The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Review by Matt Finley

(this review has some spoilers... for ALIEN 3)

There’s a sequence midway through THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 2 in which Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and a battalion of rebel soldiers splash through a claustrophobic network of underground tunnels in an attempt to evade lurking swarms of unseen monsters. Flashlight scopes mounted to futuristic assault weapons send narrow beams of light across the eerie dark. A motion detector noncommittally hums. Holy Hudson. Director Francis Lawrence is cribbing shot for shot from ALIENS. And I love it.

I mention this up front because, first of all, the scene erupts into one of the most thrilling, brutal action sequences of the entire franchise; also, in my review of THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1, I half-jokingly compared a part featuring the rescue of a cat amid steam jets, spinning beacon lights and a portentous automated countdown to the penultimate setpiece of the original ALIEN. At the time, I was convinced I’d made the connection out of sheer ALIEN fanatic pareidolia. Now, I’m beginning to wonder…

Serena (opens in Cleveland March 27th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[SERENA opens in Cleveland on Friday March 27th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Within its first ten minutes, SERENA resoundingly establishes its credentials as a bad movie. Unless you have to watch the movie to review it, or you're a masochist (sometimes feels like the same thing), you should cut your losses at this point. The film is badly cast, badly written, badly directed, badly edited, and badly scored. At least cinematographer Morten Søborg does his job well, but no matter how well you film a traffic accident, it's still a traffic accident.

Silver Linings Playbook

Review by Joseph Anthony

What happens when a man with suppressed bipolar disorder discovers his wife cheating on him with one of her coworkers?  

Director David O. Russell tries to answer this question in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, his first film since the success of THE FIGHTER. Russell has become increasingly efficient in telling focused human stories about people who are relateable, but just a little different than the rest of us. In this case it's Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a man whose life has been turned upside down by his adulterous wife, Nikki (Brea Bee). Upon the discovery on his wife’s affair, Pat beats the man she is cheating with within an inch of his life. This earns Pat eight months in a psychiatric ward and a restraining order against his wife and their former workplace, a school.

When Pat is released, he goes home to live with his mom (Jackie Weaver) and dad (Robert De Niro), but he doesn’t find any relief there. His father is a Philadelphia Eagles junky, and bets on them every week while simultaneously keeping up his superstitious behaviors. Meanwhile, Pat is determined to win his wife Nikki back. Everyone in Pat’s life, including his therapist (played hilariously by Anupam Kher) tries to get Pat to move on, while also controlling his anger. Pat has many triggers for his anger, but his wedding song is the worst of them all: it's the same song that was playing when he found his wife cheating on him.

House at the End of the Street

Review by Bob Ignizio

One-time partier mom turned responsible nurse Sarah (Elisabeth Shue) and her 17 year old musician daughter Elissa (Jennifer Lawrence) try to reconnect while renting a swanky house that would normally be well outside their budget if it weren't for the double murder that took place next door. As we see in the flashback that opens the film, a teenage girl named Carrie Ann (Eva Link) killed both her parents there. The girl was never found, and while most assume she died in the surrounding national park, some maintain she's still out there. The only known member of Carrie Ann's family still alive is brother Ryan (Max Thieriot), who was staying with his Aunt at the time the murders took place.

Although Sarah was told that the house where the tragedies occurred was vacant when she signed her lease, it turns out that Ryan is actually living there, ostensibly fixing the place up so he can sell it. After rebuffing the unwanted advances of rich and arrogant local boy, Elissa meets Ryan for herself when he offers her a ride home. Ryan is clearly a damaged soul, but his bad-boy charisma and generally nice demeanor begin to win Sarah over. But Ryan has some dark and potentially dangerous family secrets that may put an end to any budding romance.

X-Men: First Class

Review by Bob Ignizio

The focus of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is primarily on exploring the past of 3 characters we know from the other X-MEN films: Professor Charles Xavier (James MacAvoy), Erik “Magneto” Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) and Raven aka “Mystique” (Jeniffer Lawrence). Only this time around, they're all on the same side, more or less.

As depicted in 2000's X-MEN, Erik discovered his powers as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944. FIRST CLASS restages that scene and then expands on it, introducing us to Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a powerful mutant working with the Nazis as an expedient way of discovering other similarly powered individuals. Despite extolling a philosophy of mutant superiority and brotherhood, Shaw is perfectly willing to kill Erik's mother to get him angry enough to use his powers, turning the boy into a self-proclaimed “Frankenstein's monster” in the process.