Over the past several months, there have been a few movies
that I’ve seen that I never wrote posts for.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to write short reviews for
them. At least one of them is already
out on Blu-Ray/DVD, but there are others that are more recent.
“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”
Of the books that this series is based on, I thought the
first one was the best. However, in my
opinion, this second movie was better than the first one. It followed the book really well, but there
was something about it that also improved on the original format. Some of that had to do with the casting,
which I thought was one of the best thing about the first movie. Some of it had to do with who well the
film-makers’ vision matched my own. I
loved seeing the costumes the book described come to life. One of my favorites was Effie’s poodle look
early in the film.
One of the movie’s weaknesses is that it spent so much time
on the pre-Hunger Games segment, that there were things I thought important
that were left out of the Hunger Games bit.
At the same time, there were parts left out of the first part, too. That isn’t much of a surprise, though. It’s never possible to include
everything. Otherwise, movies would be
about 10 hours long instead of 2 or so.
Over all, I thought that the movie was well done.
“I, Frankenstein”
Do not bother with this one.
I wasn’t expecting much from it, and I was disappointed. Some of the special effects were okay. The look of one of the groups, the Gargoyles,
was actually pretty cool. But the other
group, the Demons, looked cheap. I think
most of the time they were just actors in masks—and really bad masks at
that. There were a lot of
inconsistencies and logic errors in the story.
The acting wasn’t great. Almost
none of the characters were likeable. I
wanted to root for the title character, but I had a hard time doing it. He just wasn’t a nice guy—and he didn’t make
any effort to be. Mostly he was
miserable and angry, with no desire to be anything else.
“Divergent”
This one suffered from the book it was based on. The book wasn’t the best I’ve read
recently. I picked it up because I saw a
preview of the movie. But the book never
felt like it got started. And its main
character/story-teller was a rather weak character.
My favorite character from the book, Four, was my favorite
character from the movie. But most of
the other characters were shallow and boring.
Maybe it has to do with one of the major premises of the book: that
everyone is divided into one of five different factions, each based on one character
trait. Four mentioned, in the book and
the movie, that he didn’t want to be just one thing. Instead, he wanted to have all of the
qualities. He had layers. Part of what made the main character, Tris,
“special” was that she could have fit in several factions. Most of the time, though, it seemed like she
couldn’t decide if she was timid or bold.
I didn’t have any complaints related to the movie that
didn’t have something to do with the book.
The casting was pretty good. The
costuming wasn’t too bad. But, unlike
“Catching Fire”, “Divergent” failed to improve upon its source material.
“The Lego Movie”
This one was so good!
I was deceived by the mediocre preview, so I wasn’t all that excited
about it. In fact, I didn’t see it until
it had been in theaters for about a month.
I loved the humor of it.
It was surprisingly both clean and clever. I loved the silliness of it! And it had great themes and messages. I appreciated that the rebellious “Master
Builders” had weaknesses (lack of unity and team work), and that they needed
the very average Emmett to succeed in their objective. Emmett had qualities that they needed: inside
the box thinking and the frowned-upon ability to follow directions. I like that, ultimately, neither of those
qualities were bad.
Also, incidentally, Will Farrell is a much more
entertaining voice actor than a live-action actor, in my opinion.
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