To nick a quote from everyone's favourite time-travelling physician, 'it's the end, but the moment has been prepared for'. And so we reach the end of The Hunger Games saga with Mockingjay: Part Two.
Picking up almost straight after the end of Part One, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has been traumatised by her attack by the unstable Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). However, the rebellion against the Capitol continues and Katniss continues to be the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion. Starting with neutralising a threat in District 2, the rebels continue their march toward the Capitol to overthrow President Snow (Donald Sutherland), leading to Katniss' final confrontation with Snow...
It's a frustratingly inconsistent film. There are some great intimate character moments, for instance- the conversation between Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) about their respective love for Katniss; the wonderful showdown between Katniss and Snow in the greenhouse- but several of the action scenes are muddy and either really badly shot or really badly edited, making it difficult to see who's doing what to whom.
There's no scene that displays this more clearly than the sewer sequence where Katniss and her team are chased by Mutts (zombie-like creatures with massive teeth). The tense build-up is handled really well- almost playing like a sequence from a horror film (and pushing the boundaries of the 12A certificate)- but once the Mutts attack, the camerawork goes to pot, as does the lighting, and you're left with a morass of limbs. Frankly if Katniss hadn't screamed the name of the person who died, I wouldn't have been able to work it out. I know they're going for a kinetic pace but it's done at the cost of seeing what's going on.
Screenwriters Peter Craig and Danny Strong are mostly faithful to Suzanne Collins' source material. When I first read Mockingjay, at several points, I had a thought of 'how the hell are they going to do this on screen?' Like Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay is dark. In places, really dark (and this is a franchise that starts with the idea of children killing each other for sport). There's a particularly defining moment in the book which, when I first read it, gave me a lump in the throat. That moment is reproduced here and it's a ballsy move by the filmmakers to include it.
Performance-wise, as all the rest have been, it's solid across the board. Lawrence is as watchable as ever as Katniss, whilst Donald Sutherland's performance has more steel and substance to it than in Part One; he's much less Bond-villain. No complaints either about Julianne Moore who brings a steely determination to the role of President Coin. Josh Hutcherson probably gives his best performance as Peeta, as he struggles to undo the torture he underwent in the Capitol whilst Liam Hemsworth is as dependable as ever as Gale. You can tell what was filmed after the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman- there's a scene at the end where Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) gives Katniss a letter from Plutarch, where it seems obvious that- had Hoffman still been around- Plutarch would have given the news himself.
Several actors get short-changed in this instalment, although make an impact when they do appear. I'm thinking specifically of Jena Malone, whose acerbic Johanna Mason has been one of the standout performances in the saga, Stanley Tucci and Elizabeth Banks, who is always superb as Effie. You can also add Gwendoline Christie to this list- the Game Of Thrones star pops up very briefly at the beginning as District 2 leader Commander Lyme but gives a suitably commanding performance.
Despite my grousing, the film is not a complete disaster and rounds The Hunger Games saga off competently. But it's exactly that: competent. Not good, not great. Competent. It had the potential to be superb but sadly, for me, that potential hasn't been realised.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Tez
The Watchers Film Show: Ep 40 from
The Watchers Film Show on
Vimeo.
Programme 40 (40!) is here!
It's another packed show as Rhys gives his opinions of comedies Sex Tape and Let's Be Cops!, Tez and Matt discuss thriller A Most Wanted Man, whilst Matt holds forth on animated adventure The Boxtrolls.
Our decades discussion rolls around to the 1980s and Lethal Weapon, An American Werewolf In London and The Princess Bride all get a mention, but who mentions what?
Hope you enjoy it!
Like many, we at The Watchers were shocked and saddened by the news of the untimely death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was found dead yesterday in his Manhattan apartment. He was 46.
One of the finest character actors around, Hoffman was equally at ease in a big-budget blockbuster (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mission: Impossible III) as he was in a low-budget indie drama (Jack Goes Boating, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, The Savages).
His first acting role was in a 1991 episode of Law & Order and he also had roles in Scent Of A Woman (1992), When A Man Loves A Woman (1994) and Twister (1996), before becoming recognised for his performance as Scotty J in Boogie Nights (1997), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson and Hoffman would become frequent collaborators, with Hoffman appearing in five of Anderson's six feature films to date. Other notable roles are Allen the stalker in Happiness (1998), the boorish Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and grieving widower Wilson Joel in Love Liza (2002).
In 2006, he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his stunning portrayal of flamboyant author Truman Capote in Capote. He would receive a further three Oscar nominations for his supporting roles in Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Doubt (2008) and The Master (2012).
Away from the movies, Hoffman was also a gifted stage actor, performing in The Seagull in 2001, Long Day's Journey Into Night in 2003, as Iago in Othello in 2009 and Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman in 2012, for which he received a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Play.
At the time of his death, he was reprising his role as Plutarch Heavensbee for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 and had completed work on the John La Carre adaptation, A Most Wanted Man.
A talented actor, gone much too soon. Our thoughts are with his friends and family at this time.
The Watchers
(Rhys, Matt & Tez)
I wanted to like The Master; not only like, but enjoy. I've enjoyed some of Paul Thomas Anderson's other films (Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood especially) and it has two actors that I like (Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman). On paper, it seemed like a cert. The reality is somewhat different.
Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man with a few issues. Demobbed from the Navy after the end of the Second World War, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he is truly damaged goods: a violent borderline alcoholic who can't hold down a job and has sex on the brain. He stows aboard a ship which is being used by 'The Cause', a pseudoscientific cult led by Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman). Rather than throwing him overboard, Dodd takes Quell under his wing, seeing a chance to redeem him.
Quell is a fundamentally unlikeable character which made it difficult for me to have any empathy towards him or even care about his 'journey'. It didn't help that Phoenix's performance felt a bit hammy in places; the constant slurring and mumbling got annoying as well. As things dragged on, my patience with Phoenix's mugging and mumbling wore out so- by the time of the final meeting between Quell and Dodd, which should have been a real powerhouse (akin to the end of There Will Be Blood)- I couldn't have cared less what happened.
Hoffman is miles better as Dodd, a charismatic orator with a mass following. The Cause seks to use what seems to be past-life regression to deal with present-day issues and Hoffman at least makes the cod philosophy Dodd espouses sound believable. There are two moments where The Cause is challenged; one by a sceptical onlooker at a gathering and the other by a member of The Cause over the use of the word 'imagine' rather than 'recall' (maybe giving credence to Dodd's son's dismissive statement that he's making it up as he goes along). Both times Dodd explodes. There's a dangerous underswell in Dodd which isn't really utilised. In the final scene, Hoffman manages to make 'Slow Boat To China' seem tender and sinister at the same time.
Perhaps the best- and most surprising- performance in the entire film comes from Amy Adams, who plays Dodd's wife Peggy. There are some intriguing hints that she is 'the power behind the throne' and is a staunch supporter of Dodd's ideology almost to the point of fanaticism. She is underused, perhaps, but makes an impact every time she's on screen. It's a performance full of steel and ice, miles away from the family friendly good girl of Enchanted or Julie & Julia.
The 'processing' scenes at the beginning are quite intense and filmed well, but several other 'treatments' (such as Peggy reading sexually explicit prose to Quell, and Dodd asking Quell to walk back and forth between the wall and the window) seemed baffling to me. There was some controversy when the project was first announced that it was inspired directly by Scientology; people with a better grounding in those practices than I could probably point out the deeper similarities, but there does appear to be at least a passing correlation between Scientology and The Cause.
My main issue with The Master comes from the script: in places, it has the turgid, pretentious air that can sometimes come when you have an auteur behind the lens. Plus there's too little that is adequately explained- don't get me wrong, some ambiguity can provoke interest (whilst spoon-feeding the audience can be patronising and unwieldy) but there is such a thing as being too elliptical. There's some surreal imagery which doesn't add anything and Jonny Greenwood's jarring, intrusive and atonal score got to be very irritating.
Sadly, some good performances can't redeem this muddled mess of a film.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Tez
