Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

5/10
To give you a sense of how alien Park Chan-wook's Stoker is, there's a moment early on where Nicole Kidman's character suggests to her daughter that they go shopping together, and the word "shopping" hits like a slap across the face. The movie seems so much like a movie that it's impossible to fathom these characters doing anything remotely human, let alone something as mundane as a trip to the mall.
As the movie plays on and you get increasingly immersed in the world of Kidman, her daughter India and her dead husband's brother, the movie starts to work a little bit better, but there are still oddly jarring moments whenever the "real world" creeps in, such as when India is at school. So it goes with the rest of the film - it takes place in a seemingly indeterminate time period, mixing past and present styles (emphasizing its sheer movieness and its stylistic overload), and the overall feel of the movie is the Addams Family gone Stepford Wives with a Hitchcockian twist.
It's not a total bust. The acting is great all-around and the movie is gorgeous. Park Chan-wook directs with flair, but ultimately his showy style is let down by a script that underdelivers. The whole thing just seems out of whack, a failed experiment that I wanted to like more than I actually did.

Oz the Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi, 2013)

7.5/10
A friend won free passes to this and the trailer made it look like it could be good, so I went. And it was. I haven't read the reviews but I think it deserves better than its 63% on the Tomatometer. It's a fun ride, with gorgeous visuals and a strong group of characters (both human and animated); it's funny and light without being vapid. James Franco as Oz is a good choice, though he isn't doing any heavy lifting, and Michelle Williams seems born to play the Good Witch.
A couple of complaints would be that the special effects are sometimes clunky, particularly when the humans are interacting with the background/animated characters, and the plot is Disney by the books, down to the unlikely misfits rising up against seemingly indomitable adversaries using heart and clever trickery. Which is symptomatic of the biggest problem with the movie: while it's good, it doesn't do anything great or separate itself from the pack with much originality. But it's fun, and considering the current cinematic fare on offer, you could do a lot worse for a night out with the family.

She-Devils on Wheels (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968)

4/10
I found myself with some birthday money to spend, so I bought a couple of collections of shlock legend Herschell Gordon Lewis' movies. I've seen and enjoyed Two Thousand Maniacs and The Wizard of Gore, and the sets are as cheap as the movies themselves, so why not. I popped in one I didn't know much about, She-Devils on Wheels. It's about an all-girl motorcycle gang who go about having orgies (kissing fests, really) and brawls and rough initiations. It was pretty much a dud - there's not enough here to titillate either on the sexy side or the gore side, and no real plot of any importance emerges to hold one's attention. I'm sure Tarantino had this in mind among others when making Death Proof, though.