The Hunger Games ***½

Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth
Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Willow Shields, Wes Bentley
Paula Malcomson, Toby Jones, Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland
Stanley Tucci, Amandla Stenberg, Alexander Ludwig, Jack Quaid

One of the most disturbing realizations upon watching The Hunger Games is that the post-apocalyptic story revolves around a reality television show; meaning that yes, reality television programs are the entertainment equivalent of cockroaches and might survive much nobler art forms after the end of times. The show in this case is a twisted version of the Olympics titled "The Hunger Games", held every year by members of the Capitol to remember their violent history. During the games, twenty four men and women - between the ages of 12 to 18 - represent their districts and battle each other to death, until only one victor remains.
The movie concentrates on the 74th edition of the games and mainly follows Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) the female tribute from the impoverished District 12. Katniss is an expert hunter who has been providing for her family since the death of her father in a mining accident (event which we see exclusively through dialogue-free flashbacks), it's her deep love for her little sister Prim (Shields) that drives her to offer herself as volunteer after Prim is chosen.
Katniss, along with male tribute Peeta (Hutcherson) and their mentor Haymitch (Harrelson), travel to the Capitol guided by the extravagant Effie Trinket (Banks), where they experience for the first time the riches and luxuries they would've never dreamt of having in their districts. But this land is no Oz and serves them merely as the lavish waiting room where they await their eventual participation in the games.
Eventually they are thrown onto a field populated with deathly traps, genetically engineered critters and more terrifying: other human beings whose only purpose is to survive.
Whatever the movie needs to say about the sad reality of entertainment in our times, in which suffering and schadenfreude seem to be the one thing audiences need to be happy, isn't as disturbing as the way in which it's told.
The Hunger Games, based on the popular book by Suzanne Collins, seems to be a critique of dumbed down entertainment but going beyond the genre limitations, it actually forces us to look beyond what we think of as "entertainment".
More than addressing the ridiculousness of reality television, which if nothing else is a disturbingly precise metaphor for "efficient capitalism" (minimum effort maximizing profit), we also come to terms with how journalism has become a sort of Roman sport in its own way.
Watching the film you are more reminded of CNN than you are of Survivor, especially when it's suggested that the games are broadcast twenty four hours a day. The film doesn't try to get to the source of this blood thirst, instead it focuses on one of the stars.
As played by Lawrence, Katniss is a young woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. The hunger in her eyes goes beyond putting a piece of bread in her mouth, it speaks of revenge, hatred and manipulation. Katniss isn't completely likable and that's what makes her so fascinating to watch.
Few actresses are able to empty themselves completely in the effortless way Lawrence does. It seems to take her absolutely nothing to "play" someone. In the movie, Katniss is forced to pretend she has a crush on Peeta, if only to get sponsors who might help her win.
Watching the way in which the lovestruck young man looks at Katniss, we aren't only convinced that she is playing the part to perfection, we also begin to question the nature of emotions. Several movies fail because they think of love as something pure and divine, The Hunger Games succeeds because it understands that love after all might be nothing more than a human creation.
Directed with utmost precision by Gary Ross, the film takes on the harsh task of transforming a novel told in the first person, into a movie that deals with the machinations of a larger social scheme. Ross understands that even this kind of brutality must be entertaining and crafts a movie that feels profound without dangling on extreme snobbery. The film becomes especially effective when we realize it's a direct representation of the story being told.
Novels tell us, movies show us and The Hunger Games then quite literally becomes "The Hunger Games", as we watch actors pretend to be young people who kill each other. Unlike the gamemakers in his movie, Ross is a merciful director and he spares us the need to watch extreme violence. He also denies us the pleasure of getting to know the characters better, which could come off as cold hearted but in all honesty, when's the last time you "knew" the Olympic games competitors? This lack of intimacy makes the film feel even more realistic, its points the more prescient and appropriate. It doesn't avoid the moral dilemmas, it simply establishes that it would never be able to solve them. Does your favorite Olympic sporting event change when one of the teams or competitors comes from a poor country? Perhaps in the future our desire to entertain ourselves will be directly connected to our selfish sense of survival. The movie reminds us that even then, once it's over, we can simply look away from the screen and move on with our lives.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire **1/2

Director: Lee Daniels
Cast: Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Mo'Nique
Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz

"Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire" is the kind of movie that would get made at an NGO to encourage donations for the issues it features. Like those movies it would choose a harrowing topic mostly unknown, or ignored, by society and then invite audiences to make a change.
It would be like a documentary of sorts because it would draw its inspiration from real life, but concentrate on the more dramatic elements to achieve its purpose and very much like those movies, it would never be meant for the people featured in it.
In this movie we have the tragic story of an overweight, illiterate sixteen year old from Harlem called Precious (Sidibe), she's recently been impregnated by her father for the second time and suffers constant verbal and physical abuse from her domineering mother Mary (Mo'Nique).
Precious escapes from her world by daydreaming and seeing herself as a famous entertainer. Things get better for her when she starts going to an alternative school where she becomes her teacher, Ms. Rain's (Patton) protegee.
Set in the late 1980's the movie features a remarkable sense of environment and subtly introduces subjects like AIDS and the slow, but steady liberation of homosexuality.
But as liberal as the movie wants to be, its director grounds it on values that only appeal to the most conservative crowds (again, people who would provide hefty tax free paychecks to the charities the movie asked them to).
It makes Precious and Mary extreme African American stereotypes that spend their time eating pig's feet and fried chicken.
"You plan on putting some food in that frying pan?" asks Mary more concerned with the fried than the food part.
And when Precious spends a day with Ms. Rain which she reveals to be something like they would do on television, she does so by relinquishing her personal biases after she learns that Ms. Rain isn't only a smart saint, but also a lesbian.
This preaching of faux liberal values as the ultimate savior would've reduced the movie to complete cliché if it wasn't for the work of its amazing ensemble.
Sidibe is a natural talent who inhabits this young woman with no regards to how even the screenplay mocks her. She makes Precious ignorant, but willing to learn and dying for the kind of love even she would agree she doesn't know.
While Mo'Nique's monstrous Mary is the work of someone fully compromised with her character, not so much in the uglification as in the attitude; watching her stroke her wig while she dances in her living room is a perverse spectacle not because of her hairy armpits and disdainful unkempt self, but because she doesn't even care about them.
Hard as they try though, Daniels is almost working against them, making Mary throw Precious a television set (only to realize later what she'd done and be sorry for the TV not her daughter) and leaving the black people with lighter skin tones (Patton, Kravitz and Carey) to do the rescuing.
Daniels major problem is his confusion regarding character development and audience expectation. He tries to make Precious a neorealist heroine (quite literally in a scene where she imagines herself as a character in "Two Women" complete with Italian lines and English subtitles) when she has already mentioned that she can't even follow Ms. Rain because she talks like people from TV channels she doesn't watch, which again makes the whole "Two Women" episode bizarre because that would be one of those channels.
This isn't a movie about Precious, this is a movie about what Daniels thinks Precious would think of herself and as such it seems he's the one who has issues to deal with.