Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Confession time: I did not see The Hunger Games in theaters when it came out. Having graduated high school in the previous century, I am not the target age demographic for most of the YA titles that seem to be making their way to the theaters these days. This, combined with the mixed reviews for the first film, pretty much kept me away. It wasn't until this month that I even bothered to watch it, and only then because I had heard some good buzz about Catching Fire, and because it was streaming on Netflix.

I liked the first one well enough, although it wasn't without its problems. The sequel, while still with some flaws, is much better. Like all sequels, everything seems to be bigger. The contrast between the privation and misery of the districts and the oblivious extravagance of the Capitol is greater, the stakes are higher, and the obstacles found in the arena more terrifying. Too often this can lead to a franchise getting overblown and creatively empty. In this case, however, it helps the movie.

Also helping the movie is the introduction of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the new game master, a character who is all about "moves and countermoves". His icy gamesmanship plays well with Donald Sutherland's wrathful dictator President Snow, so much that I would have probably enjoyed a version of the movie that was just them sitting around a table, watching monitors and discussing what to do as the rebellion started by Peeta and Katniss' defiance in the previous Hunger Games slowly builds.

Alas, that is not how the movie actually is, but there is still plenty of good things going on. I like the twist of the Quarter Quell, bringing previous winners of various ages into the mix. Not only does it reduce some of the squickiness of teenagers fighting each other to the death, it also creates a situation where more excellent ringers (such as Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Plummer, and Jena Malone) can be plugged in. It also creates a way to return our main characters to the arena of the games that actually works in the context of the story.

The biggest problem I had with the movie is the "love triangle" that seems tacked on just because it's expected of YA series, particularly those with a female protagonist. While nowhere near the awfulness of the Twilight series*, it just feels tacked on and unearned. It somewhat distracts from the performance of Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson as Katniss and Peeta.

That being said, it's just one part of a film that is pretty entertaining. Like many middle segments of franchises, it doesn't really have an independent beginning or end. This isn't really a detriment to the movie. However, I would recommend watching the first one before seeing this if you've never seen or read anything from the series, otherwise you may get lost. Haters of cliffhangers beware, as this one ends on a cliffhanger that sets up the next two films based upon Mockingjay, the third and final book in the series.

Verdict: Strong Recommendation, if you liked the first one or the book series. If you've never seen the first one, watch it and then watch this.

*Very few things reach the awfulness of the Twilight series

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: All is Lost

The cast list of All is Lost makes Gravity look like Cleopatra*. There is only one character, known as "Our man", played by Robert Redford. We don't know why he is out on a yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or what he regrets so much in the note he is writing at the beginning. We don't even know the events that led to a floating modal container full of shoes crashing into his boat, which is the start of his mostly continuous problems. Beyond a few garbled voices over the radio that he temporarily gets working, we don't meet anybody else. The film is a stripped down story of a man and his boat, a story boiled down to the age old conflict of man versus his environment.

Given Robert Redford's notorious history as a person that is difficult to work with, it seems fitting that his latest role is one where he is the only character, and as such the focus of the entire film. Also, given Redford's reputation as pretty damn good actor, he gives a great performance. As he faces each obstacle, from the relatively small to the absolutely terrifying and life threatening, he mostly keeps his cool, using ingenuity and a strong will to survive to keep moving forward. Whether it is patching up the hole in his hull, making it through a gut wrenching storm, learning celestial navigation on the fly, or coming up with a way to use condensation to get fresh water, he is bound and determined to survive as long as he has air in his lungs.

This is not a film for those looking for a light-hearted escape from the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Things just keep getting worse as the movie goes along, even as "our man" overcomes everything in front of him. Some of the obstacles are scary, others are absolutely heartbreaking. By the end of the film it is skirting close to survivalist "porn", but thankfully never goes over that line. The visual effects, primarily the storm that tumbled the yacht around, are mostly flawless, a mixture of practical effects with CG where necessary. The trend of returning to more practical effects, while still improving CG and using it to support real effects, is very welcome to me.

Some people may get angry at the ending. I'm pretty sure the two other people in the large theater I watched it in did not like it. However, I can't think of any other way it could have ended. If this is playing near you, go see it and make up your own mind.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend, unless you are incredibly sensitive to watching movies that take place on the ocean or tense survivalist situations.

*This might be a bit of an exaggeration

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club is not one of my favorite movies of the year. It is a good movie, certainly, but not quite up to par with the best I've seen. Like many biographical films, it tries to apply a formula to a true story, and the result is mixed at best. However, what isn't in dispute is the acting, as both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto give excellent performances.

It isn't just because they went through great pains to be as thin and haggard as people in their situation (Aids sufferers in the mid 80s) would be. Just because they lose a lot (or gain) a lot of weight does not guarantee a memorable performance or a quality film. Leto already has experience with this, bulking up to play Mark David Chapman in the already forgotten Chapter 27. Commitment to "suffering" for their craft is but one part of acting, and isn't always a requirement*. If that performance isn't also worth watching, or the film around is god-awful, all you've really done is put your health at risk for damn near nothing.

The best thing about Leto's performance as Rayon, the business partner of McConaughey's Ron Woodroof in the titular Dallas Buyers Club, is that the characters is played (or written) as some transgendered saint. Far too often these types of movies like to make the marginalized characters that support (never lead) the good fight above reproach. Rayon, however, is purely human.  She fights back against her drug addiction, which is always dangerous, but down right suicidal for an AIDS patient, but ultimately fails.

Likewise, McConaughey is (mostly) not a "white savior", a white male who leads a successful crusade to help the suffering marginalized population. Sure, he moves a long way from his homophobic shit-kicking, rodeo loving electrician ways by the end of the film, but he's not exactly Harvey Milk. At first he begins distributing the drugs to AIDS patients as a way to make money, but eventually he takes it on more as a cause, going so far as to keep it going even when the money stops flowing. He may have warmed up to the afflicted, but he isn't necessarily successful, losing his fight to distribute the unapproved drugs in court, although still retaining the ability to self-medicate.

I am too young to remember the fear, paranoia, and bigotry related to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. By the time I became conscious of the disease, Ryan White and Magic Johnson were the faces of the disease, and the homophobic "gay cancer" was fading slowly into the dark recesses of history. To a certain extent the movie conveys the vast amount of disinformation and complexity that surrounded the crisis. Unfortunately is doesn't go as far as contextualizing that as it does in establishing its two main characters. Also, a post movie title card kind of undercuts how the story is told. Had the movie taken a bit more nuanced approach about the complexity and necessarily dispassionate work of scientific medicine and regulations, perhaps it would have been a much better movie.

That being said, it is well worth checking out at some point, if only just for McConaughey and Leto's performance. I recommend this film, so go see it in theaters if you see 1-2 movies a week, and definitely check it out once its out for home video. There is a pretty good chance both of these actors will be winning awards for their performances.

Verdict: Recommend

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: About Time

Let me tell you a little story about a man named Tim (ugh, that sucked, excuse me a sec, I have to find a closet)

Shut it, Love Actually. The cupboard door, that is, so we can travel back to enjoy this movie again. (That was even worse. Excuse me again.)

I have to admit I was skeptical about this film when I watched the trailer about sixty times this summer and fall*, as it looked like a kind of by-the-book romcom with a little twist. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find it much closer to Groundhog Day, although it didn't quite get there. Perhaps it could have used more Bill Murr...what? Oh god, I went too far back and stepped on a bullfrog when I was ten. Somehow Groundhog Day became a movie where Paulie Shore fought an army of animatronic groundhogs on the International Space Station. Excuse me, I have to right this grievous wrong.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: Thor: The Dark World (EDITEDx2)

PREEMPTIVE EDIT: I fixed Tom Bombadil's name, so don't fret you Bombadiliacs. Just be glad I didn't cut his part out entirely.
I'VE BEEN MAKING AN ASS OF MYSELF EDIT: I should have been paying more attention to getting the correct title for the movie. Interesting enough, I did get it right the last time I referred to the movie's full title.

The big move studios are in the middle of a period of transition, one that we haven't seen since the death of the old studio systems in the late 60s and early 70s. The implosion of the DVD market, thanks mostly to the proliferation of Netflix and other streaming services, has left the large companies that own them looking for the next viable business model. For right now, this appears to be chasing the markets abroad. This international focus can be thanked for plenty of the ills of movies today, especially the emphasis of recycling of plots and franchises over developing new stories. Remember this when you watch the fourth reboot of Spiderman in 2019, the six part Adventures of Tom Bombadil series in 2021-2026, and the four hour, $1 billion dollar movie based upon "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" in 2022*.

Dispatches from the Popcorn Stadium: Twelve Years a Slave

I seriously considered not using my regular title for this feature on this one. The juxtaposition of the lighthearted Futurama reference with a film like Twelve Years a Slave is awkward and unintentionally humorous. However, I've used it for every one of my previous reviews, some of which were of fairly serious films, so it stays nonetheless.

So what do I mean by that clunky introduction? Just that Twelve Years a Slave is a great film, but also a very serious film. At times it feels like you are watching a contest to see which recognizable actor can be the most awful to the protagonist, or to his fellow slaves. Whether its the casual sleaziness of Paul Giamatti's slave trader, the cowardly bullying of Paul Dano, or the jealous rage of Sarah Paulson to one of her husband's favored slaves, a young woman named Patsey, it's hard to watch. Even some of the less terrible characters, such as Benedict Cumberbatch's gentle and relatively fair slaveowner, are awful in a completely different way, simply because they are willing participants in the "peculiar institution" of slavery.

Of course, the worst of the bunch is Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender). The drunk, lecherous, and generally cruel man is terrifying, mainly because you are not sure what he is going to do. Granted, as I was familiar with the story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor, in a brilliant performance), I realized that he was going to survive whatever misfortunes he would have. That doesn't change the fact it was tough to watch him go through the indignities of the situation.

There are many painful scenes to watch in this film, scenes that make the pain and cruelty of slavery so vivid, despite the fact that it's constitutional legitimacy and legal standing have been gone in the United States for over 150 years. In fact it feels right at home with the oratory and literature put forth by the abolitionists during the run up to the Civil War. If there was some weird world where cinema and the Antebellum United States coexisted, I could see outraged southerners burning this film and threatening to destroy any theater willing to show it, while the abolitionists from Boston to Lawrence proclaiming its God-given virtue.

I highly recommend that you go watch this film, if it is playing somewhere you can watch it. If not, I recommend you rent it, stream it, or buy it as soon as it comes out on DVD, Netflix, etc... It's a film that should be watched by everyone to not forget the horribleness and degradation of both slave, master, and those who were willing to support, or at least unwilling to stand up against, this most undemocratic of practices.

* For more cinematic information on this story, you can make a decent trilogy out of this film, Glory, and Lincoln.