Thursdays at the Theater Vol XIII

Hello there Holy Trinity students, we have now entered into the month of December! I mean, good golly! It seems like it was just last week when 2015 began, and now we’re moving forwards on to a new year, greener pastures, and of course more cinema. December is really the time where the best of cinema seems to gather for me; you have the big blockbusters like In the Heart of the Sea, The Revenant (costing 135 million and opening in limited release), the remake of Point Break (which looks meh to me; go see the original instead), the one and only Star Wars: The Force Awakens which will be upon us in just over two weeks (I mean, can you believe it? But more on that in the next volume), and of course, you have the smaller films like Krampus, The Big Short, Concussion, and Joy.

First, let’s start off with recent releases. The Good Dinosaur was released on American Thanksgiving, and while the film was positively received, it was not viewed as one of Pixar’s better entries. This may have contributed to it being Pixar’s first movie not to open number 1 at the box office, and instead taking a humble 2nd place. Right behind it was Creed, a spinoff of the Rocky franchise that tells the story of Adonis Creed, Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son who wants to get out of the shadow of his father who was an all-time boxing champ. He eventually falls under the mentorship of the one and only Rocky Balboa who has retired from the ring to share his knowledge with a new generation of fighters, and the two form a bond as Adonis tries to prove himself. As a big fan of the original Rocky, I’ve heard nothing but excellent things about this new film, and having it open at 30 million dollars against a 35 million dollar budget is good to see, despite it falling number 3 on opening weekend. However, it had a ton of competition and I think this is a movie that’s going to stay in the top 5 for a while due to positive word of mouth, although when the Christmas releases come out (Star Wars debuts on the 18th so it does not officially count), you will see it get knocked out, I guarantee you. But that’s three weeks away, leaving plenty of time for Creed to collect its due. The comedy The Night Before released, and I’ve gotta say, it looks pretty funny. I’ve heard good things about it, and even the poster makes me giggle every time I look at Seth Rogen’s puffed up face. The film is about three friends, played by Anthony Mackie, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and the aforementioned Seth Rogen, whose lives are changing rapidly, causing them to not hang out as often as they did before. So, the three decide to have one last night of fun before they focus on moving forward without necessarily saying goodbye. And yes, the guy that Seth Rogen plays takes a bunch of drugs throughout the entire feature. It’s rated R, so be prepared for some gutbusters, some offensive material, and Seth Rogen being Seth Rogen. Another recently released film, Spotlight, is about the litany of sexual-abuse allegations directed at several priests who should not be speakers for God, and how a group of journalists exposed them. It stars Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, and Stanley Tucci.

Opening this week and the following week in wide release are Krampus and In the Heart of the Sea. The Big Short is also releasing, though in a limited run, on the 11th which is about the housing crisis in the States a few years back, and how several individuals may or may not turn it to their advantage. It stars Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carrell, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo, and Marisa Tomei. Krampus is about a boy who accidentally summons the demonic anti-Santa from European folklore who punishes the naughty to the extreme on Christmas Eve when he is upset by his family’s boorish and selfish behaviour. Not knowing what he has done, he, his mother, his father and his sister all have to band together and survive the night as visiting family members may or may not end up getting eaten. From the trailer, it looks like that doesn’t matter, they all seem horrible anyways! And of course, we have In the Heart of the Sea, a movie about the true story that inspired the famous novel Moby Dick. The activity of a whaling ship causes a very large and enraged bull sperm whale to destroy it. The crew that survive have to endure the horrifying and the impossible all while sailing to find land. However, First Mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) feels motivated to kill the whale which causes some further tension. I don’t know exactly how much is fact and how much is fiction, but it appears to be pretty faithful to actual events. I can say that it appears to be an awesome time at the movies, and if you want to see something before The Force Awakens is released, I don’t think you can go wrong with much here.

I was able to see The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 the other day, and I can share my thoughts on it now. Uh, I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it: I thought it was okay. Which is a shame, because I really loved Catching Fire and liked the other two. This one just felt… eh. I mean, let’s talk about the pacing first; horrible, absolutely horrible. It’s quiet, and then there’s a brief spurt of ‘action’ which is really focusing on Katniss instead of letting you see all of the cool stuff, then quiet, and when you think it’s going to pick up, the movie’s like: NOPE! You want to see action? HA! Nah, you’re going to get more of that propaganda stuff that was supposed to be over by now. I mean, I get the themes; propaganda is what brainwashes the masses to give the wrong authority power, yadda yadda yadda, but we covered that extensively in Part 1. Why are we still doing it in Part 2?

And when the action does pick up - it’s great, it’s intense, it’s well directed and gives you a sense of danger. However, that ends sooner than it should have, I think there were only 1 or 2 real action scenes, and then it kind of just limps to the conclusion. And to be clear, I read the books. Twice. And I can tell you, I was disappointed by Mockingjay both times because it never felt like Katniss was doing much when she should have. This is the culmination of her journey, why are you going to yank her consistently from where all of the cool stuff is going down to shoot these “propos” as they call them? I mean, why? I get the message, and it worked in the last film because it was meant to be a slower movie, but why are we still doing it? I also felt that a certain character should have been left alive due to the way that character is developed, and that the heel-face turn at the end felt very unsatisfying. I don’t know how you could have ended it, because having a straight-forward ending would be a disservice to this franchise since it’s all about the corruption that absolute power can bring, but the route they eventually go with, on both the page and the screen is just… not thrilling.

And I know I’m going to get blasted for this, but I’m going to say it: Katniss isn’t that interesting in the first half of this movie. She’s consistently a downer, she never even has brief bursts of happiness, and she maintains that same look of ‘I don’t care one bit’. Look, I get it, it’s war, this world is complete crap, but instead of having her moan in a lengthy dialogue about how everybody hates her but loves her with Joanna, a character I did not care for in this film, let’s cut that down a bit and move the plot along with things we care about. We’ve developed Katniss more than enough guys, it’s okay not to have scenes like that. At least, not as long as you made it in order to ‘justify’ splitting this last book in two. However, in the second half, where she’s given a bit more to do, she shows more emotion, she looks like she feels scared and therefore you feel scared as well. I began to see the Katniss Everdeen from the previous films again. And the thing is, I’m not particularly fond of her in general because she’s supposed to not be what you’d call ‘likeable’, she’s just a prickly person by nature. I don’t hate her, she’s just not a character that I look up to. I guess I’m more of a Black Widow type of guy. I do admire Katniss’ tenacity and determination though.

Unfortunately, I find Mockingjay Part 2 to be another example of a studio trying to stretch out a franchise and keep it going longer than it should, and sacrificing quality because of it. If they took out scenes that were just padding in parts 1 and 2, added more action, and maybe increase the run time closer to 3 hours, we could have had a really awesome conclusion. As it stands, I award The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 a 3 out of 5 stars, which isn’t a bad score for a movie. It’s not! I think it has its moments, I think it has its weaknesses, I think that there was a lot of potential here and they should have deviated from the book instead of playing it close to the chest, but it was all just kind of wasted. At least, in comparison to what I think it could have been.

To all of those trying to split their book-to-film-adaptations into two or three parts: STOP IT. These franchises of yours are not Harry Potter, these books that you’re splitting just don’t have enough in them to justify splitting them into two. The Hobbit WOULD have been better off as two movies due to the amount of lore added from book to screen. Two would have been perfect. But three? That was nuts. Although, splitting the upcoming Infinity War in two makes sense given all of the characters that Marvel has in their arsenal. But that’s off-topic, what you need to know is I thought this last entry of The Hunger Games was the weakest, which is a shame as I really liked the others.

Alrighty then, I hope you all enjoyed this volume of Thursdays at the Theater, even if I may have turned it a little sour for you at the end. I’m sorry, that’s how I feel about this last Hunger Games movie, and if you don’t like that, I can’t help you. If you disagree, hey, by all means send a tweet at me, or debate with me on Facebook. Twitter handle is @Cmdr_Volkers and I’m just Joshua Volkers on Facebook. Remember to follow the Titan Times twitter account, like our page on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram so that you can stay up to date about all we do for the paper. This is Joshua Volkers for the Titan Times signing off, I will see you next time, and stay strong Titans!

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