Walking out of “The Place Beyond the Pines” on Saturday evening, I felt dazed—the kind of feeling you get when you first step off a rollercoaster onto solid ground.

Several days later, I still feel adrift when I think about the film. And while this sensation usually makes me want to see a movie again, this one was so intense that it might just be the first Gosling flick that I don’t watch ad infinitum (yes, “Remember the Titans” included).

“The Place Beyond the Pines”—which should really be called “The Place Where Everyone is Covered in Paint Splatters and Has Daddy Issues”—opens with the story of the bulked-and-tatted-up Ryan Gosling as Luke Glanton, the motorcycle-riding stuntman with a heart of gold that Gosling plays best. And did, in “Drive.” Like, a year ago.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” may not be the newest title on the docket, but it is still a breath of cinematic fresh air. A rather bloody, stomach-churning breath, but a fresh one all the same. 

Jamie Foxx stars as the titular hero Django, a slave who has been callously separated from his beloved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), just years before the start of the Civil War. Django’s fate begins to turn around when the relatively liberal-minded German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) seeks out Django’s help in tracking down some villainous targets.

Through this mission, the two form a kinship of sorts (you know, the kind in that gray area between indentured servitude and full-blown enslavement). In part because Broomhilda is, conveniently enough, one of the only American slaves in history who speaks German, Schultz sympathizes with Django’s tragic story and offers to help him rescue Broomhilda. Thus, the two unlikely companions embark on a journey full of Western-style shootouts, twisted Tarantino comedy, and a satisfying succession of bad guys getting their comeuppance.

Having been subjected to a bombardment of advertisements for “Oz the Great and Powerful” on Spotify, I was expecting a production that was nothing short of epic. If you remake a classic and widely beloved film, you had better be sure your version is worth the makeover. 

Unfortunately, “Oz” was not.

This spiritless creation myth traces how the Wizard of Oz actually came to be the little white-haired man pulling levers behind the emerald curtain in the original film. James Franco plays the slight-of-hand magician himself, whose womanizing lands him in all kinds of trouble, both in the sepia-toned Kansas circus and in the post-tornado, high-def fantasy land of “Oz.”