Gorgon Reviews

Let’s face it. Trailers for the most part suck. Every once in awhile you get a Walter Mitty trailer, but those usually end up only being a first edition trailer, and later trailers ruin everything. Too much plot, too many spoilers, all of the cool shit, they can leave nothing exciting for the viewers when they finally see it on the big screen or awkwardly on their sofa on an iPad a year later.

The Boxtrolls is a big exception to that rule. I only remember two trailers for The Boxtrolls, this trailer and this second one. The former gives us a look of the many models and work that went into the movie behind the scenes, while giving us a song and showing some scenes but not ruining the plot. The second, just a song and scenes, no plot.

And I loved them both so much. After I saw the first one, I really really wanted to see this movie and assumed it would be one of the best animated films of the year. The second trailer only helped secure that notion in my head. And it was brought to us by Coraline / ParaNorman team (the latter, I guess, I didn’t really love, shh).

So, I was totes excited to see this movie, especially because I really didn’t know any damn thing about it. Ahhh, bliss.

I guess I also knew that it starred some of my cousins from up north. You know. Those cousins.

Here. Let me ruin my experience by telling you a little bit about the movie. Just a little bit.

In the town of Cheesebridge, we have humans, and we have Boxtrolls. Boxtrolls are troll like creatures, who wear boxes as armor/clothing. Their name is based on what is on their box. They like to build and tinker, stealing trash from the humans. The humans are lead by those who wear white hats, the elite, those who love the cheese.

Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) wants to be a white hat, he only has a red hat. Who cares if he is allergic to cheese. He wants dat prestige, and will do anything to get it. Even if it means starting a fear mongering campaign against the Boxtrolls, declaring he will capture and kill them all, ridding the town of the pests, and saving the day, earning the white hat.

Yeah. You go Archibald! Unless he is lying, like saying a box was killed by them, when instead, the Boxtrolls saved the boy and raised him on their own. We shall call him Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright), because that is his box name. Raised by Fish (Dee Bradley Baker) and Shoe (Steve Blum), Eggs doesn’t really know if he is a human or a Boxtroll when he gets older and starts feeling things down there. If he is a human, he is a Boxtroll of a human, and if he is a Boxtroll, then he is a human of a Boxtroll. That reference might be too vague for some of you. I don’t care.

Also featuring Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan as Archibald henchmen, Simon Pegg as an inventor, Jared Harris as the head White Hat, and Elle Fanning as a girl who has a punch in the face look the entire movie.

She is made of clay, she can totally help the way her face looks.

Early on in the film, The Boxtrolls had me a little bit uninterested. Sure, the stop motion was really rockin’ hard, but I thought the plot wasn’t moving fast enough and didn’t really enjoy any of the characters. But it surely got better, and somehow the animation even got better. This is by far the best animated film I have ever seen with stop motion, and I am sure it is not just because when I saw Coraline, my 3D glasses sucked. I really need to rewatch Coraline.

Either way, even in one tiny chase scene at a ball, I was wowed at how amazing it all looked knowing what they had to do to make it look amazing. Speaking of the attention to detail, I loved the existential crises that the henchmen were having about good vs evil and how they seemed to acknowledge they were in a movie at times. Had my laughing pretty hard.

The story got better and it ended with a tremendous bang. I wish this was an original story and not based on some book so I could give it even more praise for coming up with these tale out of nowhere. Those guys are good, with the stop motion and clay. I hope they keep giving us high quality work such as this.

I don’t think this is the animated flick of the year, I think at least 3 are better, but it is surely up there and you cannot go wrong with watching this in theater or at home. Very entertaining and a movie I could watch many times and not get sick of it. Yay! I don’t feel betrayed by the trailer!

Daniel Radcliff is one of those actors that you just can’t help but watch what they do. Forever will he be Harry Potter, technically a former child star, but can he be successful as an adult in random movies? We know he was successful in Broadway. He was decently successful in What If.

But what about Satan? It seems like the perfect transition really, given the witchcraft scares of Potter and other wizard folks. First they worship Satan, then they become devils in movies.

Either way, Daniel probably actually did make a deal with Mephistopheles to make all those pounds and pounds of Pounds.

If the United Kingdom adopted the Euro, famous British men wouldn’t have to worry about growing horns.

Everything is shitty for the life of Iggy Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe). He had a long time girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Well, she was killed. And everyone now thinks that Iggy did it! It was tragic too. Merrin went to church every week. She was a good person and no one hated her. But now the only people that believe Iggy are his brother (Joe Anderson) and friend/lawyer (Max Minghella).

I mean, his parents (James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan) believe him, but do they really? And Merrin’s dad (David Morse) is fully convinced of his wrong doing, threatening to kill him himself.

Oh, and he grew horns on his head. That’s interesting. Especially when they seem to change the way people perceive him, just not in the way that you’d think horns would change someone.

This isn’t click baiting to get you to watch the movie, this is just not spoiling what happens. Also with Kelli Garner and Heather Graham.

This is a scene you can find in about a third of every romance based movie.

First of all, let’s give it up for Daniel Radcliff’s American accent. I forgot he was actually a Brit in this movie! If this was his first role, I would have never assumed he was a dirty Queen-lover.

Related. I wish I could fake a British accent.

Anyways, Horns is probably, by far, one of the weirder movies of the year. And coming from me and who I am, that is definitely a compliment. Based on a book I didn’t read, book people didn’t like it as much, which is no surprise. The horns actually happen super early in the movie, but in order to keep the weirdness and uniqueness of the horns, I kept most of it a surprise for the viewers. I don’t know how much the trailer spoiled, but let’s just say it is worth finding out on your own.

It got even weirder by the end, some plot twists I could see coming, and some I could not. Some of the acting from some characters are a bit weak, but I thought Radcliffe and Temple were on point enough to keep the movie interesting. A lot of her plot and acting was of course told through back stories, but still entertaining.

Either way, Horns is at least unique and that is one of the things people seem to clamor for the movies coming out these days. It isn’t a remake or a sequel. Sure its based on a book, but basically every movie ever is based on a book, so get over it.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

Know them. Hate them. Do whatever you want. I am happy to say I have only reviewed one of the movies they have directed on this website, Vampires Suck. No, not just directed, but written too. Most of the bad terrible “Movie” films of the last few years have been them.

And now, I am willingly of sound mind going to watch another. The Starving Games. Let’s say I did it honor of Mockingjay Part 1 coming out a week ago, and a reminder that things could always be worse.

This was an already dated reference when this movie came out.

Basic movie parody right here. Have you seen The Hunger Games? Well, that is really all you need to get this one.

But this one stars Kantmiss Evershot (Maiara Walsh), and that name alone makes me want to stop the movie immediately. She likes Dale (Brant Daugherty), but Peter Malarky (Cody Christian) likes her. And then she has to go to the Hunger Games.

And man, I really cannot talk about this movie really. It is the same plot as The Hunger Games, but worse in every aspect. Well, except it does feature a ton less shaky camera action, so I guess it has that going for it.

Diedrich Bader plays Present Snowballs (this guy was literally in Atlas Shrugged Part II, not that the later is high quality film or anything), Dean J. West as the games runner guy, Lauren Bowles as Effoff, Ross Wyngaarden as Marco, the best fighter, and Chris Marroy as not Stanley Tucci.

At this point, Avatar was already a four year old joke/reference.

Watching these movies is really a will power battle on how long you can go before turning it off, falling asleep, or wandering around your house cleaning because “holyshitanythingisbetterthanthismovie!”

I paid attention to the whole thing, because by golly, you guys trust me. For whatever reason, all of these types of movies have been cheap to make and make lots of money. But not this one, it made like, no money! It bombed! It might mean that these things are finally ready to be done! Maybe! I hope?

Nah. It will never go away. Like Two and a Half Men or Jenny McCarthy.

The references go beyond Hunger Games of course. But does any of it matter? No. This is the type of film that makes me wonder if becoming an existentialist is a good idea. But then I would know the only reason these films existed was due to my own self, and not someone else’s fault.

Yes this movie is worse than Scary Movie 5, yes it is unfunny, and yes, Netflix should feel bad for having it on its servers.

Happy Thanksgiving! For those not reading this on Thanksgiving, happy day!

Thanksgiving movies really don’t exist, so in general, my Thanksgiving reviews have had one theme. Parts of Thanksgiving dinner. And no, I haven’t reviewed a movie called Turkey yet. But I did review both Butter and Milk, so my dairy should be done. Let’s start with some of the main sides.

King Corn is a slightly older documentary now, 2007, which is the old limit for reviews from my website. I try not to do anything before 2009 now, unless there is a special occasion. Like…a holiday!

King Corn is a decently famous early documentary about corn and how it has infiltrated our very existence. I am willing to wager before this documentary, it wasn’t as common knowledge what was happening in the corn industry and how it affected everyone in the United States. And maybe, just maybe, how it made us fat.

Those two boys are going to eat the entire field on that truck. That’ll do it.

The two main guys are Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, two friends who moved from Boston to Greene, Iowa to have an experiment. They both have family roots back to this area, and they asked to borrow one acre of someones land, to grow corn, to see how the whole process works, and see how much money they can make.

Of course, once they do, they find out how everything is paid out to them by the government, and purely in terms of how much land they produce. But the farmers and now have much bigger farms than ever before, and produce way more than is necessary, but the flat rate from the government makes it okay to do that. They don’t have to worry about the economy fluctuating, just the growing and production of corn.

And now corn is in everything in terms of high fructose corn syrup. Literally everything. Pure sugar. Maybe making us fat? Definitely doesn’t help.

Either way, this was a very eye opening documentary at the time, but given in such a simple way. It is about two guys farming, so of course it is a simple story, but it isn’t able to go hard after anyone driving the factors. It can’t get us into a corn syrup factory, we don’t get to hear from any policy makers. Just farmers farming, mostly. And so a simple documentary, although interesting, gets a simple grade.

I am not going to get into the same old tirade of how I randomly picked this movie on a whim on Netflix. Mostly because I just gave you all that information in one sentence. Boom. Roasted.

No. Instead I want to talk about how surprising it is that I never heard about this movie Stretch, given its mostly big list of famous actors. This shouldn’t be some straight to DVD shitflick you find in the nonexistent $3 Wal-Mart DVD bins.

Well, Stretch was supposed to come out in March of this year, full on theatrical release, trailers, everything. But Universal Pictures decided to fuck that release date and kind of not want to do it anymore. So the director was able to look for other people to release it and nothing happened. So it wen’t back to Universal who decided to release it in “creative ways”. So early October it hit iTunes and Amazon, mid October it hit VOD services, and then onto Netflix, where of course, I first stumbled upon it, in order to give you this review.

I am not putting a gun to your head to see it, I just wanted to review it, jeez.

Let’s talk about Stretch (Patrick Wilson). He is a limo driver and yes that is his official name. Stretch wants to be an actor, why else would he live in LA? But life is going bad, and he blames it all on Candace (Brooklyn Decker) for breaking his heart after a year of dating. They met on a car crash, sure, he was still a limo driver then. Apparently she wanted more. He just wanted to gamble and do cocaine. But he is better now. He is going to turn his life around. Or else!

Because he also still owes gambling debts, and the piper is calling. He needs $6,000 by tonight, but life doesn’t just ever really hand him opportunities. He can’t even get acting gigs, after all.

Maybe if he just does his job really really really well, like Karl (Ed Helms) did. The best limo driver ever. Maybe he can get some high powered actors who will tip like crazy?

Well, luck is about to be on his side. An eccentric rich person! He just has to comply with all his demands, while his entire life is crumbling around him. Joy.

But who plays the eccentric rich person? Who?! Well, maybe it is one of these people: James Badge Dale, David Hasselhoff, Randy Couture, Chris Pine, Jason Mantzoukas, Norman Reedus, or Ray Liotta. Or maybe it is a woman, like Jessica Alba. Women can be eccentric to you know!

(Yes, all of those people are in this movie).

We will never be able to see a COCK like this on the big screen.

Holy poop in a limo (not a spoiler). Stretch was far more entertaining and interesting than I gave it credit for. I mean, straight to Netflix movie? Who gives a crap! Stretch is full of intense scenes, funny moments, darkly funny moments, and kind of action heavy. A lot went into this movie and I found it really hard to look away.

And the best part is, because it is so widely available right off the bat, I can recommend it to people. Stretch might finally be my next Flypaper. Flypaper was a completely unknown movie, with some people I recognized in it, that I figured would suck. And hey, I liked it a lot. It is my favorite reason for watching probably bad movies. It is all about finding those that rise above their cover and actually present something worthwhile to watch, hopefully multiple times.

Maybe it is a bit disconcerting that I can now only think of two titles that really fit the build, but eh, fuck you for thinking about numbers that I brought up.

Stretch was highly entertaining and way more unique despite what may seem from its premise. Patrick Wilson carried the movie through his narration and humorous acting. Sure, parts of the ending you can see come from miles away, and that leads to some weaker moments. But I think this limo ride is totally worth it.

Whoops.

Sometimes you watch a movie and then forget about it an hour later. And then sometimes you don’t remember that you watched the movie or that it existed until another two and a half weeks after that.

I am not saying that is something that happens a lot. But it definitely happened with Make Your Move. I watched it randomly of course. I went to RedBox and just went far back into its archive of movies in the box, looking for something unknown. One of those free rentals, means I can get anything and not feel like I wasted money.

And of course, it is a dance movie, and despite the general low scores I give dance movies, I know they could be something special, just most of them are filled with crap. So the search for the great dance movie is one that is haunting me. My great white buffalo.

Speaking of time machines, this club looks very 90s.

Donny (Derek Hough) is your typical dancing asshole. He lives in New Orleans, the city in a lake, and he also is recently out of prison. He got involved in some bad stuff, but he is clean now. Totally. But dancing on a street corner, that ain’t a real profession. Nope, so the cops don’t it.

BUT DONNY JUST WANTS TO DANCE!

So his scheme is to fly to NYC, breaking parole, to get a job, to not be in trouble for parole. Yeah. He has a friend, Nick (Wesley Jonathan) who has the hottest underground club there, and if he can become a dancer, he will make enough to do anything!

Hah. It turns out that Kaz (Will Yun Lee), Nick’s old partner, abandoned him after some advice to start his own rival club. Now they are in a battle. One with illegal shenanigans, one with weird investments. Kaz has a sister too, Aya (BoA), who also likes to dru.

And then these two meet and fall in love. Despite being on opposite sides of warring families.

What’s that? What’s that you say. Yep. WE GOT ANOTHER ROMEO AND JULIET MOVIE.

But with more Izabella Miko, more dancing, and a lot more shit.

Is that…is that the hand jive from Grease?

Can we just assume that if a film is so unmemorable a few hours after watching it, that you forget you watched it, then it probably isn’t too great? That should really be all I have to say about this movie right there. It is forgettable, so it is lame.

Sure, some of the dances may have been interesting, but to take an already shitty plot in Romeo and Juliet, and then make a worse version of it with only adequate dancing and shitty acting? Just, get out of my house with that weak sauce.

What is even worse is the plot at times felt a little bit confusing. How can they do that with so little material?

It is the type of movie that is using a lot of slang from a few years ago to try and sound hip and cool, but instead sounds like a creepy old grandpa.

TL;DR – Make Your Move is like a creepy old grandpa.

Rawr Dracula! Vampires! So hot right now, of course we need to revisit the main man behind the bat, the one, the only, Vlad.

Dracula Untold (I promise I won’t get into how much I hate “this is the real story” nonsense for fictional stories that keep happening, I swear) wants to talk about how one man came to be the Dracula that people fear today. A real vampire. Not a sparkly boring person. Not a bunch of kids in private school. Just a guy who has standard vampire powers and standard vampire weaknesses.

But before we get into that, in case you didn’t know, this is becoming a franchise. Not just vampires. But all the classic Universal monsters. It was originally starting with a 2016 remake of The Mummy, then Wolfman, then eventually a Frankenstein thing, but they tacked this one on too. They are going to bring all the monsters into a movie and have them fight other monsters I guess. And it might fail terribly. And yes, it is a lot like Avengers. But I mean, it might be cool, as long as these movies are good, right?

Well, some bad ass armor could help, but why doesn’t it glow and shimmer?

This movie isn’t set in the modern day. I already told you it is about Vlad The Impaler (Luke Evans), the real inspiration for Dracula. Not that Vlad in real life was a vampire, it looks like Bram just took his name and hierarchy and ran with it.

Either way, Mr. The Impaler got his name for being a bad ass. He was recruited at a young age in the army and killed killed killed. Now he is a Prince of his own area, Transylvania, and wants to live life in peace. There is also a local vampire in a cave nearby, but ignore him. Either way, some Turks come knocking on his door, asking for the normal payment. But because some of their scouts were found dead, they assumed the Transylvanians came out and killed them. Now they payment is some cash and 1,000 boys to fill their armies. What! No!

So he goes to Mehmed the Conqueror (Dominic Cooper), the Turk leader to appeal to his better nature. Well, he ain’t having it, even when he offers up himself instead of the boys. Now they want 1001 boys, with the additional one being his son, Ingeras the Young (Art Parkinson).

Well, shit. What’s an Impaler going to do. Sell his soul to the devil for temporary vampire powers to defeat an entire army? Yeah. Thank goodness he knows where Master Vampire the Vampire (Charles Dance) is to get his powers on. As long as he doesn’t drink blood in 3 days, they will be temporary. If not, well, full on vampire.

He also should keep it secret. Very Catholic lands here. They don’t like Vampires. Maybe his lady, Mirena the Woman (Sarah Gadon) will find some parts of it interesting though.

Also featuring Diarmaid Murtagh as Dumitru the Untitled.

Shit, they also got Patsey from Holy Grail in here?

This might be one of those movies that would be better not seeing the trailer? That is my guess. If I didn’t see literally every cool thing a dozen times from trailers, I would have enjoyed the movie more. But Dracula didn’t do anything cooler than those few scenes. Namely the bat attack related scenes.

Other than that, it is mostly a poorly acted period movie. We got accents, we got swords, horses, chivalry and more. And just a lot of bad overly dramatic acting.

And if that is what you want in your “NO THIS IS THE TRUE STORY” films, then you might actually love it.

Unfortunately, no matter what happened with this movie, we were getting the next two anyways. Universal is going to make this Monster Avengers thing happen, damn it. Maybe the final outcome will be cool. Maybe the next movies will be good. But this is not the Iron Man of the Monsters universe, unfortunately.

Since the Transformers franchise, Hasbro has realized it can print money by having their product turned into loud explosive military forces commercials. So they started to branch out. G.I. Joe movies happened and people were either disappointed or okay with them. Okay. Sure.

Then they said, screw it, let’s turn board games into movies, not just toys. And that is why we have the atrocity that is Battleship.

And maybe after all their action films, they realized that action doesn’t have to be their only go to genre. Why not horror? That is what the kids love these days. Maybe a nice soft PG-13 horror, to get more money and revitalize one of their games. So we all hope that means they are making a new Clue Movie (that could never be as good as the original)? Nope. We are getting fucking Ouija.

This just makes me not want to floss. Are you out to ruin our teeth too, Hasbro?!

Everyone knows for Ouija (/spirit) boards, they only work if someone knows they don’t work and they make their hand move the piece around. You can trick your little bitch friends and get a laugh out of it. Haha, big joke. Well, Debbie Galardi (Shelley Hennig) never really got over it when she played as a kid. She has always felt haunted by it. And now she is in a house alone, found the board in the attic and played by herself, which is a big no no. Next thing you know, boom, she hanged herself. Hey now, it’s just a shitty game.

Needless to say, people find this news troubling. Especially Laine Morris (Olivia Cooke), Debbie’s best friend who also introduced her to the game a long time ago. Eeek. Oh, and I guess Debbie’s old boyfriend, Pete (Douglas Smith), who was in a sexual relationship with her. He is beating himself off up over this for not seeing the signs.

Well, Laine wants to just try one thing before she is willing to let her friend go. And we know what she wants to do. She wants to Ouija board it up to see if they can speak to her, because she thinks something is up.

So she gathers her boyfriend (Daren Kagasoff), her sister (Ana Coto), their friend (Bianca A. Santos), and Pete and they Ouija it up. And hey, someone answered.

But is it Debbie or someone that contacted Debbie?

Come on, you know it’s the latter. Let’s not forget Lin Shaye, she is in this movie like a lot of recent horrors. But we can forget Sierra Heuermann, because I don’t like typing out her last name and want to not do it anymore.

This is the worst depiction of a Lens Of Truth that I have ever seen.

PG-13 (or lower, if they exist?) horror movies are a bane to the genre. We aren’t say that you need swearing, tits, or gore to be scary, but disturbing violence and terror is something they have given to make a movie R before, and I have to assume PG-13 would just be slight or mild terror.

If I had to describe the terror in this movie, I would call it extra mild. Like, no one should find any part of this movie at all scary. Nothing about the board itself is scary (It moves!? It moves with no fingers?! Ahhh!). The entire thing relies on some jump scares between some ghosts that haunt the house and the kids who love to die. The deaths themselves are not creative and don’t come to anyone as a surprise.

But worse than all of that is how incredible boring the movie is. It takes awhile for them to even get their Ouija on to contact the dead friend. It felt like a third of the movie had already passed. Then a longer time before anyone even starts dying. Everyone knows you need deaths throughout a film to keep up the fear. All at the end is pointless.

Once it was over, I was glad. But then I realized how much money this movie made despite its low budget. We are going to eventually get a Ouija 2, and it will suck. Hasbro is going to make movies about Candy Land, Monopoly, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, and they too will suck (not a joke). The only one that could be good is Hungry Hungry Hippos, but only if it is a serious African drama about a herd of scary ass Hippos eating all the things.

Olivia Cooke is being typecasted into these shitty horror movies. The Quiet Ones and The Signal were bad. Here only other real role, that is horror based, is Bates Motel. I hope she sticks to horror TV shows and gets out of these terrible movies before she has no career.

Time to tackle a big fish.

Roger Ebert. A lot of people like the guy. Like, a super lot of them. Especially people who like movies. Especially people who consider themselves to be movie reviewers or critics. And then there is me, Geophysicist by day, and movie watcher by night. And I can say I never really cared one way or another.

When Ebert died, a lot of people I knew in real life wanted to talk to me about it and make sure I knew and what I thought about it. I thought that it sucked that someone died of course, but it didn’t affect me in any negative way.

For those that don’t know, before Ebert, movie reviewers were basically interchangeable. But he came in with a fancy vocabulary, an ability to write a review quickly, and a way to connect it with the every man that he became a big deal, even winning a Pulitzer Prize. He is probably the sole reason movie reviewers/critics exist as they do today. Whether that is a good thing is debatable of course.

And of course, this documentary, Life Itself, titled after his book, tells the story of his life and career and was filming during his final months alive.

He turned into a poltergeist when watching movies, apparently.

You can’t talk about Roger Ebert without talking about Gene Siskel. For over 20 years, these two Chicago men got to go on television and argue and talk the new movies in theaters that week, and the crowds loved it. No one could compare to those two and those two opinions became the only opinions that seemed to matter.

But we also get to hear about Ebert’s career in college, his first journalism jobs, and what he did after the TV show. He was also an early adopter of really liking social media/internet it seems, and wanted all of his life’s work online for anyone to read. Which is why his name is a website, and they have people posting reviews to carry on his legacy there.

And of course, we also get his family life, his children, his wife, and the final months of his life, the surgeries, and the setbacks.

Now for someone who didn’t really care about the man, I found myself surprised when his death occurred that I was tearing up a little bit. That’s some quality film making. The narrator is reading excerpts from his autobiography throughout the film, so it is really easy to feel like I knew the man by the end of the movie. Roger Ebert was a fascinating individual, and well, it sucks that he is gone.

Ugh. So here we go.

Brief recap of the series from my POV. Hunger Games – Too much training, not enough games. Too much shaky cam, not enough actual action. It is okay. 2 out of 4. Catching Fire – Figured the plot would be contrived and forced to be similar, but it wasn’t. A much better movie, less shaky cam, better acting. 3 out of 4.

So that is some of my biases coming in to this movie. Or should I call it half a movie? After all, The Hunger Games Mockingjay, the final book, was split in half for movie sake. Oh joy. Just like Twilight. Just like Harry Potter. I am sure Divergent will split the final book into three parts. Hell, this is becoming so annoying, The Maze Runner got praise for saying it wouldn’t split up any of the books! Yay!

It should be noted, I really really really fucking hate this. It is just a franchise milking more money before it becomes irrelevant. If they can fit the other X books into one movie, they can do it for the final one too. And the first of the two always ends up being weaker. It was the worst Twilight film, and a more boring Harry Potter. That is because it is all set up for the final more exciting part, and usually bullshit.

But at least Harry Potter had the decency to release the films within a year of each other, about 7 months apart. Part 2 of Mockingjay won’t come out until next November, a whole year later, making it seem like another complete movie and not a continuation.

I guess I am mostly mad because for a movie, I want a complete story and not just crappy tv show cliffhangers. Catching Fire ended on a crappy TV show cliff hanger, and this one will give me only part of a story and make me wait a whole year to see the second half. That is abusing the part 1 and part 2 system and is malarkey. The only reason to wait that amount of time is to make more money, and unfortunately it will make it too.

Rough plans for their new conference center to discuss ways to make money once this franchise is done.

For those that aren’t in the know, Catching Fire ended with The 75th Hunger Games ending prematurely. Shit broke, lot of chaos and anarchy, people got left behind, and Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself in the once thought destroyed District 13. Looks like they have had a rebel group in here for some time. And so many people are a part of it!

Like, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman)! And Gale (Liam Hemsworth)! And Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) and Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks)! Although their involvement may have been less than voluntary.

Katniss has been brought here for one main reason. To help lead a revolution to take down the capital, to unite the districts as one, and to be the face of PR and propaganda. However, when they rescued her, they notably left a few people behind, including Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a couple other tributes. She doesn’t want to get involved in this war, she just wants to save Peeta. But she gets sucked into it anyway once she finds out that all of District 12 was basically destroyed.

And that’s that! Let the PR campaign begin! Yay warring governments,even if the District 13 President (Julianne Moore) is kind of boring.

Also featuring a whole lot of other people of course. Most returning. Like Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright and Willow Shields. But there is also Mahershala Ali and Natalie Dormer guys. Don’t. Forget. About. Them.

They asked the extras who wants to be Jennifer’s BFF.

I don’t want to sound like a self fulfilling prophesier, but…

I think Mockingjay Part 1 is easily the worst film in the series. And the good news is I gave the recap on top of the other two, so I don’t have to explain their advantages, just talk about this film! The good news is that this film is only 2 hours long, not 140 minutes like the last two. It makes sense, as it is only half of a book anyways. And another good aspect of this movie is that it actually tells a complete story, more or less. We have goals at the beginning of the movie, and by the end, those goals are accomplished in a few ways. They just create a couple more issues and lead up to a bigger and more intense thing.

My issues with the film still relate to the parts though, I guess. Despite its shorter run time, this felt like 30-45 minutes of plot spread out over 2 hours. Everything felt slow, much slower than normal. I can only watch so much angst.

In additional, I cringed quite a few times at lines and actions of characters. They felt so unbelievable or unrealistic given the circumstances that I had to roll my eyes. I found it had at times to really get lost in the movie and allow time to go by easily.

It is still not a terrible film or anything, I just think it didn’t get anywhere close to its full potential. Oh well, we will see how I feel a year from now when I can finally get the end to the story.