The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Released:  November 20^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Claflin, Donald Sutherland

Directed by:  Francis Lawrence

Written by:  Peter Craig, Danny Strong

Personal Bias Alert:  loved the books, felt the first two movies were rushed

8.7 of 10

            The Hunger Games film series did itself a great disservice with its first two installments.  While they were slick, action-packed entertainments with a good head on their shoulders, they still were paired down too much from the books.  I grimaced when I thought what this would do to the finale, which magnifies every unsure moment and sweeping tide into a cataclysmic revolution entirely out of Katniss’s control.  The brilliance of the book series is in how neatly every little thread comes together.  The film series had dropped too many threads, ones that seem extraneous early on but were actually tiny building blocks for the finale.  This is why I understand people’s aversion to the dramatic tonal shift of the two Mockingjay installments, but the straight and narrow gaze it gains is precisely what elevates it into the upper echelon of popcorn entertainment.

            Mockingjay Part 2 finds Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering physically from the attack by a mind-warped Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) but without a moment for mental healing.  The revolution led by District 13 is gaining ground, with the obstacles between themselves and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) are quickly falling away.  As usual, the tempestuous Katniss would rather be in the fight than dealing with its aftermath, so she sets off with Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Finnick (Sam Claflin), and company to enter the final fray:  a storming of the Capital.

             Of course, President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) won’t let her jeopardize their carefully orchestrated rebellion, so she’s saddled with a protection team and kept behind the front lines.  Katniss’s removal from center stage is something that could alternately be frustrating or thrilling to the audience.  The Hunger Games very pointedly doesn’t follow the ‘chosen one’ narrative, continuously making it more and more obvious that Katniss is just a girl with a bow and arrow that happened to be in the right (wrong?) place at the right time.  No, she’s a pawn in a much larger game, and both parts of Mockingjay examines just how much she is used by both sides of the fight.

            This along with the series parallel themes about the influence of propaganda takes the viewer down a dismal path, examining just how revolutions start and are sustained.  War is a part of it, of course, but there’s much more sinister and damaging things afoot in Mockingjay that are easier to see when the parts are viewed together.  I attended the Mockingjay double feature for this review, where I saw Part 1 and Part 2 back-to-back.  What’s remarkable is how difficult it is to remember where one film started and the other ended.  They really are a cohesive piece, each part lesser on its own, but a grand, ambitious slice of filmmaking when taken together.

            Director Francis Lawrence keeps the film clipping along, adhering to the production company’s desire for a YA smash.  The action is crisp, clean, and occasionally brutal.  A little girl’s death in the woods is no longer a cause for mourning.  The audience and the characters have moved far beyond that, but there’s still obvious concessions made to keep the PG-13 rating.  Meaningful deaths are rarely seen, and while this takes the sting out of some moments, there’s more obvious ways that its target audience is acknowledged.  The film’s points, at times, are stated a bit too simply, and its plot is still hampered by a love triangle that seems inconsequential even to those onscreen.  And yet even this has a powerful payoff, a small moment where one path is irrevocably shut down thanks to the choices made during war.

            It would’ve been possible to tell Mockingjay in one film if the series had set itself up better for the finale, but Lionsgate wanted a blockbuster franchise, so the crazy dresses and explosions were played up instead of the agonizing decisions faced by Katniss and everyone else caught up in this world.  The first two installments moved at a break-neck pace, making a slowdown for Mockingjay necessary.  Still, there’s barely a wasted moment in Mockingjay, as what may seem like repetitive weariness is designed to wear you down.  Yes, this is a series intended for young adults, and yes, it’s supposed to be a thrilling blockbuster.  Mockingjay just wants you to be thrilled by its ideas as well as its explosions, and it does a riveting job at entertaining you with both.

Other Notes:

Ø  Throughout the two Mockingjay films, there’s several scenes where nameless foot soldiers carry out attacks against the Capital.  Waves of them are cut down so that a select few can complete the mission.  That’s a stark visual motif for the wanton way lives are used in times of war.

Ø  Few things are better than a well-used Michelle Forbes.

Ø  Let’s all take a moment and say a final goodbye to Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Released:  November 21^st, 2014

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright

Directed by:  Francis Lawrence

Written by:  Peter Craig, Danny Strong

Personal Bias Alert:  read and liked the book, highly invested in the series’ themes

8 of 10

            I was expecting people to be disappointed by Mockingjay Part 1.  Whereas Catching Fire can be justly criticized for rehashing the same plot formula as the first film, Mockingjay goes off in an entirely different direction, abandoning many of the staples that made people love the series.  Gone are the flamboyances of the capitol, the looming authoritarianism, and, perhaps most importantly, the feeling of Katniss versus the world.

            Mockingjay finds Panem blossoming into outright revolt, with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) being more-or-less used by the revolution’s leaders as the symbol of their movement.  She had always been a pawn to a certain extent, a young woman playing in a world much larger than she could handle, but there had always been a sense of her making choices within that world that led to the revolution.  Now, with the reveal of Cinna’s pre-made clothing plans and Plutarch’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) dogged insistence that she is the symbol they need, the vail has been pulled back to show how much Katniss had been manipulated and directed in the previous installments.  She’s revealed as just a girl, a hot-head with some archery skills who ended up in the right place at the right time.

            This breakdown of the character’s badassery is bound to be a letdown, especially in the middle of our current ‘chosen one’ wave where seemingly every hero has some preordained gift that allows them and only them to save the world.  What’s great about this change-up, really what’s great about what novel writer Suzanne Collins did, was that she made a revolution occur as it happens in our own world.  No magic, no cheats, just fed up people, some bombs, and lots of propaganda.

            The way in which media is used to sway the masses has been a continuous theme in the series, and it takes center stage in Mockingjay Part 1.  Being that this film only covers the first half of the book, it’s largely setup for what I imagine will be an action-packed Mockingjay Part 2.  To give this film some semblance of structure and, well, a point, writers Danny Strong and Peter Craig mine the books for their shockingly astute and dark portrait of revolutions and the people that make them happen.  They succeed wonderfully, using the extra time to finally let this film series catch its breath and really feel just how bad the world has gotten.

            Director Francis Lawrence earned the right to finish out the series after bringing great improvements to Catching Fire, and if anything he seems to have gotten more comfortable with the material.  I’ve always said that it’d be easy to make a hard R adaptation of these books, but Lionsgate wants a cash cow, so Lawrence’s great challenge is toning down the violence without losing the horror that goes along with it.  In Catching Fire he was able to lighten the tone with jokes about the capitol and the outrageous fellow tributes (especially Johanna).  He doesn’t have to be as concerned about the rating with Mockingjay Part 1 since there’s much less murder going on, and he embraced the opportunity to show the bleakness that permeates the books but was absent in previous films.  The color pallet is reduced to greys and blacks, the lighting is muted, and Katniss’s new home in District 13 is all military starkness.  Given what the series is heading for, this tonal shift is a necessary step.

            The new environment of District 13 means several new actors joined the lineup.  The respect this series has gained shows not only in the large pickups (I’m looking at you Julianne Moore) but in the swell of character actors that fill in the small parts.  Never underestimate the importance of making the small parts work.  A bad performance can grind a movie to a halt, but these people had the skill to step in and keep the whole thing moving smoothly. 

            The addition of Moore as District 13’s President Coin was bound to be a good thing, but it’s made even better when you realize that most of her screen time is spent with Hoffman.  These two have worked together on three previous films, and that familiarity and the sheer skill those two bring makes all their scenes delightful.  Unfortunately, these performance do highlight how uneven the main trio of Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson is.  I’ve always felt that Lawrence struggles with her big moments in this series, and that trend continues here.  There’s a rousing speech she’s supposed to deliver that just falls flat, especially in contrast to the evolving but effective speeches Moore delivers throughout the film.  Hemsworth finally gets to do something in this one and pulls it off extremely well, with the exception of one scene where he comes off as unnecessarily petulant.  Hutcherson gets sidelined this time around, and I think his performance would have been fine if it wasn’t hampered by some bad makeup.  Overall, the main trio still holds their own, but the rest of the cast certainly outshines them.

            I think people’s reaction to Mockingjay Part 1 is going to reveal more about what they’ve liked about the series than the actual quality of this film.  The Hunger Games has always been a well-made piece of entertainment, and Mockingjay Part 1 is no exception.  But the splitting of the last book meant that Part 1 was bound to be devoid of the intense action people have come to expect from the series, so if you’re not simultaneously invested in the characters and the series larger themes, then this one might put you to sleep.  I, for one, found these smaller moments enthralling.

            Other Notes:

Ø  The score is still a bit much.

Ø  There’s some well-handled callbacks to the previous films without being obnoxious and some decent foreshadowing of events to come.

Ø  Way to identify the building after the computers highlighted and labeled it.

Ø  I’m with Effie; jumpsuits are awful.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Released:  July 9^th, 2010

Rated:  R

Studio:  Focus Features

Starring:  Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson, Yaya DaCosta

Directed by:  Lisa Cholodenko 

Written by:  Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg

Personal Bias Alert:  liked High Art, excited by the praise the movie received

4.5 of 10

            Writer/director Lisa Cholodenko seems very interested in the fluidity of life.  In the two films I’ve seen of hers, this and 1998’s “High Art,” love, sexuality, profession, and addiction are explored, and the boundaries that come with each are pushed.  Where is the line between recreational user and drug addict, hobbyist and professional, cheater and strayer?  People like their boxes, but Cholodenko brings the blurriness of life into her films, often making it the most interesting aspect of the story.  “The Kids Are All Right” draws from these questions, which only serves to amplify how pat and familiar everything else in the film is.

            At its core, this is a story about a nuclear family:  two parents, two kids, all that’s missing is the dog.  The kids are in their late teens, and are the usual angsty but decent suburbanites.  The hook is that the parents are two women, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore).  The kids, curious about their sperm donor father, contact the sperm bank and set up a meeting with their donor, Paul (Mark Ruffalo).  Paul’s sudden presence shakes the family, and their functional little unit becomes threatened from several angles.

            This could have been a fun little movie.  It’s a solid setup for the low-budget dramedy it is, but it never quite comes together.  Individual scenes are good, including a standout conversation between Nic, Jules, and son Laser (Josh Hutcherson).  It’s funny and smart and honest and it made me wish so much that the rest of the movie was like that.  Unfortunately, it too often falls back on clichés and easy answers to have any true emotional resonance.

            Undoubtedly, the weakest link in the whole movie is the characters.  It feels like writers Stuart Blumberg and Cholodenko never expanded upon them from their initial pitch.  Everyone fits into their little boxes and can be easily summarized in one sentence.  Nic is an uptight career woman.  Jules is a spineless wanderer.  Joni is a pleaser who always does what she’s told.  And Laser is, well, simply undeveloped.  They do point out that he’s not very in touch with his emotions, which lets them slip in some clichéd jokes about men (and gay men).  But let’s focus in on the worst offender:  Paul.  He’s a laid-back, plaid-wearing, organic and local gardener/restaurateur.  Of course Mia Wasikowska’s Joni thinks he’s cool, because that’s all he’s trying to be.  Nic detests him, and I’ve got to say that that drew me closer to her.  I never understood why everyone was so interested in him.  He is nice, and I guess Nic’s abrasiveness makes everyone want someone like him, someone who will just tell them that everything’s fine and they’re fine and whatever.  That still doesn’t make him an interesting character.

            As I said, Cholodenko is very interested in blurred boundaries.  Here, alcoholism and love is challenged, with Nic being a borderline alcoholic and Jules cheating.  Jules is the more interesting example, with her fling being based more on the need for support than a lack of love for Nic.  The boundary between straying and outright cheating is different for everyone, with many people claiming that a physical act isn’t cheating as long as your heart remains focused on your long-term partner.  Then there’s another version of straying, which I think the line “I’m not unfaithful but I’ll stray” from the song “Back in Your Head” by Tegan and Sara describes best.  I’ve always thought that this refers to the ebb and flow of a relationship and being honest about the fact that there will be times when your interest in the other person wanes.  In these instances, you become more interested in something or someone else, but you always come back to your partner.  Jules’s cheating falls at an intersection between all these definitions, and that makes it particularly challenging to figure out just how bad her actions are.

            These complications are interesting, but they never hide the fact that the characters are thin and the plot is stale.  I don’t understand why this script got such high praise, and I can’t help but feel that this film seemed more interesting to people simply because the home was headed by two women.  Of course two women can form a family, and of course they can have the same problems as heterosexual couples.  I don’t think that’s a novel idea, even way back in 2010.

            Other Notes:

Ø  The dialogue is clunky, especially early on.  There are exchanges that, while natural, are boring to watch.

Ø  The kid’s friends are clichés, and boring ones at that

Ø  Like Paul, this movie seemed a little self-satisfied.