Because Everybody Else Has One

If you thought they dragged out the Huger Games series, check this out... This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about Tris and the rest of our young heroes finally escape Chicago and find what lies beyond those walls is an answer to everything that they've been searching for but also conceal dangers far more deadly than they could ever have expected. What we thought The Divergent series has always been something of a loser in the YA dystopian future genre with its lack of clear direction and one of the stupidest premises around. While the third of this four part trilogy (yup, they split up the last book into two) spends much of its running time trying to justify the latter and fix the former, it still utterly fails to understand what made something like the Hunger Games series work as well as it usually did. The series' central idea that human beings could be so neatly divided into categories based on our dominant character traits has alw...

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: Mockingjay Part 2 solidifies the Hunger Games saga as the gold standard in YA novel adaptations. As a fierce defender of Mockingjay Part 1 (I loved all the talky bits), it's kind of odd that I have to say that, for all that it gets very right, Mockingjay Part 2 makes a strong case for smooshing the two films into one three-hour long epic. The Hunger Games' final installment is an excellent capper to the series that impresses both as a gripping piece of entertainment and as impressively ambitious social commentary that deals with class warfare, traditional warfare, revolutions, the corruption of power and the way that the media is used and manipulated in all of the above. It's brave, smart and audacious filmmaking that just happens to be a major, big-budget Hollywood film aimed, nominally, at teenage girls. Unfortunately, the one thing that stops it from ever really coming close to toppling Catching Fire as the series' best en...

Who knew I'd be fighting so hard against the tide about this of all things! Everyone and there grandma seems to love Fury Road. I, however, do not... I'm not sure if it was bravery or stupidity to have the latest Mad Max movie rely so heavily on the events of the original trilogy but, either way, I would be lying if I said it paid off. It has been many, many years since I've seen any of the Mad Max films and, considering that the final part of the original trilogy came out some thirty years ago, I'd wager I'm not alone in that. Indeed, I would wager that a huge portion of the film's target audience (read: teenage boys) have never even seen any of Max's previous cinematic exploits. Now, since I remember next to nothing about any of the previous films, I can't say with any certainty just how much Fury Road actually references them. What I can say though, was that for the opening act of the film I really had no idea what was going on. Oh sure, I go...

Sorry for the delay but here are a few of my own thoughts on the somewhat underrated latest Hunger Games movie. Once again, a quick reminder and disclaimer that I haven't read a word of the novels and all my usually effusive views on the series are based almost entirely on the films themselves. I have no idea how close this is to the novel, in other words, and I don't particularly care - but I fully understand that if you're one of those fans who have devoured the books multiple times, your views may well be very different to mine. Continuing in the recent tradition of splitting adaptations of popular kid- or YA novels into two or more films, the latest Hunger Games movie captures only the first part of the final book in Suzanne Collins' massively popular series. It's unquestionably true that this is a decision based almost entirely on monetary concerns, what with the Mockingjay novel not being significantly longer than its predecessors and everything, but th...

Cult classic or just a bit flawed... you decide. This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about After a disastrous climate change experiment wipes out nearly all life on earth, the last few remaining humans spend their lives in Snowpiercer, a highly advanced, self-powered train, on its endless journeys around the world. Within Snowpiercer, however, tensions between the classes are about to reach boiling point and it's up to Curtis (Chris Evans) and his ragtag group of lower-class revolutionaries to bring class equality to the train – or die trying. What we thought An instant cult classic on release, Snowpiercer's curious mix of allegorical science fiction and Asian-cinema-inflected, heightened action sequences has also fallen victim to a fair amount of backlash. Interestingly, it's one of those rare genre films that has had a noticeably warmer reception by critics than by general audiences, as it scored a very respectable 8.4 on Metacritic an...

OK, by this time, "couple of weeks" is probably something of an understatement. Still, there's some good stuff that I haven't touched on yet... as well as one or two serious stinkers, of course. Starting off with what is probably my favourite of the films I haven't reviewed yet this month, Begin Again (8/10)   is John Carney's spiritual followup to his wonderful breakthrough film, Once: a serious charmer of a film that came out of nowhere and won over audiences, award ceremonies, critics and other filmmakers, before becoming a highly successful Broadway play. Begin Again isn't quite in the same league as its predecessor but it is certainly in a similar vain. Originally titled, Can a Song Save Your Life, Begin Again is about two lost souls finding each other through music and plays out basically like a more fully produced (and therefore somewhat less charming) remake of Once - but with enough differences to make it worthwhile on its own terms. Even i...

It hasn't been a great month for movies and, sadly, this past weekend was no exception. I may be forgetting something but I believe The Purge: Anarchy is actually the best film of the week! How crazy is that? This review is also up at Channel 24 . What it's about It's Purge Night once again, where all American citizens are legally allowed to indulge in all their worst criminal behaviour for twelve hours and the focus this time is on a group of non-participants who are forced into the mayhem on the streets, with their only hope of survival lying in a man who is out on his own mission of bloody revenge. What we thought I was vaguely aware of the first Purge film when it came out last year but it was one of those film's that somehow managed to entirely pass me by. Interestingly though, while both films are the work of writer/ director James DeMoneco and are both based on the same premise, they are, by all appearances, very different films. The Pu...

Is Catching Fire the Empire Strikes Back of the Hunger Games series? Improving on its already very good predecessor in every conceivable way, The Huger Games: Catching Fire only further establishes the Hunger Games as by far the best young-adult smash sensation since Harry Potter. I haven't read the Suzanne Collins novels on which these films are based but with adaptations this good, I don't particularly feel the need to - especially since most people who have read the books seem to far prefer the movies. Enough people have ripped into the Twilight franchise over the years that it's probably unfair, redundant even, to resurrect that particular dead horse for another solid beating, but the Hunger Games' artistic success shows just how far short the Twilight series came to reaching its own goals. Mark Kermode, in his own, obviously superior review of the film  notes that the success of the Hunger Games is in large part because Twilight paved the way and, though I h...