The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

For F*** Magazine

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast:   Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Lenny Kravitz, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Toby Jones, Woody Harrelson, Jena Malone, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amanda Plummer, Lynn Cohen, Patrick St. Esprit, Meta Golding, Bruno Gunn, Alan Ritchson, E. Roger Mitchell, Maria Howell, Stephanie Leigh Schlund, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 146 mins
Opens: 21 November 2013
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)

2012 probably saw an uptick in the number of kids signing up for archery classes, characters like Merida from Brave and Hawkeye from The Avengers making a weapon dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic cool again. The figure who played the biggest part in this was Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of the blockbuster adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series who returns in Catching Fire.



Katniss (Lawrence) and Peeta (Hutcherson) come home triumphant from the 74th annual Hunger Games and embark on a victory tour throughout the twelve districts of Panem, leaving behind loved ones including Katniss’ sweetheart Gale (Hemsworth). The autocratic ruler of Panem, President Snow (Sutherland), sees that Katniss and Peeta have given the masses hope and might have sown the seeds for a revolution. Together with the new gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman), he plans for Katniss and Peeta to take the fall in as dramatic a way as possible. For the 75th Hunger Games, the tributes are reaped from existing winners – meaning Katniss and Peeta are plunged back into the lion’s den and pitted against experienced killers. The pair work to form an alliance with the other tributes, including the dashing Finnick (Claflin), the elderly Mags (Cohen), rebellious and unpredictable Johanna (Malone), and the tech-savvy duo of Beetee (Wright) and Wiress (Plummer). Mentor Haymitch (Harrelson) warns that “there are no winners, only survivors” – and Katniss and Peeta learn just how right he is.



Young adult novels and film adaptations of said novels have earned something of a bad reputation, often associated with shallow romance and the inane cries of “woe is me”. The Hunger Games is a series that is firmly about something, exploring the idea of violence as the opiate of the masses through the eyes of a strong, relatable heroine. This film delves deeper into the futuristic dystopia that is Panem, having established what the Hunger Games are and being able to spend more time further developing the characters of Katniss and Peeta. Director Francis Lawrence (no relation to star Jennifer), known for films like Constantine, I Am Legend and Water for Elephants, takes the directorial baton from Gary Ross with an assured turn behind the camera, working from an eloquently-adapted screenplay by Oscar-winners Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt (credited here as Michael DeBruyn).



The immense success of the first film allowed this one a bigger budget, $140 million in comparison to $78 million. While an excellent film, The Hunger Games did suffer a tad in its production values and this film is definitely an improvement in that regard. For example, the murderous mandrills look better than the wolf-like Muttations in the first film. However, the film is not spectacle-driven and it is a good one and half hours before the 75th Hunger Games actually begin. The focus of this one is the aftermath of the events of the previous film and the toll that that experience has had on Katniss and Peeta, Katniss in particular emerging as a shell-shocked veteran, haunted by the carnage she bore witness to first-hand. It is to the filmmakers’ credit that just because the games haven’t begun proper, it doesn’t mean the proceedings are boring. Moments that are equal parts intense and emotional, including a scene in which Gale is flogged in public by the totalitarian “peacekeepers”, are not in short supply.



Jennifer Lawrence, now an Oscar-winner for The Silver Linings Playbook, makes a confident return to the role that made her a superstar. The character doesn’t sit around moping and licking her wounds, Lawrence excelling at showing the conflict between Katniss’ true anguish and the public façade she has to don in the midst of this life-or-death situation. Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta has not lost all of his idealism from the first film and learns to play to the cameras, though he wishes that the romance wasn’t all for show. Hutcherson ably supports the film’s leading lady alongside Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and Elizabeth Banks, all returning from the first film as the team who prepares Katniss and Peeta for the Games.



The casting in the first film was pitch-perfect, and that certainly continues in this film. Philip Seymour Hoffman effortlessly lends the picture gravitas as the sly master strategist Plutarch, sharing most of his scenes with Donald Sutherland – who is once again absolutely frightening without so much as lifting a finger. Also, since Toby Jones returns, this means there are two Truman Capotes in the same movie. The tributes who align themselves with Katniss and Peeta in the arena are all well-portrayed as well: Lynn Cohen bringing a warmth and sadness to the silent Mags, Jena Malone entertainingly spunky as Johanna, Sam Claflin suave and strapping as the sexy Finnick and Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer eccentric but reliable as Beetee and Wiress respectively. This is a bunch we truly can root for and yet are never 100% sure if they won’t turn on each other.



While The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a solid film, it is very much a middle instalment in the vein of The Empire Strikes Back and viewers are advised to watch the first film beforehand. The events of this film are not cleanly resolved and it does end on a cliffhanger, but this does not feel like a lazy tactic and we are keenly looking forward to Mockingjay Part 1.

SUMMARY: This sequel sets the screen ablaze with an engrossing, masterfully-told follow-up to The Hunger Games. Now can we stop with the Twilight comparisons already?

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Butler

For F*** Magazine

THE BUTLER

Director: Lee Daniels

Cast: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, Minka Kelly, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, Robin Williams, David Banner
Genre: Biography, Drama
Run Time: 132 mins
Opens: 24 October 2013
Rating: NC-16 (Some Coarse Language)

Through literature, comic books, film and television, we’ve become acquainted with the likes of Alfred Pennyworth from the Batman stories, P.G. Wodehouse’s creation Jeeves, Iron Man’s butler and later artificially intelligent assistant Jarvis, The Addams Family’s butler Lurch and Green Hornet’s chauffer-sidekick Kato. As butlers, valets and the like, these characters are privy to the most intimate details of their employer’s lives and are granted full access to the houses of prestige in which they live and work. In The Butler, audiences are introduced to Cecil Gaines (Whitaker), a character based on the real-life figure Eugene Allen, who was butler to eight United States presidents over 34 years.

Cecil grew up on a cotton plantation where his parents (Carey and Banner) were often brutally mistreated by the farm’s owner Thomas Westfall (Pettyfer). A teenaged Cecil escaped to start anew, breaking into a pastry shop, desperate for food and shelter. He is taken in by Maynard (Williams III), a master servant who shows Cecil the ropes. Eventually, his efforts are recognized and Cecil is employed as member of the White House butler staff. Cecil juggles his home life with wife Gloria (Winfrey), sons Louis (Oyelowo) and Charlie (Kelley) with his important occupation, keeping order in the corridors of power. He fosters a working relationship with his colleagues Carter (Gooding, Jr.), James (Kravitz) and his boss Freddie (Domingo) while rubbing shoulders with those who have taken on the position of leader of the free world. At the same time, the African-American Civil Rights Movement unfolds around Cecil, many of his loved ones right in the thick of it.



The Butler is a film that undeniably stems from a noble desire to put a historically and culturally important story up on the big screen, something that required the effort of a whopping 41 producers and executive producers. Depicting this swathe of American history through the eyes of a butler allows the audience an “in”, a point of view through which all this is made accessible. The film is almost overwhelmingly earnest and heartfelt, but at times, this is to its detriment.

Much has been made of the historical inaccuracies The Butler packs in. “Cecil Gaines” is a fictionalization of Eugene Allen: the fate of Cecil’s parents is a gross exaggeration and did not befall Eugene’s parents, Eugene didn’t get his start in the butler biz by breaking and entering, Eugene only had one son, not two, and that son was not as entrenched in radical activism as Louis Gaines was in the story, Ronald Reagan’s own son has come forward to oppose the depiction of the president’s attitudes towards race in the story, the list does go on. There are times when these embellishments feel contrived and blatant; the “drama dial” turned up to 11 and resulting in histrionics. The film comes off as something of a CliffsNotes version of the Civil Rights Movement, touching on the milestones and turning points and fitting them into the story with varying degrees of success.



The film boasts a truly impressive roster of stars, led by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker. He lends a down-to-earth, laconic charm to Cecil and easily embodies the character’s solid work ethic and makes it very believable that the butler would be a well-liked personality in the White House. Oprah Winfrey resists the urge to turn the film into a vanity project as Cecil’s chain-smoking, sometimes-brusque but ultimately well-meaning wife. The duo of Lenny Kravitz and Cuba Gooding, Jr., as the staffers Cecil spends the most time with on the job and who soon become personal friends of his, are excellent as friendly, comforting faces in the midst of the volatility and uncertainty depicted.

The casting of the presidents is a double-edged sword: on one hand, there’s the novelty factor and on the other, it really can pull one out of the movie and there will be viewers fighting with every fibre of their being not to yell “President Cyclops! President Snape! President Sabretooth!” at the screen. Liev Schreiber is entertaining as Lyndon B. Johnson, bringing some of his eccentricities (getting his daily security briefing while on the loo, for one) to the screen. James Marsden is a passable JFK, but John Cusack makes for a terrible Nixon. Alan Rickman is caked under unconvincing prosthetics to play Ronald Reagan, and the casting of Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan has ruffled some feathers. David Oyelowo is fiery as Cecil’s older son who heeds the clarion call of activism, becoming a “freedom rider” and eventually a member of the Black Panthers. The scene in which the freedom bus is ambushed by Klansmen is genuinely suspenseful.



In spite of all its shortcomings, the film comes together as a surprisingly cohesive whole and does manage to be genuinely moving and compelling at times. This is a story of great import, but the heavy-handedness and melodrama do weigh it down and threaten to drown out and not enhance its message. Danny Strong’s screenplay is competently written, but does feel burdened by the socio-political message worked into the fabric of the film. Does The Butler smack of Oprah Winfrey-backed Oscar bait? If you’re feeling cynical, certainly. But there is a significance and gravity to the film that demands respect, and the story it endeavours to tell is worth our time.

SUMMARY: Cecil Gaines’ odyssey is ungainly at times and the film does have its moments of over-embellished bombast, but there are inspirational and engaging aspects to The Butler that lift it above that.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Hunger Games review published!

Thanks to Royston Loh, editor of F*** Magazine, for publishing my review of The Hunger Games in the April issue.

The Hunger Games

What do you know, I'm back!

Movie Review                                                                                                             23/3/12

THE HUNGER GAMES

(2012)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth

Directed by: Gary Ross

Lionsgate/Color Force

          

  It was inevitable that Suzanne Collins’ 2008 best-selling and critically-acclaimed novel would receive the big-screen adaptation treatment. After all, it was a formula that worked out well for the Harry Potter books, and the vampire-love-story-that-must-not-be-named (though not so well for my favourite young adult series, the Alex Rider books). I have not read the book (blasphemy, I know), but will review the film based on its merits as a, well, film. And, possess many merits it does.

            For the uninitiated, the titular “games” refer to an annual tournament in which the 12 districts of Panem, a dystopian, future America, send one boy and girl aged 12-18 (known as “tributes”), chosen by ballot, to battle in a brutal televised death match, until the lone survivor is crowned the victor. The story centres on the two tributes from the poor coal-mining colony of District 12, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson), Katniss having volunteered to save her sister Primrose (Willow Shields) from being sent to the games and Peeta a baker’s son who nurses an unrequited crush on Katniss. Back home is Gale Hawthorne (Hemsworth), Katniss’ best friend, hunting partner, and the hypotenuse in a developing love triangle.

            The film hinges on themes such as the class divide, oppressive governments, the voyeuristic thirst for reality TV-style entertainment, survival and independence, while serving as a coming-of-age story too. This is heavy political commentary dressed up in a fantastic metaphor, and something that the film is generally very successful at conveying, though it lacks the sharper and more subtle observation of such classics as Brave New World and 1984, settling instead for something more accessible to the masses.

            And then there’s of course the controversial hot-button issue of kids killing kids. To reduce the story to just that is something of an injustice, and apparently the movie has toned the violence down quite a bit from the source material to keep with a PG-13 rating (and so as not to alienate its youthful fanbase), but it still is pretty gnarly to watch teenagers getting stabbed and shot at with arrows by their peers. One must bear in mind that this is hardly uncharted territory though – the 1999 Koushun Takami novel Battle Royale, which Collins claims to have never heard of until after turning in her book, comes to mind.

            Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar-nominated for her role in Winter’s Bone, beating out the likes of Chloe Moretz, Hailee Steinfeld, Saorise Ronan and Shailene Woodley (and practically every teenage-or-thereabouts actress in Hollywood) for the role, brings Katniss to life as one of the strongest female protagonists of our generation. Handy with a bow and arrow, she is quietly strong yet appealingly vulnerable. Josh Hutcherson, proving himself to be one of the finest young male actors currently working, lends his square jaw and slightly stocky frame to the youthful masculinity of Peeta, and it is interesting to see the relationship between him and Katniss develop. Liam Hemsworth doesn’t have much to do in this one, appearing mainly when we cut to Gale looking pained that Katniss seems to be falling for someone else. This is probably for the better as Hutcherson is clearly the superior actor.

            Something this movie gets very right, as did the Harry Potter films, is assembling a stellar supporting cast of older characters who frame the story and pull the strings. There’s Elizabeth Banks as flamboyant chaperone Effie Trinket, Stanley Tucci as charismatic emcee Caesar Flickerman, Lenny Kravitz as Katniss’ kind and nurturing stylist Cinna, and Donald Sutherland as President Snow, the autocratic ruler of Panem whose distinguished demeanour belies a dangerous sadistic streak.

            The standout though is Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, a former winner of the Games who has degenerated into a scruffy alcoholic, and is responsible for mentoring Katniss and Peeta. Harrelson deftly portrays the bitterness left over from the trauma of the games and proves to be savvy and strategic. A brief scene depicts him hob-nobbing with the elite to earn Katniss “sponsors” to provide her with supplies during the games, and he suggests playing up the romantic aspect of Katniss and Peeta’s relationship as good entertainment – much like how many authors use romance to manipulate their audiences.

            The Hunger Games shows up its teeny-bopper ilk with panache, and is one of the few modern films aimed at a teenage demographic that has any depth or substance. A captivating visual look, strong performances, an engrossing story and a dash of the unsettling turn the odds in favour of this one. I know I should save this for the review of the second film, but The Hunger Games is on fire.

SUMMARY: The Hunger Games proves it fully deserves to the next big thing. By turns entertaining and thought-provoking, it is refreshing to see a franchise flick give teenagers something to chew on at the movies other than their popcorn.

RATING: 4/5 STARS

Jedd Jong Yue