Reviews
[Review] ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2’ is a Fitting End to the Franchise
After four years, the worldwide phenomenon comes to a close with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, the second half the adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ third book in The Hunger Games young adult book trilogy. It isn’t the strongest entry in the series (that title would belong to 2013’s exceptional Catching Fire), but it does provide it a fitting, if somewhat drawn out, conclusion.
Picking up right where The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 left off, we begin the film with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering from her attack at the hands of Peeta. She is bruised and battered after having been betrayed by her friend and is then immediately thrust back into the war against the Capitol. After a rather laborious first half she, along with Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Finnick (Sam Claflin), and a slew of others enter into the Capitol, which has been booby-trapped beyond all over, prompting one character to declare it the 76th Annual Hunger Games (something the Part 1 was sorely lacking).
Jennifer Lawrence’s career has skyrocketed since she appeared in the first film four years ago, but she is still fully committed to the role that fully put her in the public’s eye. It is to Lawrence’s credit that Mockingjay Part 2 works as well as it does. She has always been the one to ground the films and give them an emotional depth when they could sometimes come off as melodramatic.
Director Francis Lawrence films the action sequences in Mockingjay Part 2 frantically, to the point where it almost feels like you are watching Saving Private Ryan. Sometimes it is so frantic that you can’t always tell what is going on or who is dying. Such is war, after all, so it fits the situations perfectly. When a major character dies about halfway through the film, it’s barely given a second thought. No one stops to mourn them because there isn’t any time.
The film has a few thrilling action sequences as well, with the two best ones involving a flood of tar and the other a vicious attack by mutts in the sewers. The latter stands out as one of the most horrific sequences the films have ever done and it plays out wonderfully.
Where Mockjay Part 2’s strength lies (and this was also a strength of the book) is that it doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of war. Besides the aforementioned deaths, Mockingjay Part 2 serves up a bleak outlook on the repercussions of the rebellion and the toll that war can take on a society. While Mockingjay was the weakest part of the book trilogy, it’s ending is what set it apart from other YA novels of the same ilk, and this concluding chapter in the film franchise is no different. The final half of the film and, specifically, the closing 20 minutes, make up for many of the weaknesses that came before it
Unfortunately, Mockingjay Part 2 fails to justify splitting the 390-page novel up into two films totaling over four hours of films screen time. Much of the film’s first hour is spent in meetings between Katniss, President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch Heavensby (the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman), which is exactly what Mockingjay Part 1 consisted of. Hoffman’s absence due to his untimely death last year is especially felt at the end of the film, with Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch delivering a letter containing Plutarch’s parting words to Katniss.
With such a large cast, Mockingjay Part 2 attempts to give each character a proper sendoff, and while it may work for certain characters (Finnick and Jena Malone’s Johana), many other characters (Elizabeth Banks’ Effie and Stanley Tucci’s Caesar, among others) are underserved and it feels nothing more than a long game of roll call. Mockingjay Part 2 would have done better to just excise some of those characters in favor of giving others more screen time. This is all the more disappointing considering that the two films had over four hours of screen time to squeeze as many character moments in as it could. You have to give the film one thing: it doesn’t feel overstuffed.
One of the weaker parts of the previous films was the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale, and that problem continues to plague Mockingjay Part 2. The film grinds to a halt every time the characters discuss Peeta and Gale fighting for Katniss’ affection. The good news is that these scenes are few and far between, but since Gale is more present in this film than he ever was in any of the previous installments, they do occur more than you would like.
Overall, Mockingjay Part 2 does justice to the book and refuses to water down any of the harsher moments of its closing moments. Any worries fans may have had about the film watering down any parts of the novel can rest assured that the deaths hit hard and the ending is just as bittersweet as you remember. On its own, it still feels like half of a film. The first half is a bit of a slog to get through, but once they enter the city, it becomes an incredibly intense war movie. It still doesn’t surpass Catching Fire as the high point of the franchise, but it is a noble effort.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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