The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

It's hard to believe that it was only a year ago when The Hunger Games was released. A little over a year later The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) hit theaters with what seems like even more hype and excitement than there was with the first movie. This time, I think the hype was justified.

After winning the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) return home to District 12. On the day the two are set to begin a Victory Tour of the country of Panem, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) visits Katniss. He explains that her approach to ending the last Hunger Games, where she and Peeta attempted a suicide pact after learning they could not both survive, inspired a rebellion in the districts. He orders Katniss not only to convince the entire country of her and Peeta's supposed love as their reason for their actions, but to convince Snow himself. Last year's mentors, Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) and Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), escorts the two victors and try to help act as distractions from the Panem's real problems, even as law enforcement cracks down on the districts. Fearing this is not enough, President Snow announces that for the 75th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, all tributes are selected from the existing pool of victors. Not only does this ensure that Katniss and Peeta will be returning to the televised fight to the death, but they will also be pitted against older, stronger, and more experienced killers including Johanna Mason (Jena Malone) and Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin).

The budget for Catching Fire was nearly twice that of the first movie, and it really shows. It's simultaneously more of what we liked about the first movie combined with a bigger story. There are a lot more sets as we get to explore more of Panem, there are bigger and more detailed CGI effects seen when the tributes train against holographic opponents and are faced with insane dangers in the games. Everything about Catching Fire is bigger, better, and more dramatic. It's not just a group of fellow kids after Katniss in an arena this time. The Hunger Games is a tool to tell a bigger story, with the story being a nationwide revolution. With the political intrigue, a nation in turmoil, and an oppressive government tightening its grip, it's not Katniss versus the televised death match contestants; it's Katniss versus an entire world that wants her dead.

One of my favorite scenes was just before the Quarter Quell games when Katniss is being interviewed by Stanley Tucci's TV host Caesar Flickerman. Katniss twirls about in her would-be wedding dress meant to distract the downtrodden populace of Panem. What initially looks like a multi-tiered, white-frosting cage is engulfed in flames and transforms into a midnight blue winged symbol of insurrection that emulates the Mockingjay, the mascot of Panem's growing rebellion. One gown represents female entrapment and expectations, the other human freedom and opportunity. It's like a Barbie meets Joan of Arc moment. Lawrence silently conveys the haunted psyche of Katniss's post-traumatic state of mind beautifully in this scene. The poor girl from District 12  grows into her role as an inspiration and a rebel fighter. She's a good, strong female protagonist, and a delightful change of pace from the surplus of male superheroes out there.

When I saw The Hunger Games, I had not yet read the book trilogy. I have since read them all, and I can honestly say I'm a fan. Now as a newly converted fan I can say they did a remarkable job transitioning the two books into movies. There is very little in the Catching Fire book that did not make it into the movie, and even then I could see why the relatively minor details were left out. The purpose of such story detail were either insignificant to the overall story, the same idea was established in other scenes, or it would have revealed a little too much too early in the story. Still it was a truly excellent transition from the book.

Catching Fire exceeded my expectation in nearly every regard. The visuals were better, the scale was bigger, the actors were excellent, and the story was more dynamic. Even the camera work was better than in The Hunger Games; no more obnoxious shaky cam to blur the brutality of the combat scenes! The costumes were phenomenal as well; seriously I want that shirt Peeta is wearing during the reaping scene. I can't think of anything meaningful that is negative to say about this movie. Catch this in theaters if you can, but make sure you've seen The Hunger Games first. I plan on getting a copy of Catching Fire on Blu-Ray once it's available.

What's the best book-to-movie transition you've ever seen? What are a few runners up that you liked? I think Catching Fire is a pretty darn good one. Comment below and tell me some good ones!

Now You See Me Movie Review

Ocean's Eleven set a pretty high standard for heist movies where the scoundrel robbers manage to stay just a couple of steps ahead of everyone who is pursuing them. Now You See Me (2013) doesn't exceed Ocean's Eleven by any means, but it blends a heist movie with the idea of magic, which leaves us with a pretty creative and interesting movie.

Four street magicians, Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Wilder (Dave Franco) each answer a mysterious summons to an obscure address with secrets inside. A year later they are The Four Horsemen, big time stage illusionists who climax their sold out Las Vegas show by apparently robbing a bank on stage. This puts agents Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) of the FBI and Alma Vargas (Mélanie Laurent) of Interpol on the case to find out how they did it. The mystery proves difficult to solve even with the insights of the professional illusion exposer, Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). What follows is a bizarre investigation where nothing is what it seems with illusions, dark secrets, and hidden agendas galore as all involved are reminded of the great truth in the puzzle: the closer you look, the less you see.

In the opening scene we see each of the magicians showing off their skills and it really draws the audience in quickly. Atlas is doing a card trick on the streets and asks a young lady to pick any card from a deck while he flips through them himself. For the heck of it I picked a card I saw as the deck passed by the screen. The trick is finished by the selected card's suit and rank appearing in lights on the side of a large building. Interestingly enough, it was the card I picked out as well. That instantly made me think that professional stage magicians were consulted in the making of this movie, and that it wouldn't need a lot of CGI effects to impress the audience. Yes, there was some CGI used, but most of it was used in complex camera work, less so for the "magic tricks."

There is a great cast in Now You See Me. Woody Harrelson is great in most everything he's in. Jesse Eisenberg is a fast talking arrogant dweeb as usual, but he plays that sort of role well. The actors who play The Four Horsemen have distinctive differences in how they act when the characters are on and off stage, which is impressive. You can tell when the character is performing and when they are not, an indicator of good acting. I haven't seen Mark Ruffalo since The Avengers, he's a great Bruce Banner and he's a great FBI agent who is at his wits' end chasing stage performers who seem to possess actual magic abilities. We've even got Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman topping off the ensemble; even when they appear in subpar movies, their mere presence improves the overall quality of the film.

The script is not perfect by any means, but it remains engaging and fun. The dialogue was witty and flowed well. It seemed to think it was a bit deeper than it actually was. Rhodes keeps insisting that magic can't be real, but finds fewer and fewer reasons to believe that it is not. Alma also thinks that everything the Four Horsemen are doing is simply an illusion, but makes statements about how good it is to believe in something. That's nice, but I never really saw where they were trying to go with that idea. While most of the script is pretty good, the ending seems very out of sorts. It's as if the script writer finished writing the climax and kind of threw some random stuff in at the end because there needed to be a conclusion of some kind. You simply don't see the end coming at all. On the one hand, it sort of fits thematically; we're constantly told a magician distracts the audience from what's really happening. But there was next to nothing that even hints at what was "really happening" in the movie and from a film making standpoint, that made the ending seem unjustified, incongruous, and sloppy.

Now You See Me was a clever concept that was really fun to watch. It wasn't great; the script has some flaws, there's a baseless love interest, it doesn't resolve all of the questions it raises, and the ending comes out of nowhere. In spite of that, it has excellent cast, some outstanding visuals that don't rely heavily on CGI, and it coyly plays with the movie viewers. Some of the magic was debunked, but we never know for sure how much of the tricks were illusions or if it was actual magic. It evens out into what a summer movie should be: fun. While it is a fun movie, I'd wait for it on Blu-Ray; it's worth seeing, but not on the big screen. I also recommend seeing it twice. It's the kind of movie that's probably a bit more interesting when you know the end from the beginning.

Here's the trailer for Now You See Me:

What is your favorite heist movie? Comment Below and tell me why!

Seven Pounds Movie Review

I keep thinking of comically based movies when I think of Will Smith. Movies like Men in Black, Wild Wild West, and Independence Day. More recently, he's been in slightly more serious roles and action roles. I think it's great that he has developed as an actor. Will Smith portrays an amazing dramatic role in Seven Pounds (2008).

Haunted by a secret, Ben Thomas (Will Smith) looks for redemption by radically transforming the lives of seven people he doesn't know. In the process he seeks out Emily Posa (Rosario Dawson) to help resolve her situation with the IRS. Emily has a serious heart problem and is waiting for a donor, but her blood is very rare and her odds are low. Meanwhile Ben seeks out other people to help them in a journey for redemption. Ben hadn't planned on falling in love with Emily, she's the one who will end up transforming him.

Seven Pounds shows us an interesting character that we, the viewers, are not permitted to know very much about. We see that Ben has a plan and already has it well in motion as the movie opens. While Seven Pounds primarily focuses on Ben, by the end of the movie we still don't know a whole lot more about him than we did at the beginning. Why does he check into a cheap hotel? Isn't he paid for his lucrative job? What favor does his lifelong friend Dan (Barry Pepper) owe him? Why exactly is he looking for people who need their own favors? Why after he intuits he is speaking with a blind man (Woody Harrelson) on the phone, is he so needlessly cruel to him, and then follows the same man to restaurant and engage in conversation? For the first half of the movie, Ben is acting according to a plan that makes sense only to himself. He doesn't really have a reason to explain it to himself again, nor does he have a reason to explain it to anyone else. It makes for a curiously enigmatic story, albeit frustrating that we don't know all the details. I don't think it's an indicator of bad writing, simply a different type of storytelling.

Will Smith plays his role extremely well and he displays an impressive range of emotions. Ben is a man who is wracked with guilt and sadness. He can be a tough, merciless IRS man, he can bend the rules in some cases, he can have a romantic candlelight dinner with a beautiful woman, he is angry sometimes, but he seems angriest with himself. It's an amazing performance.

Rosario Dawson is pretty amazing as well. She's trying to make the most of her situation though she isn't expected to live much longer. She's naturally empathetic and manages to keep up with Ben's sometimes bizarre emotional dance, following his lead. Emily is such a sweet character who offers every ounce of charm and care to the one man who seems doomed to deflect it.

It was strange noticing there was very little background music in Seven Pounds. There's almost no subtle ambient music to help amplify the mood and tone of each scene. The emotional tension is almost exclusively left to the actors. That should say something about how good the actors are. There's also some shaky camera work as if a camera man is trying to follow the action on foot through a small confining house. It did feel somewhat realistic, but shaky cam isn't necessary here. There wasn't physical action going on that we felt rushed to try to capture on film, it was dialogue driven emotional action.

Overall, I thought Seven Pounds was simply "okay." It tended to be an overwrought sentimental drama that dragged on for longer than was necessary. Sure, there are sweet moments of romance, some interesting plot twists, some great moments of emotional intensity, but painfully slow pacing of the film tended to weaken their impact. The ending will probably leave some viewers in tears and leave others indignant. I wasn't all that invested in the movie and even I teared up a bit. I think this is worth watching only if you enjoy heartfelt dramas of redemption and romantic stories. Otherwise, you'll likely be bored and possibly annoyed by Seven Pounds. In this case, I was in the latter category.

What has been your favorite Will Smith role? Mine is probably Independence Day or I, Robot. Comment below and tell me about yours!

The Hunger Games Movie Review

There has been a substantial amount of buzz about The Hunger Games (2012), directed by Gary Ross. I was worried that the pre-release hype was going to be better than the movie itself. I think the marketing hype set us up to expect this generation’s Blade Runner (1982), but gave us something a little less than the hype prophesied.

Set in a dystopian future, North America was ruined by drought, fire, famine, and war to be replaced by Panem. This country is divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year two representatives (one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12-18) are selected at random to participate in The Hunger Games; part sports entertainment, part brutal intimidation tactic of the subjugated districts, and part reality television broadcast throughout Panem. The 24 participants are forced to eliminate each other in a fight-to-the-death while all the citizens watch. When 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen’s (Jennifer Lawrence) younger sister is selected as the mining district’s female “tribute,” Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), involuntarily attain a celebrity status but will not likely live through The Hunger Games as they are pitted against other participants who are bigger, stronger, and have trained their whole lives.

One would suppose that a movie with the word “games” in the title would have at least some level of joyous frivolity. The tone of this movie is actually quite somber. There are children bent on killing each other in any way possible. Children! That alone is a disquieting concept. There are also subjects of oppressive dictators, starvation, and inequality. With all of Panem glued to their televisions watching The Hunger Games, this dystopian future brings to mind visions of present day reality television; no one in The Capitol seems to think anything of youngsters killing one another, they are simply caught up in the entertainment value with no consideration of ethics or subject matter.

Jennifer Lawrence did quite well for her first appearance. Katniss is a quiet introvert, but still a strong, independent young woman. Her character is well developed early on, and we can believe why she is so skilled with a bow and arrows; she doesn’t simply pick it up and discover a predisposition towards it. Katniss doesn’t speak very much, fortunately we have The Hunger Games commentator Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) explaining some complex concepts that Katniss isn’t verbalizing. Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy is a depressed alcoholic from District 12 who previously won The Hunger Games. He is meant to mentor Katniss and Peeta before they compete. His cynicism doesn’t seem to help either one.

Peeta has a romantic interest in Katniss, but it is not reciprocated. Peeta confesses this interest in a pre-game interview and then there is pressure for this love interest to grow, not only to please the viewers but to attract attention from sponsors who will send survival gear. Nothing brings a couple closer together than trying to survive a barbaric blood sport. Yet, I didn’t buy their romance. The actors just didn’t seem to have the right chemistry. And even though they are in the middle of a violent life or death situation, Katniss and Peeta still find time to smooch. I don’t mind smooching, but movie characters always seem to find the most inopportune moments to do so.

The art design and subject matter was interesting enough to watch, but the way the cinematographer captured it made me physically nauseated. There were a lot of shaky camera shots; as if there were cameramen running around trying to capture the action. That’s applicable, given the reality television theme of The Hunger Games, but on the other hand it made me feel pretty queasy watching it on the big screen. There were also close combat scenes where the camera was much too close to the actors to tell what was happening. There’s a struggle, obviously, but I couldn’t tell who was doing what to whom or even who was winning until the fight was over. Parts of this movie were pretty sloppy in terms of cinematography, but I don’t think it detracted too much from the movie overall.

I am constantly told by the fans of The Hunger Games that I need to read the books in order to appreciate the movie. I think that is a horrible thing to say about a movie! If the success and credibility of a film requires it’s viewer to read a book to make the movie palatable and understandable, then the movie itself can’t be solid or good enough to support itself as a good movie. Certainly I encouraged people who enjoyed the Harry Potter films to read the books, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) did not require the book to be read beforehand for the movie to be good. I have not read The Hunger Games (yet), and I think the movie is good enough to stand on its own.

The Hunger Games wasn’t too bad. While it was lengthy, it still seemed rushed and didn’t give enough time to develop some characters enough for the viewers to feel sorry for their losses. The child-on-child butchery is watered down with shaky camera work and careful edits, which ultimately weakened the adrenaline and cheapened the prolonged killing. Most of deaths just didn’t have much significance. I think Gary Ross simply assumed viewers wanted to see man-hunts and survival scenes more than they wanted to see commentary about how a cruel political system uses its subjects in a sick and twisted way. The Hunger Games was entertaining enough, and I recommend seeing it. I think it’s an above average renter, and possibly worth a matinee theater ticket; it’s not quite what they hype promised us.