by George Wolf
THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE
When a movie runs two and a half hours, yet the ending arrives as an unwelcome surprise, you know that film has done something right.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is that film, one that manages to do just about everything right.
From the start, it raises the stakes from last year’s franchise debut. While The Hunger Games was certainly a competent adventure, it was content (perhaps understandably) to work within the “young adult” parameters of Suzanne Collins’s source novel.
Catching Fire deals in more mature themes and sophisticated ideas, weaving an intelligent script, impressive direction and superlative performances into a massively entertaining blockbuster that leaves you anxious for the next chapter.
The story picks up with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) on their victory tour, accompanied by their ever-present handlers Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and Effie (Elizabeth Banks). While the group is away, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and new chief game maker Plutarch (these names!) Heavensbee (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) worry that Katniss has become a symbol of hope for the common people, a symbol which could spur another uprising.
Planning to eliminating that threat, Snow declares the next Hunger Games will be played only by former victors, which means Katniss and Peeta will again be fighting for their lives.
While this sounds like just another empty rehashing of a successful formula, Catching Fire‘s scriptwriters, following Collins’s lead, have more on their minds.
Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire/127 Hours) and Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine/Toy Story 3), both Oscar winners, fill their script with the emotional heft needed to create a sequel which immediately creates potential for a truly memorable trilogy.
We connect with the characters on a deeper level, the sociopolitical undertones carry greater nuance, and there are even some sly parallels offered between the superstar status of Katniss and the actress playing her.
Speaking of Lawrence, well, if you’re sick of hearing she’s great, call a doctor. She grounds Katniss in vulnerability while never relinquishing the character’s heroic status. Perhaps more impressively, she sells the love triangle, making Katniss’s conflicted feelings for both Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) totally believable. And not a shirtless wolf-boy in sight..who knew it was possible?
The strong supporting cast is peppered with new faces, such as Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, and Jena Malone , who plays against her former child star type as the edgy Johanna. Keep an eye out for her elevator scene, one of the film’s lighter moments. It’s a scream.
All the separate elements are wrapped in a nice holiday bow by director Francis Lawrence (no relation). He smoothly guides the film from spectacle to solitude and back again, providing some arresting visuals in the process (see the IMAX version if you can). Despite director Lawrence’s heretofore lackluster resume (Constantine/ Water for Elephants), the choice to keep him at the helm for the Mockingjay finale (to be split into two films) now seems totally justified.
Okay, Catching Fire does stumble here and there. The scenes of Haymitch introducing Katniss and Peeta to their new opponents seems more fitting for an American Gladiators reunion and…well, that’s about it.
Fans of the book should expect a fantastic realization of the world they imagined, while those who haven’t read the novels (like myself) get to fully enjoy the delicious twist at film’s end, one that may invoke memories of a certain empire striking back.
Either way, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is rousing, epic entertainment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keT5CRhhy84
DELIVERY MAN
Delivery Man wants very badly to be that magical “feel good movie of the year.”
I’d like to play right field for the Cleveland Indians.
Both have an equal chance of happening.
Delivery Man is director/co-writer Ken Scott‘s near shot-for-shot remake of his 2011 French Canadian release Starbuck, and it casts Vince Vaughn as David, a NYC slacker who learns that, in about nine months, his 534th child will be born.
Seems that years ago, David earned quite a bit of money doing quite a bit of manual labor at a sperm bank. Through some unethical misappropriation of bank “funds,” he is the biological father of 533 people, many of whom have banded together for a lawsuit hoping to overturn confidentiality agreements and learn their father’s identity.
At the same time, David’s long-suffering girlfriend Emma (Cobie Smulders) announces she’s pregnant, and so it’s time for an absurdly manipulative lesson on the importance of family. Check that, the importance of fathers, as the mothers of all these sperm bank kids are barely an afterthought.
The funny thing is, it’s not even funny, as the film just tries to get by through exploiting your soft spot for family bonds during the Holiday season. Dave gets a file with bios of many of his kids, so he begins acting as a “guardian angel,” dropping by incognito to instantly solve a young women’s drug habit or be the caring soul a severely disabled boy has always needed. If there is a heartstring available, Delivery Man tries to pull it.
Strangely, Vaughn isn’t the problem. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t just do the Vince Vaughn schtick, and seems interested in actual acting.
Trouble is, there’s nothing of substance for Vaughn, or us, to cling to. The film never seems more than a weak collection of sitcom moments, rendering Delivery Man little more than empty carton of schmaltz.
KILL YOUR DARLINGS
There are countless, fascinating stories surrounding the earliest Beat Generation writers – likely because they were sort of endlessly fascinating themselves. That, plus they kept writing about their adventures, so legends are born.
Any film about the Beats is a dream and a nightmare for writers and cast alike. What writer wouldn’t want to take a shot at a conversation between Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs? And yet, what writer would dare?
The same can be said for any actor hoping to capture these literary characters we know so well from their own pages. But Kill Your Darlings aims to do justice to all of it – the movement, the participants, the socio-political climate, and the true crime story few recall.
Kill Your Darlings revisits that burgeoning circle of geniuses to spin a more somber origins story than those we usually hear. Rather than emphasizing the madcap, mind-altering, conformity-be-damned journeys of Ginsburg, Burroughs or Kerouac we’ve grown accustomed to, the film is based on the murder that splintered the group.
It’s Columbia University of the mid 1940s. As World War II rages, young New Jerseyan Allen Ginsburg (Daniel Radcliffe) begins his life as a college freshman. He quickly falls in with the wrong sort. Thank God!
The film shadows Ginsburg along his journey toward self-expression by way of an infatuation with schoolmate Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan).
Carr introduces him to elder statesman/criminal element William H. Burroughs (Ben Foster), and later, to football playing senior and part time merchant marine Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston – of those Hustons). Together they alter their minds and begin a framework for a new world order for writers.
Carr also introduces Ginsburg to David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), whom Carr would later murder.
Though first time feature director John Krokidas has trouble deciding whether his is a coming of age tale or a murder mystery, and though he’s never able to clearly define the events’ connection to the actual writing that would eventually flood from these poets and scoundrels, he pulls together a competently crafted tale buoyed by well defined and tenderly animated characters.
Radcliffe’s growth as an actor continues to impress, as does his somewhat fearless choice of projects, but it’s DeHaan who steals the film. Damaged, vulnerable and seductive, he’s exactly the cauldron of conflict that inspires an artistic revolution.
Hall, Huston and Foster also impress as Krokidas throws light on some fascinating (if one-sided, fairly fictionalized, perfectly lurid) details of the spark that burst into the Beat Generation. They can’t quite transcend the limitations of a novice director and an under-focused screenplay, but they will compel your attention while they have you.
