12-14-2014, 07:24 PM
If CF (Catching Fire, not cranefly) was akin to HP&t1/2BP, Mkj is HP&tDH- PART 1. Still consistent to vision and T says fairly loyal to the book for a film. The cast is superb. Well, maybe not the male leads, but the supporting cast is great - Donald is seething with psychotyrant cunning, Juliane forsakes her main superpower, that shock of ginger hair, and is clearly the looming tyrant2b, Woody is spot-on as a grudging sober, Philip Hoffman makes us saddened with his passing. But ultimately, it's still all about J-Law. She nails Katniss. She makes this work. She even nails the rebel song.
There's a nice subplot on the power of media - Katniss filming rebel propaganda before a green screen was hilarious. That and the cat subplot gave a depressing set-up story some humor. Mkj moves along with fairly obvious story arcs beyond that. This installment is the greyest so far - very little in the Capitol. Mostly, it's the rebels in drab jumpsuits living in underground bunkers. No sword fights. Only one archery shot. One dog shot. Most of the sets looked like CGI. Lots of rebels getting machine-gunned down by stormtroopers...er, I mean peacekeepers.
I confess that I kept forgetting what happened in CF and replacing it with Divergent.
And Lorde gets the closing credit song again, but this time her own composition.
T says everyone dies in the final installment. But I'll surely forget about this until then, and replace it with Insurgent.
There's a nice subplot on the power of media - Katniss filming rebel propaganda before a green screen was hilarious. That and the cat subplot gave a depressing set-up story some humor. Mkj moves along with fairly obvious story arcs beyond that. This installment is the greyest so far - very little in the Capitol. Mostly, it's the rebels in drab jumpsuits living in underground bunkers. No sword fights. Only one archery shot. One dog shot. Most of the sets looked like CGI. Lots of rebels getting machine-gunned down by stormtroopers...er, I mean peacekeepers.
I confess that I kept forgetting what happened in CF and replacing it with Divergent.
And Lorde gets the closing credit song again, but this time her own composition.
T says everyone dies in the final installment. But I'll surely forget about this until then, and replace it with Insurgent.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse