The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

3.5 Stars (out of four)

The Hunger Games series is quite possibly one of the most satisfying, albeit a tad predictable, stories to have passed our way during the past decade, both as books and movies.  When I first heard of Suzanne Coliins' young adult story for the first time, it sounded a little too much like the sadistically violent manga, Battle Royale.  But she has managed to create a wonderfully entertaining world and story.

Mockingjay Part 2 picks right up where the last one left off. Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) has been rescued by the resistance and tried to kill our hero, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) because he was tortured and conditioned to become a living weapon.  The resistance is making its last push against the capital and President Snow (Donald Sutherland, exuding oily menace).  Katniss decides to go on a suicide mission to kill Snow and is joined by a team of commandos, including her other paramour Gayle (Liam Hemsworth), setting up a quiet conflict between he and Peeta for Katniss' heart.  But should Katniss succeed in her mission to kill Snow, what insidious menace comes next?

As I said, the whole Hunger Games franchise, and this movie in particular, are very satisfying.  This movie has the right amount of action, pathos, and finally closure.  Every loose thread is tied up well. This story, for a young adult's story, is quite rich in atmosphere and characterization.  It is as complex as it should be without being too Byzantine in its plot arcs.  After I watched this final film, I rewatched the other three and was surprised by how many allusions are in the last movie and how it completely pulls minor or subtle plot points from even the first movie all together at the end.  No story arc is left hanging.  Unlike the horrifying mess of the Twilight series, The Hunger Games is a complexly layered work of art with one of the better female role models for young girls.  It's sad that the "strange" worlds of fantasy/sci-fi are the primary places where strong female characters flourish, almost as if Hollywood is telling us this is the only place they realistically exist.  Katniss is strong, determined and capable, while not sacrificing real emotion and moments of weakness.  And while she is a little too much of a super woman, it comes off convincingly, due in no small part to how good an actress Jennifer Lawrence is.  In less capable hands, the performance would be hokey.  But Lawrence pulls it off with the acting chops she has developed in indie films.

I cannot recommend this series higher, for reading or watching.  It is surprising, funny, sad and ultimately stands for something.  My only complaint (and it's a minor one) is that you have to have the background of the other films to understand this one.  If you don't watch the others, you will be hopelessly lost the further you go in as there is very little exposition.  Each movie depends on the first or it will make no sense.  But, having said that, if you have seen the others, you will not be disappointed with the end here.

Creed

3 Stars (out of four)

I REALLY wanted to like this movie.  The Rocky series has meant a lot to me growing up, and is probably one of my favorite franchises of all time.  So, I was eagerly anticipating this new entry in the Rocky canon, as it promised to take Rocky in a whole new, exciting direction.  Did I like it?  The short answer is yes.  The long answer is that it could have been so much better and was a sadly missed opportunity.

So, Creed opens with the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), a young black man who has been fighting adversity and his personal demons his entire life.  The film opens with him as an unknown boxer in Tijuana, making a name for himself with several wins, mostly on his raw talent alone.  When he goes to his father's old gym in L.A., he unwisely challenges the reigning middleweight champion and is quickly thrashed in a sparring match.  Adonis realizes he has a lot to learn, so he goes to Philadelphia to convince Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) to train him.  Rocky, after some persuasion, reluctantly agrees, and soon, Adonis wins his first real middleweight fight.  Adonis was fighting under his mother's name because he wanted to make his own way, but this wouldn't be much of a movie if the Creed name didn't get leaked.  Meanwhile, the current middleweight champion 'Pretty' Ricky Conlan (played by real-life 2x champion Tony Bellew), is under several scandals that threaten his boxing career, so of course, a fight is set up between the two.

As I said, this movie is a mixed bag of nuts.  On the one hand, it is entertaining and fun, though not particularly original.  On the other hand, none of the original makers have anything to do with it.  Stallone didn't write or direct, Bill Conti didn't do the music.  And while I applaud the filmmakers' gamble to try a new stylistic feel, it is curiously flat and undramatic in all ways.  Say what you will about Stallone, he is a fantastic writer, as his 1976 Oscar nomination for the original Rocky can attest.  Stallone himself says that he uses Rocky to be able to preach certain values he has, a worldview of hard work, determination, plain common sense, and decency.  And through his admittedly tortured diction, he created a character that is the Everyman.  Rocky is us and our best aspirations.  Creed feels like a rehashed story of cliches, which brings me to what I think is the film's almost fatal flaw...

Now, I have not seen Michael B. Jordan in anything else for comparison.  I don't know if this is a fair representation of his true acting ability.  But, if his performance in Creed is an indication, his wooden portrayal of Adonis almost ruins the story.  His look is perfect, but there are a lot of youngish, African-American actors like Corey Parker or J.D. Williams who would have done a much better job.  There is a lot in the story to like.  There is pathos, conflict and joy, yet they all fall curiously flat with Jordan's performance.  I don't know if this was a limitation on his part, or a fault on Ryan Coogler, the director.  Either way, what could have been a great character is sadly lacking.  But aside from that, the movie is entertaining.  If you are looking for a fun time, go see it, but don't set your expectations too high.

Spectre

3 Stars (out of four)

We continue the story of the relaunched James Bond, and it is good, but still a tad odd.

Spectre continues wher Skyfall let off.  In another direct sequel, this movie opens in Mexico City, where Bond (Daniel Craig continuing a singularly satisfyingly intense portrai of our favorite spy) assassinates a man and picks up a mysterious ring with an octopus on it.  We find that it belongs to the shadowy organization, SPECTRE, a group that profits on anything horrible in the world and the primary author of everything bad that happened to Bond since Vesper Lynn's assassination in Casino Royale.  Bond pursues the group until he finds its leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Woltz in a deliciously evil performance).  Blofeld and Bond appear to be connected in some way, which Bond discovers as he tries to save London from another big attack.

So, considering this is one of the most action filled franchises in cinema history, there is not a lot of action.  This particular installment is long on story, and appears to be suffering from post-production cuts like its predecessor, Quantum of Solace.  For parts of the movie, I found myself lost, like I came in 39 minutes late to a two-hour movie.  It's also pretty long, clocking in close to 2.75 hours. The movie is not particularly exciting, with only a couple of major action pieces.  All the familiar characters show up and are a lot of fun.  I love the new M, Q and Moneypenny.  I like the fact the movie has nor succumbed to the temptation to put more gadgets in, because this inevitably results in overkill, like the battle of the super cars in Die Another Day.  This relies more on good old fashioned espionage and skullduggery.  Another element I particularly liked about the film is its dark and very cruel, evil undertones.  This is not a happy-go-lucky movie like the Roger Moore set.  It is very serious and somber, and therefore very interesting to watch.  Despite the plot holes, the intense tone makes this film very interesting.  It gives Bond a more "real" feel, rather than being an indestructible superman.

Real or not, however, it may be disappointing to some Bond fans.  It is a totally different tone and feel with the possible exception of License To Kill.  As I said, it is a totally different tone than a Bond film.  It is deadly serious.  This is not a movie to be taken lightly, but this is the direction Bond needs to go.  I hear many fans criticizing the film, that it sucks or it's too long, but no real criticism other than they don't like it.  Very serious takes are needed in this franchise to keep it from slipping into Three Stooges style dreck like Diamonds Are a Forever, Moonraker, A View To A Kill, or Die Another Day.  Please, when you go see this film, remember the depths these films can sink to when fans start whining about "Where's Q?  The gadgets?  The supercar?"  Etc, etc, etc.  please do not let these uninformed people take Bond away from this leaner, meaner, post-Bourne Bond which will require another reboot.  I like the direction has been going with the Craig series, despite some misfires, and I, for one, want to see it continue.

Steve Jobs

3 Stars (out of four)

Steve Jobs is a fairly complex movie about a very complex person.  It is pretty darn good, but, in the end, may have bitten off more than it can chew.

Steve Jobs tries to tackle most of the issues of Steve Jobs' life through three of his most iconic product launches: the MacIntosh, the NeXt and the iMac.  These three products encapsulate the first (and arguably most dynamic) half of Jobs' fascinating life and career.  This period of time was the most complicated of his life, covering his repeated denial of his first daughter's paternity, his famous firing (and subsequent rehiring) at his company Apple, and hints at the beginning of the second (and arguably more successful) part of his life where Apple redefined the world with the iPod, iPhone and iPad (upon which this review is currently being written).

Icon.  Arrogant.  Visionary.  Petty.  Artist.  Cruel.  Genius.  Stylistic talent.  Machiavellian manipulator.    Horror of a human being.  Dreamer of a better, kinder world.  Denier of his own child.  Loving father.  Jobs was all these things and more.  At one point in the film, Jobs says, "I am not well-made."  That sums him up quite well.  As with all things in life, things are much more complicated than they first appear.  Aaron Sorkin tries to make sense out of a very complicated man in a very short amount of time.  Drawing heavily on Walter Isaacson's great biography of the same name, Sorkin ingeniously uses the famous product launches combined with flashbacks to illustrate the events that happened up to that point.  The problem is that Jobs is so complicated, it is almost required to have a little foreknowledge of the man and the events in his life to make sense of the plot.  Newcomers to Jobs will be a little lost.  However, the movie boils down to three main stories: the relationship with his coworkers (illustrated by Steve Wozniak, played incredibly by Seth Rogen); the father-son dynamic of the fatherless Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and father figure John Sculley (Jeff Daniels); and centrally, the relationship between Jobs and his daughter.

The whole cast is incredible and the visuals by Danny Boyle interesting and creative.  For people who have an enduring fascination with the man, this is a great film.  For all others, it may fall a little flat.  Myself, I loved it.

Crimson Peak

2.5 Stars (out of four)

We can all thank Guillermo Del Toro for having such imaginative bad dreams, because they always materialize as sumptuous, visual feasts for the eyes.  Unfortunately, as time goes on, the stories are getting less imaginative.  Too bad you can't have everything.

IMDB says "In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author (Mia Wasikowski as Edith Cushing) is torn between love for her childhood friend (Charlie Hunnam as Dr. Alan McMichael) and the temptation of a mysterious stranger (Tom Hiddleston as Thomas Sharpe).  Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds - and remembers."

Whoooo!  Scary stuff.  Or is it?  The previews promised a fairly scary, gothic haunted house story.  But, in reality, is a fairly stock ghost story written for the post-feminism audience.  I actually encourage strong, female characters, but I hate it when they are stereotypes of modern women stuck in an age that holds their aspirations down and the female protagonist is a misunderstood lion that people just "don't get."  Everyone else around her is either loved but hopelessly stuck in another time, stupid or evil.  This movie plays every Harlequin romance trope out to a nauseating degree.  Without giving too much away, Edith Cushing leaves a perfectly nice guy she grew up with and actually likes (and likes her back) to go away to England with Thomas Sharpe, a mysterious good-looking English landed gentry but penniless lord and his equally mysterious sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastaine).  Edith does this because Sharpe reads and likes her story she is writing and that most everyone else dismisses (thus obviously making him more evolved and intelligent than everyone else around him).  She finds herself in a beautiful, huge, but disintegrating manor house built in the middle of nowhere.  Ghosts start showing up for a reason I won't get into.  Things go bad.

This movie sort of annoyed me for the reasons stated above.  Wasikowski is basically annoying and Hunnam phones it in, turning in the most wooden performance since Pinocchio or Showgirls.  But all is not lost.  This is, after all, a Del Toro movie, and it's the visuals that matter most.  He delivers them in spades.  The scenes in the Crimson Peak manor are incredibly atmospheric and a joy to watch.  A collision a harsh colors and dark shadows, hinting at evil lurking around every corner.  This melange of elements guarantees I will never tire of what Del Toro can do.  He is a singularly gifted director of the visual, from Cronos and The Devil's Backbone to his masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth.  His style uplifts even mediocre material like Pacific Rim, Blade Ii, and the Hellboys.  His films are always interesting and enjoyable to watch, the sheer joy and horror of the visuals are a symphony for the eyes.  Hiddleston and Chastaine play the most gleefully evil characters, and they are clearly having a ball with it.  They are so much fun in these roles.  Go for visual, but check your brain at the door for the story.

Bridge of Spies

Four Stars (out of four)

So, this is a movie I have been eagerly anticipating.  It's funny how things can work out sometimes.  A movie that is about the Cold War; and with the way current events are shaping up in Syria and Ukraine and with Putin pushing a very nationalistic agenda, we may be seeing a return to those days much earlier than any of us thought.  I grew up during the Cold War, long after these events took place, but not so much so to remember and appreciate the context this movie was steeped in.  And, it is dead on.  To younger audiences that were born in the 80's, it may seem inconceivable how the geopolitical dynamics played out then, but the movie perfectly captures these dynamics perfectly.

The movie is based on real events.  After Soviet spy Rudolph Abel (played very mensch-like by Mark Rylance), is arrested, an insurance lawyer, James Donovan (Tom Hanks), is appointed as his attorney to demonstrate to the USSR that Abel will get a fair trial, thus showing our moral mettle.  After taking the case to the Supreme Court, Abel unsurprisingly gets a very stiff sentence.  Meanwhile, U2 pilot Gary Powers is shot down over the USSR and gets a similar stiff sentence from the Soviets.  People from both sides are screaming for blood and the mood on both sides of the world is tense.  Donovan is sent to East Germany as a private citizen to negotiate a trade.  Since the trade can't be acknowledged by either government, there is a lot of skullduggery going on.  In the meantime, a US graduate student is arrested in East Berlin, further complicating the matter because the German Democratic Republic (the GDR or East Germany) wants to score points with the USSR by getting their man back and by stressing to the US that the GDR is not a doormat for the USSR.  Donovan decides to get both US citizens released and eventually does.

The reason I gave the ending away is that it is all a matter of historical record and isn't what the movie is really about.  It is about the context of the events in question, public sentiment on both sides, and most interestingly, the geopolitical power dynamics at a crucial point in world history.  It was incredible to watch, particularly in regards to the GDR.  The movie takes place just as the Berlin Wall was going up, and for those of us born later in the Cold War, it is easy to forget that Germany was caught in the middle of all this, shortly after losing WWII.  They didn't necessarily like the Soviets, but they had little control over their fate because of the war they started recently ended in defeat.  While they had to accept their lot in a much grander drama that overshadowed them, they would not go quietly.  The GDR makes the negotiations difficult until the movie implied that the Soviets leaned on them.  In this, we see the beginning of the real subjugation of East Germany under the Soviet yoke.  Essentially, we see the Soviets telling the GDR they are no longer a sovereign nation.  As Orwell said after the uprising in his book Animal Farm, "Of course all animals are equal.  Just some are more equal than others.". All of this is played out in microcosm through this spy exchange, and would establish a new world order that arguably still exists today.  It is a brilliant, yet understated presentation on how the Old World order died, a final casualty of WWII and marked the ascension of the US role in world affairs from then on.

But the movie is more than that.  It also brilliantly portrays the US/USSR battle of ideas/moral codes and our mutual distrust.  It is also quick to point out the hatred between us was very real, but both sides understood the consequences of missteps.  It portrays the mutual animosity and the quid pro quo nature that dominates our relationship even today.  And considering Russia's new-found belligerent ambitions to reclaim the prestige they lost in the 1990's, we may be traveling down the road portrayed in this film again for a new generation.

As I said, this is not a particularly dramatic film, but one of subtlety and nuance.  At first, I was underwhelmed, as Spielberg's movies tend to be bombastic.  But as I think more and more about what I saw, the more I see that it is fantastic story, penned by the Coen brothers of Fargo and No Country for Old Men.  The fact the story is true is icing on the cake.   This movie is measured, takes its time to highlight the details.  The details are all-important here, so it is not required for the movie to lambaste us.  This is truly an adult, intelligent film; a species of growing rarity in Hollywood.  It is movies like this that remind me as to why I still love  them.  Vacuous crap like The Lego Movie makes me despair, but movies like this restore my faith in the state of today's storytelling.  Leave the kids at home and see this.  Or bring them to learn something about where we have been and maybe where we are going.

The Martian

3.5 Stars (out of four)

And so the new crop of good movies for Oscar season continues.  Many people have said The Matian is Director Ridley Scott's Apollo 13 or a love letter to NASA and science, and those people are not wrong.  This movie could not have come at a better time for beleaguered NASA, and I am pretty sure the recent discoveries on Mars were timed to coincide with it.  Now, I can't tell you if the science is perfect in this film, but I can tell you it is one hell of a ride.

The Martian begins with our fourth manned mission to Mars.  After a week into a month-long mission, the landing site is hit by a huge storm and the crew is forced to abort.  As they are trying to get back to the ship, astronaut Mark Whatney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris and disappears into the storm.  He shows no life signs so the crew takes off without him.  It turns out, though, Watney did survive and after the storm, makes it back to the habitat.  He is injured, but manages to pull through.  He then has to figure out how to make supplies for six people for 30 days last for five years until a rescue mission can come and get him.  That is, of course, if he can find a way to communicate with Earth since the communicator dish was destroyed...

So, the movie is a bit like Apollo 13 meets Castaway.  But is is so much more than that.  Like Apollo 13, it stresses that none of this is possible without a great amount of teamwork; this time, on a global scale.  Scott shows why he is such a great director here by ratcheting up tension, injecting humor in all the right places, keeping a breakneck pace, showing the enormity and complexity of the problems quickly, and makes you want to go hug your old science teacher all at once. It is immensely entertaining and not to be missed.  There are no good guys and bad guys, no nefarious agendas, just a bunch of very smart people who are working toward common goal.  And it is a massive advertisement for NASA, still the coolest and nerdiest government organization that really knows how to sell itself.

The Martian is one of those great movies that is a testament to the human will to survive.  It is an acting tour de force for Damon, since he is alone throughout most of the film.  He delivers most of his exposition through a series of video logs that allow us to take stock on his personal situation at important points.  It is actually an ingenious bit of storytelling to keep us grounded in Whatney's psyche.  It brings real emotion and a human element to his situation that is critical for us to care what happens to him.  It connects us in a very real way, whether you see him clowning around, updating us on his progress and plans, or venting his frustration.  In the end, it comes down to Damon and his performance in these oddly intimate moments that make this movie work so well.  

The only real complaint I have is actually not with the film, but the source material.  It is a little too convenient what jobs Whatney has. He has precisely the set of skills he would need to do everything.  He is a botanist and engineer, meaning he sits at the perfect intersection of growing things and fixing everything on the ship physically.  He's Superbrain!  But, while the movie does come up with some limitations he has that are overcome later, I ultimately felt it was a little too neat.  I realize that all members in NASA are crossed trained in other missions as well, but Whatney seems to have every conceivable skill he would need to survive his ordeal.  But in the end, this is a very minor criticism to what is an excellent movie.  See it as soon as you can.  You won't be disappointed.