Awakening the Mockingjay

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I”     ★★★

A Review by Kevin Powers

Picking up pretty much right where “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (2013) left off, the first of two installments of the final part of the trilogy captures the same gritty tone that the previous set up. Sadly, though, we just get more set up after the masterful previous film and have to wait another year to see the action-packed ending.

We can credit the continuation of tone to director Francis Lawrence (no relation to leading actress, Jennifer). Taking over after the first film to direct the final two/three, he has really done a great job making a visual spectacle out of a series of Young Adult novels that demands such. This one, just like the book, is the darkest yet. Almost too dark.

When I Was Thirty: The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition

by Kevin Powers

Now, this one, the first watch from my twenty-tenth birthday gift of triliogies haul, is a doozie. Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork hit huge with audience and critics alike (as well as Academy Award voters) over three consecutive years (2001, 2002, 2003). The final film, "The Return of the King," swept the Oscars (minus the acting, which is certainly lackluster), but I feel these awards, looking back, were well-deserved. Watching this trilogy again, for the first time in their final extended cuts, was rewarding and often spellbinding. You often find yourself wondering…How the hell did he do it? 

Luckily, this 15-disc Blu-Ray set, tells you the answer and then some. Here's a rundown of the three films, their pros and cons, and a few words about some of the special features:

Bundle Up and Binge-Watch

by Kevin Powers

Well, I guess winter done come a month early this year. I am freezing as I type this, and I’m inside with the heat on plus two layers. For those who know me, I’m not the skinniest fella either.

            

When the cold’s getting to you this holiday season, why not sit back for six-hour stretches of TV shows? That’s what we do at the Powers’ Homestead.

Netflix is the way to go for this. And they have so many great ones to choose from. What follows are my recommendations, categorized.

When I Was Thirty: A Speaks Movie Series

by Kevin Powers

Yes. That's right. I turned 30 this year. About six weeks ago to be exact.

For the two weeks leading up to the big day, Amanda (my wife) would give me a gift here and there. A theme emerged: The Trilogy. Pretty fitting, right?

See, the thing is: Every year since Amanda and I have been together, she has rounded up both of our families on a mission to buy me BluRays on a certain theme. Usually, its a director. This year (Year Five), it was something different.

Year One: Five from the Coen Brothers on DVD (the BluRay hadn't reached us yet.)
Year Two: All Tarantino on BluRay
Year Three: Many major Woody Allen on DVD and BluRay
Year Four: All Wes Anderson on Criterion BluRay (Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox just BluRay)
Year Five (30th Birthday): Many, many trilogies (for the most part).

Here's the 30th B-Day Trilogy haul…

Unstuck in Time

“Interstellar”     ★★★ 1/2

            

A Review by Kevin Powers

Listen: 

I have come unstuck in time.

            

It happened in our local IMAX Theater at Regal Pinnacle 18 in Turkey Creek. I sat for nearly three hours in a trance, literally glued to the screen, delighted, touched, happy, often with goose bumps, sometimes confused, mostly amazed. Christopher Nolan, acclaimed director of “The Dark Knight Trilogy” and “Inception” (2010) has done it again. He has made a visual spectacle powered by emotion and creativity to the point that the awe we see in the visual effects is overridden by feeling.

            

In “Interstellar,” Matthew McConaughey plays a man named Coop, a farmer in a near-future America devastated by drought and famine. He lives in a farmhouse with his two young children, Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy). He has nightmares from his former life as a NASA pilot. In this future, there is no need for things like space exploration. In school, the children are taught to be “caretakers” of the Earth, not scientists. Farming is pretty much all there is. The only crop left is corn. Dust falls from the sky like rain.

            

In young Murph’s bedroom, books and objects begin to fall on the floor. A pattern of dust from outside emerges on the floor. Coop and Murph find this pattern to be some sort of message in binary code. Murph claims “ghost” or “poltergeist,” her father thinks “gravity.”

Tours de Force, Part II: A Night Crawler

“Nightcrawler"     ★★★ 1/2

A Review by Kevin Powers

Characters like Lou Bloom don’t come along very often. Like Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” he is a man alienated from society. He has big aspirations and achieves his goals in misguided ways.

            

Jake Gyllenhaal has been doing some fine acting these days. He has garnered much praise for his work in last year’s “Prisoners” and the odd doppelganger thriller in “Enemy,” released earlier this year. I have seen neither of those. I now will.

            

As Lou Bloom, Gyllenhaal has created a performance unlike many I’ve seen. Bloom, a small-time thief, who mostly steals scrap metal from construction sites and expensive bicycles in Venice Beach, comes off from the start as an eerie oddball. He has a way of selling himself. Early in the film, he tries to get a job at a scrap yard. He tells the owner that he believes in the idea that “if you want to win the lottery, you have to have the money to buy a ticket.” In director Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler,” Gyllenhaal puts his money where his mouth is and then some.

Tours de Force, Part 1: A Birdman

"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”      ★★★★

A Review by Kevin Powers

In “Birdman,” (see awesome full title above) Michael Keaton plays an actor named Riggan Thompson, once known for playing the title character in a superhero franchise. It has been around 20 years since he last donned the superhero suit. Sounds familiar, right?

            

We see Riggan in the first shot of the film, directed by master filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu. He is in a dressing room, meditating in his tighty-whities, cross-legged. He is suspended two feet in the air. (You read that right.) This first shot extends through this scene and out of it and into a narrow hallway and down some stairs and into a theater where stage actors are rehearsing a scene from a play, a new play adapted by Riggan, directed by Riggan, and starring Riggan. Over the next nearly two hours, the camera never cuts, or at least it seems to never cut.

            

What would it be like to be inside the mind of a washed-up action star? That’s what Iñárritu wishes to find out. 

On one level, he does it through an inner-monologue in voiceover. Riggan, it seems, has an alter-ego in Birdman himself. Birdman is his ultimate voice of reason, motivator, and, throughout the film, there are several instances of pure mania as Riggan battles, mentally and physically, with himself. On yet another level, he employs the audience to suspend disbelief and gives Riggan superhuman powers (see: Levitation and Telekinesis). This is incredibly befuddling and exciting at the same time. Then, of course, there’s the visual aspect of never cutting the camera. The story just flows one scene into the next as Riggan navigates his own demons while crossing into those of the other characters.