The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015) Review

Time: 137 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence, horror scenes & content may disturb
Cast:
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark
Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne
Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy
Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket
Julianne Moore as President Alma Coin
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee
Jeffrey Wright as Beetee
Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman
Donald Sutherland as President Snow
Willow Shields as Primrose Everdeen
Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair
Jena Malone as Johanna Mason
Mahershala Ali as Boggs
Natalie Dormer as Cressida
Director: Francis Lawrence

After realising that she is no longer fighting for survival, Katniss Everdeen sets out to assassinate the tyrannical President Snow and liberate the people of Panem.

After the rather underwhelming Mocking Part 1, we finally get into the conclusion of The Hunger Games saga. I can gather a general consensus on each of the movies, The Hunger Games is generally well received, Catching Fire is loved and known as the best of the movies, and Mockingjay Part 1 has a more mixed reception and generally known as the worst. However, the reactions to Mockingjay Part 2 are a little all over the place. While it has its issues, I still like the movie overall.

For what it’s worth, I think Part 2 is best seen back to back with Part 1. Part 2 does a good job at making everything feel dramatic and big, and translates the bleaker moments from the book. The stakes are high; the already dark story gets even darker, plenty of named characters die, and it shows the consequences of war. I was engaged with the story a lot more than I was with Part 1. The middle act is the strongest part of the movie with some really tense action sequences. There are also some great moments in the third act, but some of the resolution felt a little rushed, despite the story being split into two parts. The ending was somewhat anticlimactic, but that’s unfortunately the nature of the book too.  Some of the pacing is a little weak and it has some of that Mockingjay Part 1 issue of having scenes stretched out longer than they needed to be. Despite the issues, I found Mockingjay Part 2 a satisfying enough conclusion.

Once again, there are some great performances, with Jennifer Lawrence delivering as usual and Josh Hutcherson doing some great work and having much more screentime compared to the last movie. Those two are essentially the leads of the film, and they do very well in their parts. The supporting cast in Woody Harrelson, Jeffrey Wright, Mahershala Ali, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Dormer, Donald Sutherland, Julianne Moore, Sam Claflin and Jena Malone give commendable performances, but most of them are a little under-utilised and sidelined, more so than in Part 1. That being said, Sutherland as main villain President Snow is still a standout in his scenes.

Francis Lawrence’s direction is pretty strong once again, and has a great handle on the movie. There’s some great imagery and cinematography, a good mix of solid practical and CGI effects, and some tense and large action sequences.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 again suffers from the choice of splitting the last book into two, and despite the amount of time given to the story, the conclusion still felt a little rushed and anticlimactic. It isn’t 100% satisfying, but is still pretty good, and benefits from the strong direction and performances. It’s at least better than Part 1 and potentially even better than the first Hunger Games. Catching Fire might be the only really great movie in the Hunger Games quadrilogy, but I liked the movies overall.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) Review

Time: 123 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Mature themes and violence
Cast:
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark
Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne
Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy
Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket
Julianne Moore as President Alma Coin
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee
Jeffrey Wright as Beetee Latier
Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman
Donald Sutherland as President Coriolanus Snow
Willow Shields as Primrose Everdeen
Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair
Jena Malone as Johanna Mason
Stef Dawson as Annie Cresta
Mahershala Ali as Boggs
Natalie Dormer as Cressida
Director: Francis Lawrence

After putting a permanent end to the games, Katniss Everdeen, Gale, Finnick and Beetee join forces to save Peeta and a nation that she has inspired by her courage.

As I was rewatching the Hunger Games movies, I was curious about what my updated thoughts on the Mockingjay films would be, specifically Part 1. After such a surprisingly great sequel to the first movie in Catching Fire, the first film of the two-part conclusion was rather underwhelming. While I do like it more now compared to when I first watched it, it still has its issues.

Mockingjay Part 1 is not without its strengths. With a much slower pace and approach, it does touch on the more political aspects, and gets into things like the rebellion and propaganda. There are also some very strong and powerful scenes and sequences which work really well. While I wouldn’t call the writing bad, it’s not that good either. I do know that adapting Mockingjay was a bit of a struggle, because while it’s been a bit since I read the book myself, it is widely known as the worst of the trilogy. But what didn’t really help is that they decided to split the shortest book of the series into two parts. I can only assume that the decision was made because previous adaptations of books with younger fans in the early 2010s like Harry Potter and Twilight did that too. Compared to most people, I’m not inherently opposed to the splitting the book into two movies. It does at least set the stage for Part 2, plus having an extra movie presents the opportunity to expand on a lot of things with the story and characters. Unfortunately, the outcome is not that good. While I wasn’t uninvested, the story is a little dull, and is filled with a lot of exposition. Not much happens in the plot and while you could make an argument that its more of a character piece for protagonist Katniss, it doesn’t really pull that off either. Characters don’t really change or develop that much and a lot of it feels like filler. There are long stretches of dialogue or emptiness and, it can’t help but feel like padding. I’m all for changing things up, but if they really wanted to commit to making Mockingjay a two parter, they really should’ve done more in that first movie.

For what its worth, the performances helped to keep me invested in the story. Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is one of the best parts of these movies. So much of the movie relies on her, and while there isn’t as much development as I would’ve liked for her character here, Lawrence sells every scene. Josh Hutcherson, Donald Sutherland, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Harrelson, Jeffrey Wright, Elizabeth Banks and Sam Claflin reprise their roles and as usual deliver, with Sutherland, Hoffman and Harrelson being the standouts and Hutcherson making the most of his limited screentime. The new additions were pretty good, especially with Mahershala Ali, Natalie Dormer and Julianne Moore.

After the success of Catching Fire, it’s not surprise that Lionsgate got Francis Lawrence to direct every Hunger Games movie afterwards. While his work here doesn’t reach the heights of that previous movie, it’s solid overall. The visuals are great, and they help to bring across the setting. It is definitely lacking in action, but the action scenes here are fine if a bit too shaky with the camera at times. James Newton Howard’s score as usual is pretty good too.

Mockingjay Part 1 was better than I remembered it being. The great performances and solid direction made it decent enough for me, and it even had some really good scenes and moments. However, it is definitely the worse of these four movies. While the structure of the story itself is fine, so little happens in the movie (both in plot and character) that they might as well have made Mockingjay into one long movie.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) Review

Time: 146 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence
Cast:
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark
Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne
Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy
Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket
Lenny Kravitz as Cinna
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee
Jeffrey Wright as Beetee Latier
Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman
Donald Sutherland as President Coriolanus Snow
Toby Jones as Claudius Templesmith
Willow Shields as Primrose Everdeen
Sam Claflin as Finnick Odair
Lynn Cohen as Mags Flanagan
Jena Malone as Johanna Mason
Director: Francis Lawrence

After Katniss and Peeta’s victory sparks hope and possible rebellion from the citizens of Panem, the two are targeted by the Capitol that wants to quell the revolution before it is too late.

When I heard about the upcoming adaptation of the Hunger Games prequel (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), I decided to rewatch the original movies. It has been years since I had watched them, mostly back at the cinema. While I hadn’t exactly looked on YA adaptations fondly, in the past few years I admit I sort of missed that era, and it doesn’t feel the same without them. The first Hunger Games was pretty good, but felt like it could’ve been much better than it was. Catching Fire however is a notable step up in quality, and improves on the first movie in every way.

In some ways the first movie was solid, the worldbuilding, the characters, the setup was there. They were done decently, but felt like they were lacking something. Catching Fire handles all of this much better, it’s a great sequel with a solid script. It has been a while since I read the book, but I heard from many more familiar with the source material that it improves from the book. The plot is gripping and makes sense, the pacing is steady, yet the movie flies by. I found myself more emotionally invested in the story, and the characters felt more real. The first movie was already pretty dark from its premise, but the sequel is even darker. You really feel the oppression and weight of everything with a sense of dread, mainly everything regarding the Capitol. The worldbuilding is very solid, it doesn’t try to rush into the hunger games and actually spends a good amount of time away from it. It ends with a cliffhanger which has you wanting to check out the sequel immediately afterwards.

Much of the cast were solid in the first movie, but they do feel stronger on the whole here. Jennifer Lawrence was already good as Katniss Everdeen and is even better in Catching Fire, really conveying everything that her character has to go through. Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are also pretty good as Peeta and Gale, though they don’t really stand out much in this movie. Other returning actors Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Elizabeth Banks are also great again in their parts. The biggest notable improvement of the returning actors/characters however is seen in the main overarching series villain President Snow, as played by Donald Sutherland. Snow appeared a few times in the first movie, but he never felt like the main villain or much of a threat. Catching Fire does a stronger job at establishing him as that, upping his screentime. As far as villains go, Snow isn’t anything special, but Sutherland plays him with such menace that his scenes are standouts. There are also some newcomers to the series who play their parts really well, including Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Jeffrey Wright.

Francis Lawrence directs, and while I don’t want to rag on Hunger Games director Gary Ross, Lawrence is a notable improvement. It’s really no surprise that he would go on the direct the rest of the Hunger Games, including the upcoming prequel. It’s a very well shot movie and there are some stand out sequences. There’s this particular impressive moment where the aspect ratio changes seamlessly as Katniss enters the game. While I could get behind some of the action of the first movie, it cuts way too much. The action of Catching Fire is better; it’s a lot easier to see, abandoning the quick editing and shaky camerawork, and the violence still feels really punchy when it needs to. James Newton Howard’s score was great, and the soundtrack on the whole is solid.

Catching Fire is by far the best in the Hunger Games series and is up there as one of the best YA adaptations. It improves on the first movie in just about every way, from the tone, writing, direction, action, and with some great performances. If you watched the first Hunger Games and thought it was just okay, I’d recommend checking out Catching Fire because its even better.

The Nightingale (2019) Review

Time: 153 Minutes
Age Rating: Rape, violence, cruelty & offensive language
Cast:
Aisling Franciosi as Clare
Sam Claflin as Hawkins
Baykali Ganambarr as Billy
Damon Herriman as Ruse
Harry Greenwood as Jago
Ewen Leslie as Goodwin
Charlie Shotwell as Eddie
Michael Sheasby as Aidan
Director: Jennifer Kent

Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict, chases a British officer (Sam Claflin) through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness and is bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence the man committed against her family. On the way, she enlists the services of Aboriginal tracker Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), who is marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.

Although it didn’t feature on my most anticipated movies of 2019 list, The Nightingale was a movie I’ve been keeping my eye on for some time. The main reason is that it’s the next film by Jennifer Kent, who directed The Babadook, which was one of my favourite horror movies in recent years. I knew of the general plot, knew that Sam Claflin was in it, and I saw a few images. However, that’s all I knew going in, outside of the controversy that it’s been generating. I was lucky enough to catch this movie at the NZIFF (the first movie I’ve actually seen at a film festival actually). The Nightingale is yet another movie that’s ‘not for everyone’ and I wasn’t certain how I’d feel about it, but I ended up loving it.

The Nightingale is not an easy watch, for a number of reasons. First of all to note is that this movie is quite long at about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It’s a ‘slow burn’ I guess, but when watching this in the cinema, I never felt bored, I was riveted with everything that was happening, even with some of the more unpleasant aspects. This is also a very disturbing movie to say the least. The first 20-30 minutes might be enough to make you want to stop watching, and I wouldn’t even blame you if you did. You’ve likely heard about all the violent rape scenes and the like. I’m not going into too much depth but I’ll just say they’re just as brutal as the headlines have made it. However they don’t feel like they’re there just to provoke a reaction in the audience. Even outside of the rape scenes, there are plenty of moments that are hard to watch. Although The Nightingale starts off being a sort of rape-revenge thriller (it’s not a revenge fantasy at all), it expands to being much more than that, as it also focusses on the treatment of Australia’s aboriginal people by the British. It’s brutally realistic as well, none of the on screen violence is really satisfying or entertaining in the slightest, just rather grim and senseless (in a good way though). The movie could’ve been completely depressing and beating you over the head with it just to prove how terrible it was back then, but Kent manages to infuse it with a little bit of empathy and depth, mainly between the main characters of Clare and Billy and how they develop over the course of the movie. The last act without spoiling anything is a little slower than what you’d expect it to be considering it’s a revenge movie, and I can see some people being not really that satisfied with the way things go, especially with the ending. Personally I liked how they ended it.

The acting is generally good but the performances from 3 particular actors are outstanding and are among the highlights of 2019 actingwise. Outside of her brief appearances on Game of Thrones, I haven’t really seen Aisling Franciosi in much of anything, however she’s really fantastic here as the lead character. It’s definitely a challenging role but she really sells her character well. Baykali Ganabarr is also great as Billy, an aboriginal tracker that Clare reluctantly hires to track down Hawkins (Sam Claflin). The two characters start off really not liking each other at all but you see their relationship grow over the course of the movie. The two of them was one of the highlights of the movie, and both actors really worked well together. Sam Claflin here is in a completely different role as one of the most despicable characters I’ve seen in a movie, and that’s saying a lot. Here he plays a British officer, whose violent actions against Clare make him her target for the movie. He could’ve been a one dimensional villain, and indeed there really aren’t any redeemable qualities to him. Yet he feels uncomfortably human and like a real person, and Claflin definitely made the character work disturbingly well.

Jennifer Kent as usual is great at directing, and it’s a much different movie than her last. Here she got to work on a much larger scale, she really places you in the time period, setting and location of Tasmania in the 1800s. None of the locations are fake, they really did shoot in the forests of Tasmania, and it really does feel authentic throughout. No doubt it would’ve been tedious having to film there, but it was well worth it. It’s a stunning looking movie, and one of the first things you’ll notice is that it’s filmed in a 4:3 format. Now I’m not exactly certain why it was filmed like this, but something about that just really worked and fitted with much of the movie, it really helped increase the claustrophobia and make the film feel even more uncomfortable. While it’s not a full on horror movie (at the very least not the same type as The Babadook), there are a few dream scenes that are very much horror like.

Brutal, harrowing and uncompromising, The Nightingale is among my favourite films of the year. The performances from Franciosi, Ganabarr and Claflin were phenomenal, Jennifer Kent’s direction was great, and while the experience could be rough at points, it was absolutely worth the watch. With that said, it’s probably not a movie that I’ll be watching again for a while at least. It’s definitely not going to work for everyone, and so I should emphasise that if you go into the movie, keep your expectations in check. As it stands for me, it’s yet another fantastic film from Kent and I can’t wait to see what she does next.