MY MOVIE SHELF: X-Men: Days of Future Past

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 1 Days to go: 3

Movie #439:  X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days of Future Past is where the two separate X-Men franchises collide, and it is masterful. The characters we know from the first three X-Men movies (or some of them, at least, as well as a few we’ve never met before) come together in the future to stop an event from happening in the past — where most of the characters from X-Men: First Class are still running about — that will eradicate all mutants (and many humans) from the face of the earth. It plays with time, it plays with space, it plays with inevitability and free will and second chances, and I love it a whole lot. If not for a few complaints, it would easily be my favorite, but the things I find fault with are also the result of Days of Future Past‘s enormous ambition, which should be rewarded even if it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

In this film, the future is a war-torn dystopia and what few mutants remain are constantly on the run from weapons called Sentinels — transformative robots made from non-metallic polymers that can adapt to a mutant’s power to more effectively destroy it. Determining that the Sentinel program came from a moment back in 1973, the Professor (Patrick Stewart), who revealed he was alive again in the epilogue of The Wolverine vis-à-vis some sort of squirrelly magic that isn’t really explained all that well, and Magneto (Ian McKellen) convince Kitty (Ellen Page) to send Logan (Hugh Jackman) back in time in order to stop that event from happening and change the course of history. (Logan is the only one who can make such a trip, since he heals as fast as he’s torn apart and this journey of his consciousness will wreak havoc on his mind.)

So Logan’s consciousness goes back and he has to enlist young Charles (James McAvoy) and Hank (Nicholas Hoult) into helping him, which includes breaking Eric (Michael Fassbender) out of a prison beneath the Pentagon. For this they go to Quicksilver (Evan Peters), which I mention simply because it is my absolute favorite sequence of this or any X-Men movie, and it is entirely too short. Slowing everything else down to show Quicksilver working in his super-speed at a pace we can actually see is amazing CGI at work, and I want so much more of it. Why he’s not invited along to Paris or even just brought back at the end for their D.C. showdown is beyond me. He’s so great! Why would you introduce him, blow everyone away with his playful machinations, and then forget all about him for the rest of the film? It drives me crazy.

Not that the rest of the film doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to contend with without adding Quicksilver to the mix. Peter Dinklage (who makes everything better, let’s be honest) is here as Dr. Bolivar Trask, the scientist behind those nasty Sentinel machines, and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) aims to kill him. Unfortunately, when she does (in the past) it sets off a chain reaction of events in which her actions are used as proof of a mutant threat and her DNA is used to enhance the Sentinels. Logan’s troupe goes to stop her, of course, but the movie brilliantly plays with images so that some of the things we saw in the image of the past are duplicated in this scenes Logan is supposedly changing, raising the question of whether this is all happening as it always did, as it always was meant to. Hank brings up that question himself, of whether time is immutable and unchangeable — a common theme in time-travel tales — so somehow, some way, whatever happens will always happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Naturally, Charles takes a different view, because despite his current (1973) disillusionment, in which he treats himself with a serum to give him back the use of his legs in exchange for losing his powers of the mind, he’s still the optimist. He still believes in Mystique as a good person. He still mourns Eric’s insistence of distancing himself from goodness. And he still has faith in the human (and mutant) spirit, believing good will prevail if he only choose it.

Ultimately, the movie takes this view too, as it shows us Mystique changing her path and gives us a star-studded happy ending — incredibly, like, nearly EVERYONE is back and alive and awesome for this tiny little closing scene. At the same time, it also opens the door for ALL NEW STORIES about Mystique, about Jean (Famke Janssen), about Logan, et cetera. There are honestly not that many movies that can pull off something that impressive, and I give it a lot of credit. Meaning I forgive it a lot of its blurry areas — where things are most glossed over like LA LA LA DON’T ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE — even though they annoy me personally. I choose for goodness to prevail.

MY MOVIE SHELF: X-Men: First Class

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 2 Days to go: 4

Movie #438:  X-Men: First Class

From what I understand, comics get rebooted all the time, with a new set of stories that can have little connection to whatever came before. Movies about comic book characters do this too, with every new director’s vision of Superman, for example, or Batman or Spider-Man. These franchises often, in fact, tell the same stories over and over again, such as the hero’s origin story. What makes X-Men: First Class interesting, therefore, is its attempt to reboot the series while also a) telling a whole new set of stories about these characters, from a completely different time in their lives, and b) keeping a connection to the earlier series.

In X-Men: First Class, we meet Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Eric Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) as children (played by Laurence Belcher and Bill Milner, respectively) and then as young men. Likewise, we meet Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) as a little girl (played by Morgan Lily) who grows up with Charles in his home after he catches her alone and hungry and looking for food. These people who were linchpins to the original series of films — power players with clearly alluded to long and significantly linked backstories — are getting, in essence, their origin story. We’re introduced to their very different histories, and we’re shown how they grew together and apart in the span of a very critical time in world history.

There are things I really like about the film, and things I don’t like so much, putting it actually on par with perhaps The Last Stand with regard to my preferences. The mutant villains, for example (because the film is truly about mutants versus mutants, in the long run — humans are sort of incompetent bystanders to the whole thing), are lacking in the kind of charisma that makes Magneto himself so compelling in later films (and in this one, too, as Eric shares a lot of their beliefs and even converts Raven to embracing her Mystique self), making it incredibly lopsided. Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) is despicable, and he doesn’t make a good leader. He tells Emma Frost (January Jones) that they don’t hurt their own kind, but he spends a lot of time doing just that — especially when he kills Darwin (Edi Gathegi) for no good reason. Beyond that, his superpower just makes him look gross, like when his head and hands get inordinately big as he absorbs energy. It’s not attractive. Emma Frost herself is also disappointingly bland, and she’s the only one of Shaw’s minions who does anything interesting. The rest don’t even have lines, I don’t think. And Angel (Zoe Kravitz) doesn’t even bat an eye when Darwin is killed, so forget her.

What it gets right, though, is awesome. The performances of McAvoy and Fassbender (and Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult as Beast) are phenomenal and moving. Fassbender and Lawrence, especially, bring every ounce of emotion necessary to their character arcs — all the pain, all the anger, all the frustration and isolation they’ve felt over the years. It’s essential to developing who they are and who they become, and both actors are incredible. Beast has a similar, if not as deeply developed, history of feeling like a freak, and Hoult delivers on that. Xavier’s past is not as fraught with hardship, as his life has been filled with financial privilege and his mutation is a strategic advantage in most situations, explaining his much more positive outlook on humanity and reinforcing his desire to work with it instead of against it. I’m also a big fan of Rose Byrne as Moira, not only because she’s an undervalued member of the CIA — being a woman — but because she’s not afraid to use her undergarments to get her into a club for some good old American spying.

The time period also lends itself well to the tale of potential mutant uprisings, I think, as the Cuban Missile Crisis was indeed a very tense moment in our collective history, and one that is taught to have been resolved as if by a stroke of luck, at the last moment, almost out of nowhere. There’s an air of mystery to it that, to be perfectly frank, a secret mutant storyline fits squarely into. It’s kind of brilliant.

I also LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE the cameos by Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) and Rebecca Romijn (as older Mystique), because they are awesome. Like, I literally clapped my hands with glee the first time I saw them. And I maybe still do for Wolverine.

Obviously loving and hating so many different things about it means X-Men: First Class isn’t my favorite of the X-Men films (that would still be X2), but I applaud its ability to create a whole new franchise inside an existing one, and I really do love where this new line can take us. As the next one will attest, most anything is possible.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Winter’s Bone

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 4 Days to go: 6

Movie #436:  Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone is an interesting film. It’s a small, confined study of a particular kind of life and a particular kind of society. The film is so small, in fact, that had it not collected a slew of critics’ and movie awards and nominations after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered — culminating in four Oscar nods, including Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence (her first in a string of three in four years) and Best Supporting Actor for John Hawkes — you wouldn’t be able to find more than a dozen people outside of New York or Los Angeles who had even heard of it, much less seen it. You might not be able to find that dozen now, even with all the acclaim. Winter’s Bone is a dark film, and a lonely tale, but it’s incredibly compelling, mostly for its specificity.

Winter’s Bone is striking, for its subject matter and its performances, both, but what is most striking about it — what draws you in and really makes you take notice — is its setting. The film takes place in a very poor, very isolated part of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. It’s an area that is never explored by Hollywood, its people and its culture never examined. This is not the Middle America we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on screens. There are no strip malls or Applebee’s. This isn’t the suburbs. There are no soccer moms or minivans. At the same time, though, this isn’t the poverty we’ve been sold either. These aren’t happy-go-lucky poor people, cracking jokes about what bills are due or how many jobs they have. This is a teenage girl named Ree (Lawrence) chopping wood and cooking dinner out of whatever she can hunt and teaching her little brother and sister how to shoot and fend for themselves. Her mother is mentally ill and her father cooks meth, so he’s often in trouble with the law, and now he’s gone missing. She has no prospects of a better life or even a different life. She’s going to have to take care of her family and that’s the end of the story. Even the army’s promise of $40,000 for signing up does her no good, because she’s seventeen and because she wouldn’t be able to take her siblings with her. She’s stuck. Just like her friend is stuck at seventeen with a baby and a husband who tells her what she can and can not do. Just like they’re all stuck. This is their life, and there’s no getting around it.

In order to evoke this poverty and this culture and this isolation, the costuming and production design are exemplary. Clothes are clearly old and worn out. They’re either hand-me-downs or bought at Goodwill. Outfits are cobbled together by whatever is available. Garments are tattered and sometimes ill-fitting More consideration is given to warmth — working outside on their land as most of these people do — than to appearance. And their surroundings have that same sense of whatever works. Dogs are everywhere, chained in the yards, constantly barking, used for protection and hunting, not companionship. Sheets and blankets are horribly mismatched and piled one on top of the other to provide the warmth of a single actual bed quilt or comforter. Again, items are incredibly old and acquired from who knows where or by what means. Details like Ree’s waterbed, makeshift stairs up to the porch and the trampoline, and old, thin patches of carpet blend into the environment seamlessly but tell a bold and immediate story about who these people are, where they come from, and what their lives are like.

Class structure is also something that is starkly exposed by the film, largely through dialogue and costuming. The sheriff (Garrett Dillahunt) and the bail bondsman (Tate Taylor) are clearly more of the middle class. They have traditional jobs, drive nice cars, have a clean appearance. But of the friends and family Ree goes to in search of her father, it’s an entirely different society and an entirely different structure. Here everyone looks up to the head of the family and everyone is subject to his rule. Moreover, women are openly subjugated in a way that’s so ingrained nobody even seems to question it. When Ree tries to get a word in with someone in charge who might know where her father is, his wife (Dale Dickey) shoos her away, asking outright if she doesn’t have a man somewhere who can make these inquiries for her. This is not the business of a woman. Even though Ree is fearless and smart and determined, not being able to break through these walls in her way  is not only frustrating, it could cost her family everything.

The ending of Winter’s Bone is similarly vexing. It’s not happy ending — it’s not a happy movie — but there is a small reward for Ree, at least, that will allow them to keep their home and stay together. However, it’s an absolutely certainty that regardless of Ree’s fierce spirit, perseverance, and morality, she is never going to get out. She has too much other weight on her shoulders, and it’s a weight you don’t get out from under. It’s always going to be exactly the same as it’s always been, and Ree’s just going to have to keep making do, just like she’s always done.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 50 Days to go: 36

Movie #390:  The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1

If you’d asked me when I first read Mockingjay whether it would require two movies to tell its story, I would’ve answered emphatically no. This is not Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a nearly 800-page book chock full of events critical to the end of the series. Mockingjay is half that size, and its narrator Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is holed up in the underground bunkers of District 13, away from most of the action, for the vast majority of it. If you take simply the first half, there’s even less going on and fewer events for Katniss to be involved in. It’s problematic, to say the least. Obviously I haven’t seen Mockingjay Part 2 yet — it doesn’t come out for six more months — but based on this first half I’ve turned my opinion around on splitting the final installment in two, not because of everything that’s in the book, but because of everything the film has added to it and enhanced.

First and foremost, Katniss is nearly insane in District 13. The terror of her two Games, the disorienting way she was removed from the last one, the haunting knowledge that Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is in the hands of the Capitol being tortured or worse, the multiple injuries she’s sustained, and the recent knowledge that all of District 12 has been leveled, all combine to make Katniss as raw as an exposed nerve. But when your character is astute enough to narrate her story and articulate her madness, it loses its effectiveness a bit. On film, however, that restrictive quality falls away and Lawrence is able to put every ounce of her award-winning talent behind all the fear, pain, madness, anger and desperation Katniss feels. It puts actual walls around her too, and seeing the tiny, hidden spaces Katniss seeks out for refuge brings her panic attacks and frenzied insecurities into sharp focus.

The addition of actual visuals also benefit the destruction wrought by the Capitol. The annihilation of District 12 is especially poignant. The book talks of buildings turned to rubble, and a mass grave in the Meadow, but the film shows us the charred skeletons of fleeing people, and combines it with the first-person account of Gale (Liam Hemsworth). It’s infinitely more powerful and more effective, as is Katniss’s performance of “The Hanging Tree.” (A book can tell you something is a song, but the melody in the film really brings it to life.)

Mockingjay Part 1 also really showcases the role of television and propaganda in the world of Panem in a way none of the movies have been able to do yet (and frankly better than the book does as well). Natalie Dormer makes everything better (seriously, if she and Anthony Mackie were in a movie together, it might bring about world peace and everlasting love and harmony), and that includes her role as director Cressida here, in which she honestly conveys not only the journalistic and entertainment instincts of the film she’s shooting, but an artistic eye and an interviewer’s questions. She’s savvy and smart, and while you sense she’s personally invested, it’s also clear she knows exactly what she’s doing and how to best send a message. (Philip Seymour Hoffman brings this same publicity-savvy sensibility as Plutarch, but in a more conceptual, less hands-on way.)

In general, the film simply brings so much more of the conflict to life, as it expands the world far beyond the reaches of just Katniss and her experience. There are powerful and jarring scenes in the districts themselves, with other citizens fighting the Peacekeepers. The scene of the rebels’ rescue of the captured tributes in the Capitol plays out with a heightened sense of tension because we watch Katniss breathlessly follow the action over security cameras, and it culminates in a foreboding interaction directly with President Snow (Donald Sutherland) that the book lacks. But the most improved aspect comes from the performance of Hutcherson, as we watch Peeta grow increasingly emaciated over the course of several television interviews with Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), and then turn into a raging, psychotic madman once he and Katniss are reunited. It is shocking and disturbing and exactly what the film needed to convey just how terrifying a transformation he’s made, and how much of a threat he is to Katniss — a girl he’s only ever been loving and protective toward before now. It sets up the sequel beautifully, and I, for one, can’t wait to see it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 51 Days to go: 36

Movie #389:  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

No movie will ever be a perfect adaptation of a book. It isn’t possible. Yet Catching Fire is one of the best ever, and easily the best of The Hunger Games franchise. (Mockingjay Part 2 is, of course, not out yet, but since it’s only half the story and Mockingjay itself was the worst book of the series, it’s safe to crown Catching Fire early.) While certain scenarios are altered or streamlined and others are missing altogether, the movie nevertheless captures the tone and spirit of the second book perfectly. And Jennifer Lawrence, having won her Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook just nine months prior, returns as Katniss with a killer, deeper, more nuanced and fuller performance. For something that could be dubbed as “only” an action franchise based on “only” a YA lit phenomenon, Lawrence doesn’t phone in a bit of it. Just that closing image, in fact, of Katniss lying on an examination table in the heretofore unknown District 13, her face transforming from despair to anger to grim resolve, is practically a professional acting clinic. She’s incredible.

Beyond Lawrence’s performance, though, I also love the character of Katniss herself. She’s angrier on one hand, more frightened on the other, and more overwhelmed than ever by the enormous weight on her shoulders and the impossible decisions that lie before her. But she’s still a teenager too, and she’s still caught between feelings for Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and feelings for Gale (Liam Hemsworth), and blessedly, the film lets her articulate that. She’s able to have a conversation with Gale in which she says flat-out that there’s no room in her life for feelings of romance because of the threats leveled against her. That’s a stance people aren’t regularly allowed to take in films. Even people who claim to be off the market or not interested in dating are often immediately thrust into a romantic meet-cute or some such nonsense. But real people are sometimes legitimately not capable of fitting romance into their lives, and it’s important that Katniss be afforded that option. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel love — indeed, Katniss loves and cares about many people around her — but at this point the outlet for that love is a need to protect them.

Another young woman allowed to forsake sentimentality in Catching Fire is Johanna Mason (Jena Malone). After years of abuse at the hands of the Capitol, Johanna succinctly sums up her situation with regard to President Snow (Donald Sutherland): “He can’t hurt me. There’s no one left that I love.” (This will come, in Mockingjay, to refer only to being hurt by the screams of these particular jabberjays, but the statement is true as she says it.) She’s known love, but has had it (literally or figuratively, somehow) beaten out of her, and now her response to it — in particular to the hypersexualized Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) being actually in love with a fragile young woman from his District — is, “Love is weird.” She has no real use for it either. Johanna is a character allowed to be openly angry, to be hateful and sexual and deadly. I love her a lot. And Jena Malone gives her everything to bring that rage and volatility to life. It was seeing Catching Fire that brought me fully around to admitting I’m a Jena Malone fan, and I make no apologies for that. She is fierce and fabulous, just like Johanna.

As expected, production values go way up for Catching Fire from what they were in The Hunger Games (not that they were particularly low before, but the difference is obvious). Katniss, armed with the income of a Victor, now has a much richer — if still serviceable, at least in the Districts — wardrobe, but it’s with Effie (Elizabeth Banks) that the costume budget is really put to good use. Her butterfly ensemble at the reaping for the Quarter Quell is a work of delicate, beautiful art. (And Katniss’s wedding dress is nothing to sneeze at either.) CGI effects have been ramped up as well, as we see Katniss fighting digital holograms in her archery training session and it is every bit as impressive to the audience as it is to the other Victors. The work on the force field is also impressive, and the baboon mutts in Catching Fire are far scarier and better rendered than the dog ones in the first film (though, to be fair, the dog mutts in The Hunger Games film weren’t nearly as scary as their description in the book).

Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) gets to expand himself a bit in this one as well, being cagey and enigmatic while also being the voice of reason with regard to the relationship train Katniss and Peeta are on now. And his fear and desperation at the realization that his name is eligible for the Third Quarter Quell reaping is palpable. Of course, I would’ve liked to see a scene in which Peeta and Katniss watch Haymitch’s Games, the Second Quarter Quell, though thankfully YouTube is capable of scratching that particular itch if you want it to. (I like this one.) Aside from that small wish, though, Catching Fire is really exceptionally well-done. They even recast Buttercup as an acceptable cat. And I think we can all agree how important that was.

Next we see how to make a good movie out of a somewhat middling book as Katniss becomes the Mockingjay.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Hunger Games

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 52 Days to go: 36

Movie #388:  The Hunger Games

A Kindle is a wonderful thing to have when you’re nursing. You can hold it with one hand, change pages with a slight tap of your thumb, and not move for sometimes hours — especially if the baby in question likes to snooze while she eats. My daughter was born in the first quarter of 2012, and I used nursing time (and later, breast pump time) to do a LOT of reading.

One of the books I downloaded was The Hunger Games. The movie was releasing soon, and people were in a frenzy over it — over Jennifer Lawrence being cast as olive-skinned teenager Katniss, over the burning controversy of Team Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) or Team Gale (Liam Hemsworth), over its very existence — and I decided I should read the thing. That was an exceptionally good call on my part, I think. I would up reading the entire series (because The Hunger Games is really more the first volume for a story than the complete story) in a matter of days, and I’ve read it multiple times since. The whole thing, basically any time I get bored with whatever else I’m reading.

I felt prepared going in to the film, therefore. I felt well-versed in Katniss’s psyche, I had strong opinions on Peeta and Gale, and I’d cried huge sloppy tears when I read the part where Rue (Amandla Stenberg) died. I was ready. And for the most part, I was pleased with the final product. The Hunger Games is an adequate book-to-film adaptation. I wasn’t upset like those idiots crying foul at Rue and Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) being black (I wouldn’t have been upset anyway, because why does it matter, but they are clearly not white in the book, so those people crying foul are even more ridiculous and awful than normal bigots) (I may be a cat bigot though, because I was seriously perturbed that Buttercup wasn’t remotely yellow — WHO WOULD NAME A BLACK AND WHITE CAT BUTTERCUP???), I thought Jennifer Lawrence did a great job, and for a narrative that takes place entirely in Katniss’s mind, the movie did fairly well bringing some of that out into dialogue and action. I wish Peeta had been taller, but honestly I bet Josh Hutcherson wishes that from time to time himself. (I wish Harry Potter was taller too. It’s just one of those things.) Mostly my complaints were small, though, and had to do with ways in which the story was conveyed on film that didn’t match the way they happened in the book, and that undermined specific emotional notes the story was trying to tell.

The one that struck me most pointedly was the point where Claudius (Toby Jones) announces that two victors will be crowned if the last two standing are from the same district. In the book, this gets a spontaneous shriek of Peeta’s name by Katniss, followed by the instantaneous and terrifying thought that she may have just given up her position. She’s being hunted, after all. But it perfectly expressed how much he’d been on her mind, and how much she cared for him (in her stilted, closed-off way) and was avoiding him for the sake of not having to fight him. In the movie, however, this moment comes as a calculated whisper. Katniss is not acting out of emotion but more out of the strategic advantage of having an ally, of putting on a good show, and it will lead her directly into the notion of pretending to love Peeta in order to get sponsorships. It’s a much more cold-hearted approach to Katniss, and one I don’t entirely approve of. Even if Katniss believes and tells herself that her affection for Peeta is all for show, it’s not entirely true in her heart, and in the book that’s quite clear. The somewhat flatter way movies have at their disposal to tell stories, however, makes it very difficult to convey those many layers of emotion and internal conflict, so you’re left with a somewhat unjustly characterized Katniss.

The other instance when this occurs is earlier in the film, when Peeta and Katniss are riding into the Capitol on their chariot for the Tributes Parade. In the scene, Katniss wrenches her hand away from Peeta when he grabs for it, and he convinces her that it would be a good publicity move. Once again, this undercuts the actual emotions of these two characters. In the book it is Katniss, not Peeta, who reaches for the other’s hand. And it’s not in order to look good to the masses, but out of fear and desperation. She needs something to hold onto. It’s indicative of real feelings of connection — even as confusing and muddled as they are for Katniss throughout the series — and vulnerability that are vital to the growth of both characters over the course of the franchise. Katniss reaches for Peeta for protection and security, and he will become a rock for her in many ways that Gale, with his thirst for action and retribution, is not. The moment also makes Peeta far more calculating than he’s ever portrayed in the books, almost as if he doesn’t truly love her but is encouraging her to play a part. Even with Peeta’s masterful strategic manipulation of certain parts of the Games (interviews with Caesar (Stanley Tucci) in particular, but also his early alliance with the Careers), his feelings for Katniss were always sincerely, truly felt, and it feels cheap to take away from it here.

That being said, most of the rest of the movie was a satisfying depiction of a book so many people loved. Elizabeth Banks plays beautifully against type as the uptight, persnickety, procedure-obsessed Effie, and Woody Harrelson is an excellent Haymitch, equal parts slobbering drunk and whip-smart survivor. And Catching Fire is one of the best adaptations of a book yet, so I kind of can’t wait to watch it again. On to the next!