A safely sanitized celebration of state-sponsored child murder. The disturbingly crowd-pleasing immorality of The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games: an IMAX Experience
2012
142 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Note - this is not a conventional review and there will be far more spoilers than usual.  So warned...

The Hunger Games, as it exists as a film, is caught between two worlds.  One on hand, it wants to be a dramatic thriller about a totalitarian regime that picks children at random and forces them to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the wealthy masses.  On the other hand, it wants to be a series that appeals to mass audiences in order to rack up massive box office grosses and become 'the next big franchise'.  As a direct result of this conundrum, the picture not only fails as a social/political commentary but becomes an ugly celebration of the very narrative that it should be condemning.  By refusing to look directly at its own story and by instead fashioning a convenient morality out of its murderous sporting event, it lets the audience off the hook and even encourages them to enjoy the blood-sport as 'entertainment'.  The film may appear to be mocking reality show conventions and the tendency to emphasize simplistic narratives to alleviate discomfort, but by virtue of what it omits and what it emphasizes, The Hunger Games is a prime example of what it claims to criticize. The film is so afraid to confront the horror of its premise that, in its need to create a mass-audience PG-13 franchise, it makes the cheering audience culpable and every bit as guilty as those who would watch such a thing in real life.

Rush Limbaugh's advertiser desertion feels good, but why doesn't it feel right?

About a week after Rush Limbaugh's (insert negative adjective HERE) comments about Sandra Fluke, a law student who testified before Congress regarding the ongoing 'debate' about contraception, the longtime right-wing talk-radio host has lost 30 sponsors from his show as a result of public outcry and calls for advertiser boycott.  As someone who has followed politics for the last twenty years, a practice that inevitably involves hearing or reading about any number of god-awful things Limbaugh has uttered over the decades, I suppose I have to wonder what took so many of his sponsors so long?  As a political liberal who has witnessed not only the sheer absurdity of many of Limbaugh's often fact-less rants, as well as the incredible power he holds over Republican office holders, it fills me with no little good cheer to see him getting his ass kicked over his misogynistic tirade against a private citizen who exercised her right to testify before Congress over a matter of personal concern to her (and her friend, who needed contraception for the treatment of ovarian cysts).  But I have to admit that it's a little disarming, scary even, to see the blinding speed and brutal effectiveness with which this activism took place.  It feels good because I happen to be on the same side of the political (and moral) fence as the activists.  But what happens next time when we get targeted... again?

Review: Immortals (2011) shares the politics of 300, the plot of Clash of the Titans, and negates its worth as 3D spectacle by looking glorious in 2D.

Immortals

2011
110 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

While Immortals has been advertised as a knock-off of 300, it's actually pretty much a variation on Clash of the Titans through-and-through.  In fact, the only real similarity it shares with Zack Snyder's 2007 blockbuster is its (unintentional?) racism and its rather explicit right-wing politics.  Like 300, the film involves a very white guy (Henry Cavill, who will indeed make a fine Clark Kent in two years) who does battle with another white guy (Mickey Rourke, in arguably better form than he's been in anything since The Wrestler) who is pissed off at the Greek gods because his wife and child slowly died of some unnamed illness.  Fair enough, but at the end of the movie (yes, there will be spoilers, even generic ones...) we get a big (and very impressive) battle between the Greek gods and the evil Titans.  The Greek gods are dressed in gold armor and are as Anglo-Saxon as can be (played by Luke Evans and Isabel Lucas, among others) while the Titans are well, savage humanoid monsters with really dark skin.  So we get a climactic battle between angelic white people and demonic black men.  Subtle...