Based on the young adult novel written by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta and Liam Hemsworth as Gale. This movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic nation known as Panem where it is also divided into districts. Every year a televised battle to the death known as The Hunger Games occurs that pits a boy and a girl (picked from a lottery) from the ages 12 to 18 from each district against each other. The battlefield is vast and the children’s survival skills are put to the test. There can only be one survivor.
I purposely stayed away from reading the books because when I did get to see I wanted to watch it with a clean palette so to speak. Usually everyone always comes out of the movie saying the same thing “The book was way better”. After giving you that small disclaimer I have to say that I really enjoyed this movie. It took a premise that had been similarly done before (ex: The Running Man and Battle Royale) and did it on a much bigger scale. I was pleasantly surprised by it and personally cant wait for the rest of the movies to come out. The ONLY thing that made me cringe just a bit was a moment when the “gamemakers” started to manipulate the battle environment and 3 words slipped from my mouth. The Truman Show. It reminded me so much of that movie but a lot less funny. Everything else in the flick was action packed and suspenseful and had a great blend of it being a primitive land but with an obvious futuristic twist. The action sequences were great and smart as well but had ALOT of camera movement. I’m sure it was to hide the child on child violence but it did get a bit annoying at times. Jennifer Lawrence did a really fantastic job as did Josh Hutcherson (which was the real curveball for me). Jennifer is already skyrocketing and look for the same to happen with Josh as well. I give this a big two thumbs up and check it out if you haven’t already!!
This short Directed by Neill Blomkamp is where District 9 originated from. Give it a look.
Emile Hirsch stars in this sci-fi/action movie about a pair of friends that take a business trip to Moscow Russia. When the deal goes sour the decide to go out on the town to drown their sorrows. As the evening progresses and they leave an establishment, they see glowing alien creatures coming from the sky that soon turn invisible. As the surrounding citizens get closer to inspect the creatures they find out quickly that they didn’t come in peace. Now all that matters is their survival and to find how to stop them.
I enjoyed this flick quite a bit. I think mainly because I’m a big fan of sci-fi movies. This isn’t the best sci-fi movie I’ve seen but it was still pretty interesting. The fact that the threat is invisible added a certain amount of suspense to it as well. The aliens themselves were unique also. They weren’t seen at all for the most part but when they were revealed their look was a cross between the aliens from Independance Day and a some sort of glowing ball of energy (sorry, that’s the best I could come up with….lol). At times it did kind of feel like a big budget SyFy Original movie but I think the thing that did keep it afloat was Emile Hirsch. His acting ability really did help make this movie enjoyable as well and I thought he did really good in an action environment. Too bad there wasn’t a sweet Eddie Vedder sountrack to go along with it (I kid, I kid). This movie had a very ambitious ending and left it open to a sequel but I think thats asking for a little too much. Either way, if you dig alien invasion movies then it won’t hurt to “Redbox” it and give this a view.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Haywire stars ex-MMA fighter Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, a contractor hired by the American Government for covert operations. Mallory and her team are hired for a simple, routine operation that suddenly goes wrong. She is setup and framed for the murder of a man they were supposed to be protecting. Now her main mission is to track down all the ones that wronged her and make them pay.
I’m going to start by saying Gina Carano is an amazing woman! She’s beautiful, tough as nails and she’s actually a decent actress for this being her first feature role. She’s making the transition to film perfectly and she makes it seem like shes been in action movies forever. I felt like I’ve seen the outline of this story a few times before though but Carano’s fight scenes in this movie are so intense and real that it more than makes up for it. It almost reminds me of the 90’s action flicks that were just straight to the point and in your face with the fight scenes. The other thing that kind of surprised me was all the all-star actors involved in this flick. From Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum and Bill Paxton. They all pretty much played supporting roles to Carano and even with all that star power she kept right up with them (and also kicked most of their asses). There are already talks of a sequel and hopefully there’s more to be seen from Carano (maybe Expendables 3???)
