JOY: Dull Dolls

Director: David O. Russell
Writers: David O. Russell, Annie Mumolo
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramirez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Dascha Polanco, Elisabeth Rohm
Runtime: 124 mins.
2015

I've heard time and time again that early career David O. Russell is better. My favorite of his has been The Fighter, the earliest of the four movies I have seen. I enjoyed the film, a boxing movie with a weird quirky spin. The dialogue was off kilter and the side characters were kooky; I still remember being thrown off kilter by the way the movie framed the weird cabal of sisters. It had a great original energy to it. Silver Linings Playbook maintained that energy, but situated it in a widely accessible package. The edges of psychological illness, that movie's subject matter, are smoothed over in a palatable and appealing way. Next was American Hustle, to which I gave a primarily positive review back in the day, but even then my major problem with the film was the lackluster convenience of the ending. It felt like Russell spent the whole movie setting up dominoes, then calmly placed them back in the box without ever knocking them over.

Now we've arrived at Joy, the culmination of a trend that has been brewing in Russell's work for years. After the critics and the public alike fell for Silver Linings Playbook, Russell has been catering to those crowds. These films aren't passion projects. They are what he thinks people want to see. This is a baseless claim of course, but I bring it up as an illustration for my feelings about Joy as a whole: it is a movie utterly devoid of passion.

MOCKINGJAY - PART 2: Capitol Punishment

Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Peter Craig, Danny Strong
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willow Shields, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Patina Miller, Gwendoline Christie
Runtime: 137 mins.
2015

The real bummer about Mockingjay - Part 2 is how serviceable it is. The first Hunger Games movie had just enough problems that it left me cold, so I was shocked when Catching Fire ended up being one of my favorite movies of 2013. That film is jampacked with memorable characters who are each given a host of personality traits and political affiliations. Then along came Mockingjay - Part 1, a movie which retained all the memorable characters, but mostly had them walk around and talk to each other for two hours. If you can choke your way through my audio review of that movie, you'll hear that I found the actionlessness of Part 1 to be mostly enjoyable. Scenes meandered here and there, but the characters felt lived in, and the movie did some really interesting work with propaganda and symbolism. At any rate, the dullness of Part 1 was supposed to be a necessary byproduct of it being the first of a two-parter.

Now, a year later, we have the final entry, a movie that came with the promise of providing a wham-bang conclusion to one of the most successful movie franchises of our generation, and instead we get... serviceable. This time plenty of stuff happens, to be sure. It's just that nobody seems invested in doing these things. Between Francis Lawrence's workmanlike directing, the screenwriters' straightforward adaptation, and the lead actors' adequate performances, Mockingjay - Part 2 feels like a movie franchise that knows it has ended up one movie longer than it should have been. The franchise has outgrown itself.

MOCKINGJAY - PART 1: Rebels and Rubbles

In which it takes me two hours to figure out how to upload a sound file to Blogger.

Director: Francis Lawrence
Writers: Peter Craig, Danny Strong
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Sam Claflin, Natalie Dormer, Mahershala Ali, Jeffrey Wright, Stanley Tucci, Jena Malone
Runtime: 123 mins.
2014

For this winter's biggest cinematic event, the continuation of the massively successful Hunger Games franchise, Post-Credit Coda is releasing its first audio review! Click below to hear me discuss Mockingjay - Part 1 with my two esteemed guest stars, Brandon and Carson Rebel. (Hopefully it works; you might have trouble on mobile devices. I apologize for the sound quality, I did the best I could with zero microphones.)

WARNING: Spoilers are discussed for Mockingjay - Part 1, though if you ask me it doesn't matter that much for this movie. Nothing beyond the scope of Part 1 was discussed.

My reviews for movies mentioned in the discussion:

Top Ten 2013 (Catching Fire)
Edge of Tomorrow
Godzilla

2.5 / 5  BLOBS

AMERICAN HUSTLE: Neither Profundity Nor Moribundity

Director: David O. Russell
Writers: Eric Singer, David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K.
Runtime: 138 mins.
2013

American Hustle lives in the endlessly entertaining realm of smart cinema, breezing past clever and falling short of intelligent.  It never even brushes its gaudy sleeves against profound, but the good thing is it never tries.

Our heroes are Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), lovers and small-time con artists who get nabbed by F.B.I. agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper).  They make a deal to participate in a sting that, thanks to DiMaso's wild and dangerous impulses for glory, spirals into a situation too big for our savvy con artists to handle.  Irving's ditzy, manipulative wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is a wild card who only complicates matters.  Through all of this, the characters struggle to find something real and genuine in love and friendship despite the constant subterfuge.  But the plot isn't really what's important here.