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.

SNOWPIERCER: Crazy Train

Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writers: Bong Joon-ho, Kelly Masterson
Cast: Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Ko Ah-sung, John Hurt, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer
Runtime: 126 mins.
2014 (2013 in South Korea)

In the online film community that I haunt, there has been a lot of rumbling about people going to the wrong movies. Or rather, that rumbling always exists, it has just been exacerbated recently by a few factors. Between the movie you came here to read about, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and the excellent Edge of Tomorrow (as well as the much-hyped forthcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Mockingjay: Part 1), 2014 is turning out to be a banner year for mainstream sci-fi films--and yet, everybody and their reluctant mother is going to see the predictably steaming pile that is Transformers: Age of Indistinction.

That is why my goal in writing this particular review is to mobilize you to get out and go see Snowpiercer, a film that you likely haven't heard anything about, except perhaps snippets here and there: whispers in dark alleys, notes passed under restroom stalls, covert communiqués exchanged away from the watchful eyes of the Transformers marketing campaign.

In the world of Snowpiercer, the Earth has succumbed to a new ice age, brought about by humanity futzing with the atmosphere in an effort to counteract global warming. Now everything is dead. Cue the Snowpiercer, a massive train that contains the only remaining human life. It operates as a self-contained ecosystem that circles the entire globe once per year. All is not well on the so-called Rattling Ark, however. Our protagonists live in squalor in the tail of the train, cut off from the relative comfort and prosperity of the front-dwellers by a series of gates and armed guards. The gates only open once per day, for about four seconds, to allow the delivery of the nasty looking protein blocks that sustain the lives of the tailies. Guess what, though? Our hero, Curtis (Chris Evans), is planning a revolution! If our ragtag band of misfits can unite in order to press forward, and if they can wrest control of the Eternal Engine (that which sustains all life on the train) from the industrial despot Wilford, then they will have all the bargaining chips necessary to upset the established order.

But that's just the beginning. What sounds like a familiar plot opens out and contorts in all manner of unexpected ways--without ever leaving the cramped confines of the train.

ELYSIUM: The Dangers of Assumed Empathy

Director: Neill Blomkamp
Writer: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga
Runtime: 109 mins.
2013

I remember enjoying District 9.  It felt fresh, character-driven, and deep despite the straightforwardness of its political allegory.  Neill Blomkamp was going to be one to watch, especially with a blockbuster budget and Hollywood grade-A talent at his disposal.

What happened?

Elysium had a mountain of hype behind it, but its reception was lukewarm.  Many people seemed to like it, and they defended it against the critiques of the malcontents.  Full disclosure, I am one of the malcontents.  Being disillusioned with the film, I've been thinking about why the film was generally well-received.  Maybe it was the excellent special effects, or the cinematography (although I felt the pacing didn't allow me to take in any single moment).  Maybe it was the detailed sci-fi worldbuilding (although I wish they would have explored that world more).  Maybe it was that a big budget summer genre blockbuster had a discernible high-minded theme underpinning it (although I found that theme's presentation simple and borderline condescending).

These are all almost-merits.  But I won't get into the aesthetics of the movie very much.  I want to talk about how I found Elysium unsatisfactory on a basic narrative/dramatic level, and I want to do that by looking at each of the nine primary characters and their impact on the story.