Dear Readers,
Once again, I have been lax in updating this blog. Holidays, travel, etc etc. Below, I have 3 quick reviews of movies I've seen in the past couple weeks.
Please keep your eyes peeled for my "Best of 2013" blog entry coming soon! It may not happen until later in January since there are still some movies I want to see (Wolf of Wall Street, Her) before I finalize this list.
Until then, enjoy!
Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The second film in the Hunger Games trilogy is a rare example of a sequel being superior to its predecessor. The first Hunger Games film was exactly what we all expected--it set the stage for a dystopian world where a battle royale with children took place once a year as a ritual to remind the Districts of their submission to the Capitol. It introduced as to Katniss Everdeen, and her two potential love interests, Gale and Peeta.
There weren't a whole lot of surprises in the first Hunger Games and the social commentary was present, but not the main attraction. The focus of the film was how Katniss would survive the games. Catching Fire, however, ups the ante.
Katniss and Peeta are forced back into the Games due to a tricky loophole called the Quarter Quell--every 25 years, the Games are different and special. Because of Katniss' defiance of the Capitol, President Snow uses the Quarter Quell to round up previous winners (and, inevitably, Katniss, since she is the only female winner from District 12) and pit them against each other once more. Snow wants Katniss to die; but first he must kill the hope of freedom that she symbolizes to the Districts.
Catching Fire is darker than the first film, which is saying something considering the whole trilogy is about kids killing kids. The sense of anger is more severe--all the returning victors are furious at having Snow and the Capitol force them to fight again. Katniss and Peeta know that they can't pull their "so in love" stunt again, and thus, one of them has to die. Both of them separately make a deal with their mentor, Haymitch, for him to do everything he can to save the other.Also, the satire is more prominent in this film. At one point, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) explains to Snow how to calm the rebellions in the Districts: fear and distraction. "What kind of dress will [Katniss] wear? Floggings. What will the cake look like? Executions." he says, blatantly referencing the culture of simultaneous fear-based news coverage and reality TV/celebrity obsession we live in. It's not subtle, nor should it be.
Catching Fire is a clear middle film in a trilogy since it ends with a cliffhanger than promises a huge turn of events for the final films (the last part of the trilogy will be split up). I haven't read the second and third Hunger Games books, though I do know the plots. But even knowing the ending, I'm excited for the final episodes of this intense trilogy.
4 stars out of 5
***
Anchorman 2
On the other end of the spectrum, here is a sequel that does not live up to its predecessor. Anchorman 2's biggest problem is that it tries too hard to be Anchorman 1. It offers more of the same, and very little of anything new or different.
Taking place about 10 years after the first Anchorman, Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone are married, have a son, and work together as a news team. When Veronica is promoted and Ron fired, Ron attempts to force Veronica to choose between him and the news. When she doesn't back down, Ron takes the offer of a job at a new 24-hour news channel and rounds up the old team: Champ Kind, Brian Fantana, and Brick Tamland. We get a round of the same jokes: Champ owns a chain of questionable fried chicken restaurants and is vaguely in love with Ron; Brian photographs kittens for a living and has an armoire filled with condoms; and Brick is so dumb, he mistakenly thinks he is dead and gives a eulogy at his own funeral (nice callback to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, there, Adam McKay! Just kidding...Mark Twain has nothing to do with this movie).
Ron and the team face typical and obvious challenges at their new job--a younger, more attractive anchorman humiliates Ron; Ron has sex with his female boss; Brick falls in love with a female version of himself, Chani (Kristen Wiig). Cleverly, the film pokes fun at the current state of the news by having Ron and his team promote stupid, entertainment-style news over more substantial stories. In order to raise their ratings, Ron's team pitches the idea of giving their audience "the news they want to see" rather than the news they need to know. And thus, stories like "Top 50 vaginas" are born.
Anchorman 2 has its moments, and may even be better upon further viewing, but overall the movie tries too hard to capture the weirdness of the first movie. The first movie was a triumph by being low budget, odd, and heavily improvised. The sequel is higher budget, too self-conscious to be weird, and more scripted. All the things that made Anchorman a cult comedy are wiped a way with a trace of high-gloss sheen in Anchorman 2.
3 out of 5 stars
***
American Hustle
David O. Russell's follow-up to last year's genre-defying Silver Linings Playbook is equally intellectually stimulating, if a bit lacking in emotional depth.
Taking place in the late 1970's, a time when fashion was apparently defined by how hideous it could be, American Hustle is about a con man with a surprisingly sweet center. Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) has a beer gut, an awful combover, but is weirdly sexy in a confident sleazeball kind of way. He owns a chain of laundromats and dupes investors into giving him $5,000 for nothing in return. He meets Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and the two become lovers and partners in crime, with Sydney pretending to be a posh British woman to attract more investors.
After an ambitious FBI agent, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) goes undercover and busts Sydney and Irving, he offers them a bargain: work for him and help him do four more busts (mostly of crooked politicians), and the charges will be dropped.Of course, by the end of the film, it's difficult to tell who is conning whom. There are double-crosses and fake (or is it real?) flirtations aplenty in this film. And when a violent mobster gets involved, the whole thing goes to shit.
Supporting the main cast are Jeremy Renner as Carmine Polito, the mayor of Camden, New Jersey whose crooked, criminal dealings are backed up by genuine love for his town; and Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn Rosenfeld, Irving's unstable, yet tough wife. She, too, has a touch of con woman in her: when she "accidentally" lets it slip that her husband is working with the FBI to a mobster, it initially seems like she is too naive to know what kind of trouble she just got her hubby in. Yet, whether she blabbed consciously or on a subconcious level, it's clear that she's not as dumb as she sometimes pretends to be.
American Hustle is a solidly good and entertaining film, although I wasn't quite as taken with it as other critics were. However, I felt the same about Silver Linings Playbook initially, but on further viewings have come to appreciate it more and more. Perhaps I'll give American Hustle another watch in the not too distant future.
4 out of 5 stars
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