{"id":16148,"date":"2015-08-21T20:44:34","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T00:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=16148"},"modified":"2015-08-21T20:46:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T00:46:56","slug":"the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/21\/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the_hunger_games-mj\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good thing that \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d has so much interesting story and undertones about the power of the media and propaganda behind it. It skirts dangerously close to a movie that\u2019s nothing but set up to the second half of the final film. It\u2019s padded and filled with a lot of discussion that seemingly goes nowhere, but through its flaws, I appreciated where it brought the story of Katniss Everdeen. It doesn\u2019t hurt that Jennifer Lawrence single handedly keeps the movie from diving in to the deep end with her powerful turn as the reluctant heroine. As I mentioned, \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d dealt with various stages of Katniss\u2019s life as a celebrity. She built a revolution in the first movie, had to maintain her celebrity status in the second movie, and here she\u2019s now a pawn for a rebellion.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Director Francis Lawrence revels in exploring the power of cinema and how Katniss is built as a bonafide goddess through the power of cinema and war propaganda. Now that Katniss has escaped the destroyed District 75, she is taken to District 13 where she and other rebels have been kept tightly in a bunker. Katniss is then introduced to the rebel leader (Julianne Moore) who reveals to her that she has inspired riots and massive rebellion. The problem is the movement needs an icon and a deity to look up to, and Katniss has been chosen to present the fight against President Snow. Armed with a camera crew and a new set of armor and weapons, Katniss begins exploring the real effect she\u2019s had on everyone, and decides to implement her tools of the camera to battle against President Snow\u2019s fierce campaign to smear Katniss with the help of her best friend Peeta.<\/p>\n

Katniss suspects Peeta is being forced in to bad mouthing her over television, and now she decides to head up a rescue crew to retrieve him from Snow\u2019s clutches. \u201cMocking Jay Part 1\u201d definitely has its merits as a more politically motivated dramatic thriller that doesn\u2019t revolve around a lot of action this time around. There\u2019s no big competition, but there is a war that\u2019s being played through the media and through the channels that allow the rebels to communicate to their people. Surely, President Snow has a wider scope to communicate with the people he holds under his rule, but the rising influence of Katniss becomes impossible to battle. Director Lawrence chronicles the resistance throughout the course of Katniss\u2019s war of media against Snow throughout the narrative, showing how far people are willing to go to honor Katniss and finally strike down Snow\u2019s command. Lawrence\u2019s direction is as good as always with some really entertaining set pieces and moving scenes of psychological warfare between Everdeen and Snow.<\/p>\n

There are also a slew of top notch performances with Jennifer Lawrence not missing a beat as Katniss Everdeen. There\u2019s also the welcome return of Woody Harrelson as Katniss\u2019s mentor Haymitch Abernathy, and Elizabeth Banks as Effie. There\u2019s also the welcome introduction of Julianne Moore as the rebel leader President Alma Coin. \u201cMockingjay Part 1\u201d is an entertaining and different approach to the build up to the confrontation between Everdeen and Snow, and I appreciated its more downbeat intellectual grasp of how wars can be fought through film and media. Did we really need a two pronged final film? Not really. Does \u201cMockingjay\u201d end as an entertaining first part to a bigger war? It surely does. It\u2019s not a masterpiece, but it sets up the game pieces for what promises to be a grand finale. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how it all draws to a close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a good thing that \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d has so much interesting story and undertones about the power of the media and propaganda behind it. It skirts dangerously close to a movie that\u2019s nothing but set up to the second half of the final film. It\u2019s padded and filled with a lot of discussion that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[58,64,71,302,1250,438,874,906,922,1087,1173],"class_list":["post-16148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-packed-april","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-drama","tag-dystopia","tag-h","tag-romance","tag-science-fiction","tag-sequel","tag-thriller","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16148"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16153,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16148\/revisions\/16153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}