THE HUNGER GAMES - eheu o me miserum!

HUNGER GAMES plays like a po-faced, de-fanged version of RUNNING MAN and BATTLE ROYALE. In a dystopian American future, the tyrannical 1 percent demand each district volunteer two kids to fight to the death in a gladiatorial reality TV show. Predictably, the two kids from the poorest district work together to game the system and survive - the only spin being that they become as manipulative as the game they are in to succeed - feigning teen love (or are they?! - who cares) to win public sympathy.  Clearly, the franchise, based on a trilogy by Suzanne Collins', is gearing up for a finale in which the triumph of the 99th percentile inspires a revolution of the Plebs. Which begs the question why, with all their technology, cash, and cunning, the 1% allows them to survive so long. Frankly, any ruling elite so utterly incompetent deserves to die by dingleberries. Dr No, sorry, Snow, is giving us a bad name. 

Anyways, what can we say about this film. It has less pretty lead actors (Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence)than the Twiglet series but equally pitiful dye jobs.  (Picture the Celebrity Death Match between Josh Hutcherson's blonde highlights and Twiglet's Nikki Reed!) The acting is better in THE HUNGER GAMES, basically because Jennifer Lawrence can communicate so much nuanced and conflicting emotion without saying a word. But this is offset by some truly shitty production and costume design - so over-the-top, so absurd, that it looks cheap and trashy and completely undermines the attempt at portraying earnest emotion. The worst victim of this is poor Elizabeth Banks in what one can only call the Parker Posey Memorial Role, as inspired by Helena Bonham Carter. By contrast, Lenny Kravitz hardly looks like he's trying at all, and one can imagine an hilarious conversation between the rock musician and the make-up department where he just refuses to go with it. Finally, the direction (Gary Ross - THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX) is also pretty pedestrian.

But my real problem with the whole show was its hackneyed premise coupled with a pretty superficial use of Roman names and concepts.  The world really just doesn't need a desaturated RUNNING MAN. It's like the whole problem with Twiglet: vampires who don't have sex are about as compelling as a Death Match where studio economics require a PG-13 certificate, so that all violence happens off-screen. Apparently the books are more savage, which is great, but then again, Suzanne Collins does try to palm us off with a kind of lo-rent tipping-of-the-hat to Rome.  Clever, clever to call a food deprived land "Panem", and to keep the plebs happy with circuses, but you just can't call major characters Cinna and Caesar without following through. It all felt highly disrespectful coming from a woman who purports to have serious influences. Moreover, where's the subtle satire on reality TV? Where's the subversive politics? The film seems to pick up so many interesting, dangerous concepts, but doesn't seem to have the balls to follow them through.  Oh, and one final thing.  Why give your heroine a name that sounds like "catnip"?

THE HUNGER GAMES is on release pretty much everywhere except Chile and Vietnam, where it opens on March 30th; South Korea and Lithuania, where it opens on April 6th; South Africa, where it opens on April 13th; Spain where it opens on April 20th and Italy, where it opens on May 1st.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - RAMPART

When I walked in to RAMPART I was expecting the movie equivalent of The Wire or The Shield - an examination of corruption and institutional racism in the police force, based on the real Rampart scandal in 1990s Los Angeles. To be sure, director Oren Moverman (THE MESSENGER) and writer James Ellroy impressionistically hint at the wider malaise.  We have cameos from Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver as the ass-covering establishment. But there's no clear picture of the wider context - no attempt to connect the dots and take the viewer to the heart of the corruption, in the  manner of LA CONFIDENTIAL. Rather, this movie is a character study of a fictional policeman at the centre of the scandal - Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown.  


To that end, the centre of the story isn't the police department or the patrol car, but the home Dave shares with the mothers of his two children, who also happen to be sisters (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon); the bars he frequents; the woman he picks up (Robin Wright).  Because, let us be clear - RAMPART is a scathing depiction of a delusional man, so corrupt he can't even see it, or own it - a self-destructive charmer, who thinks he should be rewarded for "doing the city's dirty work" but can't see that he's destroying his family in the process.  


If you accept the movie as a character study rather than a thriller or procedural, you have a far greater chance of enjoying it. Frustrations with the ambiguities of the graft and the uneven pacing - the lack of real "bite" - are compensated for by the powerful, charismatic and complex central performance by Woody Harrelson and the impressionistic use of intense colour and feeling of claustrophobia created by DP Bobby Bukowksi (ARLINGTON ROAD). Because, in the final analysis, RAMPART is not a great movie - it doesn't hold you in the way that it should - it is, rather, a highly successful mood piece that contains a superlative central performance. I just wish that that performance had been anchored to a stronger supporting text.

RAMPART played Toronto and London 2011.

Michael Stipe and Woody Harrelson at the UK premiere
of RAMPART at the BFI London Film Festival.

The Fast Jimmy Memorial DVD Review - DEFENDOR

Trailing in the shadow of KICK-ASS comes a low-budget flick called DEFENDOR - the directorial debut of writer/actor Peter Stebbings - that got a limited release in the US and goes straight to DVD in much of Europe next Monday. Woody Harrelson stars as a sweet guy suffering from the delusion that he is a super-hero called Defendor, who can fight evil villains a jar of angry wasps and a baseball bat. Naturally, he gets the shit kicked out of him, but not before he is rescued by/rescues a crack-whore called Kat (Kat Dennings - NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST). Before the inevitable third-act redemption, Kat plays to Defendor's delusions by making him think that her ex-boss/pimp is his arch-enemy, and the rest of the movie shows how Arthur/Defendor tries to navigate real-life crime-busting. This is inter-cut with footage of him going through therapy with his psychiatrist, played by an amused by sympathetic Sandra Oh (GREY'S ANATOMY).

Overall, the movie is an interesting watch because Woody Harrelson commits to the role and brings a sort of goofy charm to it that he hasn't had on screen since back in the days of CHEERS. The supporting cast is generally strong - particularly Elias Koteas as undercover cop Chuck Dooney. And the tech credits are particularly impressive for a low-budget venture: props to DP David Greene. But there are problems with the flick. In front of the camera, I had a tough time buying into Kat Dennings portrayal of the hooker with a heart of gold. In every film she makes she carries herself and speaks like a wise-ass hipster. This is fine for a film like  NICK AND NORAH but really jars in DEFENDOR. She just doesn't sound convincing as a girl who lives on the streets. The second problem is on the page - the script is too uneven in tone. Does Peter Stebbings want this to be a goofy comedy, poking gentle fun at Defendor? Or does he want this to be an emotional drama about too damaged and unlikely people finding a connection? Neither was committed to.

So, would I recommend DEFENDOR? Yes, it's good enough for DVD night and has an interesting approach to superhero movies. But for my money, if you really want to see a sensitive and beautifully acted examination of super-hero as delusion, check out SPECIAL.

Additional tags: Peter Stebbings, Clark Johnson, Lisa Ray, A C Peterson, Kristin Booth, Charlotte Sullivan, John Rowley, David Greene, Geoff Ashenhurst

DEFENDOR played Toronto and Whistler 2009 and went on limited released in the US and Brazil earlier this year. It is straight to DVD in the UK on September 9th.

MANAGEMENT- Finally!

Finally! After what seems like endless twee, smug, in-love-with-their-own-kookiness hipster rom-coms, with about as much authentic emotion as a Barbie doll, along comes a quiet little independent movie called MANAGEMENT. Part bittersweet relationship drama, part broad comedy, the movie is hard to define (and presumably hard to market). Sometimes characters do crazy cute things that only really happen in rom-coms. Some characters are so exaggerated they couldn't possibly exist in the real world. But for every purely funny scene, there's a scene of real emotional warmth and truth.

Jennifer Aniston plays Sue Clauson - a really nice woman who's somehow still single and fills up her life with worthy causes. On a business trip she meets a guy called Mike, another lonely, nice person, stuck working in his parents; motel. The two hook up and so it should end, but Mike rather fantastically, and immaturely, starts following Sue across the country, finally parachuting into her pool and serenading her. She's stuck between being flattered by this insane "rom-com" behaviour and being creeped out by his semi-stalkerish immature antics. What I love about the film is that there is no quick Hollywood ending but actual personal growth. Jennifer Aniston in particular turns in a convincing, modulated performance, while Woody Harrelson and James Liao are very funny indeed.

MANAGEMENT played Toronto 2008 and was released earlier this year in the US, Israel, Iceland, Romania, Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Singapore and the Philippines. It opens today in the UK and on October 29th in South Korea.