There’s nothing really extraordinary about “The Leisure Seeker,” which is the very thing that makes it such a lovely little film.
Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland play a couple in their 70s from Massachusetts who spontaneously embark on a journey to the Florida Keys in their 1975 Winnebago Indian, whose nickname supplies the film’s title. The old RV hasn’t seen a lot of action in a while, more a vehicle for memories of family vacations than an actual conveyance.
You could say the same of the pair, who seemingly have had their lives stuck in stasis for a long, long time.
It doesn’t take a lifetime for director Paolo Virzì and his quartet of screenwriters (based on the novel by Michael Adoorian) to reveal the purpose behind the trek. John Spencer (Sutherland) is struggling with some sort of dementia. Ella Spencer (Mirren) pops a lot of pills, and when she takes off her wig at night reveals the sort of short-cropped ‘do worn by chemotherapy patients.
The exact nature of their ailments is never stated, but we gather enough to know that Ella’s life is slipping away, while John’s memories are doing the same.
Like “The World’s Fastest Indian” and other road trip films involving seniors, the destination of where they’re going is less important than the reasons for setting off on this jaunt.
The Spencers have a variety of encounters along the way, some positive, a few not, most of them fleeting. Ella is a charming chatterbox who loves to talk to anybody, or everybody. John tends to trap people in long ruminations on Hemingway or other favorite writers, but usually winds up making a connection nobody expected.
Back at home, their grown children Will (Christian McKay) and Jane (Janel Moloney) are appalled at what’s going on. They had apparently convinced their parents to take some critical steps with regard to their lives -- likely involving institutions and/or hospitalization -- and are left worried sick, and resentful.
The usual sorts of encounters you might expect occur -- mechanical troubles, a run-in with Johnny Law, a meeting with miscreants -- but we never really doubt the couple will get where they’re going. Given John’s affinity for Hemingway, it’s no surprise that he’s always dreamed of seeing the (fantastically overrated, imho) writer’s home in Key West, and Ella wants to make that wish come true while there’s still a little time left.
What’s best about the movie is how it drills deep into a 50-year marriage, showing us that while the fire of passion can remain undimmed after all that time, there will naturally be resentments and recriminations that have piled up in the passing of years. John is peeved about Ella’s boyfriend prior to him, convinced she still pines for him, while Ella harbors suspicions about the many young coeds who were mentored by John in his role as a literature professor.
This is also a very realistic portrait of dementia. John can be spot-on one moment, then loses his way the next. He’ll protest his undying love for Ella, then a few minutes later confuse her for their next-door neighbor back home (Dana Ivey). “The Leisure Seeker” also shows us the strains placed on the caregiver, as Ella occasionally snaps after years of unceasing support.
Getting old is both a beautiful and scary thing, especially when two people in love do it together. Marriage is a journey, quite literally in this case, and the bumps in the road are often what we hold onto best.
Prepare to be shocked: I actually read all of the “Hunger Games” novels by Suzanne Collins, most of them prior to their movie version coming out.
Prepare to be even more shocked -- shockeder? -- I actually enjoyed them.
So when I pile on these films, it’s not out of dismissive distaste for young adult fiction in general or this series in particular. It’s out of… well, not love exactly. But at least like, which is genuine if not overly exuberant.
The biggest problem with “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2” is the “Part 2.”
This series, like other science fiction and fantasy genres (Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Twilight) takes the artistically craven idea of splitting up the last book into two different movies. It’s a transparent -- and successful -- attempt to wrangle twice the ticket sales from the same amount of story. Having come along already for two, three or more movies, fans are unlikely to bail. So it’s “print your own money” time.
This is the sort of decision made by accountants rather than storytellers.
While decently engaging, there simply isn’t enough narrative in Collins’ “Mockingjay” to justify nearly five hours’ worth of movie. The result is an overlong bore with surprisingly few action scenes or emotional thrills.
As the story opens, heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is leading a small team of rebels into the heart of the Capitol District to overthrow the nefarious President Snow (Donald Sutherland), who kept the outlying districts in line by making their youngsters fight in gladiator-style games lapped up by the jaded television viewing masses.
The city has been laden with high-tech traps -- mutants, fireballs, snares, etc. -- so they’re essentially traversing through another iteration of the Hunger Games.
Complicating things is the presence of Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a fellow contestant from Katniss’ home district who was kidnapped and brainwashed by Snow. They faked a romance, and even a pregnancy, to earn the adulation of fans and become the first-ever couple to jointly win the Games. But now Peeta lives in a state of induced paranoia, and thinks Katniss is the cause of all his pain.
It’s hard to lead an assassination effort when a member of the team is trying to kill you, too.
Fold in the shifting schemes of the insurgent leader (Julianne Moore) and the mysterious machinations of the chief Gamemaker (the late and sorely missed Philip Seymour Hoffman), and you’ve got a confusing mishmash of loyalties and threats.
While “Mockingjay” the book built up to a serviceable crescendo in both plot and character development, the second half of the movie adaptation is surprisingly dull. Not enough action happens to keep us engaged, and the talkie scenes in between feel like labored filler.
Big budget, multi-part film franchises should continually raise the stakes and suck us ever further into the story. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2” limps to a drawn-out ending.
Whatever you want to say about the quality of these films, they’ve consistently been released on video with top-drawer bonus features. This time is no exception.
There is a full commentary track with director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson; an eight-part, feature-length documentary touching on virtually every aspect of the production, from special effects to casting; a photographic look at the behind-the-scenes journey; costume sketches; an exhibition from past fictional Panem Games, and more.
You can also buy “The Hunger Games Complete 4-Film Collection,” which includes 14 hours of bonus content from all the movies, including 139 featurettes and dozens of deleted scenes, many of them never seen before.
The "Hunger Games" saga ends not with a bang but a yawn. I haven't been a fan of this overstuffed film franchise based on the popular YA novels, but the final entry is easily the most tedious and least entertaining of the bunch.
Like other recent sci-fi/fantasy series, it takes the now-familiar and thoroughly discredited route of dividing the last novel into two movies. It's a transparent attempt to sell twice as many tickets for the same amount of story. With the Harry Potter books and the Hobbit, there was at least enough narrative to give the final movie momentum.
Suzanne Collins' engaging but thinly plotted book simply doesn't.
If you'll remember where we left off, the rebellious uprising against the Capitol District was starting to stick it to the villainous President Snow (Donald Sutherland, in full twinkly smirk mode) with the help of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) acting as the Mockingjay, the face of the insurgents.
But really, she has been more or less in thrall to the District 13 chief, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), head creator of the nefarious Hunger Games, in which children killed each other for sport. Meanwhile, former ersatz lover Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) -- a relationship concocted for the benefit of the Games audience -- has been brainwashed by Snow into a maniacal urge to kill Katniss. And Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Katniss' stoic and grim actual love interest, labors hard at becoming grimmer and even more stoic.
Have I got all those names and faces straight? Good. A few other formerly important figures are in the mix, such as mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and Katniss' kid sister, but they only show up to service the plot and then leave.
(Harrelson seems to have been given most of the expositive lines left over from Hoffman, who died during production.)
Basically, it's end times for Snow and the other leaders of Panem. Katniss and an ever-shrinking team of soldiers is infiltrating the Capitol on a quest (unauthorized) to take him out and end the war. But the outlying portion of the city has been evacuated and filled with pod snares, mutant mutts and other nasty challenges, essentially making it another giant booby-trapped iteration of the Hunger Games.
Peeta is unwisely inserted into the group as a PR move, and is distrusted by all, particularly Katniss. But his kind nature slowly reasserts itself over the mental "hijacking" he underwent, and she begins to remember the altruistic boy who has sacrificed so much for her.
There are surprisingly few action scenes. It's mostly running and hiding as the group makes its way toward Snow, are picked off by pods, share a few standoffs, etc. Only an attack in the sewers by mutated human "mutts" contains anything like a genuine thrill.
You wouldn't think that what is essentially one long chase would add up to a 2¼-hour movie... and it doesn't. "Mockingjay Part 2" is filled with pregnant pauses and dead spots. Despite some talented actors, the material is too goofy to ever take seriously. Snow dismisses Katniss as an easily manipulated puppet who's only good at shooting a bow, and for once the bad guy has it right.
"1900" is a movie that is at once very large and very small.
It was Bernardo Bertolucci's self-conscious attempt to create an epic film about Italy's struggle between fascism and socialism. He framed his tale around two characters, the son of a rich landowner or padrone and the son of a peasant, who were born on the same day and raised together. We watch them from boyhood to middle age to dotage, striving against each other, eternal friends and combatants.
The title is somewhat confusing. In Italian it was known as "Twentieth Century" to indicate the scope and sweep of the story, but perhaps they thought American audiences would confuse it with the studio. So they came up with "1900," which itself is something of a misnomer, since the movie explicitly begins on the day Giuseppe Verdi died, in 1901, when both boys are born.
Released nearly 40 years ago, "1900" is known today for three things.
There is the sexual content, which at one point earned an NC-17 rating during a 1991 re-release. It includes a scene where fully nude stars Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu are masturbated by a women simultaneously -- one (obstinately flaccid) cock in each hand.
There are the various edits of the film, all of them long. Bertolucci fought with his financial backers, at one point being literally locked out of the editing room, and different iterations of "1900" have been shown at different times and venues. Traditionally the movie has been exhibited in two parts, though the run time has varied quite a bit. I saw the full director's cut, a hair over 5¼ hours, which places it among the longest narrative films ever released.
(There is no official intermission, and my viewing took place over several days, by necessity.)
Lastly, there is the pretty uniform perception that the film is a dog, a disaster even. Right after "Last Tango in Paris," Bertolucci was being hailed as the new European master. Many people were expecting the Italian equivalent of "The Godfather" parts 1 & 2, and were left sorely disappointed by the shambling narrative.
Roger Ebert put it succinctly in his review: "Bertolucci had his pick of actors, a free run with his budget, the freedom to make a personal film. And he blew it."
I think it's still a worthy cinematic experience, and certainly it is a very beautiful film to gaze upon. Ennio Morricone, one of my favorite film composers, came up with a lush score to back up the visuals of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The rustic, slightly dreamy look of it reminded me very much of Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven."
The main problem with the film is that it wants to use the two main characters, Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò (De Niro and Depardieu, respectively), as representatives of the competing aims of fascism and socialism, and neither one is a particularly good fit.
Olmo is a born troublemaker who instinctively identifies with the collectivist agrarian ideas of his large clan, who have worked the Berlinghieri lands for generations, essentially as indentured servants. He has a tendency to provoke conflict but then shy away from the consequences, so he doesn't make for a very heroic leader of the proletariat. When he finally stands up enough to make the fascists respond, he runs away, so their punishment is visited upon his family instead.
Alfredo is even thornier. As played by De Niro, he's a pampered rich boy who takes his wealth and status for granted, but is more sympathetic to the socialist sentiments of his workforce than are his fellow landowners. When we first meet him in young manhood, Alfredo is extremely cocky and hedonistic, preferring parties, booze and cocaine over the dull homestead. Later, after taking his place as padrone, he becomes defined by his indecision. A main character who won't make a choice is rarely a compelling one.
He won't stand up to the local leader of the fascist blackshirts, Attila, even though he is Alfredo's employee. Donald Sutherland plays Attila, a snarling, depraved man who sees the fascist movement as the proper vehicle in which to express his masochism and lust for power. We see him use his forehead to smash the life out of a helpless cat, and later he sodomizes and then kills a young boy in a similar fashion.
Sutherland is arresting in the role, by far the most vivid character in "1900." But narratively he's problematic.
It's much the same issue I had with the Michael Fassbender character in "12 Years a Slave." By making a single person the representation of all evil in a movement that entailed millions of people, you end up making that character a cartoon. And you let the multitudes who embraced fascism/slavery/the Holocaust, etc. -- or were complacent in its atrocities -- off the hook.
So why exactly won't Alfredo simply fire Attila and banish him from his lands, given that the essentially existed in a feudal system with himself as lord? It's never really answered, or even explored.
The best part of the film is the first 90 minutes or so when Olmo and Alfredo are rambunctious boys. Roberto Maccanti and Paolo Pavesi play them as youths of about 12, and are both terrific. (They have their own controversial nude scene in which they compare their foreskins.)
They have all sorts of spats and adventures, such as Olmo lying underneath a passing locomotive. (Alfredo takes up the dare but then balks.) In one of the film's most visually memorable moments, Olmo catches live frogs from the farm's irrigation canals and ties them, alive and wriggling, to his hat.
Two figures who lord over this section with magisterial sweep are the boys' grandfathers. Leo Dalcò is played by the great Sterling Hayden, while Burt Lancaster is Alfredo Berlinghieri the elder. Each man has an intuitive grasp of his place in the world, and their relationship to each other. In some ways it mirrors that of their grandchildren, a strange brew of respect, affection and antagonism.
Leo is initially hostile to the socialist movement, teaching Olmo that he will always be a peasant and to accept his fate. Still, his heart is with the land and the people, so it doesn't take much to convince him to join a strike. Leo is a servant of capitalist tradition, but socialist ideals aren't much of a stretch for him: "If it's yours," he tells young Olmo, "then it belongs to all of us."
The older Berlinghieri has traits of both nobility and venality about him. He sees his workers as chattel, much like the stock in his milking pen, but he's also the sort of man who believes in treating his animals well. His own son, young Alfredo's father, inherits all of the man's pride and entitlement but none of his wisdom. In another seminal moment from the film, when the new padrone tells the workers he's cutting their wages in half, one of the men slices off his own ear and offers it to the master as a symbol of his lost dignity.
"1900" loses focus and momentum in the second half. Much of it is taken up with Alfredo's relationship and marriage with a half-mad Parisian woman, Ada, played by Dominique Sanda. Her face and low, dusky voice reminded me very much of Lauren Bacall. She's one of those women who insists on being the center of attention in any room she occupies, even if she has to act completely batty to force the limelight. Predictably, she becomes resentful of life in the country and turns to drink.
Olmo's own wife, Anita (Stefania Sandrelli), checks out of the movie midway, dying in childbirth. She is actually Olmo's instructor in the ways of socialism, but their relationship doesn't have much spark outside of that.
The other significant character is Regina, Alfredo's cousin and childhood playmate. She clearly expected to become his wife one day, and when he chooses a wan foreigner over her, it drives Regina into the arms of Attila. She becomes his hate-whisperer, urging him on to ever more destructive acts as a way to spite Alfredo.
Regina is played by Laura Betti. About 20 years older than De Niro and Depardieu, with a matronly build and stout face, Betti's presence is an incongruous one, seeming more like the witchy aunt than the third leg of a supposed love triangle.
It's interesting to note that Bertolucci filmed "1900" with actors from America, France, Italy and other nations, and instructed them all to speak in their native language. This was a not uncommon practice with international productions of the 1960s and '70s -- Sergio Leone did so with his spaghetti Westerns. So watching the film on video poses a dilemma.
In general I prefer to view non-English films in their own language with subtitles. But doing so meant watching De Niro, Lancaster and Hayden with obviously dubbed voices -- and not very good ones, either. Meanwhile, Depardieu speaks in French, the Italians in Italian, and so forth.
So I opted to watch mostly in English, but would switch to French for Depardieu's long dialogue scenes and occasionally to Italian. (This revealed that Sanda, with her distinctive low moan, apparently did her English and French lines herself.)
It was somewhat distracting, but not much. I can only imagine how it complicated the give-and-take between actors on a set.
"1900" is a flawed film, but it's certainly a noble failure. Seeing it is obviously not a thing to be undertaken lightly, given the sheer investment in time alone. But I am glad I did so.
So once again, a big fantasy/science fiction book-to-film franchise is coming to a close, and has decided to split up the last novel into two movies. We’ve seen it a bunch of times now, from “Twilight” to “Harry Potter,” and invariably the penultimate movie winds up being rather a bore, stuffed with exposition that will only pay off in the final flick.
“The Hunter Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” – now there’s a mouthful – is no exception.
Mercifully shorter than its predecessors, “Mockingjay” nonetheless has a much lower thrills-to-doldrums ratio, with really only one major action sequence to carry the momentum. The rest of the time, it’s Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) adjusting to her new life in the underground fortress of the militaristic District 13, epicenter of the rebellion against the evil Capitol and President Snow.
As the story opens, Katniss has been rescued from the gladiator-style Hunger Games, in which comely teenagers battle to the death as entertainment and as a way to subjugate the Districts. But her partner and ersatz lover Peta (Josh Hutcherson) remains in the hands of Snow. This section of the story covers the rising battle of propaganda between the two sides, with Katniss enlisted as the symbol of the revolt.
She’s not fully accepted by the District 13 folks, particularly the cunning president, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). Luckily there are a few familiar faces, including Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to offer counsel and prodding.
What’s made Katniss a compelling character in the other movies is that she’s a doer who takes a stand and then acts upon it – sometimes impulsively and disastrously, but always with genuine resolve. Here, she’s relegated to reacting and talking, and it makes for one dull parade.
Whatever I might think of the movie, it’s being released on video with a handsome set of bonus features.
These include a feature-length commentary track; nine deleted scenes; a tribute to Hoffman; music video and featurette; and “The Mockingjay Lives: The Making of Mockingjay – Part 1,” an eight-part feature-length documentary on the making of the film. All told, extras run to five hours of material.
I haven't been a big fan of "The Hunger Games" series in general, and now it's fallen into the trap of so many fantasy/supernatural franchises based on books -- splitting up a novel into two movies. It's been done by Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Twilight and I'm sure the Divergent folks are gearing up to follow suit.
Nearly always, this is done for business rather than artistic reasons -- why sell one ticket to the series' slavering YA fans when you can sell two?
What usually ends up happening is that the penultimate movie is a bunch of boring exposition and build-up, and you have to wait for the follow-up for the real catharsis.
It should be noted that "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1" is 20-25 minutes shorter than the previous two films, and the lack of a substantive narrative is glaring. It essentially plays out as Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), having escaped the tortures of the gladiator-like televised games organized by the oppressive nation of Panem, spending most of the movie wandering around looking haunted and google-eyed.
The thing we liked about Katniss is that she's tough, resourceful and fiercely independent. She made things happen and shook things up. Here, relegated to a more passive, reactionary role, she comes across as a whiny teen thrust onto a stage she hasn't earned.
The action scenes are still engaging, what few of them there are, and Donald Sutherland still has a twinkly, loathsome presence as President Snow, the thoroughly evil dictator brutally putting down a rebellion inspired by Katniss, aka the Mockingjay.
Long stretches, though, are just plain dull.
If you'll recall from the last movie: Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), having jointly won their Hunger Games by faking a romance for the benefit of the audience, were recalled by Snow to participate in another games featuring past champions. It turns out the rebellion, aided by Games Master Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), had rigged the games to break out Katniss and several other of the champions as a way to stoke the rebellion in the various Districts.
Katniss, brilliant scientist Betee (Jeffrey Wright) and pretty boy Finnick (Sam Claflin) were rescued, but Peeta and the others were captured by the forces of the Capital. Katniss finds herself in the hands of District 13, the stark underground home base of the rebellion, which is led by enigmatic president Coin (Julianne Moore).
She finds some familiar faces who survived the bombing of her own district, including her mother, sister and Gale (Liam Hemsworth), her childhood friend and would-be lover. Katniss is tasked with appearing in a bunch of propaganda videos, or propos, decked out in a cool black Mockingjay uniform. But she turns out to be a terrible actress, so they decide to put her into actual combat, which yields some better footage. The war plays out mostly offscreen, with reports of various insurrections and retaliations filtering in.
The big surprise is when Peeta starts showing up in Capital broadcasts as the counterpoint to Katniss, urging peace and responsibility. He's denounced as a traitor by the rebels, and Katniss has to deal with her complicated feelings for him. She doesn't fully return the romantic ardor Peeta had for her, but there is love on some level. The pair, formerly faux lovers, are pushed by their respective backers into positions of antagonism.
Director Francis Lawrence, a holdover from the last movie, is joined by two new screenwriters, Danny Strong and Peter Craig, in adapting Suzanne Collins' novel. I've actually read all three of the Hunger Games books -- don't judge; it was research! -- and have been surprised by how faithfully the films have followed them.
Fans may appreciate this ultimate fidelity, but it can actually be a problem when adapting a book to the movies. The rhythms of the page and the screen are completely different, and I think that's why so many sections of this movie feel like we're treading water, story-wise.
I mean, at this point what purpose do Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and Effie (Elizabeth Banks) serve in the movie, other than recalling some friendly faces? Their tiny bit of expositional dialogue could easily be passed off to other characters. Kill 'em off, I say.
They key challenge in adapting a book to film is finding ways to condense and distill the tale down to its essence. There's no such attempt at cinematic alchemy here.
I first encountered Ken Follett's novel "Eye of the Needle" when I was fairly young, and found it a rousing good read. Not surprising considering it featured a lot of violence, Nazi spies, WWII intrigue and a fair amount of sex -- all catnip to a young reader.
The 1981 film version contains all of that stuff, but manages to be dull and lifeless. It's the story of a German spy with a secret that holds the fate of the entire war in the balance -- have you noticed that every war movie has this? -- who ends up seducing a lonely British housewife on an isolated island.
Donald Sutherland, one of the finest modern actors never to be nominated for an Oscar, is charming and icy as Henry Faber, a seemingly pleasant everyman working as a clerk at a shipyard. Of course, he's secretly transmitting all the troop movements to his German command in preparation for the Allied invasion of France. As we've heard before in a hundred other war pictures, great pains were taken to convince the Axis the invasion would happen further to the north instead of at Normandy.
Faber discovers the huge armada of American airplanes are actually fakes made out of wood and canvas, takes pictures of the lot, and prepares to bring this crucial information back to the Fatherland so he can personally deliver it to Hitler. He had been transmitting his intelligence via radio, but that was compromised early in the movie (requiring the murder of Faber's landlady).
This little plot point provides crucial late in the game, when Faber is trapped on remote Storm Island waiting to be picked up by a U-boat, and he has to find a way to radio the submarine to coordinate his pickup. Of course, he could always have spoken a few words into the transmitter and his mission would've been accomplished. But then, as they say, we wouldn't have a movie.
Kate Nelligan is sympathetic as Lucy, the woman who takes Faber into her bed seemingly four minutes after she's met him. She's more or less been abandoned by her husband, David (Christopher Cazenove), who lost his legs in a car accident on the day of their wedding. (Cazenove is an able-bodied actor, and the various half-hearted attempts to depict him otherwise leave it unclear whether the character is supposed to wear prosthetics or not.) Now he lives out his days as a sheep farmer on the island, rejecting any physical affection from his wife and virtually ignoring their young tow-headed son, burying his sorrows in drink.
Lucy and Faber begin their affair almost immediately, the first day after Faber shipwrecks his stolen trawler on the shores during a storm. By the time of their last coupling, though, Lucy knows that her lover has killed her husband, resulting in a disturbing scene that implies the sex is coerced out of fear for her life and her child's.
The most interesting thing about Faber of course is his code name, The Needle, and why it's given: his penchant for dispatching his foes with a stiletto knife.
My recollection of the book is the stiletto is a narrow-bladed dagger with a hilt, which the Needle uses to thrust into his victims so they die without very much messy blood loss. I seem to recall he favored stabbing in the neck upward, so as to pierce the brain, resulting in instantaneous death.
In the movie, though, Faber uses a huge modified switchblade -- since that's what American audiences think of when they hear the word "stiletto." And he invariably stabs them in the gut, on the left side approximately where the stomach should be. Blood spurts out in a crimson river, and his victims invariably fall dead within seconds -- in contradiction of biology and basic common sense. The extension of the knife's blade is always accompanied by a harsh metallic "skree" sound, perhaps a forbear to the "snikt" of Wolverine's claws.
The biggest problem with "The Eye of the Needle" is that it's essentially two different movies smushed together. The first half is about Faber's flight from British authorities, led by a resolute but one-dimensional Ian Bannen. This includes a tense sequence aboard a train, where Faber is recognized by a soldier he used to be friendly with when he was a boy. Needless to say, he gets the needle.
Then the syrupy romance part takes over in the second half, leading up to a confrontation between Lucy and her would-be lover. Their combat is quite messy -- including cutting off some of his fingers with an axe -- yet Faber remains hesitant to use the full extent of his prowess. This begs the question of whether the spy truly feels something for the Englishwoman, or if she's simply a means to an end.
Given the confused logistics of the finale, "Eye of the Needle" is a movie that leaves us with more questions than answers, and even the questions aren't all that interesting.
Director Richard Marquand would go on to direct "Star Wars VI: Return of
the Jedi," an odd choice given his meager film credits, including this
one. He later made "Jagged Edge" and "Hearts of Fire," Bob Dylan's brief
foray into film acting, before dying young at age 49.
The problem with many fantasy book franchises that get turned into a series of movies is the individual films often seem much like one another. I enjoyed the first couple of “Harry Potter” flicks, but by the time the third one rolled around I felt like I’d already paid enough for the same dance.
“The Hunger Games” only needs two films to arrive at dreary repetition. “Catching Fire,” the sequel to 2012’s mega-hit, unrolls in very much the same fashion, culminating with gladiator-like games where young champions vie to kill each other off while an agitated populace is forced to watch on TV.
The only real difference is that Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is no longer an unknown novice from a remote district, but the reigning champion along with her childhood friend Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), with whom she carries on a faux romance for the benefit of the cameras.
She’s recruited (aka forced) to participate in a new set of games featuring former champions by the evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland), who fears Katniss has become the lynchpin of a brewing rebellion. He’s even hired a new Games Master, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), to devise insanely diabolical challenges for the competitors.
Katniss and Peeta quickly find themselves in an unlikely alliance with other players, but at times it seems like the very environment is out to get them.
“Catching Fire” isn’t bad, but it takes a long time to get going, and even when it does we’ve already seen all there is to see.
Video extras are decent enough. The DVD version comes with a feature-length commentary track by director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson and deleted scenes.
Go for the Blu-ray combo pack, and you add a nine-part feature-length documentary about the making of the film, “Surviving the Game: Making Catching Fire.”
(Note: “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” will be released on video Friday, March 7.)
"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" isn't any worse than the smash hit from last year, but that isn't really saying very much. This overly faithful adaption of the super-popular young adult novels by Suzanne Collins returns brave heroine Katniss Everdeen for another go-around that plays in large part like a broken record.
The tearful selection to the Games, in which champions from a dystopian America's 12 districts must fight gladiator-style for all the world to watch? It's here. The blunt tutoring by burnt-out former victor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson)? Ditto. Costumed pageantry and a gleeful skewering of our celebrity-obsessed media? Loved ones in peril? Sneering resentment by other, pampered, champions? Here, here, here.
And of course, the actual games themselves, which take up the latter half of the film. Once the action starts things pick up well, but it's a long, long slog until the arrows start flying.
The only real difference here is that the stirrings of rebellion against evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland) have blossomed after Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and her district partner, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), managed to defy all expectations and win the last Games together. Snow believes she's the face of the rebellion, and would snuff her out if he didn't fear that would stoke unrest even more.
He recruits a new Games Master, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), to come up with a devilishly sadistic scenario for the 75th annual games centered around bringing back past victors. It's all just an excuse to put Katniss in peril.
We get the familiar scenes of the champions at practice, making threats and showing off their killer muscle definition. There's a pair of Aryan siblings, some older scientist types, a gal who files her teeth to jagged points, a mentally unhinged chick with an axe, an anonymous big bald dude, and a scattering of others who are quickly forgotten or killed off.
Chief among the new arrivals is Finnick (Sam Claflin), a golden boy who seems to absolutely smack his lips at the prospect of going up against Katniss and Peeta.
The love triangle from the last film continues, again without much resolution. Katniss loves Gale (Liam Hemsworth), a stolid miner from back home, while Peeta is hopelessly smitten by her. They continue their supposed romance for the benefit of the cameras, even concocting up a planned wedding. It's taken its toll on Peeta, though, who wants to sacrifice himself to save his unrequited lady love.
New director Francis Lawrence has a good eye for the action scenes, but anytime the characters have to just stand there and talk to each other, it's pure death. It's a turgid, curiously emotionless affair -- something you'd think would be difficult, given all the death and ardor being flung around.
"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" will likely please its molten core of fans, mostly teen girls. But I found it to be a fantasy-adventure soap opera, where clothes and media gossip get just as much play as the battles to the death.
"The Eagle Has Landed" is a pretty preposterous movie based on a ridiculous premise, but a terrific cast almost pulls it out of the garbage heap. Director John Sturges -- veteran of several terrific pictures including "The Great Escape" and "The Magnificent Seven" -- has a keen eye for composition and knows how to stage action scenes very well.
But this was also his last film, ending his career on something of a sour note (though commercially the movie was quite successful).
I'm not sure what Sturges really could have done with the material, based on a novel by Jack Higgins. The setup is that the Germans come up with a cockamamie plot to kidnap Winston Churchill. In late 1943, the war is considered already lost by most high up in the Third Reich, but they figure capturing the bull of England can at least delay the inevitable for awhile, and increase the morale of the Axis.
Robert Duvall plays Radl, the colonel charged with coming up with a plan to grab Churchill. The idea came from the real-life rescue of Benito Mussolini by German paratroopers from the mountain ski resort where he was being held by the Italians who deposed him.
His commander (Anthony Quayle) gives Radl the assignment out of disgust, calling it a silly joke. Write up a contingency plan so somebody can stick it in the bottom of their desk, is how he puts it. Radl laughs along, but as he pokes into the intelligence he learns that the idea actually has merit. Churchill is scheduled to vacation in the remote (fictional) coastal town of Studley Constable. It would be a simple matter to sneak in a team of soldiers, snatch him up and get out on a disguised ship.
I liked the Radl character quite a lot. A decorated hero, now relegated to unimportant duties by his wounds -- he's missing an eye and, apparently, his left hand is a prosthetic. Duvall gives him a sad, noble quality, the weary soldier who knows he serves a corrupt and loathsome regime but offers his full loyalty nonetheless.
Michael Caine plays Steiner, the disgraced paratrooper colonel selected by Radl to lead the mission. When we first meet Steiner, he and his men are returning from a tough fight on the Soviet front, and encounter German soldiers putting Jews aboard a train.
Inexplicably, Steiner goes into a rage, strikes another officer and helps a woman captive attempt to escape. Instead, she's shot and killed. He and his men are court-martialed and assigned to suicidal duty in the English Chanel, so Radl's offer is their only chance to be regain honor.
Why would a loyal soldier of the Reich object to the well-known plan for the Jews? It's never really made clear, and the Steiner character remains something of a mystery until the end. Caine and Sturges reportedly battled during production, and it resulted in the main character remaining distant and unrelatable.
Donald Pleasence also has a terrific little turn as Heinrich Himmler, who personally authorizes the Eagle mission via a letter signed by Hitler himself, which may or may not be a forgery. It's soon clear that Radl is Himmler's catspaw, to be used and disposed of based on the outcome of the operation.
Donald Sutherland has a corker of a role as Liam Devlin, an IRA insurgent who gets recruited into the mission by the Germans. He's a red-headed charmer and brawler, sent ahead to infiltrate the town as a marsh warden -- a position of dubious meaning to these American ears. He carries a shotgun and patrols the countryside, so I gather he's a constable of some sort.
While spying things out, Devlin falls for local lass Molly (Jenny Agutter), almost 19 and an accomplished equestrian. Their affair is perhaps the most outlandish aspect of the whole over-the-top story. Despite knowing Devlin for a grand total of two days, Molly is somehow willing to betray her countrymen, and even kill one of them, to protect a German spy.
Devlin gets into trouble with a local tough who has a sweet eye on Molly. Upon their first meeting at the local pub, he refused Devlin's offer to buy him a drink. After Devlin pummels the man in a bout of fisticuffs, the old gravedigger throws a bucket of water on the man's face to revive him, and offers the movie's funniest line:
"Well Arthur, looks like he bought you a drink after all!"
The whole cast acquits themselves well, and all of the half-dozen leads are terrific in their roles, even as the script (by Tom Mankiewicz) requires them to do and say some pretty zany stuff.
I should point out that this is a rare World War II movie in which English and American actors play Germans, which makes for some strange audience dynamics as the action plays out. Late in the game we're introduced to an imbecile American reserve colonel played by Larry Hagman, who frets about the war ending without him getting any combat experience.
When he learns about the Churchill plot, he declines to inform his superiors and rushes off with a few men to stop take on the Germans himself. Steiner's seasoned men quickly dispatch the Yanks in a sequence that almost reaches Keystone Kops levels of comedy -- until we remember these are American soldiers fighting and dying (poorly).
The film ends as absurdly as it progressed. Steiner, his entire command decimated, refuses to flee and impersonates an American soldier (Jeff Conaway), continuing the mission to kidnap Churchill, alone. He manages to make it to the mansion where they've hidden him, sneak up and kill him, dying himself moments later when guards arrive.
The young American captain (Treat Williams) marvels at his audacity to single-handedly murder the British leader -- but then we learn that the dead man is the double of the real Churchill, who's actually meeting with FDR and Stalin in Tehran.
In other words, the entire enterprise was a ruse. It's a fitting end for a movie about a made-up plot that was a joke until it became something more.
I loved the cast of "The Eagle Has Landed," but it fails Gene Siskel's test of whether you'd prefer to watch the same people doing almost anything else instead.
If you took movies like "The American" or "Taken" -- lean, efficient thrillers about hit men struggling with their violent histories -- and stripped them of any intellectual pretense, you'd have "The Mechanic."
Credit this new action flick from stolid B-list leading man Jason Statham ("The Transporter," "Crank") and director Simon West ("Con Air") with being self-aware. It doesn't try to dazzle with deep meditations on aging assassins filled with regret. This is a movie devoted to celebrating mayhem, which it does with straightforward flair.
Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a veteran "mechanic" or hit man. He works for a shadowy group that simply calls itself "The Company," but we don't get the sense it's a governmental agency hunting bad guys. Bishop receives a file from time to time, which names a target he's to take out.
Sometimes the kill is supposed to be big and bloody, to send a message to the world. Other times, Bishop is expected to carry out his mission without anyone knowing he was ever there.
Much of the film's enjoyment comes from watching Bishop come up with all sorts of ingenious ways to execute his victims. An opening sequence involving a Columbian drug lord surrounded by a veritable army of gun-toting guards comes down to an afternoon swim and a wristwatch.
Things go south when Bishop receives his new assignment, and it's to take out his own handler, a wheelchair-bound old-timer named McKenna (Donald Sutherland). The boss (a slithery Tony Goldwyn) claims McKenna was taking bribes and set up another team of assassins, who all perished. Since Bishop is his friend, they figure he'll have the best chance of slaying McKenna with no mess.
But a mess finds a way to stick to Bishop anyway, in the form of McKenna's screw-up of a son, Steve. Steve doesn't have any plans beyond drinking up his dad's stores of scotch before the bank comes to repossess the house, so Bishop decides to take him under his wing and train Steve as his protégé.
This is the film's best section, as the two men slowly gain a trust that Bishop knows will eventually be punctured when Steve learns that his mentor was the one who killed his father. Steve is played by Ben Foster, who lends his character a skeevy but soulful presence.
Foster's made something of a career stealing scenes as a sidekick to bigger stars -- "3:10 to Yuma," "The Messenger" -- and does so again here.
The final act of the movie is a paint-by-numbers affair in which Bishop and Steve team up to annihilate the organization they'd been working for. Still, the action scenes are crisp and engaging -- especially a rooftop shootout that ends in a sudden drop.
The screenplay is by Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino, who also wrote the 1972 original film starring Charles Bronson upon which this is based.
"The Mechanic" scores because it knows what it is and isn't -- it thrives not on brainpower, but the horsepower of bloody havoc.
