Tag: Francis Lawrence

Red Sparrow

“Red Sparrow” starts with an intriguing premise built around sexual power, but becomes a more convoluted and conventional spy thriller

Red Sparrow poster 2
Fox

The most interesting scene of Red Sparrow could also be its most problematic. Jennifer Lawrence has just stripped off all her clothes and hopped onto a desk in front of a classroom of people. A day earlier, one of her classmates attempted to rape her in the shower, and now he’s standing before her. This is an invitation. But he can’t get it up. “Power, that’s what he wants,” she says.

It’s a line that speaks volumes in the post-Weinstein, #metoo era. And if this were The Handmaid’s Tale, it might just work. Lawrence’s line comes as part of a class in which Russian spies are trained as “sparrows” to use their bodies and sexuality to manipulate their marks. Charlotte Rampling leads the class in which young women and men are asked to give blow jobs and study their own sex tapes. “Your body belongs to the state,” Rampling says. “Now it asks something in return.”

It’s almost laughable, and it’s hard to swallow (forgive the euphemism) within a movie that wants to be about female empowerment and survival. But I’d trade much more of this bizarre, questionable sex boot camp for the convoluted and conventional spy thriller Red Sparrow becomes. Continue reading “Red Sparrow”

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

“Mockingjay – Part 2” is a fitting end to the Hunger Games franchise.

HungerGamesPosterHow do you have a Hunger Games movie without the Hunger Games? That was essentially the problem of “Mockingjay – Part 1,” the padded first half to the third and final entry in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games book trilogy. “Part 2” finds a way to retain that Hunger Games feel without the repeat of the arena setting, and it finds Francis Lawrence’s film back on track for a satisfying conclusion to what has been an otherwise stellar franchise.

The rebel organization housed at District 13 has rescued Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the Capitol’s imprisonment and brainwashing, but at the end of “Part 1” he tried to murder Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and is still suffering from the after effects of the brainwashing. Katniss hopes to bring him back to the real world while organizing a plan of attack to bring down President Snow (an increasingly excellent, understated and chilly Donald Sutherland). The rebel leader President Coin (Julianne Moore) wants to use Katniss as a symbol for the rebellion, but Coin may be plotting a way to kill Katniss and get her out of the way in the event of Coin’s inevitable takeover and rise to power.

All this has traces of the politicking that bogged down “Part 1,” but “Part 2” is far better at reaching those intimate, character driven pow-wows and moments of conflict. Watching and waiting for the film to get to the action, Director Lawrence keeps the audience of two minds, torn between a craving for excitement and Katniss’s want for peace. For the first time in the franchise “Mockingjay” makes the dividing line between good and evil less clear. Katniss comes to realize the people trying to kill her are not her enemy, every drop of blood lost has less and less meaning, and the impact of each on the audience stings more.

“Part 2” gives back the “Hunger Games” feel by trotting Katniss, Peeta, Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and her outfit of teenage Marines into the barren warzone of the Capitol. The streets are littered with “pods” or cleverly designed booby traps. Their unmanned nature makes each feel gamelike, with someone from above pulling the strings and all the rules being decided on the fly. “Mockingjay” toys with everything from stormtroopers, flamethrowers, machine gun traps, spotlights capable of disintegrating and even slimy, faceless zombies that resemble the pale monster in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” One incredible set piece has the team running from a growing pool of oil; touch the surface and you’re immediately impaled by spears of the liquid suspended above the ground.

“The Hunger Games” have always stood out in the creative use of deadly traps and special effects, but it’s also one of the few that goes so far above and beyond the YA novel boilerplate romance and “be yourself” mantra. The symbolism here is all on point, with Katniss literally becoming the “girl on fire” after an explosion, with the floating packages previously used in the games as relief now used as harbingers of death, and with the televised murders of children not just used for action but to implicate us as an audience for enjoying it.

The very first “Hunger Games” showed this was not a trifling franchise just for kids. Katniss is a character in grief and anguish, the world is always in disarray, and love triumphs, but at a cost. “Mockingjay” ends this franchise fittingly; the odds were ever in its favor.

3 ½ stars

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

There was no need for “Mockingjay” to be broke into two sequels, but why does this hardly resemble a Hunger Games movie at all?

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1” started the unfortunate trend of major film franchises splitting tentpole books into two separate films. Though it may be a cash grab, that seventh Harry Potter film is actually one of the most distinct in the series. Six movies of being tied down to Hogwarts and Quidditch, the seventh film took the main characters out of a familiar world, threw them in the forest against insurmountable odds and allowed them to act. They grew up into adults and the whole franchise matured overnight. It’s the most unusual Potter film, yet also David Yates’s best.

The previous “Hunger Games” movie “Catching Fire” was the blockbuster everyone needed after Potter. It was dark, inventive and upped the stakes on the previous film, not an easy task when you consider the first film was about teenagers murdering each other for sport and survival. But it also ended in such a way that “Mockingjay – Part 1” could hardly repeat the successes of the second. Katniss had been thrown into the rebellion, separated from her love and Hunger Games partner Peeta and asked to serve as a symbol she never wanted to be.

“Mockingjay” was poised to rewrite the franchise, but Francis Lawrence’s opportunity to make “Part 1” into something more than a cash grab has been squandered. It’s the most unusual “Hunger Games” yet, but hardly for the better. The fantasy, the color, the intrigue and the creativity has all been sapped from this sequel to make a frustrating half of a movie, one that’s talky, filled with exposition and set pieces that hardly resemble what made either of the first two films memorable. Continue reading “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1”

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” finds new director Francis Lawrence raising the stakes on this already dark franchise.

“The Hunger Games” franchise has now done what it took the Harry Potter movies perhaps four or five films to get right. “Catching Fire” is a sequel that sees its stakes increase tenfold, its action becoming more crisp and polished, its themes growing deeper and its deep cast of talented individuals gelling completely.

It does beg the question, how does a story in which teenagers murder other teens for sport and sacrifice manage to get darker, more serious and more consequential? Gary Ross’s “Hunger Games” was a film about the internal struggle of an individual to find her strength and voice. It treated survival instincts like a virtue. Now in “Catching Fire,” that lone wolf mentality to just survive plays like another death sentence.

New director Francis Lawrence ties “Catching Fire’s” dystopian future concept and steamy love triangle to broader ideas about rebellion, fame, loyalty and psychology. Best of all, he’s packaged it in a slick, suspenseful package that hasn’t lost any of its twisted edge.

“Catching Fire” resumes shortly after Katniss and Peeta’s (Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson) victory from the previous games. Now President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is using their celebrity as a symbol of false hope as he tours them around each district of Panem. Snow threatens to kill Katniss and her family unless she tows the evil Capitol’s line and makes her act in front of the cameras genuine.

Katniss however has become a reluctant symbol of a slowly growing rebel uprising. The film has done a wonderful job playing up the franchise’s iconography, with early shots framing Katniss as a figure of solemn power or people raising three fingers in defiance to the Capitol and making it feel significant. When they do celebrate her legend, people are beaten and killed by the Capitol’s “peacemakers,” faceless stormtroopers modeled off another similar franchise, “Star Wars.”

Because she’s creating problems, the new Master of the Games, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), arranges a special event for the 75th Annual Hunger Games in which past survivors of the games are forced to compete again. Given how few there are still living, Katniss and Peeta are on the chopping block yet again. Continue reading “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”

Water for Elephants

“Water for Elephants” is a classically good romance with a period-piece vibe. The film’s title, which it takes from a book of the same name, is symbolic of the falsity in the main character’s life. But there’s nothing fake about the actual circus of a film director Francis Lawrence creates.

That tangible quality of ‘Water for Elephants” is part of its appeal. Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz all interact with physical, flesh and blood animals including the aforementioned elephant, and their personal interactions are real and simple enough to reach out and touch them.

In a day and age when modern romances can seem so stretched, this one is smart enough to convince us otherwise. Continue reading “Water for Elephants”