The Hunger Games has been a long time coming, the ravanous fans of the book series devouring every bit of news from the production. So now it’s out, a few box office records have been broken and I just saw one of the most disappointing adaptations in my recent memory. I read the book about a year ago and leaving the theatre I felt like the essence of the book was missing.

First the good. Loved the cast. Great choices, mostly great performances and everyone looked how I thought they would in my head. Soundtrack is equally solid, music and sound effects really work in every scene. Special effects were mostly good as well. The presentation of the Tributes is a good example of the teeter totter effects work. The fire costumes for the Boy and Girl on Fire was nailed…but the crowd looked so fake it was distracting. Clearly a green screen backdrop that’s done in countless movies but just didn’t composite well here. A mild complaint, but that kind of stuff really jumps out at me.

Now the big draw backs for me: the script and the direction. Most of the book is Katniss’ internal dialog and that’s how you learn about most of the world she’s in and most importantly her feelings and intent toward the Games (and Peeta). In the movie, a lot of that is done with facial expressions or added dialog from other characters (like the explanation of what Tracker Jackers are). This was a really hard book to adapt and I really don’t know how else to tackle it. I never felt like I understood Katniss all that well or most of the people around her. Plus, the pace of the movie is really fast (and still clocks in at like 130 min) so that compounds the feeling that there are these big gaps in the story telling and characterization. While some of the scenes worked just as intended (Katniss and Rue is probably the best) others come off as really hokey and melodramatic (the cave scene with Katniss and Peeta).

Now for the direction. Holy crap, did Gary Ross ask Paul Greengrass to do most of the work for him? I can’t think of a movie with more close ups in it. It’s insane. The camera shake during action scenes is completely out of control. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that was done because they were terrified of getting an R rating. The very start of the Game at the Cornucopia is a prime example. That’s a very important scene and it’s very chaotic on the page. But it’s shot so wild that your spacial reasoning is sent reeling, it’s so hard to understand where and what anyone is doing. The violence is extremely vague, you more or less see flailing around cut with running, a still shot of someone hiding, more flailing with shaking and then maybe a spot of blood cut back and forth with shaky running and a body that is laying on the ground. Shortly after that scene, it’s announced that 13 of the 24 tributes have been killed. I think I saw three. It was a complete surprise that so many were killed. Every action scene is shot like that. I understand their concern with the violence part of it, but consider the source material! It is kids forced to kill each other, you can’t avoid it. Now I’m not saying that it should be a slasher movie, but the way it was done here just wasn’t right.

The close ups drove me nuts too. I was honestly shocked at how close up just about everything was filmed. It made everything feel so narrow and claustrophobic. The Potter movies feel like they exist and operate in a complete world, Hunger Games felt like it was taking place in 3 rooms, a train car, a gym and a 1 acre plot of a park. It seemed so weird to me, it felt like the story was so compressed that the visual scope of the world was too. Was it budget constraints? You just see tiny pieces of things, and when they do blow things out (like the Presentation of the Tributes I mentioned earlier) it looks fake. So that just made me think “well, they’re just in a room surrounded by green screens, not in an huge arena or open area. I could never sustain the belief that I was watching an event that takes place in the future.

A lot of people compare this to the book and movie “Battle Royale” that was made 12 years ago. They share the same core concept; the government forcing the young population picked by a lottery to fight to the death in contest as punishment. But that’s about it, they exist on 2 opposite sides of the same line. The set up, story, characters and execution are completely different. Battle Royale knocked me for a loop when I first saw it. It totally embraces and never looks away from the horror of it all. It’s more of a thriller/horror movie than HG and I really enjoyed that a lot more. The Lighthouse scene in that movie is one of the most intense things you will ever see. In fact, BR just hit English DVD/Blu for the first time and I highly recommend it.

This experience reminds me a lot of what I thought about The Last Airbender. Phenomenal source material that just didn’t survive the cramming and smashing to get it all into a 2 hour film adaptation. It’s just not as good as it should and could have been.

Some quick hits to completely catch me up!

Contagion– Remember the movie Outbreak? This is a new viral threat movie, but minus those pesky monkeys. Director Steven Soderbergh continues his solid legacy with this one. It’s a straight forward epidemic movie that’s going to make you want to wash your hands the second the credits roll. Gwyneth Paltrow is close to patient zero, in fact she brings it to the States. Never trust her.

Outrage-Yakuza! A big name boss needs a group of drug trafficers to be brought under control. He tells his right hand man to handle it who then passes it on to the guy below him. It doesn’t go well. Mistakes and misunderstandings are made and a whole lot of people end up paying with their lives. Beat Takeshi is the most well known actor here and he does his standard quality tough man gig here. Pretty good, but I’d only recommend it to yakuza genre fans.

30 Minutes or Less– This one got alot of weird looks when it came out because it kind of mimics a real life event where a pizza delivery guy actually had a bomb strapped to him and forced to rob a bank (he didn’t live). I don’t really see how this teased or made fun of that mans unfortunate end, but that might be just one of those things that people who like to get offended over cling to.

I watched this for the cast as I really like Eisenberg, Ansari, Swardson and McBride. It’s not a laugh a minute, but there is some great dialog and character interaction here and at 80 minutes long it doesn’t overstay its welcome. McBride and Swardson are a pair of dummies who get the idea of opening a massage parlor, but they don’t have the money to invest in it. But, McBride’s father does! They hire a hit man to take him out so McBride can get the inheritance but need 100 grand for the hitman. They spot Eiseneberg and decided to force him to rob a bank to put their plan into action.

It’s not going to win any awards, there is a love plot that really doesn’t mean much in the end and it’s not the funniest movie ever made, but I don’t think the movie deserved all the hate it got. Good rental to kill a rainy afternoon.

Tintinis an old comic created by Herge. Huge in Europe, Tintin never really caught on here. He’s a young detective who solves wondrous globe spanning mysteries with his trusty dog Snowy. A menagerie of characters accompany and hinder Tintin in the many stories that Herge wrote over a 50 year span.

This movie, spearheaded by Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson merges 2 stories, “The Crab with the Golden Claws” and “The Secret of the Unicorn”. The film feels and looks a lot like an Indiana Jones movie ( a lot better than Crystal Skull). It takes place in 1930 in various dusty locals around the world. The visuals are the most striking of all, by far the best motion capture based animation films I’ve seen. Realistic character movement and facial animation, incredible environmental effects. Easily on par with the best Pixar has offered to date. Given the virtual space, Spielberg went with a full digital camera system (as first used in 2006’s Monster House I think). This allowed him to move the camera around in ways that’s impossible to do in real life. The action set pieces often use these sweeping and long camera takes that are pretty breathtaking to be hold.

It’s a really well made movie, a lot of care and work went into this. Not being familiar with the original works, I can’t comment on how well they translated Tintin to the screen, but I liked what I saw. It’s a fun, adventurous story with memorable characters and great action. Recommended to everyone.

Remake or reboot? Either way Jonah Hill took on the task of reimagining the 80’s show for the movies and it works surprisingly well.

21 Jump Street is an undercover cop unit that infiltrates high schools to stop the growing scourge of illicit drugs. Here it’s a new synthetic drug that the authorities want stopped before it spreads to other schools. Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) went to this school 7 years ago and became friends while going to police academy after graduation. A botched arrest puts them on this new task force where they need to find the dealer and then the supplier of the drug.

It’s a funny buddy cop movie, Hill and Tatum have a real chemistry that the movie really relys on. While the movie does go through the motions, some slight twists and bumps were wisely put in to keep it new and interesting. Great cameos by the main cast of the TV show give a nice final touch on the whole experience. I’d say it makes a quality rental.