Fish and Cherries Productions

My Reel Snippets have been put on hold because of work and health (also… I haven’t finished it), so instead, let’s look at a Musing I just did about a movie I reviewed that needed some extra explanation.

Mother! May I?

All right, let’s start off the new year by catching up with some of last year’s stragglers. Gotta fill out the best and worst lists, right?

Passengers

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 1 didn’t have as much action as the previous flick, but it more than made up for it with tension. This movie definitely took some liberties from the book, but that makes sense. The sections of Mockingjay covered here has Katniss see very little fighting, so it figures that the movie would put the spotlight on the important events involve other people. Elizabeth Banks’ character is also expanded (she only appeared at the end of the book for about one or two lines), though I’m not sure how necessary that was, apart from the filmmakers realizing that they have Elizabeth Banks and figuring they may as well use her.

Also, yes, Jennifer Lawrence has a song in the movie and it’s quite good, even amazing how they make it actually sound like a slave song. But the scene that plays alongside is quite breathtaking and I won’t dare spoil it for those who haven’t seen it. What I really have to give credit to is the makeup team, especially on Josh Hutchinson as he looks worse and worse for wear the longer he’s in captivity and a character who gets strangled for the realistic red their eyes turn. This movie doesn’t shy away from the horrible imagery within the scenario, which is why I never bought into the arguments against bloodless carnage. Things can be horrific and traumatic for the viewer without resorting to gore. Just look at Hotel Rwanda to see what I mean.

But the movie that isn’t above lighthearted humor either; there’s a scene where the heroes are shooting some propaganda shorts and the dialogue will be eerily familiar to anyone who’s shot a movie. It had me in silent stitches. Also, one more bit of credit to the scene is that Jennifer Lawrence manages to act like a bad actor very effectively.

If I had one gripe, it’s that I wasn’t really feeling Julianne Moore’s character. I didn’t really get much of a feel for her personality apart from a few speeches she made. We’ll see how it plays out in the next film, but as of now, she’s the least interesting to me. I’m not sure if Mockingjay should have been split up into two movies, but I’m honestly not sure how I would have done it differently. It’s mostly build-up for the next movie, but you can tell that it’s going to be a great finale.

X-Men: Days of Future Past went the extra mile of the path to redeeming the franchise that First Class started. While the apocalyptic future scenes kept the serious tone that the original trilogy had, the scenes in a past were refreshingly doused in the humor found in First Class. Seeing everyone return to their roles is a huge treat, but the new additions to the cast are also well in their element, such as Peter Dinklage as the creator of the Sentinels, Fan Bingbing as the mutant Blink who uses portal powers very creatively, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver who steals every scene he’s in. The scope is truly impressive too, as the mutants in this movie truly feel like the next step in evolution, even being something like gods to the normal humans and the future Sentinels are something out of nightmares. I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the costumes, but I can write that off as the future being light on materials. Days of Future Past is the hero the franchise deserved and needed and I would highly recommend it. And to those who are still a little burned from X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, let’s just say that problem is… fixed.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was a superb sequel to a great movie. What really stands out, apart from the amazing Jennifer Lawrence, is the vastly improved camerawork that has abandoned the obnoxious shaky cam of the previous film. The material carried a lot more weight and I felt a lot more for Peeta’s plight than I did in the first film. Overall, this movie comes highly recommended, even if you haven’t seen the first one.

For a movie called The Hunger Games, it definitely left me satiated.