Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

* * *
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Donald Sutherland, Josh Hutcherson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson

There will come a time once The Hunger Games series finishes when I'll revisit all of the films and perhaps at that point I'll have a better appreciation for Mockingjay - Part 1. Right now I'm having a hard time finding an artistic justification for the series having joined the increasingly annoying trend of splitting the final story of a would-be trilogy into two films (the economic justification is, of course, obvious). Don't get me wrong, Mockingjay - Part 1 is a good movie and I liked it well enough, but there's no denying that it feels distinctly... padded. At 123 minutes it's the shortest film of the series by nearly half an hour, yet it lacks the sense of urgency of either of the predecessor films and the amount of table setting for the next film is much more obvious here than it was in either The Hunger Games or Catching Fire. If those films were representative of Katniss being the "girl on fire," Mockingjay - Part 1 is representative of Katniss being the "girl on a slow simmer."

Review: Don't Look Now (1973)

* * * *
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie

Don't Look Now is one of the most dread-filled movies ever made. A shadow hangs over it from the first to the last, and every scene has a palpable sense that the other shoe is about to drop. A psychological horror thriller about the lingering effects of grief, this adaptation of a short story by Daphne du Maurier is a deeply creepy and deeply effective movie that has influenced filmmakers far and wide since its release in 1973. It's taken me a while to catch up this this film, which is now considered a modern classic, and what struck me about it (aside from the fact of how good it is) is how the elements that made it controversial in 1973 still stand out now. Often it's difficult, so many years later (in this case forty), to see why something would have once caused such heated debate, but the frankness of Nicholas Roeg's film remains somewhat out of the ordinary. Don't Look Now would still be a compelling film even if that frankness had become muted by time, but the fact that it remains so sharp helps give the film a greater sense of timelessness than it would otherwise have.

Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland

After watching female led, would be young adult franchises like Beautiful Creatures and The Mortal Instruments crash and burn this year, it's good to be back in the company of Katniss Everdeen, one of the best and most active female characters to emerge in the past decade. Building on the momentum created by last year's The Hunger Games, Catching Fire raises the stakes, creating even more spectacular action sequences that its predecessor, even while it makes the "games" themselves secondary to the politics of revolution. Though the series has seen a change in directors from one film to the next, it hasn't missed a beat and the praise Catching Fire has received for being even better than The Hunger Games is well deserved.