Film Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Posted on 20th December 2015 by 5WC in Film

The Hunger Games saga seems to have been around forever. Trying to think back to when I first saw Jennifer Lawrence arrive on the big screen as Katniss Everdean, fighting for her life, in the opening salvo of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, it seems like a life time ago. Apparently, it’s only been 4 years, but it’s reached such a saturation point that I would have sworn it was longer.

I remember that opening movie well because I had turned my nose up to it for a long time (it was teenage dystopian nonsense after all) but watching it, it provided so much more, and me so wrong. It sucked me in and, while it pre-dates the reviews on this blog, won me over with the deep emotive messages it so easily conveyed. It felt real and scary, had me panicked and on the edge of my seat. Yes, it’s teenage dystopian nonsense, but it is nonsense about characters I inexplicably came to care about. I wanted them to be safe. So when Catching Fire arrived I was expecting a lot, only to be left disappointed by a film that felt beyond the “difficult second album”  and instead appeared disjointed and unconnected to the level or depth and empathy the first film had created. Read more

Film Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

Posted on 26th November 2014 by 5WC in Film

The amount of hype that surrounded the release of the next instalment of The Hunger Games has been huge and has managed to create a voice that is loud enough to command debate amongst a raft of hotly talked about film.Peruvian Bears, Dwarves of Middle Earth and plenty of Comic Book reboots have all fallen mute to the arguments played out over whether this film is a purely cynical commercial move or an necessary and acceptable expansion to the franchise.

I came back into the franchise though, completely cold. I haven’t watched a Hunger Games film since I sat in the Cinema 12 months ago to watch Part 2: Catching Fire. And so, the first thing that really hit me was just how little back story this film rekindles. How little this film is capable of standing on it’s own two feet. If you’ve never seen any of the previous incarnations then do not start with a trip to see Mockingjay Part 1, because you will have no idea what is going on. Read more

Film Review: Jack Goes Boating

Posted on 16th August 2014 by 5WC in Film

There was a time when I was much younger, didn’t own a mobile phone let alone have any idea what Facebook, Twitter or Google were and when you went to the cinema you didn’t use an automate ticket machine to collect pre books tickets but instead you’d stand in a queue to waiting to see a usually grumpy lady in a ticket booth, basing your evenings viewings on the names and start times pinned wonkily to the rudimentary felt board behind her.

And while we may now live in a modern age where such simplicities seem fuddy duddy and unthinkable, occassionally, channeling those times forgotten can throw up interesting results. You may noticed that recently I’ve discovered the Curzon Home Cinema service, and last night with only had a couple of pounds left on my account to spend on a film, the choice of what to watch became not what does Rotten Tomatoes rate highly, but rather what can I afford that grabs my attention. Read more