The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)

*** ½ out of ****

Sometimes I really don't understand movie critics. When “The Hunger Games” came out in 2012 I thought it was only a moderately okay movie. It was a nice waste of 2 hours, but nothing particularly special. Then in 2013 when “Catching Fire” was released, I considered it a nice improvement on the first – it was more intense, better acted and had far superior production values. I would have given them both 2 and a half stars, with a slightly higher recommendation to “Catching Fire”. But the critics LOVED them – they had 84% and 89% Rotten Tomatoes scores respectively.

So when I saw that the latest release “Mockingjay Part 1” was only receiving a 65% rating, I was in no hurry to go off the theatre to see it. Turns out I was late to the party – critics be damned, this is simply a different class of film. It is really, really good; far better than its two predecessors.

When we last saw Katniss Everdeen she had just been rescued from the games and found herself in the midst of a revolution. The remaining 12 districts of Panem have had enough of the repression of the capital and, using Katniss as their figurehead, are striking back. Perhaps it is the discontented revolutionary deep within me speaking, but this is not like the slightly silly concept driving the original films – this is an idea that stirs feelings in all of us when we see injustice. We want to fight back (but rarely do) and love to see oppressors beaten down. A much more interesting theme that has led to a far superior movie experience.

The revolution is being led by “President” Coin (the modern day Jefferson Davis of the film), and among her key advisers is former game-master Pultarch Heavensbee, as well as Katniss' friends Gale and Haymitch. Since it was Katniss' rebellious actions in the games that originally led to the revolution, they all want to hold her up as the figurehead for the revolt. They film staged settings for her, where she appears to be in the midst of the fighting (complete with CGI) but her acting fall flat; she can only appear revolutionary when she is really in the middle of it. So against their better judgment, they send her out into the districts where the real fighting is happening.

Of course this is the best thing they could have done because Katniss really is a warrior – her fighting on the front lines (with a camera crew at her back) repeatedly displays what the revolution is all about, and airing the footage inspires more and more people to take part. Before long it is full out war complete with late night sabotage, covert operations and hard line artillery shelling going on.

Many critics are calling "Mockingjay" slow and lacking in action, but I felt that director Francis Lawrence paced this film beautifully. It isn't the slam-bang action of the first two films (which even for sci-fi I found too fantastic to take really seriously), but it all unfolds very realistically. I loved how it is Katniss' natural fire that sparks the people to fight, and one particular scene where she spontaneously sings a folk song by a reservoir is really beautifully done. The ensuing scene (where late-night saboteurs destroy a dam while singing the same song) drives it home.

Many are condemning the way the novel has been split into two films, but there isn't one second of this 2 hour "part 1" that I would remove. If you're seeking rock'em sock'em action with endless firefights and mindless battles then you won't like this films as much as the first two, but if you enjoy more intrigue and characters that react like real people instead of caricatures, this one is far superior.

Jennifer Lawrence has made a real name for herself over the past few years, and deservedly so. Her work in “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012) and “American Hustle” (2013) have proven her to be a real talent. While I loved "Mockingjay Part 1", her role isn't much of a challenge for a real thespian – in fact I found her performance to be a bit over-the-top at times like she was trying to wring more out of the character than it actually has to give. Katniss' anguish over the deaths of innocents is dragged out a bit too much, but that is really the only minor complaint I would voice.

This is a terrific movie, and I give it an extremely high recommendation. Now I can't wait for the finale next year- I hope it maintains this level of quality.

Trancers (1985)

* out of ****

Childhood memories can be flawed. You remember a long-ago relative as being a giant..... you meet him again as an adult you find he's barely more than average size. Grandma's basement was a labyrinth of treasures and secrets..... then you visit years later and see it as small, dank and claustrophobic. You are enthralled by a movie filled with excitement and intrigue..... then watching it again decades later it is a truly silly piece of cinematic trash.

Such is “Trancers”. A flick I found very entertaining as a teen which on viewing now I can't believe I ever liked. Although I will go easy on myself by suggesting that some others must have enjoyed it as it has since spawned two sequels.

Reveling in its own low-budget limitations, “Trancers” is a fairly typical sci-fi time-waster from the 80s. Tim Thomerson is Jack Deth (I have to give them this – that's a great name), a 23^rd century cop that spends his time tracking “Whistler”, a psychic who can turn the weak minded into brainless killing machines. When Whistler travels back in time to kill the ancestors of those chasing him, Deth has to follow suit and go back to 1985. They achieve this by transporting your consciousness into the body of an ancestor, leaving your own body behind. This was actually a nice plot device as it added the challenge that Whistler's ancestor was a cop, giving him the authority to remove anyone he suspects is after him from the picture.

One of the better parts of the movie is Helen Hunt as Leena, a Madonna-wannabe that Deth meets up with in 1985. Though her actions and dialogue make no more sense than anyone else's, you can at least see that Hunt's acting is a step above the wild over- emoting that everyone else is projecting. Together Leena and Jack are able to plot a way to stop Whistler and get everyone back into their own time.

When I watched this years ago it seemed to me that it was a “good bad movie” - one that you know was made on a shoestring budget but that overcame that with a fun storyline. Now I see that it is trying very hard to be just that, but the plot holes and lack of continuity is often just plain silly. Thomerson isn't bad in the role, but he really has nothing to work with here. The best part of the entire film is his brief ability to stretch a single second out into ten seconds (allowing for getaways from tight situations).  Early in the film that made for a great scene that really rocked the slo-mo.

But the whole thing just isn't very good.....

Shattering youthful illusions is never much fun, but at least I won't ever make the mistake of suggesting anyone else ever watch it. Though it's not completely without time-wasting capability, I am very confident that I won't ever make any attempt to watch it again.

These Final Hours (2014)

** ½ out of ****

For some reason I have always had a fascination with “end of the world” movies. I can even remember when that fascination started. One day when I was about 10 years old I turned on the TV after school and a local channel was showing “The Omega Man” with Charlton Heston. Not the world's greatest movie, but still one of my personal favorites and definitely the best attempt to bring Richard Matheson's “I Am Legend” to the big screen.  Heston's "last man on earth" was at the same time frightening and exciting, and I have loved the genre ever since.

So every time there is an “end of the world” movie, I check it out. Over the years I have seen some great ones; “This Quiet Earth”, “Mad Max”, “12 Monkeys”, “The Stand”.... more recently “The Road”, “The Book of Eli”, “This is the End”, “Interstellar”. So watching “These Final Hours” was a no-brainer for me, and I have to admit I quite like it – it reminded me in many ways of “Last Night”, a Canadian end-of-the-worlder from 15 or so years ago.

Set in and around Perth, Australia, a giant meteor has hit the earth (somewhere between Europe and North America) and gives us 12 hours before the shockwave wipes out Australia. The film follows James, who leaves his girlfriend behind at their home to go to a "this is the end" debauchery party. He tells her that all he wants is to be “fucked up” at the end so he won't feel or notice the end of the world. Upon hitting the road he is almost immediately relieved of his car by a machete-wielding maniac, and you see the depravity that Armageddon is loosing upon the world. James finds a little nobility when he rescues a young girl from a pair of child molesters, but this screws up his plans as he now has someone to be responsible for. The girl, Rose, wants him to take her to her Aunt Janice's to reunite with her father for the bitter end, which would keep James from his great party. What to do, what to do...... in many ways the film is simply about retaining humanity under inhuman conditions.

What I liked most about it is that it didn't try to offer big, meaningful statements about what it is to be kind or what it means maintain your decency even when it doesn't matter. James was a flawed guy that came to several crossroads where he had to decide between the “right thing” and the selfish thing. At one point he comes across a family of four where the father asks James to shoot them all to spare them the terror of the oncoming firestorm. Without showing it as a big moral dilemma, James simply has to decide what he can or can't do based on his deepest personal needs.

The ending felt a bit of a rip off, torn directly from the pages of “Deep Impact”, but other than that this re-treads much of the genre's old ground without feeling like a waste of effort. It isn't ground-breaking or particularly insightful, but is an enjoyable time despite the grim setting. Most critics are giving it a very high score – I don't think it's quite that great, but surely worth a watch.

Tammy (2014)

* out of ****

When is Melissa McCarthy's 15 minutes going to expire? Soon I hope. The sooner the better.

In reviewing this movie, I will try to be brief. I've already written more than it's worth.

Tammy (McCarthy) is a selfish, rude and self-absorbed loser. She works (briefly) at a fast food restaurant, is married to a man that cheats on her (but who seems totally justified in doing it), and takes advantage of everyone she knows. She is stupid, inconsiderate, mean spirited and just a flat out unlikable human being.

She and her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) run away from home in Grandma's Caddy because they can't think of anything better to do. They hook up with a father and son combo and for some reason the son seems to be romantically interested in Tammy. This blew my mind – I mean, who wouldn't have romantic ideas about such a person, especially one who has been nothing but rude to you since you met?

They have so-called adventures. Grandma gets arrested for possession of unprescribed Oxycodone and Tommy very wisely robs a fast food joint for the bail money. They call Grandma's cousin who torches their car and throws them a huge 4^th of July party. Does this seem off-the-charts insane?  In watching you will be holding your head to keep it from exploding .

This movie tries to be funny and fails. It tries to be sweet and fails. It tries to be entertaining and fails. Miserably.

Do not watch this movie. It sucks.

If my review had only been the one line in the previous paragraph, it would have been sufficient.

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

** ½ out of ****

When I was a kid I had a Children's Bible – where they retell the bible stories in language a 7 year old can understand and with lots of illustrations. My favorite story was always the tale of Moses, from his mother saving him with a basket in the reeds, to the burning bush, to “let my people go” and the plagues, to the Red Sea and the Ten Commandments. Moses was a real hero, and what kid doesn't love a hero story?

But Hollywood is never happy with a good story – they want to offer “something new”. Earlier this year “Noah” (2014) did it, with the stowing away of Tobal-Cain aboard the Ark and with Noah's near-homicide of his son. In “Exodus” director Ridley Scott takes the same liberties with the written word, but in a slightly different way. Rather than change the story itself, he changes the details around the story that alters the context of the entire thing. Why do directors do that? Do they think their version of the story is better than the one people have been fascinated by for thousands of years?

I won't say much about the geography of the film other than that I have been to Egypt and Ridley Scott seemed to want to get the entire country into one city. The pyramids and the Saqarra step pyramid are shown right next to each other (they are 30 miles apart), the Karnak temple is right outside the pyramids (it's hundreds of miles farther up the Nile) and the Temple of Abu Simbel is also very near Memphis (when it is actually on the north shore of Lake Nasser, a thousand miles away). Impressive looking but ridiculous. Enough said.

Christian Bale is Moses in this retelling, and Joel Edgerton as Ramses, and both play their parts extremely well. Ramses is one role in the film that doesn't seem to have been seriously altered – he is an egomaniacal paranoid who is sure of his own divinity. But the part of Moses is very different than the biblical story – this Moses is a fiercely proud man, unwilling to bow to the word of God unless he personally supports God's position and instructions. Toward the end we find out that God is pretty much okay with this (umm, when the heck would that ever happen? The Judao God is a “take it or leave it” kind of deity).

Like in the Bible version, Moses was saved from the Nile as a child and raised a prince of Egypt, and he and Ramses are like brothers. But unlike the bible which tells how Moses was banished from Egypt after saving the life of a Hebrew slave, here an Egyptian overlord discovers Moses' true origins and reports it to Ramses to prevent Moses from reporting his own theft of riches from the treasury. Ramses is only too eager to believe the tale, and gets Moses to admit its truth by threatening to cut the arm off Moses' sister. Admission under duress, anyone?

God himself is reimagined for the story as well – here God does not appear to Moses as a burning bush, he appears as a nine-year-old child that usually looks like he needs a good spanking. The burning bush is there, but only in the background while the brat whines to Moses about what he wants him to do. I guess Ridley Scott decided that he had to have the bush in there somewhere, so he squeezed it in – that is literally what it looks like. Moses decides to do what he was told and return to Egypt, but he spends a lot of time questioning God and yelling at him. At one point he even yells, “Do you think you have humbled me?” For anyone that has read the Bible, this is a ridiculous idea as it was Moses' pride that keeps him out of the Land of Canaan in the end, for a sin of pride much less blatant than this.

The plagues are presented differently as well, though they are presented very nicely on screen. Here Moses does not appear to Ramses to tell him that these are acts of God and that they will continue until the children of Isreal are freed until after the 6^th plague. To Ramses, the crocodiles, the bloody water, dead fish, frogs, flies, locusts and hail are just a bunch of bad luck befalling his kingdom. But after Moses reveals that there is another, more terrible plague coming Ramses decides to take his chances. I did like this sequence, the first Passover, very much. The deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt was shown clearly and with sympathy, and the scenes showing the agony and pain of Egypt for their deaths was extremely well done. Ramses pain over the death of his beloved son drives him to release the Hebrews, and Moses leads them across the desert.

Everyone knows the story, so I won't go on about the changes other than to say that the parting of the Red Sea was unspectacular in this version (and meant to be so), though the “closing up” of the Red Sea was VERY spectacular. I didn't really like the presentation of this aspect of the story, but the telling of the tribe fleeing from the approaching chariots was otherwise excellent. But post-Red Sea, the story lost all strength as the “Ten Commandments” part of the film was glossed over (and again presented God less as deity than whiny child) and the 40 years of wandering in the desert was not touched upon at all. Key elements of the story, in my opinion, that the film didn't make any attempt to deal with.

Overall this is a good movie – enjoyable cinema with absolutely fantastic production values, excellent cinematography and near-perfect CGI. The performances are solid (look for Aaron Paul as Joshua – I was disappointed he didn't call anyone “bitch”) and it is entertaining. But it would have been MORE entertaining if they had simply told the story as it was written. That version would have made a better movie than this one.

The Equalizer (2014)

** ½ out of ****

A couple of months ago I reviewed “John Wick”, a stylish action film that understood that action films are not to be taken seriously. I loved how firmly it's tongue was planted in its cheek. “The Equalizer”, new on video and starring Denzel Washington, could take a few lessons from that movie. “The Equalizer”s biggest drawback is how deadly serious it takes itself, when it should treat itself more like the cinematic fluff that it ultimately is.

It doesn't start out that way – in fact I thought the first half of the film was very promising. Denzel is Robert McCall, a simple fellow leading a simple life, working at Home Mart (it was well into the film before I realized that it wasn't actually a Home Depot) and enjoying classic novels. He doesn't sleep much, and is a regular late night patron of a local diner, where he befriends a teenage prostitute names Teri (Chloe Graze Moretz). They see each other there most nights and have a nodding acquaintance - she clearly leads a pretty crappy life and is intrigued by the obvious “nice-ness” of McCall.

But not all is as it seems (is it ever in an action movie?). McCall is a former Green Beret and CIA operative who gave up the life as a promise to his now-deceased wife. And he fights down his natural urges when he sees Teri abused by her pimp, instead trying to reason with him and buy Teri her freedom. Only when the pimp refuses to listen to reason does McCall fly into action, wiping out the pimp and his whole team, and eventually bringing the entire Russian mafia into a manhunt to find and kill him.

So far, this is all pretty much in good movie fun. And when Russian cleanup man Teddy (Marton Csokas) arrives to take charge of the search for McCall, it looks like it could become even more fun. But then director Antoine Fuqua forgets that it is 2014 not 1985 and that he is not Sylvestor Stallone. Suddenly the movie falls into madly obvious subplots and cliched action sequences (complete with slow motion walks and heavy metal music). There's even a hand-to-hand combat scene with a monster of a man who seems to be unhurt by being stabbed a handful of times (including one in the neck). It doesn't get quite as silly as “Cobra” (1985) but the two films are surely kissing cousins.....

However, it isn't all bad. Denzel is adequate in the role (I hate using that term for any performance of his, but there is no other way to describe this one) and most of the supporting cast do their jobs fairly well. It's the filmmaking itself that comes up wanting – if the director had as much fun with this as Chad Stahelski had with “John Wick” it could have been every bit as enjoyable. As it turns out, it is only a slightly-above-average action film that left me thinking it was a missed opportunity more than anything else. A very mild recommendation from me.

I Am Ali (2014)

* ½ out of ****

I became a boxing fan on September 15, 1978, the night that Muhammad Ali beat Leon Spinks by decision to become the heavyweight champion for the third time. There was only one TV in the house, and since my sister and I were 10 and 8 respectively, we ended up watching what my dad wanted to watch just about every night. And while I'm sure I had watched fights with my dad before, I don't remember any prior to this match, mainly because of the impact the decision had on my dad. He cried, he laughed, he mooned over the images of Ali on the TV screen. He was deeply moved.  I remember it like it was yesterday.

Such is the type of emotion that Muhammad Ali generates in those that lived through his tenure as a prizefighter. Ali was more than an athlete; due to the strength of his voice in both the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, he became an icon. During the 60s and 70s he was at the same time the most loved and most hated athlete in the world, and the single most recognizable face on the planet. He was bigger than boxing.  He was bigger than just about everything.

Directed by Clair Lewins, “I am Ali” virtually ignores Muhammad Ali the athlete and focuses on  the icon. And not to put too fine a point on it, basically treats him as Muhammad Ali the saint. Or martyr. Or God..... I appreciate that Lewins tried to do something different here - the amount of media available about Muhammad Ali is so vast that it is virtually impossible to learn anything new about the man. So Lewins doesn't even try and instead made a movie hailing the wonderful-ness of Ali. But since this is a documentary I feel it fell very short of making any kind of real statement, more because of its omissions than its content.

It would be okay to have the people that love and admire Ali discussing how he has influenced them. It's fine to have his family talk about how much they love and admire him. What I found not okay was the absolute refusal to address the reality that Ali left a trail of broken hearts in his wake. The film shows an interview with Muhammad Ali Jr about his upbringing, but fails to address the non-relationship between he and his father now. It also shows interviews with Marvis Frazier where he speaks to some degree about how Ali's taunting hurt his father Joe during their three fight history, but glosses over it rather than hit it head on. I have zero doubt at all that Marvis had a lot more to say about this, but the editing left it as a “they loved each other in spite of it all” feeling to it. Joe forgave Ali in the end but spent DECADES being eaten up inside about being called "Uncle Tom" and "The Gorilla".

Even Veronica Ali, Muhammad's third wife, gives a “kid gloves” treatment to Muhammad. When she discusses Ali's infidelities, it's more in a “nudge nudge wink wink, isn't he naughty” way than how in reality it was the sole reason for their broken marriage. So overall I can't say this paints a real portrait of Ali – it just paints the bright side and leaves the dark side almost completely alone.

There is some great stuff in this film though. Being an Ali-o-phile I noticed quite a few photos and videos that I hadn't seen before, and though it is all daddy-daughter stuff the recorded conversations from the 70s of Ali with his kids is also new to hear. And since there is so much Ali-related stuff out there, it is difficult to make a new documentary that doesn't simply re-tread the same old footsteps. “Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story” (1996) is the most complete, comprehensive and honest documentary about the man, and “AKA Cassius Clay” (1970) gives you a really great account of what he meant to the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, “I Am Ali” falls into the vein of the dramas made about Ali (“The Greatest 1977 and “Ali” 2001) – they are just not very good viewing.

Muhammad Ali is many things. A superior athlete, a great but deeply flawed man, an entertainer, a cruel egomaniac, an icon of anti-war and anti-segregation. But he is no saint, despite what “I Am Ali” seems to convey.  I love the man personally – loved him as an athlete and loved his courage as a political statesman. But I most love him because on the night of his last great triumph, my dad cried tears of joy because of what Ali meant to him. He deserves a better tribute than this film provides him.