Tag Archives: Julianne Moore

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)

The final installment of the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay – Part 2, received relatively little fanfare compared to the releases of the previous films. Though it is probably fair to say that the interest dwindled after Catching Fire due to many audiences feeling the series had become “too dark,” it wasn’t really until after Mockingjay – Part 1 that the general fan base seemed to disappear entirely.

For me, the issue with the Hunger Games film series is relatively simple: it is neither brutal enough nor committed enough to what the essence of the Hunger Games story is.

I read all of the books in the Hunger Games series, and remember that I felt a similar disinterest about the final book as I did with the final film. It just seemed that the idea had run its course by the end of Catching Fire, and that anything that followed the second book’s publication was just a feeble attempt to bring in more money and to wrap up a story that didn’t particularly need more wrapping.

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Film & TV News: February 20

News

  • True Blood‘s Kelly Overton has been cast as the gender-swapped vampire-hunting Van Helsing in SyFy Channel’s newest series, which already sort of seems doomed for cancellation. Is anyone clamoring for more Van Helsing? Is the gender-swap just…because? Will Hugh Jackman appear as a grizzled old man in a hood on a lush island in the final moments, with Overton’s new heroine extending his old lightsaber to him in an offering of peace?
  • …okay, more sequel news. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has begun principal photography, and Pom Klementieff and Kurt Russell have officially been announced as new cast after a few months of likely rumors. Klementieff will be playing the scantily-clad comics character Mantis, and odds are Russell will be playing Big Papa Quill. Hopefully not scantily clad, though.

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The Hours (2002)

The first question one might ask about a movie is “what happened in it?” After all, the average viewer usually watches a movie to see what happens. However, in a strange way, what happens in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours does not seem to be the most important aspect of the movie. And while The Hours certainly does have a lot going on — three different stories and time periods, a couple suicides, more contemplated suicides, homosexuality, bisexuality, and historical and literary relevance with Virginia Woolf as a prominent character — the actual plot does not draw the viewer in quite like the acting, the dialogue, and the beautiful music. It doesn’t take an advanced movie critic to notice these aspects either; after all, they caught my attention almost immediately.

The masterful dialogue in the movie makes sense to a degree, for the screenplay was heavily influenced by Michael Cunningham’s novel of the same title and, of course, by the incredibly gifted Woolf. Listening to the characters converse, the viewer feels no less enthralled than if they were voraciously reading a page from any of Woolf’s great body of work.

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