[Focker]

I posted a few pages ago that I was excited to see that Netflix has the extended editions of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy...each film is split into two parts of approx 90mins each. I really enjoyed the first one, so I gave The Girl Who Played With Fire a go last night. I think I enjoyed it even more than the first! The way these stories unfold is very effective and keeps the view engaged from start to finish. I got through the three hours running time feeling the time flew by. I can't compare to the unedited versions, but I felt these were very well edited, paced properly, and well put together in general. I can't wait to see the 3rd in the trilogy. 
 
"The Girl Who Played With Fire" - 8.8/10
 

 

[snapple10]

^^^ a friend recommended those to me and I enjoyed them, will keep an eye out for the third, thanks
 
 
eke-
I watched the none english version, had to read subtitles and still enjoyed them. not sure which version but still a great series

 

[eke2k6]

The Swedish versions are Netflix are simply awesome. They follow the books so very closely, which I love.
 
I give the entire trilogy a 9.5/10

 

[metalsonata]

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013): 8/10
 
I was impressed with the first film in this series--or at least, more impressed than I expected to be. It had a lot of problems, but so excited was I to see a movie geared toward the Twilight audience that was actually about something and which featured a heroine worth admiring that I inflated my score of it quite a bit--I wanted to see more young-adult films like it. While I'm scoring the second part the same as I did the first, make no mistake, this is the superior film. Yes, there are still some eye-roll worthy moments dotted throughout (specifically the parts designed to garner some ooos and awws from the mostly teenage girl audience that I saw it with; also: Plutarch Heavensbee) and the film opts to end on a Matrix Reloaded-esque cliffhanger without first giving the audience any sort of proper resolution or climax, but otherwise this is a finely crafted, well-paced, and exceedingly well-acted (well, mostly) film that corrects most of the flaws of the first. Grittier (yes, films can be gritty without shakey-cam!) than the first, but also funnier (haha, dat elevator scene), warmer, and truer. Not to mention sharper: Catching Fire is merciless in its satire and its social commentary, or at least, as merciless as a PG-13 film geared toward a teenage audience can be--that said, in many ways, it's also considerably more 'adult' than most mainstream pictures out there, even (or perhaps especially) more so than those with a firm R. Bring on the next part, I say. And is there any chance of us seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Cleopatra mode again? Please and thank you!

 

[mutabor]

  The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013): 8/10
 
Not to mention sharper: Catching Fire is merciless in its satire and its social commentary, or at least, as merciless as a PG-13 film geared toward a teenage audience can be--that said, in many ways, it's also considerably more 'adult' than most mainstream pictures out there, even (or perhaps especially) more so than those with a firm R. Bring on the next part, I say. And is there any chance of us seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Cleopatra mode again? Please and thank you!

 
Sure for the teen girls it is a decent film. As for adults - banality and cliches were evident almost at every scene and turn. The main characters ( Catniss and Peeta) were bland. I liked some of the supporting performances played by Tucci, Elisabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson.
 
I'm glad that rating has fallen from 94% to 89%. I just couldn't believe that such a cheesy Twilight wanna be would score as high as the best efforts in cinema. 
 
The best review on The Hunger Games -2 which I've come across so far 

 

 

[metalsonata]

   
Sure for the teen girls it is a decent film. As for adults - banality and cliches were evident almost at every scene and turn. The main characters ( Catniss and Peeta) were bland. I liked some of the supporting performances played by Tucci, Elisabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson.
 
I'm glad that rating has fallen from 94% to 89%. I just couldn't believe that such a cheesy Twilight wanna be would score as high as the best efforts in cinema. 

 
Some points:
 
∙ Review aggregation sites are worthless. They assign arbitrary scores to reviewers who don't include scores, and they do not take into account the individual scoring methods of critics. For example, Ebert assigned scores based on how much he'd recommend a movie compared to other movies like it, and how much it lived up to its own potential. He could give two movies a four (perfect) rating, and they wouldn't be anywhere near the same ballpark critically speaking, a point he frequently made. Other reviewers might try to position all films they see on the same playing field and compare them all against one another. Reviewers like this might say that Star Wars: A New Hope is their all-time favorite film, but it might only be a 7/10 on their scale, while Citizen Kane might be a perfect 10/10. I would not put any stock into the scores that films receive on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
 
∙ So what that it's a cliche movie? Aren't most films composed entirely of cliches? We've seen the same movie hundreds, maybe thousands of different times--what we look for in a film is new ways of telling the same old stories, or at least competent ways of telling the same old stories. Or maybe re-combinations of several old stories. There's also a lot more to film than its characters and point-by-point plot. In this case, it'd be easy to argue against The Hunger Games (as a book) when there is obviously a lot better dystopian fare out there (1984, Brave New World), but to do so is to miss the point. The Hunger Games works because it makes connections with its target audience that a novel like 1984 does not--teenage girls love those love triangles and the hunky/cute guys that make up two of their corners, and in Katniss, they can see someone that maybe they might identify with, as opposed to Winston Smith. I agree with you that the characters aren't too interesting here, but I appreciate their slightly bent-out-of-place roles, when compared to fare like Twilight. 
 
∙ I'm an adult (not a teenage girl, last I checked), and I enjoyed it. Am I gonna rush out and buy it when it comes out on DVD? Nah. But there's room in my heart and in my head for Katniss, alongside all the established masterpieces like Seven Samurai and 2001 and The Godfather and Andrei Rublev. And truth be told, The Hunger Games is a lot more thoughtful and intelligent than most of its high-budget, blockbusting mainstream competition--I think that's worth something. Not an Oscar like the young girl behind me enthusiastically declared as the end credits began to roll, but something.

 

[mutabor]

 
 So what that it's a cliche movie? Aren't most films composed entirely of cliches? We've seen the same movie hundreds, maybe thousands of different times--what we look for in a film is new ways of telling the same old stories, or at least competent ways of telling the same old stories. Or maybe re-combinations of several old stories. There's also a lot more to film than its characters and point-by-point plot. 

The characters were black or white. It seems that Americans so got used to comics that they find it normal. The problem is that for me that cartoonish characters and unsubtle actions can't make a believable story which would be more than just pure entertainment. Lets compare the complete jerk 100% evil President from Hunger Games and evil rulers from Ender's Game. In the latter case the rulers and commanders sincerely thought that they were defending their planet and therefore they had to destroy their potential enemy. That's how it is in a cruel world of survival of the fittest. In The Hunger's Games it's like in a fairy tale. The President is comically evil and flat. The commander is oh so demonstratively cruel. The media people are oh so fake and hypocritical. The Hunger Games is in fact a fantasy which pretends to be a sci-fi. It's not.
 
The story is convenient. Katniss didn't kill anyone at the second games though she has done it before. And this alleviates potential moral dilemma. 
 
Quote:

   
 And truth be told, The Hunger Games is a lot more thoughtful and intelligent than most of its high-budget, blockbusting mainstream competition--I think that's worth something. Not an Oscar like the young girl behind me enthusiastically declared as the end credits began to roll, but something.
 

 
Sorry to say this but The Hunger Games are plain silly and crude as book and movie series. There is no even single idea which you can grab at. There were plenty in Ender's Game for example. I found a mix of Roman Empire design and distant future to be a devastating kitsch. Which particular ideas did you find smart and not blatantly second hand? I don't see even a slightest hint of any idea. There were some design decisions that is all. 

 

[metalsonata]

  The characters were black or white. It seems that Americans so got used to comics that they find it normal. The problem is that for me that cartoonish characters and unsubtle actions can't make a believable story which would be more than just pure entertainment. Lets compare the complete jerk 100% evil President from Hunger Games and evil rulers from Ender's Game. In the latter case the rulers and commanders sincerely thought that they were defending their planet and therefore they had to destroy their potential enemy. That's how it is in a cruel world of survival of the fittest. In The Hunger's Games it's like in a fairy tale. The President is comically evil and flat. The commander is oh so demonstratively cruel. The media people are oh so fake and hypocritical. The Hunger Games is in fact a fantasy which pretends to be a sci-fi. It's not.
 
The story is convenient. Katniss didn't kill anyone at the second games though she has done it before. And this alleviates potential moral dilemma. 
 
Quote:

   
 And truth be told, The Hunger Games is a lot more thoughtful and intelligent than most of its high-budget, blockbusting mainstream competition--I think that's worth something. Not an Oscar like the young girl behind me enthusiastically declared as the end credits began to roll, but something.
 

 
Sorry to say this but The Hunger Games are plain silly and crude as book and movie series. There is no even single idea which you can grab at. There were plenty in Ender's Game for example. I found a mix of Roman Empire design and distant future to be a devastating kitsch. Which particular ideas did you find smart and not blatantly second hand? I don't see even a slightest hint of any idea. There were some design decisions that is all. 

 
And Ender's Game isn't a cartoon? I can't speak directly to the movie, since I haven't seen it, but I would put the novel on exactly the same footing as most of the new wave of young-adult literature that's out there. Indeed, I might be tempted to knock it a notch or two lower, given how much I dislike Card's rendering of Ender's character, and, to be completely honest, how much I dislike Card himself. (Perhaps the movie fixes the major issues I have with the novel, and perhaps it doesn't. Maybe I'll watch it someday and get back to you on it.) I have also not read The Hunger Game novels in their entirety, and frankly have no real intention of doing so. I just happen to think that your criticisms of the films are profoundly off-base--you're approaching them from the standpoint of what you'd like them to be, rather than meet them at their own level. You want them to be realistic. They're blatantly not. You want them to be sci-fi. They're blatantly not. (Or rather, they're not the sort of sci-fi you're looking for. I believe the line between sci-fi and fantasy is extremely thin, and in may cases, utterly invisible.) Ultimately you can approach a film however it pleases you to do so obviously, and there's certainly a lot of merit in expecting certain things from specific movies as you watch them--otherwise we'd have to dispense entirely with criticism period.  But in this case you seem so opposed to the idea that there might be some young-adult oriented dystopian literature out there that paints things in broad strokes that I have to sort of wonder why you bothered watching it in the first place. It's an entertaining film, engineered specifically for mass-consumption. It'd be great if it were something more, but I'm not going to hold its pop appeal against it. What I'm left wondering is how you jive your complaints leveled against The Hunger Games with the almost pure fairy-tale scripts of M. Night Shyamalan's films (particularly The Lady in the Water), which I seem to recall you being a fan of.

 

[TMRaven]

Hunger Games 2:  7/10.
 
Still solid directing and screenplay, with seemingly even more political commentary this time around, but a lot of things feel forced, and it still does cary teeny-bopper elements.

 

[mutabor]

   
And Ender's Game isn't a cartoon? I can't speak directly to the movie, since I haven't seen it, but I would put the novel on exactly the same footing as most of the new wave of young-adult literature that's out there. 

Ender's Game movie ( I haven't read a book) is definitely a serious sci-fi. It won major and most prestigious awards in science fiction while The Hunger Games were only awarded by a number of awards for children and young audience. It has a number of very compelling ideas on personal and political levels.
 
On personal level: where is a line where you can be strong as a leader, where you can be the fittest ( Darwin's theory of survival of the strongest) and not harm or put down other people who are around you? When I served in the army the strongest soldiers were beating and horribly humiliating the weakest and the rate of suicides and murders was very high.
 
On political level: the destructive nature of Armed forces is portrayed. There is a saying: the best defense is attack. You destroy your rivals or they will destroy you. Again it is Darwinism but on the scale of civilizations. 
 
These two true to life dilemmas were put before Ender. 
 
In The Hunger Games Katniss revolts against the oppressive regime...and that's it. She revolts. Well she is more compassionate than other warriors and therefore she revolts. I don't see any idea here. Did I miss something? All the movie consists of basically two ready concepts: Battle Royal and a gladiator Spartacus story. Two stories are not sci-fi. There is some technological gimmickry in The Hunger Games like manipulations with nature ( a la Harry Potter magic) and some elements of technological development. But they are rather supportive to the story. That is why I call The Hunger Games a fantasy.
Spartacus (Greek: Σπάρτακος, Spártakos; Latin: Spartacus^[1]) (c. 109–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator, who, along with the Gauls Crixus,Oenomaus, Castus and Gannicus, was one of the slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable. All sources agree that he was a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader.

The rebellion, interpreted by some as an example of oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning oligarchy, has been an inspiration to many political thinkers, and has been featured in literature, television, and film. 

Suzanne Collins when she described what inspired her to write the trilogy named: reality shows, Iraq war coverage and a Greek myth of Theseus. Non of these three make a core of the story. Collins redesigned ready material with some manipulations. She didn't add any ideas, she changed decorations behind Battle Royal and Spartacus stories. 

 
Quote:

   I just happen to think that your criticisms of the films are profoundly off-base--you're approaching them from the standpoint of what you'd like them to be, rather than meet them at their own level. You want them to be realistic. They're blatantly not. You want them to be sci-fi. They're blatantly not. (Or rather, they're not the sort of sci-fi you're looking for. I believe the line between sci-fi and fantasy is extremely thin, and in may cases, utterly invisible.) 
 

I'm not a sci-fi fan. I watch movies of this genre for pure entertainment. I like watching advancements in technology. I do make difference between entertainment cinema and more serious intellectual cinema. 
 
I criticize The Hunger Games because they are over hyped while Ender's Game was unfairly put down. I liked After Earth - another film for young audience which was put down. I'm not against fantasy, I'm entertained by it enough to justify watching it. I'm against banality of execution. 
 
Quote:

  What I'm left wondering is how you jive your complaints leveled against The Hunger Games with the almost pure fairy-tale scripts of M. Night Shyamalan's films (particularly The Lady in the Water), which I seem to recall you being a fan of.

 
Everything about The Hunger Games was reproduced zillion times. That is my main concern. My another concern is that such concoction of cliches is considered a masterpiece. Most of Shyamalan's stories and characters are original. He creates his own worlds.

 

[metalsonata]

In the interest of preserving the intent of this thread, perhaps we should carry on this conversation in personal messages Mutabor? Let me know. 

 

[proton007]

Yeah, this is endless, and spoils both the movies for anyone reading the thread.

 

[tdockweiler]

Twelve O'Clock High -7.5/10
 
Movie from 1949 starring Gregory Peck about the air force. Haven't seen a war movie with this much non-stop talking since "The Galant Hours".
Not much action and very slow but very interesting. I think I saw this years ago but totally forgot about most of it.
 
Why are there never any war movies dealing with Post Traumatic Stress or "Shell shock". There's a few but none of them very realistic. There's some things in here about that but not enough.
 
You know what we also need? A big budget WWII movie about the air force (huge battleships required! No aliens). I'm not talking about a dumbed down Disney style movie but something very realistic that's accurate and doesn't sugar coat war.
I heard somewhere there was going to be a Hollywood movie about the bombing of Hiroshima. Not sure how well that'd go over..
 
If they made a movie about the firebombing of Tokyo (and other cities) during WWII and were very accurate it'd be very disturbing. Heard they have a live action version of "Grave of the Fireflies".
 
If I made a movie it'd be about B-29 POWs that were shot down over Japan during WWII. Some of the most interesting stories out of WWII IMO...
 
BTW I read that if you eject at 30000 feet it could be -30F degrees outside and could take over 20 minutes to reach the ground. Lack of oxygen too. I can't imagine what that'd be like..
 
Apparently the producers of "Band of Brothers" are making a series about the air force during WWII.

 

[Johnnyhi]

 
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 5/10 
 
cliffhanger...

 

 

[proton007]

Only 5?