Three Semi-Recent Quick Reviews

Okay, so I haven't written lately. And out of the blue, I got called back to work at the seasonal job with the state, so I'll be working five days a week through approximately May. With that and the travel time to and from work, it leaves me less time to procrastinate. But I really want to try and keep this going on some sort of regular basis.

I haven't seen many movies lately, but now that I'll have some spending money I'm going to make more of an effort there as well. Meanwhile, here are the three movies I've seen but haven't written about. I saw two just before Thanksgiving and the other the day after Christmas.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1: Another of these franchises splitting the final chapter into two in order to squeeze every penny out of its fans. So there's lots of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) agonizing over things and people but she's not really doing a whole lot. I was amused by the attempts to use her in propaganda films for the revolution, but this isn't what helped the first movie catch on. My grade: B-minus.

Interstellar: Looks great, well-acted, surprise guest star with an agenda, interesting premise (finding a new planet to colonize as Earth is dying somehow) but lots of WTF. I mean, society just gives up on technology? Can you imagine this happening to our smartphone/videogame/HDTV-obsessed society? And the science of it all just went over my head...although I figured out who the "ghost" from early in the film was so quickly I'm almost embarrassed. My grade: C-plus.

Into the Woods: I would like to have seen -- or see, if it's around somewhere -- the stage version, because I get the feeling the film version didn't do it justice. The fairy tale plots seemed very rushed to start, and once they converged, there was still quite a bit of movie to get through. Songs weren't bad, though. For me, on my personal scale of filmed musicals, it's not nearly as bad as Les Miserables but not nearly as good as Moulin Rouge. My grade: C-plus.