Category Archives: Film Reviews

Don’t Let Us Lose Another Bookshop

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Some grim news came out today regarding Notions Unlimited Bookshop, one of Australia’s favourite bookstores. Owner-operator, all round good guy, and king of all that’s spec-fic, Chuck McKenzie, announced that the bookshop is in very real danger of closing by Christmas or soon after, due to the ever rising costs of running a business.

The following is taken directly from the Notions Unlimited Bookshop‘s website:

Since the day we opened our doors, just 20 months ago, the staff and management of Notions Unlimited Bookshop have worked hard to create something more than just a specialist bookstore, and we feel genuinely proud of much that we’ve achieved during that time, such as:

# Continuing to offer a great range of publications, including the best of Australian small-press, rare and hard-to-get titles, genre classics, and latest new releases.

# Building and maintaining a reputation for friendly and knowledgeable service.

# Keeping our prices reasonable – no mean task in these days of Internet shopping and global economic downturn.

# Becoming accepted as part of the local community, plus creating an ever-growing community of our own, bringing together fans of SF, fantasy, horror, graphic novels, gaming, manga, esoteric interests and more – something we’re especially proud of, and that we hope to continue doing for a long time to come.

In order for us to reach that last goal, however, we really do need the assistance of our customers, general supporters, and Facebook subscribers at this time.

Currently, Notions Unlimited Bookshop is looking at the very real possibility of closure – if not by Christmas, then perhaps just afterwards – with the chief cause being the ever-rising cost of running the business. It’s not definite at this point, but the writing is on the wall, and this appeal is an attempt to reverse matters before it’s too late.

Our aim, therefore, is not just to increase our daily sales, but to substantially increase the number of potential customers. Previously, we have tried to boost customer numbers through signage, social media and print advertising – yet almost 80% of our customers tell us they discovered us through referral from friends, family or colleagues.

So this is exactly what we’re asking our friends and customers to do for us now – refer us!

In a nutshell, while we’d love you to pop into our shop over the next few weeks and purchase a book (or two) to help keep us afloat, what we really want you to do is tell other people about us. Jump on Twitter and Facebook, tell your friends, family, workmates, and anybody else you know who loves SF, fantasy, horror, graphic novels, manga, media tie-ins, gaming, esoteric subjects, and other such related genres, to come and check us out in person (and then tell all of their peeps!). We’re not looking for handouts – just introductions to potential customers who may help to keep us in business. And do be sure to mention to everyone you refer us to that this is all in aid of keeping Notions Unlimited Bookshop operating.

Finally, I just want to make it absolutely clear that this is a genuine appeal, not some fake ‘going out of business’ sale or marketing trick. If things don’t improve markedly for us over the next month, we will almost certainly be forced to close our doors forever. No business owner ever wants to admit that a business is failing, but there comes a time when that owner has to either quietly slide towards the inevitable, or step into the spotlight and ask for assistance. So, if you feel you can assist, and will do so, you will have the absolute gratitude of myself and my staff – as well as, hopefully, a future in which we may continue to provide you with the range, service and community you deserve.

In the meantime, a massive and heartfelt ‘thank-you’ to all of our customers, regular and casual, who have supported us already since we opened. We couldn’t have survived thus far without you.

With Thanks,

Chuck McKenzie (Chief Zombologist)
Notions Unlimited Bookshop
facebook.com/pages/Notions-Unlimited-Bookshop/
@notionsun
info@notionsunlimitedbookshop.com

Bookshops are an endangered entity in this day and age, and whenever one closes its doors for good, we are all a little poorer for it. Don’t let this happen to Notions Unlimited Bookshop. Please help in any way you can.

Dredd – movie review

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Dredd is the second attempt to make a movie from the incredibly enduring 2000AD comic strip, Judge Dredd. The last attempt, with Sylvester Stallone in the title role, was such a smouldering pile of crap that I refuse to say any more about it. Does the new version make up for that? Actually, yes it does.

Dredd is the story of a future Earth where nuclear holocaust has reduced the vast majority of the planet to radioactive wastelands full of mutants, generally referred to as The Cursed Earth. The surviving, unaffected members of humanity live in massive, sprawling cities that cover thousands of square miles, called Mega-Cities. The biggest of these, covering the vast majority of the east coast of the US and home to some 800 million people, is Mega-City One. Most people live in Blocks, mega structures of some 200 stories each. As you can imagine, people crammed in those kind of numbers into that kind of space means crime and violence are everyday dangers. The only line between the people and utter chaos are the men and women of the Hall of Justice, known as Judges. They are judge, jury and executioner, dispensing justice and sentence wherever they go. Of all the Judges, Judge Dredd is the Judgiest. An absolute law man, with a perfect working knowledge of every aspect of Mega-City One’s fascist and brutal justice code and a black and white eye for resolution.

This is a world and a society that has grown incredible detail over the decades, so to tackle the subject in a single 90 minute film is daunting, to say the least. The makers of this film, however, were smart and, after some opening sequences through Mega-City One, they locked two judges in one block and the rest of the film played out there. It’s the story of one particular crime boss, known as Ma Ma, and her control of the new drug Slo-Mo. When you take Slo-Mo, you perceive the world as passing at 1% its normal speed, which gives the filmmakers an excuse for some awesome and beautiful super slo-mo sequences. Also some truly brutal ones, but we’ll get to that.

Judge Dredd is saddled with a new rookie judge, Anderson. The rookie failed her test to become a judge, but only just. She does, however, have a pretty powerful psychic ability and the Chief Judge tasks Dredd with taking her out for a day’s assessment to see if the slight fail can be ignored if Anderson’s psychic abilities prove her to be a good judge on the streets. On investigating a triple homicide in Peach Trees Block, they find themselves trapped in Ma Ma’s web and the crime boss seals off the block with war protocols and orders everyone inside to find and kill the judges. Thus begins a Die Hard-esque fight for survival while Dredd and Anderson try to stay alive and dispense justice.

Seeing as I’ve been a fan of Judge Dredd since before my age hit double figures, I was scared about how faithful to the comics this film would be. I have to say, they did a pretty bang-on job. I’ll list quickly a handful of things that deviated from the comics which I wasn’t so happy about. The Lawmaster bikes the judges use looked very different and I didn’t care for that change (though the Lawgiver guns were excellent). The appearance of Mega-City One was quite well done, but there weren’t nearly enough blocks and roads and other signs of density. When we got big aerial shots of the city, the blocks were far too spread apart and that killed what was, to me, one of the best and most horrible aspects of Mega-City One, being the absolutely crammed nature of the city with massive highways criss-crossing the bristling blocks, hundreds of feet in the air. But these are small gripes.

My one main gripe about a change from the comics was around Judge Anderson. In the comics, Anderson of Psi-Division is the best and most powerfully psychic judge in the division. In the film, there was no Psi-Division and Anderson was painted as a mutie, who was lucky enough to have a strong psychic mutation and none of the weird and horrifying physical disfigurements normally associated with denizens of the Cursed Earth. Within the comics, psionics and mutants are not the same thing, and it bothered me that they went that way in the film. And it was also a shame that there’s no actual Psi-Division in the film version, as that reduces by a great deal the stories that can be explored from the comic book’s history.

Anyway, on with the film. As the friend I went with said, “That was the most violent hour and half I’ve ever sat through!” And she’s right. The comic books are very violent, but, being comic books, there’s a certain remove from the actuality of what’s going on. When that is translated into a live-action film, with an R rating and no holds barred on showing what’s happening, the violence is sudden and brutal and unrelenting. But it’s a perfect example of violence in context. The film was far better for it. A place like Mega-City One is a very violent environment, where death and brutality are around every corner, every minute of every day. Life is cheap. That’s explored a lot in the comic books and the film doesn’t shy away from it. Bodies dropped from great heights with realistic impacts, shoot-outs with realistic injuries and so on, often shot in super slo-mo due to the nature of the drug in the story, makes from some very confronting viewing. But it also makes for a strong correlation between comic book and film. When you see someone getting shot in the face in super slo-mo, you’re seeing a filmic version of the single frame in a comic book where the bullet hits its target. As a homage to the style of 2000AD, I enjoyed the way this film was made.

The story itself was pretty much by the numbers. There were no sudden twists and turns, no surprises. The story played out in a fairly linear way and, while we could never be sure exactly who might survive and who might not, the film was more spectacle than deep narrative. The real narrative lay in the place, the people, the situation itself, not in how it played out. As a film, that works just fine when taken for what it is, but it did mean the film felt more like the pilot for a TV series than a standalone movie. And, in all honesty, if they made this into a series, with the production values of this film, I would be one happy monkey.

Dredd doesn’t explore deeply the nature of its dystopian future, which is a shame, but it shows it clearly. It lacks the depth and richness of social commentary it could have had, but it is a perfect example of a genre film. Gritty, relentlessly violent and realistic, this is simply a drug bust gone ballistic set in Mega-City One and it’s brilliant for that. I just hope it’s the first of many films and the subject matter can get deeper and more interesting with subsequent ventures.

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Book Review: House at the End of the Street by Lily Blake

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Atom, 2012

Hmmmn.

I’ve tagged this review as both a book review and a movie review, because this “novel” is in fact a hastily written movie tie-in that reads like the Cliffs Notes version of the script. There is no author name on the cover. When exploring the title pages one finds the following explanation: a novel by Lily Blake, based on the screenplay by David Loucka, from a story by Jonathan Mostow. Lily Blake’s name is also attributed to the Snow White and the Huntsman movie tie-in “novel”, which I’ve got here somewhere for review too. A quick Google turns up no photos or meaningful information about Lily Blake, so I can’t tell you anything insightful about this author (except that I don’t believe she really exists and is instead probably a personification of a gaggle of entities churning out these sort of movie promotional tomes).

I repeat: hmmmmmn.

The House at the End of the Street starts off in Twilightesque fashion with a teen girl (played by The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence in the film) leaving the big city and moving to a quiet country town. Elissa and her mother score an impressive house cheaply due to its grisly history – the couple who lived there previously were murdered by their mentally handicapped daughter, Carrie Anne, who then disappeared without a trace. In true Twilight fashion, Elissa is the focus of many boys in her new town, but her own interest lies with strange and brooding Ryan, Carrie Ann’s brother, who still lives reclusively on the property in a separate house. Then, to use the phrase on the back of the book, “unexplainable events begin to happen” (ugh). There’s a twist that is fairly obvious from  early in the tale, although to be fair, it probably works much better onscreen. There’s also a lot of gratuitous use of “spooky” kids and tugging on the heartstrings ineffectively, which I tend to get my back up about these days, as a parent. If you’re going to use kids in horror, use them well, and use them with respect.

Putting aside my sneery judgemental jabs at cynical money-grubbing exercises masquerading as literature…the book goes through its motions pretty much as you would expect it to. I would class it as YA, and teens would probably enjoy it. It’s a quick read, not atrociously written, but certainly with nothing inspiring between its covers. The prose is cold and simple (and there are quite a few typos – hence my “hastily written” comment earlier). Whoever did actually write it phoned it in and didn’t bother to hide the fact – and why would they. This accompaniment to the movie is what it is. I didn’t hate it. I read it all the way to the end. I did feel dirty afterwards, but I read it anyway. I’ll probably go see the movie, as it’s a competent enough teen thriller, albeit predictable and cliched. What came across as one dimensional in print may do a far better job onscreen with Lawrence and others injecting life into it. It’s very hard to judge a movie when it’s slammed between paper covers and dubbed a “novel”.

Don’t bother reading it, but if you like teen slasher flicks with a bit of a psychological twist, you might enjoy the movie. I’ll go along to see if I do.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) – DVD Review

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I’ve been a fan of Guillermo Del Toro for a long time and his films are usually well worth the time. In this case, the Pan’s Labyrinth director is a producer for director Juan Antonio Bayona’s gothic horror about an old orphanage that is being reborn under the care of an ex-resident. As a child, orphaned Laura lived in the big old house by the Spanish seaside and has fond memories of her time there. She was adopted and left the home. Now in her mid-30s, Laura returns to the dilapidated institution with her husband, Carlos, and their seven-year-old son, Simon, to reopen the orphanage for just a handful of special needs children.

But, naturally, there is something weird going on in the beautiful old house. Simon’s behavior begins to grow increasingly strange and Laura and Carlos start to think the boy is getting carried away with his imaginary friends. On the opening day of the new orphanage, Simon’s bizarre behavior is written off as a bid for attention until truly strange events occur and Simon disappears. The search for Simon leads Laura deep into her memories of the orphanage and she begins to uncover troubling things that occurred after her own adoption.

This is classy and atmospheric film. It’s true gothic horror, with the tension and pace masterfully managed throughout. The acting is top notch, with all the characters utterly convincing. The film addresses the connections between the living and the dead in interesting ways. There’s nothing especially original in the ideas here, but the delivery and way the characters interact with the strange events is excellent.

The real power of this film is the subtlety and understated exploration of the horror as it goes for true emotional engagement. There are occasional old school shocks and a few typical tension-building filmic techniques employed, but they’re handled with as much subtlety as the plot. The cinematography is very good throughout, with the camera making great use of the locations and the architecture of the orphanage.

All in all this is a genuinely creepy and visceral horror film, cleverly written, beautiful shot and well acted. Highly recommended.

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Movie Review: The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

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Directed and co-written by Drew Goddard

Co-written and produced by Joss Whedon

Starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kanz, Jesse Williams

Here’s the integral thing you need to know about me in the context of this review: I’m not part of the cult of Joss Whedon, because I’m largely unfamiliar with Joss Whedon.

I can say “I like his work”, but when I say that, what I’m actually saying is “I like the episodes of Buffy I’ve seen” (because I haven’t seen all of them – and while I do like Buffy, I wouldn’t say I’m a massive fan of the series – I enjoy it, but I’m not passionate about it). And that’s it. I know he also did Firefly and Dollhouse, but I haven’t seen either of those, and in fact I don’t even know what they’re about. I haven’t even seen Angel. I’m sure he’s done other stuff that I don’t even know exists, which is essentially my point – I’m not an avid Joss Whedon fan; I don’t even have a solid awareness of his body of work. Yes, I am a Bad Geek, but the flipside of that is that I went into Cabin in the Woods without preconceived expectations or a pre-existing unshakeable belief that it would be good because Joss Whedon is good.

I’m pointing this out because one of the criticisms I’ve seen of positive responses to Cabin in the Woods is that people are just enthusing about it because Joss Whedon! – which, in my case, is obviously not true.

Now, on to the enthusing. BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD. Seriously, spoilery spoilers of extreme spoilerdom. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read on, it will totally ruin the experience for you. Don’t read any other reviews, either. Just go see the movie.

Cabin in the Woods is ostensibly the story of five college students who drive out to a remote, uh, cabin in the woods, to drink and smoke pot and screw, following which, gory bad things happen to them. The end.

Not.

There’s overt foreshadowing (actually, “foreshadowing” isn’t an accurate descriptor, there’s no subtlety to it, it’s just shoved in the viewer’s face because it’s not a secret, we’re meant to think we know exactly where things are at here) that all is not as it seems from the very start of the film, with technicians in an unnamed facility watching the five teens through surveillance equipment and gearing up for some nasty process to take place that they have obviously overseen many times before. We assume it involves the five’s messy demise. We’re also shown a type of forcefield around the cabin site that a bird smashes into and is electrocuted by. Got it. Can’t get in or out unless something/someone wants you to.

So even now, we think we know what’s going on, right? Yes, the five hapless teens – archetypes from horror movies gone by, including the whore, the virgin, and the jock – are in a secluded cabin and horrific things will happen to them, and as an added twist, the technicians will watch, presumably for jollies or to produce some sort of warped reality show or…something. The end. Right? Nooooooooo.

Once in the cabin, our five become overstated parodies of the archetypes they represent, and there’s all the usual male-gaze and women taking off their tops and dirty dancing and tongue-kissing stuffed wolf heads (what?) and…all that stuff. In Cabin in the Woods, though, this is intended to be ironic. Y’know, the male-gaze here isn’t really male-gaze but a commentary on the male gaze in horror films, and also the product of deliberate manipulation of the five occupants into archetypal behaviours by the technicians overseeing the cabin. And I think, largely, this irony is successful. I still don’t enjoy sitting through pervy scenes of tits and bimbos. It’s still irritating and uncomfortable. But that’s kind of the point. It’s uncomfortable but Cabin in the Woods knows it’s uncomfortable – points out that it’s uncomfortable, and then laughs at itself. And us. And we let it.

And there’s a lot of laughter in Cabin. Scares, yes. Blood, yes. Authentic laughs? Yes. That’s a hard combo to pull off – comedy in horror rarely works well. It works here. And even that is a kind of ironic parody of itself, because the comedy in Cabin is silly and obvious and cliched. But it works because it’s meant to be silly and obvious and cliched and that’s why it’s funny. And we know it’s ironic and that our laughter is ironic and how silly and pretentious that is, and how silly and pretentious we are for buying into the irony, dahhhhhling, and that’s funny too. Aren’t we all so special and hip and bored with life. Ha ha ha. We’re laughing with the movie at the movie which is laughing with us at us laughing with it at it and who’s the idiot here, really?

So, the five go into the basement (which, of course, you should never do), and find weird and wonderful things, and touch the weird and wonderful things (another thing you shouldn’t do), and read out a Latin incantation (definitely never do that), and awaken a zombie redneck torture family who attack, maim, and kill them while the technicians watch and even manipulate to ensure maximum carnage. And eventually everyone except the “virgin” is apparently dead, the watching technicians are rejoicing, and the movie should end.

But that’s where it actually really starts.

Because someone who should’ve been dead isn’t, the order of things is destroyed, and the zombie redneck torture family turn out to be just one of an array of vast subterranean horrors housed beneath the cabin and brought up by elevator based on which object the five choose and activate in the basement.

Things go nuts. The scene where the elevators are all opened and all the creatures fly out and drown everything in all the blood is fucking awesome. The cameo by Sigourney Weaver is sweet. The old Gods thing is cool. The global perspective and the variations in horror between cultures is fun. It’s all massive rapid-fire sensory overload at this point, as the movie inverts itself over and over again, with so many homages and little treasures for fans to spot and enjoy, and it’s delicious.

Sure, some of it’s a bit weak, when you reason through it in hindsight. Like, for such a sophisticated and well-established facility, they sure don’t have any strategies in place to deal with things going wrong – one brain-challenged and easily overthrown guard to deal with escapees? No one thinks to go straight to the elevator the two surviving kids have entered to escape the cabin, despite it being easy to track it as it can only be the elevator the zombie redneck torture family entered the cabin from? Why are the elevators set up to bring all the horrors up from underground and give them free access directly into the facility, anyway? Isn’t there an easier way for the old Gods to get the blood sacrifices they require – like, just shoot the archetypal victims in the head, for instance? And even the archetypes are sort of confused and conflicted – the virgin isn’t a virgin, for example. I could go on. There are silly aspects. But, y’know…

I just didn’t care.

It was that good. I’ll pass them off as deliberate silliness, or more irony/commentary/enigma/critique, or hell, just genuine errors and oversights – whatever. I don’t care. They didn’t matter, the film worked, it was fresh, it was different, it had tension, laughs, surprises, a million small gore-geeky touches (like a device that resembled Lemarchand’s configuration, held by a Cenobite-esque creature called Fornicus, FTW!), it was smart and scathing of everything including itself, the climax just kept on climaxing, there were brilliant monsters and BIG SCENES OF EPIC  BLOOD AND HORROR, and I fucking loved it.

Brilliant. Best horror movie I’ve seen in a long time. So much more than just a horror movie, actually. It raised questions – was the whole thing a critique? A parody? A joke? A puzzle? Or a serious…something? What does it mean if I liked the movie? What would it have meant if I didn’t? The actors were all flawless in their roles (at face value, you’d think that would be easy to achieve in most roles in this movie, but I don’t believe that for a moment because nothing is what it seems here), the effects were fabulous, the aesthetic was gorgeously perfect, and I came out of the cinema reeling with bliss and raving with praise.

If I had a star system to rate movies,Cabin in the Woods would score five out of five.

Maybe I’ll have to consider joining that Whedon cult, after all.

Movie Review: Dark Shadows (2012)

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Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith

Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham-Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Johnny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote

Dark Shadows is a movie adaptation of the 1966-1971 American television series of the same name. It’s another Burton/Depp collaboration (like 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), and as Burton/Depp collaborations tend to do, it features Burton’s muse and real-life partner, Helena Bonham Carter. As a big fan of this gothic trio, I went into Dark Shadows with great expectations that were, for the most part, sadly unfulfilled.

Dark Shadows sees Depp playing Barnabas Collins, once a well-to-do New England businessman, now a 200 year old vampire cursed and buried alive for much of his undead existence by spurned witch Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). Barnabas is dug up in 1972, and returns to the home he once knew, where his descendants now live. There he finds things are not as prosperous or harmonious as they once were, his long-lost love Josette du Pres (Bella Heathcote) may yet live (sort of), and Angelique still plays a large part in the Collins family’s ongoing troubles.

Dark Shadows has been flagged as horror comedy, but there’s no real horror here, except perhaps in the incoherency of the story-telling. There are some decent laughs, and there is Burton’s usual gaudy gothic flair, but there’s little else going for the movie, apart from an excellent cast who are completely wasted. Readers may remember Jackie Earle Haley’s riveting nihilistic performance as Rorschach in 2009’s Watchmen; in Dark Shadows, Haley plays a redundant bit-part as the Collins family’s drunken caretaker. Similarly, Michelle Pfeiffer’s delivery of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch, is immaculate; yet utterly boring, because the character herself is boring. Chloe Grace Moretz, who shocked and delighted as Hit Girl in 2010’s Kick-Ass, is barely present as Carolyn Stoddard, a character who seems to exist solely to pout and appear in the finale in a “twist” that is as meaningless as it is ridiculous. I can’t comment much on Bella Heathcote’s contribution as Barnabas’ so-called love interest Josette (or her modern incarnation) because she’s simply absent in every meaningful way for pretty much the entire film. Depp and Bonham-Carter give their usual flawless performances, and Eva Green’s sultry malice is arguably a highlight of the film, but nothing can bring true gravitas to this fluffy muddle.

Perhaps I’m being a tad harsh. This is not a terrible film. The vivid visual aesthetic and surreal vibe that we’ve come to expect from Burton are still present in Dark Shadows, though not as expertly handled and delivered as in Burton’s other works. The funny parts are quite funny. There’s some real depth (at times) to the character of Angelique, particularly in the climax of the film. There’s fun to be had here – it’s a Tim Burton film, after all! – but it’s of the shallow, vaguely bewildering kind.

If you’re in the mood for some light entertainment, you could do worse than Dark Shadows. It’s not without its charm. I’d suggest you wait for the DVD, though. And maybe get drunk first.

The Hunger Games movie – review and analysis by Halinka Orszulok

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The Hunger GamesThe Hunger Games is based on the first of a trilogy of young adult novels written by Suzanne Collins and has some very devoted fans of all ages. As one would expect, opinions vary about whether the movie has done justice to the written work. It seems most fans of the books are pleased with the film, however some feel necessary detail was lost. Other readers felt those same details made the written work drag so the story was in fact told more effectively in the film. I have not read the novels so can only comment on my experience of the film and the story told in this context.

It begins by immersing us in the world of Katniss, who lives with her mother and younger sister Primrose in impoverished District 12. Here people exist hand to mouth and in constant fear of Peacekeepers who enforce the iron rule of the Capitol. This is a time far in the future where new and amazing technologies exist for those lucky enough to live in the Capitol, but life in the Districts is hard, basic and rudimentary. They slave sourcing raw materials, while barely able to feed their families. Katniss’ skill with a bow and arrow in the forbidden zone of the forest helps them get by, but such unlawful behaviour is carried out at great risk, like feudal England where serfs starved but hunting in the king’s forest was a crime met with serious consequences.

An even more chilling terror than that of the Peacekeepers is the fear of being chosen in the annual Reaping to take part in the Hunger Games. Every person of a District between the ages of 12 and 18 is put into a ballot selecting one male and one female ‘tribute’ to the mighty Capitol. The games are a reality TV sensation somewhere between ‘Survivor’ and the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome, for the entertainment of the ruling class. There are 12 districts, so 24 competitors in all. It is almost certain death – to win you must survive while the other 23 tributes die. The sole survivor gains fame, fortune and public adoration, so there are volunteers from the Capitol who participate with an intense self-belief, fuelled by the many resources they have at their disposal to train into readiness and almost certain victory.

This film is largely a hypothetical exploration of class and society framed within the experience of young people being thrust into an unjust, terrifying world and having their moral mettle tested. For me, the first and most lasting impact of the film was the dread of being chosen; it forms the crux of many of the ideas underpinning the story. There is such an enormous tension built around the process of the reaping. You can imagine the potential tributes feverishly swinging between thinking ‘please don’t let it be me’ and ‘what if it is me?’ Then, the enormous guilt and relief when they’re not chosen or the numb horror of realising this terrible thing is in fact happening, the nightmare is real.

This plunges the story into two fundamental questions: what individual responsibility do members of a society have to each other and, as a maturing individual, how do you deal with the terror of facing a seemingly impossible battle on your own? What values must you stand by to remain true to your humanity and what do you take with you as comfort in times of terrible fear and darkness?

These questions are played out by contrasting the character of Katniss, and her District 12 co-tribute, Peeta, with the citizens of the Capitol. Katniss is quietly strong and resourceful because she has to be, unsentimental but deeply caring, and will help another even at great risk to herself. Her ethics are an instinct; she doesn’t have to stop to consider what is wrong or right, there is a sense that she knows this reflexively.

Most of the people of the Capitol seem extremely superficial, pampered and live totally without fear of hardship or even illness. They love the Games which are a time of great celebration and never really trouble themselves with thoughts of what the players are put through, let alone about the conditions they live in back in the Districts. It’s OK because it’s not happening to them, they are safe. For the ruling class, the Games function as a social control.

This contrast made me think about the discussions around public versus private education in our world and the slippery slope this represents. There is a parallel between the District kids versus the Capitol kids in the film and the public/private education debate. The District tributes hardly stand a chance against the Capitol Career tributes who have been coached their whole lives for winning. However, the District tributes’ enforced resourcefulness and real-life skills give them a chance of success. As epitomised by Katniss, they have to not allow themselves to mentally lose the battle first by giving up all hope; they have to believe enough in themselves to put up a good fight.

The film is a representation of class division to the extreme and again it hinges on this question of being chosen. The only real difference between the citizens of the Capitol and the Districts is where they were fortunate or unfortunate enough to be born. Fundamentally it’s about that age old saying of being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes; is it still OK when it is happening to you? Or to your child? What about your neighbour or even someone from the same town? Where do you draw the line and separate your well-being from the well-being of others? In this sense the film is like a lesson for young people in ethics 101, but because it was so visually engaging and because there was enough food for thought, its appeal will stretch to a broad audience.

The film doesn’t pull any punches or soften the harsh horror of this future world. The violence is deftly handled with excellent camera work and direction. The camera angles and distance to the action are just right, giving you a very clear sensation of the brutality without being overwhelming. In some ways this suggestiveness makes more of an impact than excessive in-your-face violence. There are nice touches with quiet scenes that effectively build up tension – for example, Katniss waiting to go up into the playing field, her nerves so tangible, you feel that you are in that room waiting with her. The first scene of battle and its aftermath works very well and sets the tone for the action to come.

The camera largely sticks to Katniss as she navigates her way around the terrain, occasionally panning out, but mostly giving the sensation that you are right there beside her, or you are her – tearing through the forest, tumbling down a slope, turning a corner and abruptly colliding with another player knocking the wind out of you. It’s all skilfully done. Part of this is also achieved through the soundtrack. There is little if any music, rather you hear things like her breath or the crunching of the ground underfoot. This adds to the realness and presence of the characters.

I’m a great fan of Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss. I loved her in Winter’s Bone where she played a character with many parallels to this one – the older sibling driven to care for her family and subsequently mature for her years. A lot of the message of this film rests on her portrayal. She will play the game because there is no other option, but she will not give up the core of herself or her values. I think this is a powerful premise to share with a YA audience – if you want to change things sometimes you have to learn the rules of the game first, even if they are blatantly unjust, but not lose yourself in the process. This lesson is driven home to Katniss by Peeta and is something they take to the very end of the Games. In this way at least she is sure to have a moral victory of sorts and we see that this is something to hang onto even when the outcome seems grim. Katniss instinctively knows that comfort in times of real darkness comes from the connections we have with each other.

If there is one criticism I have of the film it is that throughout there are hints of the broader political context outside the game and once the game is over, the ending seemed a little abrupt. There could have been a few minutes spent on tying in these threads to build the context for the next story and make this one a little more complete. However overall it was enjoyable, visually seamless and thought-provoking.

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Bio: Halinka Orszulok is a Kung Fu fighter and painter from the Illawarra region of NSW, Australia. She has a Masters Degree in Visual Arts from SCA. You can see her work at www.halinka.com.au

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