Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 review

Susanne Collins’ book series and its subsequent film adaptations “The Hunger Games” has lead the pack of young-adult dystopian fiction. As an outside observer and a non-reader of the source-material, my familiarity of the films' well-worn pulp and science-fiction tropes combined with the overall seriousness in which they are presented has often left me cold. As the series has progressed both in budget and quality and as the story shifted from the hokey set-up of booby trapped game shows—hokey in execution, not necessarily concept—to the devastation of a revolutionary war scenario, my patience has increased in terms of the films’ undeniable tween demo targeting.

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2” concludes this franchise with an emotional and visceral payoff for those who have been invested since the first page of the first novel. It’s by far the darkest of the four movies and challenges “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2” with its mounting body count. But unlike many of the films in this series that awkwardly juxtaposed its themes of violence with its interest in filling the multiplex with 13 year old girls, this installment is fully committed to the trauma and complex psychological torture involved with oppression and war.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) has decided to break out on her own, away from the safety net of the other rebels and away from the propaganda war perpetrated by the rebel leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). With a little help getting out of her city district, Katniss and a group of other young soldier attempt to travel across the war-torn Capital to assassinate President Snow (Donald Sutherland).  On their journey they must avoid a series of dangerous booby-traps—less hokey this time around—while staying under the radar of the Capitals extensive surveillance.

After spending much of the last film brain-washed by the leaders of the evil government, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) has rejoined the rebels, now suffering from post-traumatic stress. The rest of the group, including Katniss’ other would-be suitor Gale (Liam Hemsworth), are skeptical of Peeta’s reintegration and Katniss’ loyalties are once again divided. By this point in the series, amongst all of the death and destruction at hand, the last thing I want to see is the further development of a love triangle. Though much of it is truncated in favor of the film’s more interesting arc about the exchange of one governmental dominion to another, whenever the movie pauses to pay lip-service to this sub-Twilight will-they-or-wont-they, the tragedy of war is momentarily trivialized.  

Besides the tonally inappropriate love-story, the majority of the movie has a shocking lack of levity. The stakes are as high as anything the series as presented thus far and director Francis Lawrence flavors the rebel’s deadly pursuit with almost horror-movie levels of tension and anxiety. In one particularly suspenseful scene, Katniss’ group are held up in a subway tunnel where they are attacked by subterranean mutant vampire-like creatures. There’s not a lot of blood-letting or gore in this sequence but the set-up and its cinematic effect adds up to some pretty scary stuff for a younger than teenage audience. It also happens to be the only moment in which Lawrence seems to be havin fun with the pulpier elements of this franchise.

“Mockingjay Part 2” makes interesting points about the way classism and war exploits those most vulnerable, doing most of the heavy lifting for the privileged outliers who only wish to propel their own ideologies. The film’s final act—minus a saccharin and pointless epilogue—includes a shocking political gesture and a bravely messy cap on the good-guys-verses-bad-guys nature of the story. It’s about 25 minutes too long, drags whenever the characters have talk to each other, and cannot be bothered to consider its existence as a piece of genre entertainment, but as the full maturation of a YA property, this final installment is smart enough and intense enough to warrant the lesser entrees that preceded it.

Grade: B-

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2015

Listen to more discussion about "Mockingjay Pt.2" and "Carol" on this week's Jabber and the Drone podcast.

Beasts of No Nation review

Netflix has forever changed the traditional models of content delivery. Video stores were put on the endangered species list when people began subscribing to the company’s mail-based DVD rental system, and were later forced into extinction by its ever-expanding streaming service. Entire seasons of television shows, old and new, could be accessed with a single click and movies that people may have never considered watching were put on the same digital shelf as familiar classics. It wouldn’t be long before Netflix would start creating its own content, first in the form of serialized dramas like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black,” and now in the form of stand-alone movies.

Netflix’s first original film “Beasts of No Nation” is an attempt to draw in a new audience that may not already be sold on the service’s versatility. In order to be eligible for awards consideration, this movie was given a day-and-date release, where it was available to stream from home alongside a limited theatrical run. This African war-thriller was written, directed and shot by Cary Fukunaga, director of the first season of HBO’s popular crime series “True Detective,” and the seductive style and the rich atmosphere that drew people into that show is certainly evident in this project as well.

The story here follows the life of a young villager named Agu (Abraham Attah) who is left an orphan when his family is gunned down in the streets by an invading government army. Agu manages to survive the vicious attack when he escapes into the bush. After a few days of struggling on his own, he is ambushed by a group of militant rebels who promise to give him food, water and safety if he joins their cause. Even more enticing, the young survivor is given a chance to avenge his family’s murder with the opportunity to train as a child soldier.

The group’s charismatic Commandant is played by English actor Idris Elba, who portrays the ragtag war-lord with a weighty sense of pathos and psychosis that makes it uncomfortably difficult to label him a monster, even as he indoctrinates eleven year olds into slaying grown men with machetes and keeps them enslaved to his agenda through heroin addiction. Elba plays this tyrannical Pied Piper with a world of pain behind his tired eyes and an unrelenting cycle of aggression expressed through the delivery of his radical speeches.

Attah is also given a strong arc as an actor, mentally aged far beyond his years as he is forced to endure and internalize the worst of human instincts. His character quickly loses his innocence while marching through the jungle with the other brainwashed lost boys and slowly loses his humanity as they pass from one massacre to another.

Fukunaga evokes Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” by giving us the same long, dead stare into the abyss, and in many ways “Beasts of No Nation” is a similar triumph of stylish and emotional filmmaking. It’s very well acted, it’s directed with confidence and conviction and the oppressive tone of the film lingers hours after the credits roll. Much of it is very well made and the power of individual scenes are undeniable, but the movie ultimately seems more concerned with mood than it does theme—of course the very same could be said of “Apocalypse Now."

Not unlike a perverse take on “Oliver Twist,” the fable-like nature of the film’s structure gives the movie something stylistically tangible to hold on to as it throws its audience into psychologically difficult terrain. Though sometimes this technique registers as pat or sensational when juxtaposed with the movie’s all-too-serious subject matter.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks a film like this, although documenting a very different culture, helps viewers understand the process of radicalization by humanizing those we may so easily label monsters and villains. The difficult truth is that in unstable governments it is often previous victims who become the most dangerous victimizers.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2015

Spectre review

The James Bond films are one of the only enduring movie franchises that’s given as much freedom as it has to constantly reinvent itself. The actors can change, the settings are always in flux and the adventures are allowed to be episodic as they like, without much of a rattle from the audience as to why or where the characters are going. There’s a base expectation for this series that’s pretty much summed up by its aesthetic choices; fancy cars, beautiful women, long chase scenes, tuxedos and disfigured bad-guys. If they manage to cram enough of those ingredients in each film, than things like plot coherency or emotional stakes almost have no consequence on the final result.

 The truth is most of these movies are bad. A lot of them are fun-bad, like eating a churro and frozen slurpee before riding on the tilt-a-whirl, but very few of them transcend the franchise and stand alone as compelling films on their own. Don’t get me wrong--recent offerings such as “Goldeneye,” “Casino Royale” and “Skyfall” come pretty close to as good as these movies have ever been, and as far as the classics go, I would wholly recommend the often under-discussed “On Her Majesties Secret Service.” But for every “Goldeneye” there’s a “World is Not Enough” and for every “Skyfall” there’s a “Spectre.”

“Spectre” picks up where “Skyfall” left off, after the death of Bond’s leading officer M (Judy Dench). And like every great spy, she left a video message for the international man of mystery explaining that there is a very threatening loose-end out there that still needs to be tied up. 007, still played by Daniel Craig, with his particular style of world-weary swagger, is set off on a personal mission to hunt down the mysterious leader of a shadow organization (Christoph Waltz) who is currently attempting to hack an online, global terror surveillance—not unlike the NSA. Along the way, Bond runs into the daughter of one of his former villains (Lea Seydoux) and tries to keep her protected from Spectre assassins while trying to figure out how all these things are connected.

A lot of what the Craig iteration of these movies have aspired to do is to reinterpreting the Bond aesthetic through the post-modern lese of post-911 terror-noia. Though this movie suggests a deeper subtext about the dangers of electronic spying and governmental overreach, the majority of this film is much more concerned with filling the run-time with wall to wall action sequences. They’re certainly shot with a lot of technical skill and attention is payed to the construction of a set-piece, but too often they are placed with no intention of moving story along or informing the characters in any meaningful way.  All of these chase scenes and extended fight sequences, as expensive and as thrilling as they sometimes are, have an undeniable lack of gravitas when compared to the true sense of danger that permeated the other Craig films.  This is amplified by the fact that Waltz’s villain is off camera for the majority of the film and is never integrated enough in the narrative to properly earn his reputation as the baddie above all baddies, that the script is trying to sell him as. And despite lacking the simple payoffs of decent storytelling, the movie still manages to clock in at an awkwardly paced two and a half hours.  

“Spectre” will ultimately be counted among the filler that exists between the highlights of the Bond franchises but it has a charm and devil-may-care sense of irony that almost apologizes for its schlock with a wink at the audience.  While it’s undeniably a stupid movie, a lot of it is superficially entertaining, in that junkie, Bond-movie sort of way. Sam Mendes is a terrific visual director and the action, as baseless and banal as it ends up being, is, at the very least, considerate of its presentation.  I would have like villain with a little more incentive, a hero with a little more conflict, and plot with a little more…well…plot, but instead I simply enjoyed another spin on the tilt-a-whirl.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal - Nov/2015

Steve Jobs review

Writer Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) and director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”) have teamed up to tell the story of Apple CEO and proto-Ted-Talker “Steve Jobs.” Given the success Sorkin had with his previous techie biopic “The Social Network,” in which he won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay about the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, his connection to this project makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it’s not the boldest or the most unconventional move for the writer to make at this point in his career, but you can always guarantee that if Sorkin is going to tread water he’ll do so with the grace and agility of an Olympic swimmer.

Like David Fincher, who was considered an edgier genre auteur at the time he agreed to direct “The Social Network,” Boyle’s involvement with this subject matter exists a little farther outside of his comfort zone. His hyper-kinetic visual choices and the psychologically subjective character portraits that have generally defined his style are sheathed to service a very dialogue-centric screenplay, where characters often say everything they’re thinking and feeling before the camera has time to imply it.

The structure of this movie is the most interesting thing about it. Each act of the film takes place during a different launch of Apple technology; starting with the Macintosh 128k in 1984, the NeXT in 88 and finally the iMac in 1998, that helped pull the company out of dire straits after failing to compete with Microsoft for a significant stint of time. Each of these launches play out like separate one-act stage performances where Steve Jobs, played fantastically by the enigmatic Michael Fassbender, is forced to deal with the stresses of his life and consequences of his career achievements, only moments before he’s supposed to unveil his company’s latest gamble. Each time, we are introduced to the same set of personalities that circle Jobs’ world.

Like his Zuckerberg, Sorkin’s take on Steve Jobs is that of a man who is haunted by own hubris, leaving a pile of smoldering bridges behind him as he blazes down the path of his own ambition. In repeating the same beats, revealing these moments of frustration before every new unveiling, the movie is instantly charged with a sense of nervous anticipation. 

All the actors are working hard for supper here, delivering the hyper-verbose Sorkinese dialogue like they don’t have time to get it wrong. Seth Rogen plays the humble but frustrated Apple Co-creator and engineer Steve Wozniac, who wants, and cannot get, a measly shout-out for his team’s Apple II contributions. Michael Stuhlbarg plays an approval-starved engineer who tried to stand in for Steve’s conscience and Kate Winslet plays a type-A work-wife named Joanna Hoffman, who’s desperately trying to keep the world from crumbling under her boss’s feet, even as he stomps through people’s sensitives in defiance.  Jeff Daniels steps in as a financier who also doubles as a father-figure for the so-called genius, all while, at the same time, Jobs carries on an arms-length relationship with his daughter, whom he initially refused to call his own.

Believe it or not, the bigger of a jerk the character of “Steve Jobs” is, the more interesting he is to watch. The movie only stumbles when it tries to humanize him too much, including a final ten minutes that tries to cowardly soften the blow of the two hours of shrewd and uncompromising self-assurance exhibited before it. The moments of dramatic weight come from a tension that exists between the high-stakes of Jobs’ vision to see his products perform well and the emotionally drained lives around the character that are begging for the same level of attention. This unfortunate cop-out of an epilogue is somewhat destabilizing, but not a big enough knock on the film to ruin it completely. 

Everything we see here—the writing, the directing and the performances—should be expected from the high level of talent involved and perhaps the fact that the movie doesn’t exceed expectations makes it feel as though it’s less accomplished. That notion is a mirage based on the unfair reality that this project was released after “The Social Network,” but a silver metal is nothing to be ashamed of.

Grade: B+

Originally Printed in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015

Crimson Peak review

Guillermo del Toro’s “Crimson Peak” was released in October to attract an audience looking for some chills on their way out of the mall, and given that there are fewer and fewer scary-movie options, outside of the realms of direct-to-second-run shlock and/or “Paranormal Activity” clones, it’s nice to a see a large-budget, effects-driven period-horror that’s trying to compete in the mainstream. In fact, del Toro treats this project just as he would any of his other features, combining the gloss and bombast of his 2013 giant-robot spectacle “Pacific Rim” and the gothic elegance of his Spanish-language fantasy-thrillers” and “The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

Visually and conceptually “Crimson Peak” is a dense genre-hybrid that marries the traditional narrative structure of nineteenth century, Victorian romantic literature with a blockbuster update of a Hammer-Studio styled haunted house ride—it bares mentioning del Toro was once attached to direct a “Haunted Mansion” reboot for Disney. What results is an uneven and some-what rigid film that, while ambitious and handsome in terms of its production, is rather empty and tepid as a story.

Mia Wasikowska plays Edith, the daughter of a wealthy American industrialist. Though she wishes to one day be a successful writer, after meeting a fledgling British inventor named Thomas Sharpe played by Tom Hiddleston, and his disapproving sister played by Jessica Chastain, Edith decides, against her father’s wishes, to marry the struggling aristocrat and follow him to his decaying mansion in England. the newly-wed Edith begins to feel less and less welcomed by the creaking house as the months goes by, and her marriage begins to strain under the constant supervision of her overbearing sister in law.

To the movie’s detriment, the most interesting character here is the mansion itself. As the plot slogs from scene to scene it’s clear to see that this living, breathing set seems to be the only thing in the film that del Toro bothered to give any real dimension. The production of this multi-segmented mansion is fully realized and designed with many swirling arches, ornate moldings, and antique trinkets filling every consciously arranged shot. This decorative flair is then brought to life though many practical and CGI effects, including walls that bleed crimson clay and moving shadows that cast down long hallways. And yet, the production is so costumed and ornamental that it often overwhelms the performances and constipates the drama. 

Many of the special effects are unsupported by the weak and conventional script and thus left with a surprising lack of tension within the traditionally set-up sequences of horror. CGI ghosts are rarely scary and even less so when, by the end of the film, you realize their inclusion in the plot is mostly superfluous. This might also have to do with the overall tonal problems the film suffers by wanting to appeal to the masses as too many things at once, a Victorian costume drama, a gothic fairy-tale, and a perverse murder mystery—all of which are wrapped up in a slick, over-lit production that’s far more concerned with its surfaces than it is with its emotional or psychological connection with the audience.

Struggling to find a balance between chaste and polite and guarded and mysterious, Wasikowska and Hiddleston’s performances come off somewhat bland and stagey. The same or worse could be said about “Sons of Anarchy” actor Charlie Hunnam who conveniently drifts in and out of the movie as a plot device.  Chastain, on the hand, revels in her character’s complete lack of subtext and subtlety and instead leans into a knowing sense of camp as the film escalates into face-stabbing hysteria, mixing into her performance two parts Mrs. Danvers from Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” and one part “Mommy Dearest.”

Despite mostly failing as an involving story or as an effective thriller, nobody can fault the film for its lack of trying. Del Toro deserves to be commended for his creativity and his willingness to take risks, even when working from a script as predictable and tired as this one. His love for the genre is undeniably contagious and like a familiar theme-park adventure, there’s always something interesting to look at and admire as you pass through the plodding set-pieces.

Grade: C

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015

Sicario review

There’s been a long tradition of southwest, boarder-town noirs that reach as far back as Anthony Mann’s 1949 film “Boarder Incident” and as recent as the Coen brother’s “No Country For Old Men,” as well as television’s “Breaking Bad.” Surprisingly, as worn as this genre may be, Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario” still manages to find new life underneath old tropes and effectively tightens the screws with tense, Hitchcockian set-ups.

Emily Blunt plays Kate Macer, a moral FBI agent who’s hired by a government special operations unit to take down a powerful cartel leader who’s responsible for a number of indiscriminate killings and mutilations. In hopes of doing the right thing to get to the worst evils of society, she realizes that the deeper she gets involved the less her convictions and her morals will help her with the job at hand.

From the opening sequence when we see Blunt and her fellow agents break into a remotely located drug-house, with gunmen behind every corner and dead-bodies shrink-wrapped behind the dry-wall, Villeneuve establishes a Dante-like hell that increasingly challenges our hero as she descends deeper into each circle of its depravity. Josh Brolin plays her duplicitous guide into this journey named Matt Graver, a man who smugly wears flip-flops to office meetings and hides his elusive motives behind a casual smile. Benicio Del Toro’s Alejandro is an even tougher nut to crack, as he seems to be able to brutally operate outside of the strict confines of the law with complete immunity. Blunt serves as the audience’s surrogate but also as the movie’s moral center and its heart. To her credit, given the mechanical function of her character, she manages to breath in sync with the camera and effectively embodies Villeneuve’s tone of paranoia.

As with the director’s last film “Prisoners,” this feature was shot by the much-celebrated cinematographer Roger Deakins, and like his past work—including “No Country for Old Men”—every shot is precisely considered and milks each frame for ominous drama. Deakins’ artful approach to photography, along with the film’s doom-laden score by Jóhann Jóhannsson perfectly accents the movie’s many apocalyptic establishing shots and creates a malevolent sense of dread within the world these characters inhabit.

Luckily “Sicario” understands that aesthetics alone doesn’t make a movie without an assured story to tell and a confident director at the helm. Taylor Sheridan’s hard-boiled screenplay examines the war on drugs as a complicated parable with a “Chinatown” sense of pessimism. Villeneuve perfectly captures this with his nightmarish vision of violence as the last form of communication between the law and lawless.


This certainly isn’t a happy film and if you’re not inclined to watch a crime story that stares deep into the abyss without any tangible hope to keep from falling directly into it, then this might not be your ideal Saturday night. I, however, can’t recommend this movie highly enough. The performances across the board are fantastic—perhaps the best I’ve seen from all the leads in years—and it’s great to see a mainstream movie that’s isn’t satisfied with simply fulfilling its genre conventions.  Instead “Sicario” digs its familiar premise deeper for existential conflict and a darker tonal ambiance. 

Grade: A

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015

Black Mass review

“Black Mass” is essentially a traditional rise and fall gangster drama within the aesthetic of the American gothic experience. Director Scott Cooper tries to subvert the film’s familiar trappings by setting in place a tension within the story where I we know the two main characters are damned to failure from the first scene.  Considering the clever set-up and the movie’s all-star cast, the fact that the story almost broods to a complete stop by the second act is as befuddling as it is a jaw-dropping disappointment.  

Johnny Depp plays James “Whitey” Bulger, the Boston crime-lord who inspired Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello character from Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-winning film “The Departed.” And while Depp is every bit as unhinged and deranged here, the portrayal is decidedly less animated. Joel Edgerton plays opposite as John Connolly, a shady FBI agent who lets Bulger does as he pleases, so long as he continues to sell out the Italian Mafioso that’s moving in to the Boston streets. With his brother Billy Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) in a position of local political power, Whitey is given a legal hall-pass by both the state and federal authorities to become one of the most powerful and dangerous east-coast gangsters of 70s and 80s.  Nevertheless, Bulger’s paranoia gets the best of him and both his criminal brethren and the cooperating agents of the FBI are in constant fear of triggering his scorn.

Cooper’s vision of this story is interested in investigating the interiority of the characters and exploring how they click within their world of broken rules and the hypocrisy of their familial street-code. This means on a genre-level things tend to skew more towards “The Godfather” side of the gangster spectrum than it does “Goodfellas.” Given this approach, there are far too many story and production choices that orient things toward the broad surfaces. The all-star ensemble and the constant walk-ons by known character-actors like Corey Stoll, Adam Scott, Rory Cochrane, Peter Sarsgaard and Juno Temple spread the story too thin to effectively delve into the tense relationship between Depp and Edgerton as the leads. With a timeline that spans decades and multiple character perspectives to shift to and from, the movie never becomes the deep character study it thinks it is.

Despite this structural flaw, Depp’s performance is nuanced and appropriately pitched to the tone of the film, and in many sequences he is quite engaging without defaulting to his usual post-Pirates affections, but his Dracula-esq make-up design becomes so distracting that it often blocks whatever subtly there is to appreciate in his delivery.  Off and on the rest of the cast have their moments to shine and individual scenes of conversation work well on their own when Cooper is afforded to do what he does best - zeroing in on performance and dialogue. When it comes to the overall big-picture and the execution of the screenplay, the movie unfortunately fails to drum up enough drama to fuel the narrative.

Emotionally “Black Mass” doesn’t work like it should, but the movie isn’t a total wash either. It was nice to see Depp given something juicy to bite into as an actor and to play to his actual age, but Cooper seems out of step with many elements of the film as a director and often conflicts with the base genre elements of the story.

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015