought back for good measure in this insightful but sometimes slow, sometimes bland film. I hate to sound as if I didn't like the film because that isn't true. I actually enjoyed the experience very much, made better by the full audience that had their predictable reactions ready and willing to fire at every expected and intended moment. I loved the imagination of Raimi and his team of artists that have rendered a version of OZ the makers of the original could have only imagined, bit for all that gloss and digital effects wizardry (for lack of a better word) there is still something missing about the movie; something that elevates it from simply being an enjoyable experience to a memorable one. I had fun re-visiting OZ and its winding yellow brick road, but odds are this adventure, no matter its title, will never be lumped into the same category as Victor Fleming's picture.