Column By JIM O’DONNELLDue to Thanksgiving week we will be open for additional showtimes so please check our schedule closely.
This Friday we are opening Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, but don’t forget our special showing at 8 p.m. Thursday Nov. 20. Tickets are going quickly.
Movie poster for ‘Mockingjay Part 1’ Courtesy Reel Deal Theater
On Tuesday, Nov. 25, St. Vincent and Interstellar will be leaving to make room for Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2, which both open Wednesday the 26th. We will hold Big Hero 6 for another week. Laggies will end this Thursday.
Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1: Katnis Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), an emotional mess after two grueling Hunger Games, opens her eyes in a hospital at the start of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1, one of the grimmer dystopian movies in a decade lousy with them. Seriously, stuff this bleak used to be in German or Japanese, but now it’s lapped up by American kids who’ve finally gotten the message that whatever’s coming isn’t good. After nightmares and nightmares-within-nightmares,
Katniss heaves herself from her bed and trudges through the film on the brink of tears. She’s angry that the rebels abandoned her true love, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), in the fascist capital; angry that she’s being used as a propaganda tool by the people she’s angry at; and angry that she has to bargain with the chilly rebel president (Julianne Moore behind a sheet of white hair), who seems almost as much of a totalitarian creep as the wicked president (Donald Sutherland) who just incinerated her home district and more than 90 percent of its population.
The film ends at the apex of anguish: Thanks, Lionsgate, for cleaving Suzanne Collins’s third book in twain to maximize your already staggering profits. Add to that the presence of Philip Seymour Hoffman — reminding you yet again that the poor bastard went out at the peak of his talent — and it’s tough to summon up the strength to say “See it anyway. It’s really good.”
What works most smashingly is the movie’s meta side. Much of Mockingjay centers on selling. In the film, the rebels sell a revolutionary icon, Katniss in her Mockingjay wings clutching a bow and arrow. But it’s hard not to think — I’m pretty sure the screenwriters and director Francis Lawrence did — of how Lionsgate is madly selling our nation’s No. 1, nobody-doesn’t-love-her female movie star. (An inspired touch: The rebels’ first commercial for the Mockingjay ends with the same whistled four-note motif that closes the Hunger Games previews.) The problem Katniss’s handlers have is that she’s too pure to strike phony heroic poses.
When she’s directed (by Hoffman’s Plutarch Heavensbee, the rebels’ media manager) to make like Liberty from the French Revolution, she sounds like a bad high-school actress. Her former mentor, Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), wanders in from rehab to suggest they get more Method-y and shoot her in the field, whereupon she’s placed in the hands of a film crew (the director is the delightful, pert-faced Natalie Dormer) and told to do what comes naturally.
Walking among the dead, the dying, the starving, Katniss is suddenly every inch the Mockingjay of her publicists’ dreams, the one who suffers and roars her defiance at President Snow, who’ll inspire the oppressed of the districts left standing to rise up and fight. The kicker is that underneath Katniss’s genuine rage, you also see her revulsion at helping turn tragedy into showbiz.
A part with this much sobbing, hand-wringing, and mournful gazing into the middle distance could be, in the wrong hands, a laugh riot, but Lawrence’s instincts are so smart that she never goes even a shade overboard. She’s a hell of an actress. Her adorable clumsiness in life suggests a reason she’s convincing onscreen: Spontaneity is all. She sings here, in a lovely, cracked voice with a touch of bluesiness, sounding as unaffected as when she speaks. If only the Hunger Games movies could tap her comic gifts, too. And if only her male-heartthrob co-stars gave more back.
Liam Hemsworth has a big monologue in which he recounts the bombing of his district, but all I could think was how slow he was saying his lines, as if waiting for a flood of emotion that doesn’t come. At least Josh Hutcherson’s captured Peeta is mostly seen in interviews with Stanley Tucci’s camp talk-show host on TV screens (Peeta is being used as counter-propaganda), so the actor can’t bring his lack of urgency to scenes with Katniss.
In a harsh, downbeat war film, a few of the actors briefly lighten the mood. Elizabeth Banks returns as the chirpy escort/camp counselor Effie Trinket, this time forced to wear a regulation gray rebel jumpsuit and no wig — and mighty pissed off about it. Watch her tiny glance of horror at Moore’s non-coiffure and thank the gods of comedy for this tender mercy. I loved Sutherland’s demonic smile whenever Katniss makes a new move: In his psychotic way, he loves her. Working beside the humorless rebel president, Hoffman’s Plutarch keeps his cards close to the vest. He muses, he inveigles, he tries to balance opportunism and decency. Hoffman underplays peerlessly, layers of irony under layers of sincerity under layers of … something unfathomable. The sting of his loss will never fade.– This article by David Edelstein appears in the Nov. 17, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.
Movie poster for ‘Penguins of Madegascar’ Courtesy Reel Deal Theater
Penguins of Madagascar: Super spy teams aren’t born…they’re hatched. Discover the secrets of the greatest and most hilarious covert birds in the global espionage biz: Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private. These elitists of the elite are joining forces with a chic undercover organization, The North Wind. Led by handsome and husky Agent Classified (we could tell you his name, but then…you know), voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch. Together, they must stop the villainous Dr. Octavius Brine, voiced by John Malkovich, from destroying the world as we know it. (c) Dreamworks
Movie poster for ‘Horrible Bosses 2.’ Courtesy Reel Deal Theater
Horrible Bosses 2: The follow-up to the 2011 hit comedy “Horrible Bosses” reunites Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as everyone’s favorite working stiffs: Nick, Dale and Kurt. Jennifer Aniston (“We’re the Millers”), and Oscar (R) winners Jamie Foxx (“Ray”) and Kevin Spacey (“American Beauty,” “The Usual Suspects”) also reprise their “Horrible Bosses” starring roles, while Chris Pine (“Star Trek: Into Darkness”) and Oscar (R) winner Christoph Waltz (“Django Unchained,” “Inglourious Basterds”) star as new adversaries standing between the guys and their dreams of success. (c) Warner Bros
Coming attractions include, Birdman, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, The Hobbit , Into the Woods, Unbroken, and Wild (based on the book by Cheryl Strayed.)
Note: Do not trust other websites for Reel Deal Theater movie times as they are often incorrect and we’ve been getting a lot of confused patrons who use these random sites including Google. For correct show times, visit www.reeldealtheater.com or use the Los Alamos Daily Post listings for show times. If you have any requests, email me at odonnell455@gmail.com and I will respond when I know something.
Don’t forget, if it’s your birthday, the movie of your choice is free!
You can see our full schedule, show times and trailers at www.reeldealtheater.com.
