The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 November 2o14



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The Crying Games: Mocking JLaw – Part 1

Okay, I admit it! I like the three books that make up The Hunger Games series better than the movies! The books are an exceptional exploration of war and its effect on everyone in the community who experiences it either by direct participation or indirect inclusion. The books are well written, personal, grim and very gritty. I’m rather surprised that a YA set of novels would be quite as grizzly and horrifying in its depiction of war.

 

So, why are the movies NOT as “good” as the books? Well, wanting a PG-13 rating may well be the main reason since most of the people who read and fell in love with the books are 13 to 16 year olds AND wouldn’t be allowed into an R rated film which is this movie needs if you want to honestly explore the ideas created by the books.

 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 tries to express ideas about the propaganda of war, but doesn’t quite investigate it as well as it should. Mostly, Mockingjay - Part 1 is a movie about Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Katniss, crying. The character cries about everything. She cries when she’s reunited with her family, cries when people try to make her the symbol for the “revolution,” when she sees that her lover (boyfriend, I should say) is alive, she cries, and guess what she does when she goes back home to find the whole town wiped out by the Capital’s army? I mean, you could make a decent drinking game out of it, “Okay, guys, take a drink every time Katniss cries.” You’d get quite a buzz.

The problem with this movie is that it’s more a trailer for Mockingjay - Part 2 than an actual self-sustaining movie. I was surprised when the movie was over and they rolled credits. I thought they were just getting started! The movie is mostly exposition than anything else.  I’m guessing that the thought of bigger box office receipts had a lot to do with deciding to make four movies instead of three. Now I gotta wait a WHOLE YEAR before I find out what happens! Thank God I read the books!

P.S. It may sound like I’m “mocking” Jennifer Lawrence in this piece, but I’m not. She’s an exceptional actress. I do believe that the powers that be lead her down a bit of the wrong path in this particular movie venture.

 

Interstellar November 2014

Sorry. Took me awhile to get into writing this review. No SPOILERS, I hope.

Interstellar is one of those movies that I watched intently, didn’t miss a beat of it, and I was totally engrossed in the whole thing. However, once the experience was over, I wondered why they made it? It’s not that Interstellar is a bad movie. The production value is high, the acting works well, and the script . . . well there’s the problem. The script just isn’t deep or specific enough for me.

 

The best parts of Interstellar are the scenes between the father and daughter. There’s a deep connection there between the characters, a good sense of a specific relationship that is still universal, the love between father and daughter. However, the final scene of that relationship (I won’t tell you what it is) is rather dissatisfying.  Also working for this film (for the most part) is the sound. Yes, it’s damn loud but it helps create such a visceral response in the audience. Best example: when the spaceship is leaving the Earth there is this bone rattling (I mean, it physically SHOOK the audience) sound of the rocket engines, and then when it finally left the Earth’s gravity and entered outer space

. . . dead quiet. But not wanting to let go of a good thing, they use the same sound level in another part of the movie when the spaceship is in trouble (again), and it only got in the way of the audience hearing important dialogue. I mean, I “think” it was important dialogue because I couldn’t understand a word of it, AND in turn, I couldn’t understand what was happening in the movie!

 

Although Christopher Nolan has great ideas and a good eye for visuals, the script seems more of an outline for a movie leaving this audience member feeling a bit underwhelmed. And the “science moments?” Yeah, I know, there’s a whole group of scientists out there who get their equations all in a bunch if you don’t get the science “right,” but every “science moment” they have in Interstellar stops the action, it’s not incorporated into the film as well as it needs to be. I ain’t kidding. Every time they started talking science I felt like somebody walked on with a giant dry erase board and I was back in junior college sitting through another boring lecture. Don’t get me wrong, getting the science  “right” is important but you must make it a part of the action, and not just shove it down our throats because you’re afraid  that Dr. deGrasse Tyson will jump on his iPod show and get all “better than thou” on us “uneducated,” low life movie goers.