Tag: Jena Malone

Hooray another franchise is over! After Harry Potter, I am grateful book series are still afraid to break from the trilogy format. Or else we’d get these yearly movies that drive up the box office and everyone freaks out about and so on.

You know, like Marvel movies. Or the upcoming Star Wars films. One a year. Fuck.

Of course, this time it is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. The studios will say over and over again it is because the last story needs all that time to tell the story, but it is just for money grabbing purposes. It is putting a pause in the plot, usually meaning neither half are a complete film and overdrawn.

Part 1 was the worst film of the franchise. It had about 30 minutes of plot spread out over two hours. And because of that, Part 2 is almost definitely going to suffer for similar reasons. Even if Part 2 is great, the fact that Part 1 exists and is bad, instead of one coherent picture, means both are weaker than they should be. Happened with the final two Twilights, happened with the final two Harry Potters, and will probably happen again here.

You know, Katniss, this is the last time I might get to dress you.” – Creepy Effie

Katniss Katniss Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). Katniss found herself choked up over the fact that they saved Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) from the Capital, her emotions all over the place. She knows one thing now. She will help Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and the rebels in any way she knows how. The Capital and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) must fall! And die!

Got it? Good. I’m done with that point of view. Lets change it up.

My man, Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) is still a bad ass mother fucker, cool spear trident weapon thing. No one can take him one on one. Except one girl. That’s right, Finnick is getting married. They will have ginger babies. Apparently they are all Irish, and Irish is a thing in this world, because their wedding has Irish violin music and jigs and shit. But that won’t stop him from putting his life on the line to take down the bad guys, YEAH!

Okay okay one more. Caesar Flickerman (StanleY Tucci) is the best host in all of the districts. He has flair, hair, and style. Unfortunately in this movie, he only has one scene as a shitty news anchor person. We don’t delve more into his life. Sad news.

Alright, everyone else in this movie are played by the same people you have seen before. Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Willow Shields, Elizabeth Banks, Mahershala Ali, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Patina Miller, and of course, Elden Henson as the best video camera man in the world. Formally best at shooting the puck really hard.

“What are you going to do, just walk up to the door stop and kill him?”

I felt a bit silly typing up the plot outline for this film, as you may have guessed. They are finally doing that fight thing. No longer is this about the hunger games, it is about a revolution, damn it. They should really assume the viewers are smarter and just call it Mockingjay without THG.

Part 2 ended up being a lot better than Part 1, but not as good as the first movie or Catching Fire. The ending wasn’t full of epic moments, but just a slow fuse that slowly ran out of steam. And then a couple more scenes, and an epilogue. Hell, the ending was very confusing just in terms of time. I can’t be more specific without bigger spoilers, but the events being shown and that were talked shouldn’t have overlapped as such.

There were some decent action scenes in the middle though. The best was the sewer scene, although it was also confusing. Dark places means they don’t have to make coherent action, which might just be an allusion to the first film where they just changed the camera angles a lot and shook the camera. They threw in zombies out of no where, which is I guess the cool thing to do in a teen book franchises (see Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials). I am sure technically they are not zombies, but they came out of no where and never were really explained, so that is all I can really call them.

When I think back on the Hunger Games franchise in the future, I will just think about the first two movies. As long as you accept that Catching Fire ends with a crappy cliff hanger and doesn’t resolve anything, it will save you from the extremely mediocre two film filler after the fact. With only a handful amount of Finnick scenes to get you by.

When I first heard about the movie title, Time Out Of Mind, I thought it was a completely ridiculous title. When I found it was also the name of a Bob Dylan album from the late 90’s, I still thought it was a ridiculous title.

Is it supposed to be a drunk guy getting a saying wrong? Is it someone so completely lost that they can’t even sentence right?

Or does it want to go one step further? Does it want the viewer to over analyze the title so much that they, too, become Time Out Of Mind? Shit. This is too spooky for me. I hope it doesn’t cause me to obsess too long over this, so that I can’t focus at work, lose my job, become homeless, and wander the streets looking for spare change and someone to give me a sandwich or something.

When being a homeless person on the mean streets of New York, it is best to use the buddy system.

His name is George (Richard Gere), and he is homeless. But those are words you wouldn’t ever hear him say. No, life just sucks a bit right now. He has made bad decisions and has no job sure, but he isn’t some homeless asshole.

He had a place to stay, but bad things happened and the person who owned it is now evicted. He can’t stay there, he can’t stay anywhere. He tries to just sleep in ER lobbies, but even they throw him out.

So sure. Fuck it. He will go to the official center for homeless men. He has no ID of any sort because his wallet was stolen while he was sleeping outside, so that is a big issue. There is no way he can get a job, he is too old. There is no way he can do much of anything without the proof that he is even alive. I should also mention he has a daughter, Maggie (Jena Malone), but she hates him and his inability to face his own reality.

Also helping him cope with his situation include Steve Buscemi for a whole 1-2 scenes, Kyra Sedgwick, and Ben Vereen, who more famously voice the preacher bird in Once Upon A Forrest.

If you lose your buddy, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Time Out Of Mind is a strange movie. Turns out I have seen both other movies directed by Oren Moverman, The Messenger and Rampart. The difference between those movies of course is that the former was amazing and emotional, and the later was just a boring mess, now made famous by a bad AMA on Reddit. Thankfully, if you can sit through it, Time Out of Mind falls closer to The Messenger than Rampart.

Time Out of Mind is slow, it is bleak, and it doesn’t take you on a wonderful journey. George’s life just plain ole sucks and barely anything positive happens to him in the film. In this way, it is almost brutally realistic (don’t worry, nothing super graphic in the film). Moverman uses a lot of longer takes with the camera a bit farther away than normal from those acting. This helps as a constant reminder that George is just a very small piece of an ever moving and non caring city that makes his home, adding to the overall bleakness of his situation.

Time Out Of Mind is also not the movie for everyone. I was on the verge halfway through of pausing it to do something “fun” for awhile, not even sure if I was liking or hating what I saw. But what really turned the whole thing around for me was Vereen. He acted the shit out of this movie. He went full on into his character, a babbling homeless man who has lost his wits but befriends George. Gere’s acting was fine, but his character was a bit uninteresting in his constant pessimism. But Vereen though, he nailed it. Watch it for Vereen. And to make you sad about America. But mostly Vereen.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

Before we get started, I should mention some things about The Hunger Games. I gave it a 2 out of 4. I also didn’t watch it until 5-6 months after it went to theater. Not surprisngly, I didn’t read the books, so I had no stake in it.

I knew the rough outline. For some reason, teens have to go into a competition and kill each other, with only one remaining. Literally teens killing teens, very brutal. So I knew it should have been a brutal movie, but they decided to have it about teen death, and show practically nothing, through the use of shaky cam and just not showing crap. Shaky cam makes things look hectic and rushed, placing the viewer in the shoes of a character I guess. It is supposed to increase tension, but really is cheap, lazy, and lowers the rating. So that was annoying for the entirety of the games.

Outside of other random issues, the story felt complete after the games. Her life is going to change, but whatever, that doesn’t mean we need more story about it. Basically, I feel like I felt after watching Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Interesting story, no need to move on. But they both move on? The next two movies for Girl felt forced, and just didn’t feel as good as the first. So I am worried the same thing will occur here too, with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

I mean, we will see how it goes, just throwing out my thoughts ahead of time, so you know where I am coming from.

All of those thoughts were quelled when I realized it featured a literal merman, though.

The sequel takes place almost a year after the original movie. Everything is back to normal. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) isn’t anything special at home, for whatever reason. She just wants to get her love on with Gale (Liam Hemsworth), but has to pretend to be in love with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). Or else like, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) said he would kill all of her loved ones. You know, typical teenage girl stuff.

Why? Because she is a threat to the government. The districts are furious that two winners were allowed for once, and if it isn’t true love, they will feel scammed. They will riot. They will assume the government isn’t all powerful. But her love games aren’t fooling anyone it turns out. So they have to make an alternative strategy.

Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is made the new games dude, and they are allowed to fuck up the rules when they hit a quarter mark anniversary. Oh good timing! Number 75 is here! In an act to show that the government is the greatest power and no one can defy their power, not even past winners, they decide to pick the tributes solely out of the past winners still alive per district. Yay! We are talking old people and adults! Also people who know how to kill.

So what is a Katniss going to do? Maybe she is going to have to kill Peeta yo.

Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, and Stanley Tucci reprise their roles from the first film. Also introducing Sam Claflin as the merman (kind of), Jena Malone as an axe wielder, and Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer as really smart people from District 3. All in the games, of course.

Peeta gave that bitch some protests. That bitch loves protests. [But still not Peeta]

Despite the weather’s best attempts, I still was able to watch this movie on its opening premier, which means surrounded by a lot of rabid fanboys and girls. Armed with my best Twilight T-Shirt, I was able to sit down and get ready to criticize all of the problems I already saw from the trailer with the story. And then the unthinkable happened. The movie explained the “problem areas” in the movie, and all of my pre-concerns were gone. Damn. Ain’t that a bitch?

Seriously. Fuck the trailer for Catching Fire. It was badly put together in comparison to the movie, showing some nonsensical crap and in retrospect, basically a piece of shit. Because the movie explains everything and doesn’t leave any of the potential plot holes out there. It does a great job of explaining it all.

What else did I dislike about the first movie? The shaky cam. Well, there is a lot less of that. Easy enough fix. I am not saying there was more action, because that is debatable, but there is definitely less shaky cam.

Overall, I was pretty entertained by watching Catching Fire. It was full of surprising moments to me, as a movie watcher, and kept me more or less on my toes. I do have to wonder why the tributes, if they were all super pissed that they had to be there (literally all of them, who wouldn’t be?), even decided to battle and kill the tributes. It would be a good show of solidarity if they just all refused to do it, you know. But that isn’t action-y enough I guess, we need some bad people still.

This section was looking too wordy, so I threw in a third picture to distract you. And make it look even longer.

I disliked how the film chose to end. Reminded me of the ending of Matrix Reloaded, which was bad enough that I didn’t watch the third one. I get it. Based on a books so stories won’t be completed. But they chose to end it after giving a lot of new information and changing things up, which should only be a tactic for weekly TV shows, not movies. It is already enough bullshit that the third movie is being split into two again because “there is so much story to tell!” (re: money to make). And now I am getting what feels like childish cliffhangers instead of a full story for a movie.

In addition to that issue, I will note the games themselves felt way easier this time than last time, which is kind of annoying. I am being advertised that this is the best of the best, all born killers, but she has a pretty easy time during these games compared to the last. Not only is it easier, but she has fewer moral choices to make too. A bit disappointing.

Catching Fire is definitely a step up from the first film though, and overall, pretty decent of a movie..

Recently I asked my two labs what their favorite movies were. I asked everyone, about 37 students in all, and I was happy to say I had seen every single one of them already.

Except for one.

Into The Wild. I had heard of it mentioned before, but never seen it. Well, I couldn’t let my record stay at only one away, so I set off to see it immediately. Didn’t hurt that it fell in my 2007+ range of reviewable movies!

Hey uhh, that’s some nice geology you, uhh, got going on there.

Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) is not like normal boys. No, he is a free spirit, a guy who just hates the grind towards success in life, and he only just graduated college. Well, after he is finally living alone, he says fuck it. I don’t want to do this shit. I want to go out and live on the land, enjoy life for what it is and become one with nature. Damn it.

And that begins his two year journey, with the goal of moving up to the Alaskan wilderness to live on his own. But that isn’t his only goal. He also kayaks down the Colorado River all the way to Mexico, works a few odd jobs, and gets in trouble with the law. His parents (Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt) are distraught, as their boy seemingly fell off the face of the earth. He has no intention of being found either. His sister (Jena Malone) seems to understand why he did it all, but doesn’t mean she is fine with it either.

Oh, but he isn’t alone on this journey. He meets many people along the way, with different stories, theories and stations in life, and many free spirits. (These people include Brian H. Dierker, Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Hal Holbrook, Kristen Stewart, and Zach Galifianakis).

No. You will ONLY get artsy looking pictures in this review, damn it.

Oh here is another fun fact. This movie was directed by Sean Penn. That fact wasn’t fun for you? My bad. But maybe mildly interesting.

This is the only movie I have seen directed by Mr. Penn, and let me a tell ya. It was pretty intense. I am kind of disappointed no one told me to watch this movie earlier, because it is such a great (and true-ish) story!

I am not the kind of guy who will ever give up things to go and discover myself. I like things, I like that they are a part of myself. Hooray capitalism and what not. If I didn’t like things, I wouldn’t have so many movies. But even I felt attached to Chris during his story. Full of ups and downs he discovered the truth about his life and did what he loved most in the world.

The movie is over 2 hours long and I didn’t notice it at all. I don’t think I have seen Emile Hirsch in any other movies, but I think his acting was just so tremendous in this movie, I am going to have to see more. The next will probably be Speed Racer, where he is the titular role, that way I can have a lesser opinion of him. Or something.

Into the Wild is definitely an overlooked movie from about 5-6 years ago, and should be a must watch for some time to come.

Sucker Punch was a highly anticipated movie when I first saw the previews on TV. I mean, it just looked visually stunning. I knew absolutely nothing on the plot, I just knew that I wanted to see it.

And I did! In theaters. Leaving with mixed reviews. Despite that, I knew I still one day also wanted to see it on Blu-Ray. Because man was it pretty.

OMG SAMURAI BEASTS.

I won’t spend too much time with the plot, because it is up for interpretation technically how much of it is real, and how many layers of fantasy are involved. Why is it up for interpretation? Because I said so.

Movie begins with Babydoll (Emily Browning) fighting off her step dad, who wins and puts her in a mental institution, now that the mom is dead, so he can claim the inheritance. But right as she is about to get lobotomized by the doctor (Jon Hamm!) it switches to a brothel of some sorts, with young women dancers, recreating the exact scene. Because Lobotomies are hot. Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) is the star of the Brothel, but Babydoll is a new girl brought in from the Orphanage. She doesn’t talk much and seems upset.

Probably because she is in a brothel. The other main girls there are Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung), taught by the dance instructor (Carla Gugino). But when she is made to dance, she goes on a weird fantasy adventure, where the Wise Man (Scott Glenn) tells her how to escape, and the items she needs to collect, along with a secret item.

So Babydoll makes it her mission to go and collect these items, while every time she dances, she goes into one of these fantasy trances, whether it is versus the steampunk nazi federation, and robot trains, and etc. But what is really going on the whole time? And how the heck does she look when she dances? Also, Oscar Isaac plays the Brothel owner / main bad guy.

Lot of action violence, all done by tiny women!

Some will say that the only reason this exists is for men to have things to oogle. But pfft, people don’t make movies like that. More specifically, to make nerd guys go crazy. But nerd guys realize they also want a good plot with their crazy action fantasy movies featuring a cast of mostly women. The plot is obviously the weakest part of this movie. It is incredibly nonsensical and hard to explain.

That isn’t the only problem. Some of the fantasy scenes are just WAY too long. I think the first one with the full group of women, I feel like it drags on forever. I was thinking we’d never go back to the main plot line of the movie, escape from the Brothel. These scenes could have been editted down a lot more, to make the pacing better and probably more enjoyable.

But also, this CGI fest is just…so pretty.

Just to prove a point, here is a third picture.

And it is so fucking stunning. Just think, if the plot was better and edited it down, this could have been the coolest experience ever!

The Messenger is a movie by those Oscilliscope people. If you know anything about bad DVD cases (And Blu-Ray) you know these are some of the worst. Complicated fold out mazes, and in the middle you put the disk in a sleeve. Gross. And different. I hate different. Also some of their other movies I have loathed (Meek’s Cutoff), thought were Okay (Howl) or thought they were wildly original (Rare Exports).

Don’t act too surprised. Yes that last paragraph sentence was pointless.

Ben Foster (Who you may remember as that annoying character in Six Feet Under or the lame character in the Worst X-men Movie) is in the army. But he got injured in the war! He is young and only has a few months left on his original enlistment, where he plans on probably leaving. But hey, since he is back home, time to get back with his old fling Jena Malone!

Oh. She found someone else during it and is getting married. Well shit. Oh well, he is leaving the army soon. Not like they will put him in a high pressure job like killing people right?

Right! Its the opposite! He gets assigned to the Casualty Notification Unity for his area. Aka the guys who get to go to the house and tell someone their loved one died in combat. Well. Damn.

Not his ideal position. He has to work with Woody Harrelson who has been doing it for a long time and is in the AA. Easy enough rules to follow. No contact with the people they are talking to. Have to make sure the word killed or deceased are used, to avoid confusion, and can only speak with the assigned person. No neighbors, no friends. No dawdling/waiting. No midnight calls. Etc.

So by now you will realize, man, this is going to be a sad movie. And it definitely is. We get to see them make quite a few calls to quite a few different types of family members, spouses, parents, etc. We get to experience their reaction to all of the civilian reactions. One visit they go to is Steve Buscemi, who does not take that news well. They also meet Samantha Morton, who is now a single mother. And for some reason (probably losing his ex), Ben Foster seems to develop feelings for.

If you think that is fucked up, that is because it is. Starting to like someone after telling them their husband died? Yeahhh. No way it works out.

But hey, free temporary taxi is part of the service?

Besides the sad, its obviously pretty emotional. Just watching the reactions from the parents and loved ones at the news, and en route to receiving the news is probably worth the price of admission. Receiving the news sucks, but being the guy to tell the news can’t be the best job in the world, and this movie gives an interesting perspective that is pretty widely overlooked.

Foster is the main guy, but I think Harrelson’s performance overshadows him. You can tell that the years of the job have really wore the character down, along with the guilt that other people put their lives on the line, while he is the guy who tells others, his life never in danger himself. Surprisingly very well done piece. Glad I bought it, too bad the Blu-Ray case sucks.