The Hunger Games - Catching Fire - Reviewed

Whoo, more reviews! As always, spoilers!

Catching Fire

As with many of the movies I watch, I haven't read the books. So I apologize if I come off as ignorant to certain things.

Let me immediately get out of the way that I vastly preferred the first movie to this one. This one builds waaaaay more plot than the first one, sure. But at the same time, that cliff-hanger at the end is quite bad if you know that you'll get to see the rest 2 years or so from now. It's great for the fans of the book, but not if people haven't read it.

So, again, it's great for the plot, but as a "stand-alone" movie it's a bad thing. Admittingly, this'll stop being a problem once the third one is out and you can just watch it right after, but for now, it gets points deducted for it.

The acting, like last time, was great. All the roles were very believable, and it's a nice spin to make actors act in a movie, because when they do it right (which they did) it makes it even more believable and relatable.

The things I didn't like about the movie were not that big of a deal. I didn't like how the movie skipped ahead one year and nothing really had happened in that one year. Katniss and Gale were still so-so about each other and their relationship seemed to develop most (or rather, mostly crash and burn, really) during the small time frame of the movie. Other than that, they both got a decent house but that's about it.


Don't get me wrong, I get why the skipped ahead a year, otherwise it would've been a dull period of waiting for the games to start. But I think they could've done with a time-skip or two of several months as well, if only to explain the changes happening in their lives, the rioting and the districts. I mean, isn't it weird that their victory-tour happens almost an entire year later?

Anyway, I digress. The other dislike I have is how mediocre the actual games were this time around. I mean, I get it, they were planning a rebellion and all that, but half of the candidates weren't in on it. And that aside, if you have access to all the weapons/supplies, and have a ranged marksman on your side. Why would you EVER leave the island in the middle?

Oh, and finally, poison should not be curable by water. Period. Either don't make it poison or make a sponsor send antidotes. Anything other than water would've been fine.

The music was good and appropriate. Not much else to say about it, really.

This probably happened in the book, so it would make sense to translate it over to the movie, but I liked how they changed the arena and the training-station in general. At the very least, it shows they're not lazy and just looking to save on budget.

All in all, it's a movie more focussed on plot. It falls short in some aspects, but overal it's worth watching if you liked the first movie. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. The score might've been higher had it not been for the cliff-hanger at the end.

Ender's Game - Reviewed

It's been a while since I've done one of these. So let's give it another go, shall we? Just like the last two, spoilers are probably ahead!

Ender's Game

Let me start by saying I'm just an average movie go-er and I haven't read the book at all, so keep that in mind if I complain or mention something that has been explained in the books.

Ender's Game was a great movie. I feel a bit conflicted about the child actors, because while they were good, they weren't great. So if I were to compare them to adults, they were alright, but I think the movie would have been better if we had adults; because let's face it, there weren't many child-specific moments in the scene that could not have been done by adults.

I only have a couple of gripes with the movie, really. To get a small one out of the way first, I hated how right before the final showdown in the tournament of the games, one of the recruits on Ender's team twisted his ankle and had to be conviniently replaced (which turned out to be permanent, apparently) by Petra. You don't need to use your ankle to walk in zero-G, damn it.

As for the second one, I disliked how time was irrelevant in the movie. At one point you hear Bonzo mention "At this rate, I'll make it to command school in 6 months." but I got the impression that Ender was advancing in mere weeks, not years or months as it's made out to be.

And finally, just the overal shoe-horned relationship with his sister/family, it felt out of place. It also felt out of place how the enemy tried to communicate with him through his dreams and the video game. Plus it begs the question: How the hell did no one find that egg while building the place. IT'S RIGHT OUTSIDE.

As for the good things, I enjoyed how Ender was portrayed. That with being smart/whatnot usually means you're an outcast when it comes to children, because they're often run by emotion and can't see the bigger picture of how meaningless that is when you're being trained for war.

The soundtrack fit the movie well, no score really stands out to me in memory, but that's how I usually am with movies.

And I have to give very big props to the ending; I remember thinking very clearly with 40 minutes or so left "How are they going to finish this simulation training, fight the war, win, and do a victory scene? Please don't tell me they'll just squeeze the war in a 5-10 minute battle and be done with it." So I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out the simulations were the actual war rather than, you know, simulations.

I don't know if that's how it was in the book, but if not, that's a great way to deal with a rushed ending in a movie, if you ask me.

All in all, I would rate the movie a 8 out of 10. It would've bumped a bit higher hadn't it been for those couple of pet peeves and adult actors. But definitely a great movie, would recommend watching it greatly.

Swelling with...

You know the feeling you sometimes get about someone else? The one that starts from within you, making you swell, and when it does happen, you can't help but let the other person know? Being proud of someone is a very interesting feeling.

What? Did you think I was talking about something else? Pervert.

Anyway, the reason as to why I think it's interesting is because why does it really happen? Usually it comes up in a situation where the other person stepped out of the comfort zone, and did something they usually wouldn't do, right? But why does that makes us feel good? When we feel pride in something we do, it's usually related to an accomplishment or something you feel good about making/doing.

So why, generally speaking, isn't the same applied when feeling proud of other people? It's not an on-going thing, usually. It happens once in the moment when they do it, and generally after that it becomes "normal" for them to do it again. Why is this?

But, to take a step back with this, where does pride come from? Do we feel proud about other's accomplishments because we didn't expect them they could do it, but wanted them to be able to? Is it because we imagine us in their shoes, thus feeling good about ourselves and them? But if it's the former, isn't that technically a bad thing? Because you're expecting them to not be able to do something--shouldn't you always have a positive attitude in regards to what your loved ones can accomplish?

Either way, just another ramble coming from me, I had no idea where I was really going with this. I think I just wanted to make the initial joke with this post.

Looking back

As another year rolls by, it reminded me of how it is to look back on things in life. And not just a year or anything like that, but over a long period of time.

Sometimes, while you're in the moment of something in your life, it feels great. Maybe even shortly after that it can still feel great. We've all experienced this, we all know this too well.

But is that really how things were? Were they really as great as you remember them to be, or is that you just tricking yourself because you don't want to remember things being bad? After all, if you remember things being bad, wouldn't you have sort-of just wasted your time with them? Of course, this mostly applies to things such as school, work, relationships, etc.

I've been personally mulling things over lately, and I've drawn that conclusion. Things weren't as great as they seemed at the time, and it took me a lot of perspective and a fresh breath on things to actually realize that. Now, by no means does this mean nothing was ever good, far from it. It just means that at the end of the day, you want to be happy. And you'll jump through hoops to convince yourself that you are happy, rather than accept facts sometimes.

Or maybe it's that things were never bad? Maybe, just maybe, you move on to a better point in your life and things just seem bad in comparison, because you're used to so much better. A good example of this would be an abusive relationship, or finding a job that you actually love.

Either way, whatever the case may be, cherish the good moments you have but don't hide the bad ones by lying to yourself.

Happy New Year everyone, here's to a better 2013 2014!