Review: "Midway"

What a good old-fashioned rip-roarer war picture. “Midway” is the sort of movie they made 40 to 60 years ago starring John Wayne or Henry Fonda and a bunch of other guys, but with modern CGI effects for the extravaganza air-and-sea battles.

I went in skeptical that famously schmaltzy conductor of disaster flicks, director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”), would deliver anything more than another soulless special effects showcase. But paired with screenwriter Wes Tooke, a rookie to feature film scripts, and a solid cast of square-jawed actors of varying fame, I left amazed and more than a little shook.

The aerial combat scenes are just flabbergastingly good. The pilots careen and yaw all over the screen, a concerto of impacts and explosions sounding all around them. There are plenty of dogfights with Japanese Zeroes, with cutaways to how it all looks from the ground.

Best of all are the bombing runs, as the Americans tip tail over nose and dive seemingly straight down vertically, the Japanese aircraft carriers blasting a storm cloud of flak into their faces, pulling up at only the very last moment. Their wingtips kiss the ocean surface before climbing again.

It’s like taking a ride on the world’s longest, deepest roller coaster ridden by yowling demons bound straight for the fiery furnaces of hell.

The story actually sets up the war in the Pacific beginning at Pearl Harbor and all through the important military developments before Midway, including the battle at Marshall Islands and the James Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart) raid on Tokyo. The last hour or so of the movie is the titular battle, which is generally regarded as the turning point of the war.

Like a lot of old-school war flicks, the action flips back and forth between the pilots and ship captains on the front lines with the commanders and intelligence boys back at HQ, and does a good job of seeing how one group played off the other.

Patrick Wilson is Edwin Layton, a dweeby intelligence officer who predicted the attack on Pearl, and now has to pluck up the courage to convince the top brass to rely on the info from his team, which includes military band members turned into codebreakers. Woody Harrelson (!) plays Admiral Chester Nimitz, put in charge of the Pacific effort while most of the fleet was sunken or smoking.

Ed Skrein is terrific as Dick Best, the prototypical hotshot cowboy pilot who flies like he doesn’t care about coming back. Then he’s placed in command and has to become the shepherd to a flock of green newbies. He’s got a sort of hunched-over, laconic rascal charm. Think Han Solo by way of Jersey.

Luke Evans is Wade McClusky, the by-the-book commander who clashes with Best, and Luke Kleintank is Best’s buddy, Clarence Dickinson, another crackerjack pilot. Dennis Quaid plays Vice Admiral William Halsey, Mandy Moore is Best’s wife, Anne, and Nick Jonas plays a puckish machinist who gets into the action.

Surprisingly, nearly all of the characters are actual historical figures. The Japanese commanders are even given plenty of scenes so we can size up the strategy from their side. Though this isn’t an “equal sides” type of film production along the lines of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”.

There's even a little ode to filmmaker John Ford, who happened to be on hand at Midway the day of attack, producing some seminal documentary footage.

The film’s a bit long at 138 minutes -- so many are these days, it seems. I long for a time when editors were powers in Hollywood and had agency to tighten, tighten, tighten. Today’s movies are like Robert De Niro’s out-of-shape scenes in “Raging Bull.” They still can pack a punch, but the flab is distracting.

Still, a few talkie scenes that run long and some clanky dialogue aside, “Midway” is a terrific piece of throwback entertainment that actually gets the history right.

Video review: "Solo: A Star Wars Story"

“Solo: A Star Wars Story” was the first bona fide flop for the storied sci-fi franchise. I’m not sure why. Although it certainly deserves a ranking toward the bottom of the Star Wars canon, it’s still a fun, action-filled entry with plenty of entertainment value.

My 7-year-old declared it the best Star Wars flick of all. That’s overstating the case, though I would put it at least above “Rogue One” and “The Last Jedi.”

Alden Ehrenreich takes over the role of intergalactic smuggler/smirker Han Solo from Harrison Ford, and it’s a pretty seamless handoff. Aside from being a head shorter, Ehrenreich’s Han has all the scruffy charisma we’re used to. This story looks at his formative years prior to meeting Luke, Leia and the gang.

Raised on the crime-ridden planet of Corellia, Han manages to escape the den of thieves where he was raised, though his lady love, Qui’ra (Emilia Clarke), is captured. He vows to become a great pilot, snag his own ship and return to rescue her.

Flash forward a few years, and things didn’t turn out that way. After washing out as a pilot in the Imperial academy and deserting as a foot soldier, he stumbles into Qi’ra to find out she isn’t in need of any rescuing at all. She’s become the right hand woman for Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany), a high-up in the criminal syndicate Crimson Dawn.

Han has fallen in with a group of bandits led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), who takes him under his wing, shows him how to spin a laser blaster and a few things about double-crosses, too. Their assignment -- failure means death -- is to boost some raw hyperspace fuel from inside the Kessel nebula.

It’s volatile stuff, so if they don’t get it out fast enough, the whole plan goes explodey-splodey.

We also get to witness Han’s meeting up with Chewbacca, and his first encounter with self-pleased rogue Lando Calrissian, captain of the Millennium Falcon. He’s played with dizzying charm by Donald Glover, and if the Star Wars honchos don’t give him his own movie, they’re dumber than nerf herders.

Another fun addition is Lando’s navigation droid L3 (voice/motion by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is a distinct break from the polite/subservient model of C3PO and his ilk. Sassy and rebellious, she advocates for robots overthrowing their “organic overlords” and even hints at a possible romantic relationship with Lando.

I’m hoping more people will discover “Solo” on home video. It’s a worthy addition to the Star Wars library, fleshing out the backstory of (arguably) its most popular character and giving us some thrills along the way.

Bonus features are very good. They include eight deleted or extended scenes, including one showing Han as an Imperial cadet; a roundtable with director Ron Howard and his cast; interviews with veteran Star Wars scribe Lawrence Kasdan and his co-writer, son Jonathan; and much more.

One especially neat bonus feature: “The Millennium Falcon: From Page to Park,” depicting the history of the famous spacecraft and its upcoming translation into a theme park ride.

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Review: "Solo: A Star Wars Story"

“Solo: A Star Wars Story” is in a lot of ways daring, and in other ways plays it very safe.

It’s the first film in the franchise to cast another actor as one of the principal characters from the first trilogy, and attempt to sketch out a backstory for that universe’s most deliberately vague period: what smuggler/rogue/occasional nerf herder Han Solo was doing in the years before he bumped into Luke and Leia.

By all accounts Harrison Ford -- who seems to be lobbying to kill off all his iconic characters with the exception of Indiana Jones -- is happy to pass along Han’s mantle to Alden Ehrenreich. My guess is most audience members will be fine with it, too. Ehrenreich is cocky, twinkly and likeable.

(Wait until they cast someone besides Carrie Fisher as Leia, and we’ll see how people feel. Btw, I don't count Darth Vader because other actors played Annakin before his fall.)

The result is a film that’s fun and frivolous. There aren’t really a lot of stakes, since we know Han is going to survive, meet up with furry friend Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) and acquire the Millennium Falcon in a game of cards with fellow scoundrel Lando Calrissian (a charismatic Donald Glover).

Pretty much any other character who shows up, we can make some good guesses about their fate.

There are two main new ones. Emilia Clarke plays Qi’ra, who grew up with Han on Correllia, a junk planet where runaway kids work for a local crime boss. They are separated while attempting their escape, and Han vows to become a pilot, buy (or otherwise acquire) his own ship and return for her. Instead, he winds up in the trenches as a grunt soldier for the Empire, after being kicked out of their version of pilot school.

The two do eventually meet up again, though circumstances are very much changed. Despite the old passion still burning, they play a cat-and-mouse game with their faith in each other.

The other main addition is Woody Harrelson as Tobias Beckett, an old scallywag who takes Han under his wing. He teaches him how to shoot a blaster with finesse, pull off daring heists and, above all, to trust no one.

Paul Bettany turns up as Dryden Vos, the scarred, sneering boss for the criminal syndicate, Crimson Dawn. The long and short of it: after failing to steal a batch of hyperspace fuel from the Empire, Beckett and Han are tasked with pilfering a load of its unstable raw component from a mining world deep within the dangerous Kessel nebula.

If that name sounds familiar, especially in context with the avowed speed of a certain spaceship, you won’t come away disappointed. 

Phoebe Waller-Bridge provides the voice and motion of L3, Lando’s sassy droid/copilot. It’s a very different take on the subservient role robots usually take in the Star Wars universe, with L3 making puns about her supposed “organic overlord,” and encouraging other droids to rise up against their masters.

Director Ron Howard isn’t known as a master of action scenes, and I often found the fights hard to follow. The film also seemed very murky to me, as if they shot it without a lot of foreground lighting, though that may just have been the theater where I saw it.

But Howard, who took over the film from a pair of co-directors several months into production, finds a nice balance between comedy, character development and laser blasts. The screenplay is by Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan -- hey, how come no one’s ever thought to let him direct one of these? -- and his son, Jonathan.

I feel about “Solo: A Star Wars Story” about the same as I did “Rogue One,” “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” They’re fun rides, and I like dancing around in this universe as much as anyone. But they don’t hold a candle to the original trilogy, which no one would debate, and aren’t even as good as the second trilogy -- a statement I know will inflame my fellow geeks everywhere.

It’s a peppy rehash, but a rehash it remains.

Review: "LBJ"

Rob Reiner is the last guy you’d expect to draw a sympathetic portrait of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States who, more than anyone, was responsible for America’s tragic involvement in Vietnam. A politically outspoken filmmaker his entire career, Reiner demonstrated against the war and, by his own admission, loathed the man who threatened to send young men like him there to fight and die for a lost cause.

But “LBJ” does indeed take a kindly, or at least balanced, look at the president who was the ultimate mix of the highest nobility and the crassest venality. In the film, he’s the sort of man who would berate subordinates while squatting on the toilet in full view, then valiantly twist the arms of like-minded Southern politicians to pass landmark civil rights legislation.

The story (screenplay by Joey Hartstone) takes place during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the days afterward, with flashbacks to Johnson’s failed 1960 bid for the Democratic nomination, recruitment as vice president and subsequent dissatisfaction with his subservient role.

Though Reiner and Hartstone map out some of the relationship between Johnson and JFK (Jeffrey Donovan), and between LBJ and his wife, Lady Bird (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the real dynamic at the center of the tale is Johnson’s antagonism with Bobby Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David). RFK sees the scrappy Southern politician as an irksome emblem of the racist past, useful for securing the Texas vote and nothing else.

Johnson, for his part, seems genuinely mystified at having his vast experience in the corridors of Congress cast aside so he can preside over useless committees that serve mostly to keep him away from the limelight.

It’s a revelatory performance by Woody Harrelson as LBJ. At first it might seem a bizarre casting choice, given Harrelson’s colorful history of kooky and comedic roles. After seeing the film, though, it’s hard to imagine any other actor in the role.

Prosthetics help somewhat with drawing the resemblance closer, with Harrelson outfitted with Johnson’s horseshoe hairline, jowls and droopy basset hound ears. He’s got the corn-pone speech pattern down to a T, and the jangly body language of a man who projects bravado but is never quite comfortable in his own skin.

We get a few get examples of “The Treatment,” LBJ’s infamous in-your-face style of negotiating that could include browbeating, charm and begging -- sometimes within the space of a few sentences. The chief target is Sen. Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins), a Senate ally of Johnson’s from Georgia who (incorrectly) assumed the ascension of another Old South politician to the White House meant the indefinite enduring of Jim Crow.

The movie doesn’t get into Vietnam at all, other than a couple of brief mentions during the movie and some sobering end titles.

“LBJ” has had a troubled birthing. The screenplay languished on the “Black List,” an annual catalogue of the best unproduced scripts. Reiner shot the film in 2015, and it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival over a year ago before finally picking up a tiny distributor.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the movie is how funny it is. LBJ was a king of the one-liner, and just as often said things that were hilarious without his intending so. “Never underestimate the intensity of martyr’s cause, or the size of a Texan’s balls,” he says.

The film is at times a bit too sentimental, occasionally dipping a toe into sappy. (The musical score by Marc Shaiman doesn't help, laying on the syrupy strings.) Perhaps in trying to do justice to one of the most reviled men of his day, the filmmakers tipped a little too far in the other direction.

But “LBJ” is still well worth a look for Harrelson’s peppy and affecting performance.

Video review: "War for the Planet of the Apes"

“War for the Planet of the Apes” didn’t do as well commercially and critically as its two predecessors, virtually reassuring that the reboot of the franchise will end as a trilogy. That’s a shame, because this is one of the best threesomes to come along in the action/fantasy wing of moviedom – due in large part to its eschewing of traditional summer movie tropes.

Directed by Matt Reeves from a screenplay he wrote with Mark Bomback, “War” is a surprisingly smart and contemplative film. There are plenty of action scenes, with human actors portraying apes through CGI and motion capture.

Once again Caesar is played by Andy Serkis, a pioneer of his own in the realm of motion capture. But for me it’s the quiet moments that are most technically impressive, as subtle emotions flicker across Caesar’s face. You have to pinch yourself to be reminded that what you’re seeing is made up completely of pixels mapped over Serkis’ visage.

The tale continues the journey of Caesar, who is more or less the Adam of talking apes within the franchise’s mythology. Here he must face off with a mad human colonel (Woody Harrelson) who seems intent on eradicating the simians – and a good chunk of the remaining humans, too.

“War” has often biblical overtones, as Caesar orders his tribe to go on an Exodus-like journey to escape the colonel’s clutches, while he and a few loyal followers stay behind to face him down. They also meet new apes, some who will become allies but also willing slaves of the humans.

Sad, thrilling and introspective, “War for the Planet of the Apes” stands apart from the typical summer blockbuster fare.

Bonus features are excellent. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track by director Reeves, a gallery of concept art and a featurette on Caesar as a protagonist. There’s also a nifty digital feature that shows side-by-side comparisons of 10 scenes with the raw performance capture next to the final CGI version.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add 10 deleted scenes with commentary, four more featurettes and “Waging War for the Planet of the Apes,” an in-depth documentary on the making of the film.

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Review: "War for the Planet of the Apes"

Can a summer blockbuster film also be contemplative and downright sensitive? The third entry in the reboot of the “Planet of the Apes” certainly manages to achieve that, in a movie with thrills but one that truly engrosses with a probing study of its central character and the nature of leadership.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” takes us a few more years down the road, about 15 years after the outbreak of a simian flu that killed off most humans while granting all forms of apes higher intelligence. Caesar, the leader of the simians played through motion capture by Andy Serkis, has tried his best to avoid conflict with the remnants of mankind, who seem insistent about wiping out their genetic cousins before expiring themselves.

Grayer and grimmer, Caesar has grown tired of always turning the other cheek, and is ready for some payback.

Three movies in, the CGI effects for Caesar and the other apes continue to astound. The subtlest emotions play out on his face, especially eyes that know rage, despair, bravery and tenderness.

The antagonist is Woody Harrelson as the Colonel, a seemingly close relation to Kurtz from “Apocalypse Now,” who’s gone off the deep end while carrying out his own particular sense of mission. Uncharacteristically bloated and stiff, Harrelson comes across more as more blinkered than crazed.

Caesar and his kind are astonished to find not only apes crucified on stakes, but also other human soldiers. Both are branded with the alpha and omega symbols, and it’s clear the Colonel’s crew is more focused on end times than the beginning.

After their first face-to-face encounter goes badly for the apes, Caesar is determined to have his revenge, even if it means abandoning his clan while they go on an Exodus-like journey for a new homeland. The biblical references are never far from hand, and Caesar’s plight often takes on a Shakespearean quality as the hero must endure continuous tragedies and challenges, including confronting his own rash decisions.

Joining him on his quest are Maurice (Karin Konoval), a wise orangutan, and Rocket (Terry Notary), a former adversary turned loyal and muscular presence. Along the way they pick up a mute human girl (Amiah Miller), whose angelic demeanor reminds Caesar of his own losses. And they meet Bad Ape (Steve Zahn), a zoo chimpanzee-turned-kooky-hermit who somehow acquired the power of speech -- and comedic relief -- separate from Caesar’s tribe.

One of the more disturbing aspects of this movie is the “donkeys” -- apes who have willingly turned themselves over as slaves to the humans in exchange for better treatment. Among them is Red (Ty Olsson), a mighty gorilla who treats Caesar cruelly but is impressed with his resolve.

Director Matt Reeves co-wrote the script with Mark Bomback, a holdover from the last movie. “War” has an almost elegiac quality, underscored by the restrained music by Michael Giacchino, which often slims down to just a few affecting trills of piano notes.

Amidst a summer explosion of dumb popcorn movies, it’s reassuring to see that it’s still possible to do big-budget filmmaking with brains and heart.

Review: "The Edge of Seventeen"

We see a lot of teenagers in the movies, but it’s almost always an ersatz version. They’re much smarter, braver, more beautiful and interesting than real teens. Not to mention, they’re generally played by actors ranging from mid-20s up to nearly AARP.

The last time I spotted a zit on the face of a movie teen, I considered it a major triumph.

Audiences are used to the chicanery and understand they’re watching Hollywood Teens, not any honest attempt to depict the real thing. That is what it is, but it does create an emotional disconnect from the people we’re watching.

“The Edge of Seventeen” is a keener and truer take on teendom than we’ve seen in a while.

Hailee Steinfeld -- actually a teenager -- plays Lakewood High School junior Nadine, who has but one friend in the world and trouble connecting to anybody else. Her widowed mother (Kyra Sedgwick) is frazzled and harried, and older brother Darian (Blake Jenner) is handsome, popular and wants nothing to do with Nadine.

Nadine likes to wear weird clothes, trade insults with her burnt-out history teacher, Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), and fantasize about hooking up with local bad boy Nick (Alexander Calvert), whom she’s never even spoken to. She’s dorky, clever, wickedly funny and rather glorious. But she sees herself as awkward and unloved, and that’s a hard feeling to shake.

Things go from bad to worse when her best (really, only) friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), hooks up with brother Darian at a party. After an appropriate freak-out period, she’s willing to abide the episode as a one-off -- but then Darian and Krista decide to make it a permanent thing.

Seeing this as the ultimate betrayal, Nadine launches herself into a vortex of loneliness and increasingly bad behavior. She sees herself as an outcast who’s grown content with her small, stable patch of emotional turf. When that’s yanked away, Nadine feels homeless and alone.

Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, “Seventeen” is narratively unstructured and messy, but it’s also dashingly original and full of juice. The characters behave in a way that’s consistent with their impulses rather than just to further the plot down the road.

Steinfeld is astonishingly frank and vulnerable as Nadine in a way that recalls Molly Ringwald’s better movies with John Hughes. There’s one scene where she’s peeing in a public restroom and suddenly looks up and asks God why he never gave her a break. It’s played for laughs, but also has unexpected poignancy.

Nadine’s relationship with Mr. Bruner also goes sideways from what we expect. Normally a caustic mentor type slowly warms to the youngster, but Harrelson always looks like he’d rather leave the room than bestow advice. Nadine berates him as a balding, lonely loser, and even goes so far as to offer the clichéd outcome herself: “You should date my mother!” But the movie keeps us guessing about him.

I also really liked Hayden Szeto as Erwin, a nerdy kid from school who has a huge crush on Nadine, but tries to play it off as coolly as he can – which is to say, not very much. He’s in many ways Nadine’s perfect male counterpart, trying to fake his way to social status and not fooling anyone. Like her, all he needs is to slow down, do what comes natural and don’t worry about the consequences.

You can pretty much say the same thing about teenager movies in general. Just allow the kids be kids … and maybe let them have a few pimples, too.

Video review: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1"

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.

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Review: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1"

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.

Video review: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

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.)

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Review: "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

"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.

Video review: "Rampart"

"Rampart" is one of those independent movies that get a decent amount of buzz but never quite break free of orbit ... or even show up in theaters in most towns. Woody Harrelson was thought to have a decent shot at an Oscar nomination for his brutal, mesmerizing performance as an L.A. cop whose corruption goes down to the bone.

But in a year in which Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender got snubbed, it wasn't surprising that a little-seen crime drama was overlooked.
Harrelson is indeed hard to take your eyes off of, though the film itself is a little disjointed at times.

It also has one of those unfortunate endings that's supposed to seem ambiguous and "arty," but feels like the movie just stops arbitrarily.

Set in 1999, "Rampart" is the story of Dave Brown, the original dinosaur cop. He's a racist, violent throwback and he knows it -- he just happens to think back in his daddy's day was better. He drinks on the job, extorts favors from businesses, shoots suspects and then plants weapons on them, and every other dirty trick you've ever heard of.

After a quarter-century of bad deeds on the force, Dave gets in serious trouble after a random auto accident ends in him viciously beating a man, the whole thing caught on video and played endlessly on television.

As the noose draws slowly but inevitably tighter around his neck, Dave gets more and more desperate, and woe to anyone who gets in his way.

Director and co-writer Oren Moverman seems to be in the Woody Harrelson business; his first feature behind the camera was the acclaimed "The Messenger," which did get an Academy Award nomination for its screenplay.

Video extras are not bad. There's a feature-length commentary track by Moverman, interviews with the cast and crew, and a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes.  

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four  
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Friends with Benefits"

Boy, I could really feel "Friends with Benefits" trying.

This hip romantic/comedy wants you to know that it's not just an average romantic comedy. It is aware that it's a romantic comedy, and acknowledges and mocks the convention of that genre -- even as it falls back on them time and again.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis -- two performers whose acting skills have not heretofore impressed me -- play a pair of best buds who decide to incorporate sex into the relationship while keeping the friendship intact.

Of course, this never works in real life, or in the movies. And the characters and script of "Friends" is smart enough to admit this before setting off into an adventure that the audience and the film both know will fail.

The movie seems to think that by announcing itself in this way, it can than proceed to do every predictable thing we know is going to happen, but because they called it beforehand it's cool.

This movie reminded me of a shy, awkward guy who approaches a girl at a bar and opens with, "You may think this is really stupid, but..." And then, having told her that what he's going to say is pitiful, he is surprised when she's inclined to think so, too.

Timberlake is Dylan, who works at a rambunctious start-up website in the crunchy Pacific Northwest. He's recruited to interview for a position as art director at GQ magazine in New York City, with Kunis playing Jamie, the headhunter pitching the job to him. Or rather, she's pitching him the job, because Dylan is very ambivalent about moving to the big city and going mainstream.

After a magical evening on the town, right down to a massive flash mob dancing in Times Square that Jamie arranged just for Dylan, he agrees. (I can only imagine if he'd said, "Yeah, I'm bushed, gonna just go back to my hotel room." That's a lot of phone calls to make.) Not only that, they find such a connection that they start hanging out as friends.

After a pair of crashes in their respective love lives, they decide to add sex to the bill of fare. No commitments, no mushy scenes of regret, just an exchange of physical needs -- not unlike a game of tennis, they reason.

There's a certain friskiness to their couplings, including some glimpses of Timberlake and Kunis' naked posteriors (or at least Kunis' body double, I suspect).
I don't need to go into detail about what happens next. Despite the movie's pretensions and look-ma-no-hands self-referencing, it still ends up right where you knew it was going to go.

In fact, the mocking of romcom convention often ends up backfiring. There's a number of bits when Dylan breaks into snippets of song -- ostensibly to comment on the intrusive use of music in romantic movies, but really I suspect to give Timberlake a chance to show off his golden pipes.

But then later, "Friends" employs the same syrupy, incongruous musical cues that it was just lampooning.

Director Will Gluck, who helmed last year's clever "Easy A," co-wrote the screenplay with Keith Merryman and David A. Newman. They do manage a few funny moments, and a couple of characters who were more interesting than the stars.

Woody Harrelson plays Tommy, a co-worker of Dylan's who is extremely enthusiastic about expressing his gayness. He's positively puffed up with happiness and wants the world to know it's because he loves men. I'd like to think that such an exuberant soul could exist and work at a straight men's magazine, though I tend to doubt it.

The great character actor Richard Jenkins plays Dylan's father, who's suffering from dementia. The writers give him one great scene in an airport that was so passionate and angry and true, I felt sorry that the movie around it was unworthy.

1.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Zombieland"

There's always been a comedic element to zombie flicks, at least in their modern incarnation. George A. Romero had several moments of dark humor in 1968's seminal "Night of the Living Dead," and the laughs have shambled side-by-side with the flesh-eaters ever since.

If other movies have dipped a toe into humorous waters, then "Zombieland" dives head-first into comedy, with often uproarious results.

The set-up is similar to a hundred other films: The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and it's up to the few remaining humans to survive. Our foursome of heroes take the names of the cities they're from: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a video game dweeb; Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), a pair of butt-kicking sisters; and Tallahassee (a hilarious Woody Harrelson), a redneck who was born to eradicate the undead.

The filmmakers seem to know and love every convention of the zombie genre, tweaking them for comic effect while still delivering a satisfying helping of gleeful violence. At one point, Tallahassee takes out a grocery store full of walkers with a banjo.

Whether you're horror fan or just want a good laugh, "Zombieland" offers plenty of biting humor.
DVD extras cover a nice scope of material, though they're not as engrossing as you'd like.

Two making-of featurettes total about 30 minutes, but there's nothing really new other than the revelation the project was originally conceived as a television pilot. Seven deleted scenes are similarly underwhelming.

Better is the feature showing how the special effects were achieved, combining live action with layers of CGI.

I was glad to see a commentary track that actually has the participation of the stars: Harrelson and Eisenberg are joined by director Ruben Fleischer and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

The boys keep the banter flowing at a nice pace, although the constant complimenting each other gets to be a little much.

In addition to these, the Blu-ray version also comes with a "Beyond the Grave" picture-in-picture track with storyboards and animatics, plus a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Zombieland"

Zombies have become a powerhouse franchise. Movies starring the walking dead, already popular for decades, have seen a resurgence, and zombie literature is on the rise with books like "World War Z" and even classic literary spoofs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

The next logical step was zombie comedy films. "Shaun of the Dead" got the ball rolling, but "Zombieland" immediately leaps to the front spot of an admittedly nascent genre.

Hip, ironic and often raucously funny, "Zombieland" will have you holding in your guts with laughter almost as often as the zombies try to rip the viscera out of their onscreen prey.

I mean, what other zombie flick would pair two of indie film's young rising stars, Jesse Eisenberg ("The Squid and the Whale") and Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), both known for their shy, introspective roles, as post-apocalyptic ass-kickers?

Well, not quite: Eisenberg's still pretty dorky as Columbus, a lonely dweeb who spent most of his days playing "World of Warcraft" before the undead outbreak. He's come up with a list of rules for surviving what he calls Zombieland.

The first one is "Cardio" -- as in, maintain your ability to run fast. As the droll prologue narration notes to a scene of an obese guy getting run down and feasted upon, the fatties were the first to die.

Other rules include the "Double Tap," which instructs that even when you think a zombie is dead, put another bullet in its brain just to be sure. When the world is infested with creatures that want to eat you, now's not the time to get stingy with the ammunition.

Columbus soon happens upon a guy writing his own rules, which all boil down to kicking walking corpse butt in as many inventive ways as possible -- baseball bats, chainsaws, even a banjo. Tallahassee (all the characters go by the name of the city they're from) figures that everyone was put on earth to be really good at one thing, and his just happens to be killing zombies. It's Woody Harrelson's best roles in years.

This intrepid pair meets up with a pair of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Breslin), who pull a con on them and steal their guns and ride. Soon enough, though, they've joined forces, with a love struck Columbus making plans to invade Kansas.

Director Ruben Fleisher, in addition to showing a good eye for the action scenes, keeps the tone goofy and light. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick seem to have watched every zombie movie ever made, and joke around with the conventions while clearly reveling in them.

So when the boys stumble across a Hummer loaded up with assault weapons, Tallahassee shouts to the heavens, "Thank God for rednecks!"

The movie reaches its full stride of daffiness when the foursome arrives in Hollywood, and they decide to crash in a celebrity mansion, only to find the one belonging to Bill Murray still occupied by its owner. In a short but rich stretch of screen time, Murray plays "Ghostbusters" with his guests and even delivers an apology of sorts for those awful "Garfield" flicks. (Stick around after the end credits for some more fun.)

Based on "Zombieland," I'd say the undead comedy genre deserves to rise again.

3 stars