Passengers

Year 9, Day 336 - 12/2/17 - Movie #2,784

BEFORE: It was very nice of Hollywood to make a movie with both Jennifer Lawrence and Andy Pratt in it, and almost no one else, because I'm guessing someone knew that I would need to link between 6 other movies with J. Law in them, and another one with Pratt in it.  It's this sort of forward thinking that's enabled me to keep my linking going, and to finish the year out the way I want to.  It looks like I'll be able to link to "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" with just one day to spare - I do love it when a plan comes together.  I can't believe another new "Star Wars" film is now just 12 films away...

THE PLOT: A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet, transporting thousands of people, has a malfunction in its hibernation pods.  As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.

AFTER: Why is space-travel so problematic in movies?  Isn't it supposed to be this grand fantasy, to hop aboard a space-ship and travel via light speed to another world?  While we want very much for this to happen, it seems that at the same time we can't believe that the process will work right, so most movies depict something going wrong.  If it's not mechanical problems, like in "Apollo 13" or 'Gravity", then it's pesky creatures invading the ship, like in "Alien".  Then there are the problems inherent to space itself, as seen in "Interstellar" and "The Black Hole".  "Mission to Mars", "Red Planet", "2001: A Space Odyssey" and even "Planet of the Apes" - it seems like something's always going wrong on a mission.  Is this all done just to create tension and drama in stories, or do we believe deep down that once we as a people finally get to the future, we'll find a way to screw it up?

Which brings me to "Passengers", because once you think you've solved the problem of how to get people to endure space travel, by using hibernation pods, then you have to figure that there's got to be a potential downside somewhere.  In this case, a ship malfunction wakes up one passenger much too early, and he finds himself alone on the ship, able to survive but with no way to fix the problem or contact anyone for help.  Due to the distance, any transmission for help wouldn't be answered for decades, time that he doesn't have.

He could just spend the rest of his days in luxury aboard this ship, designed to entertain 5,000 passengers who are scheduled to wake up four months before the ship reaches another planet.  There are enough resources to keep him alive, but not enough to keep him entertained, apparently.  So he goes a little cuckoo over the course of a year by himself.  But then for the sake of his sanity he decides to wake up another passenger, and the most logical thing would be to wake up someone who could help him fix the ship, or better understand how to interact with its systems.

(I'm not sure if this is really a NITPICK POINT or not, but at first I believed that the ship intentionally woke up the character that would be most helpful in fixing its systems, since Pratt's character is an engineer.  But apparently not a spaceship engineer or a computer engineer, since either of those would have been helpful.  And I suppose the malfunction on his pod was more or less random - or...was it?  I suppose it's asking a lot to believe that a ship's computer could take steps to repair itself by re-programming his hibernation unit, but then be unable to communicate to him the exact nature of the current mechanical problem, despite having androids that can speak to him and serve him drinks.  That would be silly, if someone designed an A.I. for the ship that had arbitarily imposed limits on what it could do...)

Instead he does the illogical thing, he wakes up the hottest woman, who's also a writer, so that he can at least pass the time with a pleasing companion.  But by doing so, he's potentially dooming her to a similar life in exile, and preventing her from living long enough to reach the colony world.  Which makes me wonder if this whole sci-fi thing with the broken ship is just a metaphor for a different ship - relationship.  Marriage has that whole "Till death do we part thing", so we don't seem to have a way to acknowledge you want to spend your life with someone without being reminded of your mortality.

And just like in a relationship, the two people here have to work together to find the root cause of the ship's troubles, deal with that issue and then try to repair the damage and move forward...

Also starring Chris Pratt (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"), Michael Sheen (last seen in "The Queen"), Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "Bobby"), Julee Cerda, with a cameo from Andy Garcia (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2") and the voices of Emma Clarke, Chris Edgerly, Fred Melamed.

RATING: 6 out of 10 tethers

Winter's Bone

Year 9, Day 335 - 12/1/17 - Movie #2,783

BEFORE: The Hunger Games may be over, but Jennifer Lawrence week still has two more films to go.  She's sure to make my year-end list of actors and actresses who appeared the most times, and so is pretty much anyone who was a regular in that Hunger Games series.  Three appearances usually allows someone to make it to the countdown, and 6 or 7 will bring someone almost to the top.

I'm back on schedule, I planned to hit this one on December 1 because of the word "winter" in the title.  I know that technically winter doesn't begin for another three weeks, but this was still my intent.

THE PLOT: An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact.

AFTER: My boss said the other day that there really only four stories in the world, so each new one that you hear is just a variation on one of the old ones.  Seeing a film like "Winter's Bone" really drives that point home - it's a very simple story, the one where someone is looking for someone.  In this case it's a teen girl looking for her absent father, but those are just details, the basic framework is the same simple story that's been told time and time again.

It's very strongly suggested that her father's mixed up in the drug scene in rural Missouri, though if you don't know much about "cooking" drugs like meth you might think that he's been working as a chef or something, only there just don't seem to be any fine restaurants in that part of the world.  So it eventually becomes clear that he's been doing a different kind of cooking.

The whole first half of the film seems to be the main character knocking on doors of various people and asking them where her father is, then them telling her to shove off.  Can you really justify a whole half of a movie like that?  And who are all these people, how are they connected, and why won't any of them answer her questions, is it because they don't know or they won't tell?  But this became so repetitive that after a while, I just didn't care.

Sure, she needs to prove that her father did not skip town on his bail, because the family house was put up as collateral, and the family would very much like to continue living there.  But if he crossed the wrong people and got himself killed, that would be an elegant solution to the problem, because if he died that means he didn't leave town, and therefore his bail and other debts don't need to be paid back.  And that means that the family can keep their house.

Other than the search for her father, not a lot goes down - so I'm having trouble seeing how this movie became so critically acclaimed.  Who cares?  I'm not seeing any big deal here.  It apparently did well on the festival circuit, with prizes won at Sundance and other key festivals, but that doesn't always mean a film consists of great storytelling.

Also starring John Hawkes (last seen in "Everest"), Garret Dillahunt (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Dale Dickey (last seen in "The Guilt Trip"), Lauren Sweetser, Tate Taylor (last seen in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"), Sheryl Lee (last seen in "Café Society"), Shelley Waggener, Kevin Breznahan (last seen in "Regarding Henry"), Ronnie Hall, Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, Cody Shiloh Brown, Cinnamon Schultz, Casey MacLaren, Valerie Richards, William White, Russell Schalk.

RATING: 4 out of 10 roasted squirrels

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Year 9, Day 333 - 11/29/17 - Movie #2,782

BEFORE: Day 4 of Jennifer Lawrence week, and I've reached the end of the Hunger Games, unless they become a real thing in the U.S. over the next few years.  Screw the Winter Olympics, let's have the Reaping and start training the tributes from Districts 1-12.

THE PLOT: As the war of Panem escalates, Katniss Everdeen, the reluctant leader of the rebellion, must bring together an army against President Snow, while all she holds dear hangs in the balance.

AFTER: Let's face it, war is just not as interesting as a gladiatorial contest, let's be clear about that.  I'm a little disappointed that this trilogy/quadrilogy started out as one thing, and took a left turn halfway through to become another thing entirely.  Like I was sold a bill of goods and then didn't get what I bargained for.  Instead I'm presented with a story in the final film where the past contestants have to band together, arm themselves and advance on the capital city, which is filled with booby traps and people and things designed to kill them, almost like the central district is some kind of arena itself and...Ah, I see what you guys did there.  Very clever, the Hunger Games arenas in the first two films become symbolic metaphors for the larger battle to come.

And if we take "The Hunger Games" as not just a glimpse at a dystopian future, but somehow also an uncanny predictor of our current political climate, what can we learn from the final film, where the people rise up and overthrow the whole damn system, because they're tired of how the President is making a mess of things?  Well, for starters, as we're all learning, that process could turn out to be a lot more difficult than you might think at first.  And then, assuming you accomplish that, who are you going to replace him with?  Remember, Trump managed to pick a Vice President even more conservative (and possibly weirder) than himself, which I maintain was the smartest decision he's made in the last two years.  Any anti-Trump liberal would probably want Pence as President even less, which is really saying something.

There's absolutely no process, I'm assuming, to allow the winner of the popular vote in the 2016 election to take over, even if you could get Trump impeached, so that's nothing more than a pipe dream.  And even then, if you could essentially call a "do-over" and get Hillary Clinton elected after the fact, which is impossible, you'd risk alienating the OTHER half of the country, so where would that even get us?  Remember, nearly half the voters rejected her in the first place, and maybe that's not likely to change, even though hindsight is 20/20 - right-wing people would regard this as replacing one bad apple with another, at the end of the day.  So maybe it's better to just hunker down for the next three years and ride this out.  However harsh this may sound, it's the only way we're going to collectively learn to make better decisions in the future, if there are consequences for our actions.

But let's get back to the film.  It's astounding that they kept the central love triangle going for so long. Every time Katniss competed in the Games, it seemed like she was getting closer to Peeta, and then every time she got back to District 12, she drew closer to Gale.  Maybe some people go through situations like this in real-life (if you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with...) but on a practical level, I don't know how anyone could maintain that, in reality or in fiction, for any length of time.  I think in the end I was more Team Gale than Team Peeta, and I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity to say that casting Liam Hemsworth made that an obvious choice to me.  So I'm sorry these crazy kids couldn't work things out in the end, but what the heck do I know?

I guess it's the same situation with the love-triangle romance as it is with an election - whichever way the conflict is resolved, there are bound to be almost half of the people not satisfied with the result.

Also starring Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stanley Tucci, Sam Claflin, Natalie Dormer, Elizabeth Banks, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Mahershala Ali, Willow Shields, Paula Malcomson, Wes Chatham, Elden Henson, Patina Miller, Evan Ross, Stef Dawson, Sarita Choudhury, Robert Knepper (all carrying over from "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1"), Meta Golding (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Toby Jones (ditto), Michelle Forbes (last seen in "Kalifornia"), Gwendoline Christie (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), Omid Abtahi (last seen in "Argo"), Eugenie Bondurant, Misty Ormiston, Kim Ormiston, Joe Chrest (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), April Grace (last seen in "Whiplash").

RATING: 6 out of 10 propaganda videos

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

Year 9, Day 332 - 11/28/17 - Movie #2,781

BEFORE:  It's Day 3 of Jennifer Lawrence week and we're approaching the holiday season.  Please, let me be the first to wish you and your family a Happy Hunger Games this year.  (I'm hoping this will catch on, maybe a new line of greeting cards is in the works.).

Really, though, I'm starting on my holiday mix CD this week, too.  Always a tricky thing, putting a mix CD together, trying to balance the songs I like against what I think my family and friends have come to expect from my annual CD, which I mail out with my Christmas cards.  There's always a theme, this year I tried to put together another 80's mix, but it feels very boring to me - this might be because I've already used the best tracks from all my 80's artists, so unless I order some new CDs very quickly, I won't have much to draw from.  On the other hand, I have these "style parodies" that I sometimes make mixes from, these are holiday songs that are done in the style of particular rock bands or notable songs, but I don't have enough to fill up a CD with.  However, if I take the best tracks from both playlists and weave them together, maybe I can make a disc full of great Christmas songs that's also a little funny and irreverent, but is also peppy and moves along at a good clip, so as to feel lively and entertaining.  There's so much to consider, but I usually end up working it out in time to get my cards in the mail.  Here's hoping.

THE PLOT: Katniss Everdeen is in District 13 after she shattered the games forever.  Under the leadership of President Coin and the advice of her trusted friends, she spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta and a nation moved by her courage.

AFTER: Damn, I was really starting to enjoy the Hunger Games, and then this film comes along and throws the whole series into a form of chaos.  The end of "Catching Fire" showed us the 75th annual Hunger Games, and it seems like there won't be a 76th edition.  What a shame.  You hate to see an entire sport get cancelled like that, just because the players all teamed up to stop it, so they don't get killed.  But hey, NFL players, please take note - if you're worried about all the risks that come from excessive concussions, just get all of the players on every team to agree to stop.  Problem solved, and you're welcome.

Last night I mentioned the amazing similarities between Panem's President Snow and our current President Pro Tem, Donald Trump - and the books were released between 2008 and 2010, years before the 2016 election.  All of these films were released prior to the election too, making it all an incredible prediction, or an incredible coincidence.  Tonight Katniss finds herself in the mysterious District 13, where there's another President in exile, and it's a woman with blond hair who seems to have a problem being warm and relatable in her speeches.  Let me guess, did she win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College?  Another astounding coincidence - she wears a fatigue-like jumpsuit for most of the film, and I'll restrain from thinking of that as a pantsuit, though.

So now begins the arduous task of uniting the 12 - sorry, 13 - despite the walls (literal and figurative) that separate them in order to take down the President and this system where the Capitol gets everything from the subjects and gives very little in return, except for imposing law and order.  (Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, are you watching this, too?)  Katniss agrees to be the "Mockingjay" for the cause, but what exactly does that mean, for the benefit of those of us who didn't read the books?  I guess it's just the symbol for the Rebellion against the Empire, or something like that.

But there's a big problem here, and that's the fact that the series is still called "The Hunger Games", but how can there be more Hunger Games if the whole system goes kaput?  Bring back the Hunger Games, just maybe without all the killing and stuff, or else change the name of the movies!  When you go to see a new "Star Wars" film, you kind of know what to expect, because "Wars" is right there in the tile.  If they made a new "Star Wars" without all the fighting, then it just wouldn't seem like part of the franchise.  There's plenty of fighting in "Mockingjay - Part 1", but a definite lack of Hunger Games...

Also starring Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Stanley Tucci, Sam Claflin, Elizabeth Banks, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright, Willow Shields, Paula Malcomson, Stef Dawson, Erika Bierman (all also carrying over from "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Julianne Moore (last heard in "Eagle Eye"), Mahershala Ali (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Natalie Dormer (last seen in "Rush"), Evan Ross, Elden Henson (last seen in "Jobs"), Wes Chatham, Sarita Choudhury (last seen in "A Perfect Murder"), Patina Miller, Robert Knepper (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters").

RATING: 6 out of 10 incendiary arrows

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Year 9, Day 331 - 11/27/17 - Movie #2,780

BEFORE: Jennifer Lawrence carries over from "The Hunger Games", which is itself a huge spoiler, if you think about it.  A lot of other actors carry over from the first film also, so they all somehow survived The Reaping.

I'm giving myself the whole week for this quadrilogy, I didn't schedule another film after these until December 1, so I may have a free day on Friday, or I may just keep going so I'll be a day ahead of schedule.  Or I may need a break on Friday, you never know.

THE PLOT: Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark become targets of the Capitol after their victory in the 74th Hunger Games sparks a rebellion in the Districts of Panem.

AFTER: Prior to this, I was made aware of "The Hunger Games" during the 2016 Presidential campaign, when Stephen Colbert dressed up like Caesar Flickerman and would project the images of the fallen candidates on the ceiling of the Ed Sullivan Theater as they dropped out of the race.  That's about the time I realized this franchise is so integrated into pop culture that I should probably give it a look.

But somewhere in the humor, there's a real allegory - I realize the first "Hunger Games" film came out in 2012, and the novels preceded that, but isn't there a similarity between President Snow and Donald Trump?  Think about it - what is "The Hunger Games" but "The Celebrity Apprentice" with weapons?  Last night I drew the comparison to "Survivor", but really, any reality show where the contestants get eliminated one by one would do, they just also lose their lives in the future version.  So in the future there's this incompetent President who's obsessed with watching reality TV, using the media to gain power, and getting into culture wars with the participants.  And he's notorious for directing the narrative with false information about the contestants and their back-stories - that's fake news, right?   And the districts are separated by giant walls - see where I'm going with this?

And in both the film series and reality, there's an elite class of people who work at the Capitol who are hopelessly out of touch with the concerns of the working class. Is anyone surprised that the latest proposed "tax cut" bill would actually increase the taxes on most people in the middle and lower class?  I sure wasn't.  In both the film series and reality,  I'm heartened to learn that the Rebellion is forming.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We're told that once someone wins the Hunger Games, that's it, they're set for life, they can retire and just be famous, maybe mentor a young competitor once in a while.  That's great for one book, but it doesn't help turn the story into a series.  So although it feels like a bit of a cheat, the rules of the Hunger Games are changed yet again, for the landmark 75th Games the President announces that former winners will return to compete - anyone who's seen an "All-Star" edition of "Survivor" could have seen this coming, it makes great sense.

But of course this throws Katniss and Peeta back into the Hunger Games arena, after they finish their "victory tour" of the other districts, and get a sense of the fomenting rebellion there.  And it's a strain on Katniss to maintain the illusion of having a relationship with Peeta while her real boyfriend, Gale, works in the coal mines back in District 12.  But you people probably knew all of this, right?  I still feel like I'm coming late to this party.

The Hunger Games All-Stars are generally all unhappy about being called back to the Games, since all were promised a bill of goods that said they'd never have to compete again.  This brings a whole new element to the Games, since some of the past winners won by brute force, some won by using technology, and others won just by hiding well, and waiting for the arena to finish off their competitors.  And then alliances form among the All-Stars, because there's strength in numbers, but also because they saw from Katniss' first appearance that the Games can be brought to an end if the remaining players refuse to play.  I mean, sure, the Careers from Districts 1 and 2 are going to put up a fight, but it turns out there are other ways to win besides killing all of your opponents, if you're willing to think outside the box and exploit every loophole.

I was prepared to write off this whole series as silly young-adult material, but it keeps surprising me at every turn.  Now I'm glad I never read the books or learned too much about the plot of the films, it feels like I waited until just the right time to start paying attention to this series, since it turned out to be topical as hell.  I'm half-done, and I can't wait to finish it over the next two days.

Also starring Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Lenny Kravitz, Toby Jones, Paula Malcomson, Willow Shields, Jack Quaid, Nelson Ascencio, Bruce Bundy (all also carrying over from "The Hunger Games"), Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Jeffrey Wright (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Amanda Plummer, Jena Malone (last seen in "Into the Wild"), Sam Claflin (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Lynn Cohen (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Meta Golding, Bruno Gunn (last seen in "28 Days"), Alan Ritchson, Stephanie Leigh Schlund, Patrick St. Esprit (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Stef Dawson, Erika Bierman (last seen in "Dumb and Dumber To"), Wilbur Fitzgerald (last seen in "The Founder").

RATING: 7 out of 10 angry mandrills

The Hunger Games

Year 9, Day 330 - 11/26/17 - Movie #2,779

BEFORE: Dayo Okeniyi carries over from "Runner Runner", and that enables me to follow the Ben Affleck chain with a 6-film Jennifer Lawrence chain.  I've managed to avoid the "Hunger Games" franchise until now, why watch it here?  I'm glad you asked...

I wish I could say it's a neat tie-in with Thanksgiving - but honestly I didn't notice the verbal connection with one of America's best eating-based holidays until just recently.  If I had, I might have worked a little harder to get more films in last week, so at least I could get the first film in this series a little closer to Thanksgiving Day.  "My bad" on that front.  The truth is that when I was planning this chain, I worked off the release dates of "Justice League" and the upcoming "Star Wars" film - I knew I had a few more Ben Affleck films, and at the same time I worked the connections backwards from "The Last Jedi", hoping to meet somewhere in the middle.

What I got was a 5-film gap, squarely between the two chains.  But the latter chain started with a Jennifer Lawrence film, so I thought maybe this 4-film series would help fill this gap, provided I could come up with a connection between any of those 4 post-Justice League Ben Affleck films and the first "Hunger Games" movie - which did exist, and it was Dayo Okeniyi.  That still left me one film short for the year, but I added "Rush" to the Chris Hemsworth chain, and then I had my plan that would take me to the end of 2017.

Why did I avoid "The Hunger Games" for so long?  There seem to be a few franchises that I just have no interest in, like the "Fast and Furious" or "Transformers" films.  There are still a few other famous franchises that I'm very late in viewing, like the "Rambo" movies, or horror franchises like "Halloween", "Scream" and "Friday the 13th", which are just not my bag.  But I didn't have anything against "The Hunger Games", in fact they're such a part of pop culture that watching them now is basically an afterthought on my part, like the "Harry Potter" movies.  In fact I'm going to treat these four films much like I treated the "Harry Potter" ones - I'm watching them just to familiarize myself with them and stay current on trivia, I don't necessarily plan to enjoy them, but it doesn't make sense to keep avoiding them, either.

But once I made the decision to finally commit to this franchise, then I had to figure out how to watch them.  At the time I worked them into the plan, no TV channel seemed to be running them, at least not without commercials, so I kind of missed my window there.  The films were on iTunes, but at full price of about $10-$12 per rental.  But I figured I could buy the box set of all four films on Amazon for about $24, and I made a mental note to do this around the end of October, so it would be sure to arrive in time.   When I checked iTunes a couple weeks later, the price had come down to just $3.99 per film to rent, so that would cut the cost down to $16 and save me a few bucks.  Last week all four films showed up On Demand for free - 3 run by TNT (with commercials) and the fourth on ePix.  So now I can watch all the films at no cost, but to save some time and skip the ads, I think I'll still watch the first three on iTunes, for $12 total.

THE PLOT: Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games: a televised competition in which two teenagers from each of the twelve districts of Panem are chosen at random to fight to the death.

AFTER: Now that I've seen the film, I have so many questions about this dystopian future - not really about how society got there, because I think many people might agree that with everything in the news this year, this is where we're heading - between climate change, political upheaval, and scandal after scandal, it won't be long before we won't be arguing over "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays", we'll all just be saying "Happy Hunger Games", and "May the odds be ever in your favor."  The book's author probably intended this to be a few hundred years in America's future, but now I'm thinking it's just a few years out. 

I'm just kidding, they refer to the 74th Annual Hunger Games, so clearly this competition's been around for some time, and therefore this is set far in the future - but what, exactly happened in their past to set this up?  If it was a nuclear war or other apocalypse, then humanity would seem to have recovered nicely - umm, except for the enforced teenage gladiatorial contests, of course.  There's reference to some kind of rebellion that set up the Hunger Games, but the real details are incredibly unclear.  How, exactly, does sacrificing two teenagers from each district preserve the peace?  It seems to make sense to everyone in that society, but not to me - does watching a TV show where teens kill each other just satisfy everyone's bloodlust, so nobody feels the need to wage war, or is there something about the contest that precludes further bloodshed?  Because if the districts are really in competition with each other, there doesn't seem to be reason why there can't be both the Hunger Games AND a war between 2 districts, for example.

Perhaps they will explain this further in the following films, or maybe I need to read the plot of the books on Wikipedia, to get some further insight.  I have a feeling that maybe the movie took some shortcuts and didn't dumb the situation down for people like me, who did not read the novels.  But since I went into this film series cold (more or less) I don't want to read any spoilers now. 

Another question - is the choice of tributes really random?  Was everyone given one ticket in the lottery drawing, or did some people get their names in the bowl multiple times?  Someone made a reference to their name being on 42 slips of paper, but it wasn't really clear how this came about.  Another time Katniss told her sister not to "take any more food from them", so she wouldn't be at risk in the future.  So is there a relation between eating food and being chosen for the games?  This was really unclear, and could have been explained better.  (EDIT: Yes, the novel apparently clarifies that putting one's name in the Hunger Games lottery additional times will gain their family extra food.)

This ties in with my next question - why is it called the "Hunger Games"?  Is there some connection to how much food the district receives, like is there a shortage of food in the future, and does winning the Hunger Games get those citizens more food?  There were some shots of food being weighed out on scales, but I don't think what was going on was explicitly stated - for those of us who did not read the books, this could have been made a lot more clear.  I thought maybe the competitors were just really "hungry" to win, but now this sounds quite stupid if there's a more tangible connection to getting food.

There are so many other things I don't understand about the selection process, and the future in general.  Some districts sent kids to compete - but obviously the older, bigger kids would have an advantage, they would be stronger and have had more time to train.  So how does it benefit a district to send a younger kid, someone less likely to defend themselves.  Or would they therefore be able to run faster and hide better, essentially playing a different kind of defensive game from the larger "hunter" teens?   Plus, who's to say someone doesn't tamper with the voting process?

Which leads me to my first NITPICK POINT: if some districts, like #1 and #2, have contestants who have trained their whole lives for the Hunger Games, how is that fair?  How did those contestants know that they'd be picked, and therefore devote their lives to training?  Is the selection process not random in those districts?  And for that matter, why can't contestants train their whole lives in Districts #11 and #12?  They know that they'll be competing next year and the year after that, so what's preventing them from being competitive, just their relative poverty?  That's a poor excuse. 

Regarding gameplay - why would any four or five competitors form any kind of alliance?  Any fan of the "Survivor" show should realize how tenuous any alliance would be - if 5 competitors teamed up to get ahead and eliminate the others, they would immediately have to turn on each other if they managed to be successful in this regard.  So any alliance would be undermined by the possibility of needing to also eliminate one's allies.  On the other hand, players on "Survivor" are always wary of "power couples", alliances of two, because two people working together can go very far together - but since everyone knows this fact, power couples then tend to be broken up by the other players as soon as possible.  So they don't end up working in the end, because of this anti-strategy.

The Hunger Games take place in a giant arena that's part bio-dome, part holodeck - but this just leads me to more questions.  I get that maybe in the future there's not much left of the Earth's original plant and animal life, so it makes sense that mankind would find a way to genetically engineer wildlife, in order to preserve it.  But to me this is still a NITPICK POINT, because if mankind is going to use technology to keep certain species alive, like bees for example, why the heck would they create killer bees with deadly hallucinogenic venom?  This seems counter-productive to keeping humans alive in the long run.

I'm going to assign another NITPICK POINT to the fact that the rules of the Games are changed several times, in order to accommodate the needed plot twists.  Imagine the rules of any major-league sport or the Olympics being changed WHILE you're watching them, as a fan wouldn't you be upset by this?  If they suddenly made a forward pass illegal during the Super Bowl so one team couldn't score, there would be an uproar.  So this seemed just a little too convenient to bring about the desired result in this story.  

Still, I found there was a lot for me to like here.  A bunch of millennials killing each other on camera, what's not to like?  (OK, so maybe their characters are from the next millennium, it still counts.)

Also starring Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "Joy"), Josh Hutcherson (last heard in "Epic"), Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "Paranoia"), Woody Harrelson (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Lenny Kravitz (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Spotlight"), Donald Sutherland (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), Wes Bentley (last seen in "Interstellar"), Toby Jones (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Alexander Ludwig (last seen in "Lone Survivor"), Isabelle Fuhrman (last seen in "After Earth"), Amandla Stenberg (last heard in "Rio 2"), Jacqueline Emerson, Jack Quaid, Leven Rambin (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"), Willow Shields, Paula Malcomson (last seen in "Tombstone"), Latarsha Rose, Ian Nelson, Kalia Prescott, Ethan Jamieson, Mackenzie Lintz, Imanol Yepez-Frias, Annie Thurman, Dakota Hood, Steve Coulter (last seen in "The Founder"), Sharon Conley, Tim Taylor, John Ross.

RATING: 7 out of 10 nightlock berries

Runner Runner

Year 9, Day 329 - 11/25/17 - Movie #2,778

BEFORE: I've reached the end of Ben Affleck week, but his 6 appearances this year will only tie him for fifth place (with a few other actors) when I count down all of the top actors at the close of business in just 22 films.  There are at least 10 actors with more showings this year, and there will be no catching Fred Astaire for the top spot.  But I've seen Affleck run the gamut this week, from a rich superhero to a rich gangster, a rich accountant/assassin and a rich shady stockbroker.  So I'll wrap the week up with Ben Affleck as a rich online casino owner.

THE PLOT: When a poor college student who cracks an online poker game goes bust, he arranges a face-to-face with the man he thinks cheated him, a sly offshore entrepreneur.

AFTER: I don't know, this film started out being one thing and then took a left turn and finished as an entirely different sort of movie.  Since it's neatly broken up into two halves it almost feels like the original story ran its course, so they had to start up another one to fill the remaining time.  This college kid who's supposed to be so smart, like a marketing whiz going for his master's degree in finance at Princeton, but he gets in trouble for promoting this gambling web-site on campus.  This is how he makes his tuition money, because he gets a percentage of the income that these students lose on the gambling site.

But if he's so smart, why didn't he check to see if gambling was against the university's rules?  Or promoting gambling, for that matter?  Was he really relying on the fact that the activity is taking place on-line to skirt the university's rules?  Or did he know that what he was doing was illegal, and just hoping to not get caught?  And then when the college says he can't market the site any more to his fellow students, and he's got to make his tuition somehow, what does he do?  He risks ALL of his own money on the site, intending to turn it into a sizable bankroll, however, as we've just stated, this activity is illegal.  Plus, he KNOWS that students have been losing their money there, so why would he think that he would be any different?  He's either incredibly over-confident or very stupid at this point.

So when he loses all of his money (what a shocker...) he flies down to Costa Rica (Umm, who paid for the plane ticket, then?) to sneak his way into a party so he can catch the attention of Ivan Block, the man who runs the gambling web-site, because he figures there's NO possible way he could have lost all of his money unless someone was cheating, so if he alerts the site's owner to the cheating, he can get all of his money back.  Right, Albert Brooks tried that in "Lost in America", it's not supposed to work.  I mean, the day that casinos start giving money back, that's the day they go out of business, right?

But believe it or not, the casino owner is thankful for being alerted to potential cheating on his site, and he thanks the student by giving back his money.  Since it's at this point where the plot takes a turn, we're never really sure if the casino owner does this out of genuine good will, or is only doing this for appearance's sake, in order to lure the student in further.  Because the second part of the story involves the student going to work for the casino owner, because really, who needs the master's degree that they're only a few months away from getting?  Doesn't dropping out of college when you're 75% of the way to getting your degree mean that you wasted all the money and time it took to get there?

So really, this is a film about making bad choices.  And then making even worse choices to correct the bad choices.  The FBI gets involved - despite the fact that they have no jurisdiction in Costa Rica, they're there anyway.  So this is confusing, do they have jurisdiction over international online gaming, or not?  Because if they do, they're not doing their job well, and if they don't, they're wasting their time by trying.  Of course, it's also a little strange that someone making so much money from online gaming would also have a casino in the real world, which involves much greater expenses and risk, plus paying off the Costa Rican police and government every month.

Collectively, this film made less and less sense with every added plot point.  So that meant it had to take a huge risk itself, and bend over backwards to bring all the elements together for some kind of resolution.  Plus it's two different stories stitched together at the midway point, really.  And it seems like nobody did any research into how either online or real casinos work before the writing began.

Also starring Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Black Snake Moan"), Gemma Arterton (last seen in "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "Triple 9"), John Heard (last seen in "Pollock"), Michael Esper (last seen in "All Good Things"), Oliver Cooper, Christian George, Yul Vazquez, James Molina, Louis Lombardi (last seen in "The Crew"), Vincent Laresca (last seen in "Hot Pursuit"), Sam Palladio (last heard in "Strange Magic"), David Costabile (last seen in "Prime"), Bob Gunton (last seen in "The 33"), Ben Schwartz (last seen in "The Walk"), Dayo Okeniyi (last seen in "Terminator Genisys"), Jordan Beder, with a cameo from Deadmau5.

RATING: 4 out of 10 hungry crocodiles