Film

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

OK, now we seem to be getting somewhere. A new director, some well-placed additions to the cast, a brand new cinematographer, and a strong central performance from Jennifer Lawrence combine to make The Hunger Games: Catching Fire a vast improvement over the franchise’s first, sloppy mess chapter. New director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) and cinematographer Jo Willems (Limitless) get rid of most of the goofy, baroque sheen that made The Hunger Games so annoying. They also have a much better technique for filming action scenes, and they have made a film that feels quite brutal at times. A film about kids being forced to kill each other should be brutal, and not feel as if it is pulling punches for a PG-13 rating, as the first movie did. Watching this new film, I was reminded of how the Harry Potter series switched into high gear with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Alfonso Cuaron washed out the color palette and added a new element of darkness to the proceedings. In many ways, Francis Lawrence steals Cuaron’s game, and that’s to the viewer’s benefit. This is an efficient, well-oiled movie machine now. The sequel picks ups soon after the events of the first film, with Katniss and Peeta (Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson) enjoying a relatively calm, reluctant celebrity life after their rule-bending victory in The Hunger Games. President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is not happy with the rising popularity of Katniss, and lets her know, in person, that it will not be tolerated. Soon thereafter, Katniss and Peeta find themselves fighting for their lives again in a rarely invoked tradition of former Hunger Games victors competing against each other.

Gone is that quick cut, shaky cam, messed-up way of filming action to mask the fact that you can’t show R-rated violence in what is essentially supposed to be a violent movie. The action is not only easy to follow, but quite exciting. A sequence where Katniss and friends flee some sort of creeping gas cloud stands as one of the better action scenes by Bob Grimm this year. Jennifer Lawrence takes Katniss to a bgrimm@ new, far more interesting level this time out. newsreview.com In front of Willems’ lens, she looks a little more worn and embittered after the first time 4 out. I found her more believable as a wartorn survivor. She also seems a little more engaged in this movie, as if the new director has simply pulled a better performance out of her. Her performance in the first film was fine, but the environment she was put in felt staged. Catching Fire feels more organic. Donald Sutherland’s Snow gets a chance to be more involved and far more sinister than the first film, establishing himself as a true villain. Philip Seymour Hoffman climbs onboard as the shady new game master, and yes, he’s a far more menacing presence than Wes Bentley and his lame facial hair. Hoffman is good here, but Sam Claflin wins my pick for best new addition to the cast as the preening Finnick Odair. He’s a great, mysterious Hunger Games competitor whose motivations are complicated. He also provides some decent comic relief. Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer also join the cast as competitors, making the group of people actually in the game far, far more interesting than the first film. In the great tradition of mega-franchises like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire leaves you with a big cliffhanger that will have you feeling a bit incomplete. Don’t worry, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (two films will cover the third book) is merely a year away. Even better news: Francis Lawrence will direct the two Mockingjay films, so they have a solid chance of being good. Ω

Duck, goose, duck.

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excellent 3 Bad Grandpa Johnny Knoxville has tried to parlay his Jackass fame into an acting career, and he hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire. So, because huge paychecks are tempting, he has returned to the Jackass well numerous times with three official movies, and his body has paid a tremendous toll. The man has thrown himself into the path of buffalos and bulls to score good laughs and, oh man, has he gotten those good laughs. As big as those checks can be, internal bleeding and broken limbs lose their luster after a while. So now we get this, a sort of Jackass movie that has a narrative mixed into hidden camera stunts. It’s very much in the tradition of Borat. Knoxville gets to play one part for the film, that of Irving Zisman, an over-80 letch of an old man that has shown up in past Jackass skits. He’s taking his grandson (Jackson Nicoll) across country, leading to some funny stunts that manage to shock a few. The highlight would be Nicoll dressed in drag and dancing to “Cherry Pie” at a beauty pageant, a moment when he basically steals the movie from Knoxville. Not as outrageous as the other Jackass films, but a nice way to keep the franchise going without destroying Knoxville’s body.

2The Best Man Holiday Fourteen years after the original, writer-director Malcolm D. Lee and friends finally get around to making a sequel to the highly successful 1999 film The Best Man. The results are mixed, with a likeable cast straining to keep Lee’s script vibrant until the all too silly end. Harper (Taye Diggs) is experiencing a lull in his writing career, and looks to get former friend, NFL star Lance (Morris Chestnut) to OK him as the writer of his biography. (It’s actually cool to see Chestnut playing a football star; it’s as if his aspiring athlete in Boyz n the Hood never got shot). So Harper, and much of the cast of the original (including Monica Calhoun, Regina Hall, Harold Perrineau and a very funny Terrence Howard) reunite at Lance’s house where decent comedy and terrible melodrama commences. As a laugher, the film gets some good ones, especially when Howard is on the screen. As a drama, it has a mawkish, Hallmark movie channel feel that derails it. It’s too bad, because some of the players make this one worth watching at times.

1Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 This is animation done with all the style and grace of a spastic colon saturated with hot sauce. While the first film in this series had a reasonable amount of charm, this one goes haywire from its start right until the finish line. Bill Hader returns as the voice of Flint, the overly excited inventor who, in the first movie, managed to use a crazy invention to inundate his hometown with giant food. Now, the machine has gone nuts, creating a race of living food including cheeseburger spiders and dolphin bananas. The film boasts an intolerably frantic pace, with a plotline that’s scattered beyond reasonability. It’s hard to follow, but it does have the occasional fart and poop joke to make the kids laugh. The only character I managed to enjoy was a jittery monkey trying to put out a sparkler, and that accounts for about 30 seconds of the film. Don’t waste your time and, trust me, your kids won’t like it either.

4Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaughey continues his career resurgence in this film based on the life of Ron Woodroof, a man who tested HIV positive in the ’80s, and had to battle the FDA while smuggling non-approved drugs into the country for himself and fellow sufferers. McConaughey lost many pounds to look the part, and it’s a frightening transformation. He also delivers an incredible performance. This, combined with his work earlier this year in Mud, easily establishes 2013 as the best year of his career. Jared Leto does incredible work as Rayon, a cross-dresser who helps Woodroof distribute the drugs to those needing some sort of treatment. Director Jean-Marc Vallee does a good job of capturing a time where HIV was a death sentence, and the terror that surrounded those who were fighting for their lives. This is a very good movie with great performances. 2 Delivery Man Vince Vaughn battles to make this American remake of Starbuck (both directed by Ken Scott) something worthwhile, and he almost wins. He plays David, a meat deliveryman who finds out he’s fathered over 500 children due to sperm clinic donations, and some of those kids want to meet him. David finds out who some of the kids are, spies on them, and tries to serve them as some sort of guardian angel. The film, while containing some genuinely warm moments, lost me in the final stretch where it gets overwhelmed by its dopey plot. Vaughn gives a good performance, as do some of the supporting cast (good to see SNL’s Bobby Moynihan getting some lines), but the pieces don’t add up. The outrageous premise screams for something a little less conventional than what Scott serves up. It’s one of those movies where you can predict all of the choices the protagonist is going to make, which results in boredom.

2Ender’s Game Finally, Orson Scott Card’s epic novel is adapted for the big screen and, regrettably, it misses the mark. Asa Butterfield plays Ender Wiggin, a future young master strategist who is picked by a determined colonel (a craggy and fun Harrison Ford) to eventually command a crew of teens. The hope is that the teens (including True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld), through a series of drills and exercises can eventually gain the knowledge to lead Earth in a war against an insect-like alien species. The premise is a good one (and a trendsetter for such franchises as The Matrix and Harry Potter, being that Card penned the novel almost two decades ago), but Butterfield is a bust in the title role, rendering much of the movie flat and lifeless. Ford is the best thing in the movie, and I hope this acts as a nice bridge for him to return to the Star Wars franchise. It’s cool to see him doing sci-fi again. This movie feels abbreviated, with a rushed ending. Perhaps they should’ve done it as a TV miniseries, and recast the lead.

3Kill Your Darlings Back in the early college days of poet Allen Ginsberg, when he was just getting to know the likes of William Burroughs, a mysterious murder took place. Daniel Radcliffe plays Ginsberg, infatuated with a fellow student named Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) who killed a former mentor and possible stalker (Michael C. Hall) and involved some of his fellow students in the killing’s aftermath. Radcliffe and DeHaan are pretty good here, but the film’s best performance belongs to Ben Foster as Burroughs. He nails the former drug guru’s mannerisms. The film also stars Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and David Cross as Alan’s father, Louis (Cross played an older Ginsberg in I’m Not There). While the movie has a few lapses in judgment, it’s interesting to see somebody actually telling this little known story.

4The Motel Life Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff play solemn brothers, quite convincingly, in The Motel Life, a solid adaptation of the critically praised novel by Willy Vlautin. Fans of the novel might notice some distinct changes, but the “sometimes bad luck hits you” and brotherly companionship themes of the book remain strongly intact. Frank Lee (Hirsch) is sleeping off his latest drunk in a seedy Reno hotel room when half naked brother Jerry (Dorff) enters the room shivering and bawling. On a cold winter’s night, Jerry has accidentally run over and killed a boy on his bicycle, and he’s begging to get out of town. Frank hears the story, vomits, and then agrees to take a drive. A string of bad decisions and actions follow, and a lesser film might’ve been too dark and depressing to take. Thankfully, directing brothers Alan and Gabe Polsky combine beautifully shot images with stellar performances to keep things rolling in a way that keeps us rooting for the brothers. Dorff has never been better, and Hirsch is his equal. The Motel Life walks that fine line of being dark without being unrelentingly depressing. There’s a certain joy in seeing two actors performing together so perfectly, something that gives this movie a feeling of triumph amidst the intentionally conveyed despair. The Motel Life is available for rent on Amazon.com and iTunes during its limited theatrical run.