MOVIE REVIEW: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2

With all honesty, this writer has never been a fan of "The Hunger Games." Dystopian worlds and brassy films about them are always fascinating, but kids-killing-kids-for-sport isn't a cup of tea fitting of endorsement. It is easy to be intrigued but admittedly hard to be entertained by such a thing. With the profit-milking complete from "Part 1" last November, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2" ties together its loose ends with reasonable quality. To this critic, the series has always come down to your tolerance of overwrought melodrama, your acceptance of illogical hang-ups, and your stomach for grim fictionalized massacre with a high body count being pushed on kids. It's hard to be a fan of that bleakness.

MOVIE REVIEW: Bone Tomahawk

The western film genre has always had a violent backbone. Even in the sunniest and most heroic of examples, more often that not, we're watching a struggle of survival where it is kill or be killed in a raw rural landscape. We label, separate, and celebrate heroes from villains, but all are killers with only opposing morals and justice of different degrees separating them. The violence is ever present. Few traditional westerns embrace its violent reality. "Bone Tomahawk" surges head first into it with absolute courage and graphic disregard.

MOVIE REVIEW: Burnt

Due entirely to his talent and appeal, two hours of Bradley-being-Bradley works and the film will rightly entertain at an acceptable superficial level. The subject is simple and the the risk is low. The food is pretty, the ensemble is smooth, and the cliches are pre-made. While "Burnt" offers a flourish or two to spark a little extra entertainment, it is far from the grass roots personal touch and smaller scale passion that was Favreau's "Chef" a year ago. "Burnt" is, in essence, more elitist and that requires you to be impressed, but only at a distance.

DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: Motley's Law

51st Chicago International Film Festival special presentation

In this writer's opinion, documentary films are at their strongest when they merge two symbiotic pairs of traits. A good documentary and its human interest story merges truth with its narrative. Secondly, a good documentary merges its overarching message with art. Any of those four ingredients alone are not enough. In the documentary genre, a narrative without truth defeats its nonfiction purpose and the central message being delivered needs the artistic touch requisite to its chosen medium of cinema. As long as it can achieve those two mergers, a successful documentary can take any subject and give it proper focus.

MOVIE REVIEW: Bridge of Spies

Sewn with care to document an unopened storybook file on little-rememberd, forgotten Cold War heroics and theatrics, "Bridge of Spies" is the kind of historical drama that Steven Spielberg can make in his sleep. In a way, this is Spielberg's throwback answer to "Argo," three years after Ben Affleck's film swept the top Oscars away from Spielberg's own "Lincoln." He doesn't need that one-upmanship for his ego. "Bridge of Spies" is more a reminder that the master is still capable of making a winner with ease.

MOVIE REVIEW: Embers

51st Chicago International Film Festival special presentation

With "Embers," we definitely have something to bite into from first-time director Claire Carre. The film occupies a domestic world after an unseen neurological disaster that caused societal collapse. People drift aimlessly through urban ruins trying to eek out existence and survival. Worst of all, the people still alive now are stricken with amnesia and now have the inability to keep short-term memory. Think "Memento" on a community-sized scale.

MOVIE REVIEW: Everest

Marketed like a thrilling disaster film yet playing like a respectful drama, "Everest" is still carries the sheen of every other Hollywood mountain climbing movie while offering enough of a eulogistic history lesson to be respectful of its true story. Based on the real 1996 events documented in Jon Krakauer's massively best-selling novel "Into Thin Air," astute viewers who know how it will all end will still be engaged and entertained through the cliches. Director Baltasar Kormakur veils the seams of Hollywood dramatization enough to not sour the experience.

MOVIE REVIEW: Black Mass

Not to put on the school teacher hat, but let's pose a few questions and directions. Raise your hand if Johnny Depp has let you down since 2003 when he hit the big time playing Captain Jack Sparrow and became a caricature instead of an actor? Alright. That's most of you. Now, how many times did he let you down? Twice? Five times? More than five? Wow. That's still a lot of hands. Last question, how many of you miss Johnny Depp, The Actor who made us marvel as a serious performer back in films like "Blow" and "Donnie Brasco" Yup, that's everyone. Rest assured, class, "Black Mass" is here.

DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Sometimes, the best documentaries aren't about stirring victories, historic successes, or heroic people. Sometimes, the best documentaries are about losers, accidental stardom, hubris, and horrible people. We are equally fascinated by a trainwreck as much as we are a space shuttle launch, maybe even more so. The captivation and interest factor doesn't wain. That's the draw of the new documentary "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films." It makes a trainwreck fascinating.

MOVIE REVIEW: Vacation

To this writer, the success of a remake, reboot, or sequel is contingent upon matching the tone of the original work to the best of its ability. If a film gets that tone right, it can be a drastic revision full of changes and updates and still feel respectfully aware and in tune with the previous well-remembered greatness the new film is trying to emulate. That's the taste test that should be put on "Vacation," the new long distance sequel/update of the 1983 National Lampoon comedy classic.

MOVIE REVIEW: Trainwreck

The amount of love and appreciation you will garner for "Trainwreck" will entirely depend on your taste and tolerance level for its star, Amy Schumer. The groundbreaking comedienne wrote this screenplay as a fictionalized take on herself. If you love her brash comedy and clever subversive feminism, "Trainwreck" is a star-making arrival and a triumph as rare female-centered romantic comedy. If you're not into the crassness and randomness of her act, the film is going to feel like episodic fits and starts within a flawed romantic comedy that feels like pieces from different and better films.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ant-Man

Creative differences, bad PR, and terrible marketing have sunk greater and lesser films. "Ant-Man" survives each those kisses of death to be a fun, entertaining, and clever blockbuster. The creativity is more than present to veer away from Marvel's usually enormous scale of worldwide crisis-aversion and give us a true small-scale (literally and figuratively) "regular guy" hero that was missing among the billionaires, scientists, soldiers, assassins, and demi-gods Marvel has elevated so far to its cinematic pedestals. "Ant-Man" is packed with a plentiful amount of humor, spirit, and surprises that trump both the bad PR and overindulgent marketing. It was saving some aces up its sleeve.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

BRINGING YOU MOVIE REVIEWS AND MORE SINCE 2010

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