Chris Overing is not quite Sisyphus, but a couple of years into his project of building a stone wall you have to wonder what he’s being punished for. Not that he entertains such thoughts. “This is art,” he asserts. How do we know it’s art? “If it’s insane and you’re still doing it, well it must be art.”

Featuring Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle stuntman turned bank robber, Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines immediately conjures comparisons to Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. And, for the first five minutes, Beyond the Pines does seem to be in the same vein as Refn’s thriller. However, what follows is something so unexpected that it will completely defy your expectations. The trailer for Beyond the Pines sells the film as a high speed thriller. However, it is much more focused on the actions that shape peoples’ lives than any high speed chase.

I’m going to be perfectly honest, the only reason I went to see Sam Raimi’s new Oz installment, Oz the Great and Powerful, was to watch James Franco’s performance. Fortuitously, this turned out to be even more rewarding than I had first anticipated. Although the film has generally received poor reviews, Franco’s performance as Oz resonates with a certain allegorical parallelism to his own artistic career and endows the film with a greater depth than one might at first suspect.