Movie Review The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) 

Directed by Francis Lawrence 

Written by Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt 

Starring Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Viola  Davis, Jason Schwartzman

Release Date November 17th, 2023 

Published November 17th, 2023 

Is there a need for another Hunger Games movie? The original foursome of Hunger Games films felt vibrant and alive, a commentary on the cultural moment as the 1% became villains, and the populace approached a consensus about too much wealth. That moment died a death and we've receded back to a place where the rich get richer and the poor suffer to support the ungodly wealth at the top. Into this fray comes a new Hunger Games movie that still feels reflective of the moment in which it is being released but not in the exciting and invigorating way that the original Hunger Games did. 

This new Hunger Games movie seems to support the 1% and have contempt for the poor. The film asks us to sympathize with the personification of the 1% in the original Hunger Games movies, Coriolanis Snow (Tom Blyth). As played by Donald Sutherland originally, Snow is pure malevolence, a scheming villain of the classic, mustache twirling variety. There is no gray area between the good of Katniss Everdeen and the evil of President Snow. The prequel on the other hand, while charting Snow's heel turn, seems to admire Snow as a man of conviction forced into a place of malevolent pragmatism. 

In this telling, Snow isn't evil, he was simply a good person who was betrayed. He's a good guy who happens to have adapted to the cutthroat world around him. He's a poor kid just trying to protect his formerly prominent family from poverty. He's a successful student whose successfully hiding his family secret, gasp, they are no longer rich. Can you believe it? The scandal. It's okay, the Snow family won't be poor for much longer. Corio, as his friends call him, is on the brink of winning a major prize that guarantees financial security and a full ride college education. 

The prize is all but in his grasp until a deceptive Professor, an enemy of Snow's father, schemes to keep Corio from his prize. The prize is centered around the annual Hunger Games. The students in Snow's hoity toity capitol school are being assigned as mentors to the poor district living souls who must fight to the death in The Hunger Games for the entertainment of the capitol. In its 10 year, residents of the capitol are no longer excited for The Hunger Games. The games need something to get people interested again and the mentors are being encouraged to help turn their fighters into spectacles, celebrities that the TV watching elite can root for or against. 

When Snow is assigned a girl from District 12 named Lucy Gray Baird, he's concerned that she will be killed quickly and cost him a chance at the prize. However, Lucy has spirit, she's attractive, and she sings, all of which could make her marketable, if she can survive longer than a few hours in the arena. At the behest of his beloved sister, Tigris Snow (Hunter Schafer), Corio decides to get close to his charge, meeting her train as she arrives and doing his best to endear himself to her so that he can give her tips to survive longer in the arena. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010) 

Directed by Lee Unkrich 

Written by Michael Arndt 

Starring Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger

Release Date June 18th, 2010 

Published June 17th, 2010 

With the release of “Toy Story 3” Pixar authored a third masterpiece in the film series that began the company's unmatched winning streak. Toy Story 3 is as bright, imaginative, compassionate and thoughtful as the first two entries in the series. And yet, the series doesn't simply fall back on qualities that it has become known for. Much like how a child learns about the world, the Toy Story franchises grows, learns to embrace change, and gets better for the lessons learned and commented upon. 

We rejoin our friends Buzz (Tom Hanks) and Woody (Tim Allen) and their family of toys as they make a vain attempt to get their kid Andy's attention. Andy is now 18 years old and preparing to leave for college. It's been several years since Andy has played with his toys but they hold out hope that one day he might pick them up again. If not, there is always the attic where they can wait for Andy to start a family and pass them on to his kids.

Things go awry however when Andy's mom mistakes the toys, sans Woody who Andy decides to take with him to college, stuffed into a garbage bag intended by Andy for the attic, for trash. This begins one terrifically suspenseful action scene as Woody risks everything to get to the curb and save his friends while Buzz attempts to save the day from inside the bag.

Thinking that Andy had abandoned them, the toys duck into a box of toys to be donated to a local day care center. Woody joins them, attempting to get them to go back to Andy. The day care meanwhile seems like a dream, a retirement home for toys where they can get played with by new kids for years to come.

There is a sinister undercurrent to all of the good natured fun of this kid friendly aesthetic. That sinister undercurrent emanates from a suspiciously too friendly stuffed bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty) who steps forward as a leader of the daycare toys and appears to have a place for the new arrivals. However, instead of taking care of Woody and his pals, Lotso dooms them to the Butterfly room where kids too young to properly care for toys end up playing with them in the most painstaking fashion.

Juxtaposed with this story is Woody's journey to get back to Andy and his very real internal conflict between his loyalty to Andy and his loyalty to his family of toys. It's remarkable the ways in which director Lee Unkrich along with Toy Story creators John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton cause us to invest so deeply, emotionally in these toy characters. We feel for these characters as deeply as any human character we've ever seen on screen.

Just as remarkable is how this deep emotional connection is forged with joy and laughter. Toy Story 3 racks up big laughs through out its feature length even at the most dramatic and heart rending moments. Unkrich, Lasseter and Stanton know that the best way to deliver a hard lesson is to follow it with a big laugh and no scene demonstrates this quite as well as the landfill conveyor scene, a scene filled with danger, sadness and eventually a big laugh.

This is some of the finest writing and voice acting we've seen in any Pixar feature and some of the most eye popping, remarkable animation as well. Pixar has advanced this art form to such lengths that it's hard to find superlatives that haven't already been overly ascribed to the artists at Pixar.

”Toy Story 3” is a masterpiece. It is a remarkably emotional, action packed, breathtakingly beautiful movie. The characters that we came to know from Pixar's early days have only grown even more warmhearted, funny and vulnerable over the years and our emotional investment in them has only deepened with each ensuing adventure. What a remarkable feeling it is to be moved so deeply by non-human characters. Moved and yet also gleefully, joyfully entertained.