The Hunger Games

Skip dinner, pass on dessert, run to The Hunger Games which is playing on every screen at every theatre near you. You will be on the edge of your seat for the entire 2 hour & 20 minute spectacle. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a tyrannical government stages an annual televised competition of  young people fighting to the death. The Hunger Games is Mad Max meets Gladiator at the Olympics. I am not usually a fan of young adult or series literature (and I use the term "literature" lightly). I have never read a Harry Potter, The Girl with..., or Twilight novel. Yet the marketing for this movie was brilliant and "reaped" my interest. Casting is terrific featuring Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Lenny Kravitz, and Donald Sutherland as the "President". Hunks Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are sufficiently hot and easy on the eyes. Costumes and make-up are outrageous, Nazi-esque futuristic sets are wonderfully overdone, and even the multiplying hairless Rottweillers are original. Yet the movie belongs to the talented Jennifer Lawrence. Any of you who saw her in Winter's Bone knew she had talent. A heart pounding race from start to finish. Bring on Hunger Games 2, I'm starving for this type of original action film!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Long, grey, confusing and yet somehow intriguing! If you don't fall asleep you'll be riveted to the screen. Cast amazing, Gary Oldman Oscar worthy and Colin Firth always brilliant. "I know who he is."

The Iron Lady

"The Iron Lady" is a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One of the 20th century's most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to become the Leader of the Conservative Party, a party which does not believe all men are created equal, but rather men--and women--are created to achieve, and achieve she does. Thatcher's "Just get up and do" ethic is evident to a fault as she leads England through a tumultuous time of union strikes, IRA bombings, a downturn in manufacturing, and mortgage defaults (sound familiar?).


The story swings chaotically between her humble beginnings as a grocer's daughter and Oxford graduate to head of Britain, and her later years filled with paranoia and hallucinations. Meryl Streep is dramatic and full of costumes & make-up as "MT". Yet, it all seems somewhat shrill, staged, and stiff, as if we are watching a wax figure from Madame Tussauds. You never loose Meryl in Margaret. The movie has no substance other than endless newsreels of Britain burning and/or warring in the Faulklands. The men who surround Margaret are one-dimensional, and terribly English, stiff, cold, and remote. 


Meryl plays Thatcher's sad descent into Alzheimer's with a mix strength and courage, yet it all seems horribly forced. Jim Broadbent, who is usually brilliant given a meaningful screen play, appears silly and foolish as Dennis Thatcher, her pompous husband. The performances are an effort rather than a gift. This was not Meryl's best role and the movie is a dud.

HUGO

Best said by the late Amy Winehouse, "They tried to make me go to HUGO and I said, no, no, no." Unfortunately, the good press on Martin Scorsese's fantasy piece, HUGO, drew me in. What is this movie about? Inventions, clocks, trains, movies? How likely is it that two kids will meet and both be orphans? Does it really snow that much in Paris?

Living in the walls of a 1930's Paris train station, which might actually be the present day D'Orsay, thirteen year old Hugo is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton. An automawhat?
Fantasy is not my preferred genre. Ben Kingsley was wasted, Sasha Baron Cohen was ridiculous, only the doberman seemed real. I think I'd prefer rehab!

The Descendants

The Descendants is a wry, somewhat moving, slightly entertaining snapshot of hell in paradise. The Hawaii of this movie is at times idyllic, at others a mirror of American society in distress. George Clooney adeptly plays the distant father coping with two daughters, while Mom lays in a coma from which she never recovers. (If you've lost someone you loved in the past year, this may not be the movie for you.) There is some funny dialogue as well as poignant moments along the path of sorrow, illness, old age, and adultery, while Dad and his girls find their way back to each other. Overall the supporting cast may be better than George, though best actor nominations will surely come his way.

The Artist

From the stylized opening credits to the last tap, The Artist is thoroughly clever, completely enjoyable, and tearfully touching. A smartly played black and white film about silent films, The Artist pays homage to cinema's golden age. This film may turn out to be the best movie of the year, while 2011 boiled over with hangovers, bridesmaids, girls with tattoos, twilights, and horses. The Artist is more imaginative than nearly every other entry. Don't be put off by the lack of sound and color, plenty of laughs and emotions are on hand, free from anything other than a delightful soundtrack and handsome shades of black and white. Step out for a lively rendezvous with the past, the older you are, the more you'll enjoy it!

War Horse

War Horse is the story of a young farmer-boy, Albert, and his beloved horse, Joey. Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during World War I, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between the horse and Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are unfortunately parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets--British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter--before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of no man's land, the trenches of The Great War.


If you put "All Quiet on the Western Front", "Black Beauty" and "Saving Private Ryan", in a blender, and threw in some Gone-with-the-Wind-size landscapes, you've got War Horse. Remember to suspend disbelief, it's an animal movie, and gallop along with Steven Spielberg and the grandiose John Williams score to a resounding good cry at the end.