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 Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed (2016) 

Directed by Justin Kurzel 

Written by Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage

Starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling

Release Date December 21st, 2016 

Published December 20th, 2016

I cannot win with this review. I can, in my mind, already hear the voices of those who say that because I don’t like videogames I cannot appreciate a videogame movie. Then there are those who will recall the number of times I have decried the videogame movie subgenre and will also claim I went into “Assassin’s Creed” with bias. My only response to these spectral voices is believe whatever you want, Assassin’s Creed is simply not a very good movie, videogame adaptation or otherwise.

Michael Fassbender stars in “Assassin’s Creed” as Callum Lynch, the son of a murdered mother and a murderer father who grows up to be a killer himself. We meet the adult Callum on the day he is to be executed for what we can only assume was some sort of murder spree. The execution however, does not take and Callum wakes up in Spain where he’s been kidnapped by the Knights Templar who plan to hook Callum to a machine that can access the memories of his ancestors (just go with it).

Callum’s ancestors were members of an ancient order of Assassins known as the Creed. The Creed were created to battle the Knights Templar and specifically keep the Knights from getting their hands on The Apple, literally the apple taken from the tree knowledge in the Garden of Eden. For the reasons of the plot the Apple has the power to remove free will from the world and grant the Knights Templar the power to enslave humanity.

Through his time in the machine, called the Animus, Callum will learn the story of the Creed and will polish his assassin skills. Will he use those skills to continue his family legacy? Yeah, probably, the Knights Templar are obviously the bad guys here. Nevertheless, I will leave some mystery for you to discover if you choose to subject yourself to “Assassin’s Creed,” though I do not recommend that you do that.

“Assassin’s Creed” is a forgettable bad movie, not one that will leave much of any lasting impression. Michael Fassbender and co-stars Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons and Michael K. Williams are all professionals who give life to the material even if it proves unworthy of the effort. Fassbender is a physical specimen whose glower certainly can petrify an enemy but he’s at a loss to overcome the CGI splattered all around him in messy edits that render every frame of “Assassin’s Creed” a minor eyesore.

“Assassin’s Creed” comes from Director Justin Kurzel whose adaptation of “MacBeth,” yes that “Macbeth,” also starred Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and was similarly an eyesore. At least his “MacBeth” has ambition, Kurzel’s “Assassin’s Creed,” on the other hand, feels like an attempt to appease a studio eager for a well-known product to churn into a formula franchise that creates new revenue streams and elevates stock prices.

Poor Michael Fassbender; he seems lost in a Hollywood that doesn’t understand his gifts. Despite that chin that could cut glass and eyes that could pierce steel, Fassbender isn’t a classic “movie star.” We, the popcorn chomping blockbuster masses, simply respect him as an actor too much to watch him act below his skill level. Sure, his version of the “X-Men” villain Magneto is well liked but we’d all hoped that was his “one for them” studio picture that would let him get back to being a real actor.

Instead he has stranded himself in “Assassin’s Creed” as another “one for them” movie and we are left to lament the kinds of performances he could be dedicating his time too. Quirky, wonderful indie flicks like “Frank” and “Fish Tank” gave us the Michael Fassbender we truly want while “X-Men” was supposed to be the insurance for the next “Frank” or “Fish Tank.” Now, with “Assassin’s Creed,” who knows where Fassbender may be headed, probably cruddier looking CGI claptrap. What a shame.