'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1' review by Captain Raptor

'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1' review by Jake Boyle

The Hunger Games franchise was in an awkward position in the run-up to this release. There was a lot of expectations riding on it - the previous two films have grossed in excess of one and a half billion dollars, and more dauntingly, both placed highly on the Captain Raptor Top Ten Films of the Year - but the notoriously less popular third book is having to pull double its weight in viewers. Obviously people were always going to (and have) come to see Mockingjay Part 1 in droves, but a disappointing performance could limit the interest and intake of the second half next year.

Despite straying from the arena combat of the first two installments, some things have stayed the same. Jennifer Lawrence gives a consistently good performance, a bit more subdued than before but the script doesn't give her as much opportunity as it previously did. Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks and especially Josh Hutcherson remain fantastic in their supporting roles, which are unfortunately all too brief here. While this does make the moments they are present even more entertaining, it leaves us stuck with the series' most dreary characters like Gale and Prim for far longer than is desirable. The politics of revolution and dystopia are brought forth from sideline to front-and-centre this time, which has irritated some but I personally find to be a winning move. Despite the drought of action in the film, it brings the saga's real battlefield (media, politics and class struggle) into clear focus and makes this film feel the weightiest and most climactic thus far.

 Proceedings are quite dull to begin with, but after a while the tragedies caused by Donald Sutherland's glowering Machiavelli figure allow emotion and tension to surge forward. At times it's quite predictable, which for a relatively subversive blockbuster is a disappointment, and Mockingjay is certainly a little more dour than its predecessors, presumably owing to the minimal presence of Harrelson and Banks - although Effie's reintroductory scene is a thing of beauty. These are problems, but it's worth noting that these flaws are all routed in not being quite as good as it used to be. The best parts of The Hunger Games are all still very much in tact, and this time with a subtler tone and more purpose in its message.

 Mockingjay is a placeholder of sorts, but it's a highly entertaining and well executed one. Jennifer Lawrence proves yet again why the whole world's obsessed with her, and the focus on the social issues at the heart of the concept gives this film a more mature feel. There are missteps along the way and it could definitely be bolder about the message it's conveying, but the competence and confidence of the narrative and the subtext craft an engaging and exciting experience.

'Interstellar' review by Captain Raptor

'Interstellar' review by Jake Boyle

The build-up for Interstellar feels like it's taken longer than the voyage undergone by its space-faring characters. Any Christopher Nolan film is a cause for excitement, but when it's starring some of the most sought-after actors of the moment and promises to deal with space-travel in a way both scientific and cinematic, it really does become a full-blown event. And most importantly, it shows an emerging pattern of Nolan making stand-alone films titled with an increasingly long, uncommon word beginning with 'I'. I can't wait for him to start work on Immunifacient.

One of Interstellar's best features is its epicness, but it comes at a price. The film's visuals are nothing short of truly beautiful, the ideas presented and explored are fascinating and the grand existential scale of the film's events rendered me speechless. It provokes thoughts and wonderment with equal frequency and is constantly moving from imaginative, interesting point to imaginative, interesting point. Unfortunately, all this grandeur - excellent though it is - leaves little room for character, and often for emotion. Most of the characters seem to exist for purely functional reasons and there's barely any effort to flesh them out beyond this. They're all well-acted, especially by Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy, but if they weren't involved in a story of such magnitude and weightiness, there'd be no reason at all to care for them. They're as devoid of life as the Earth is imminently to be.

Interestingly, the closest that the film does come to engaging characters are a pair of blockish, featureless robots. Their artificial sense of humour and morality implanted purely out of functionality creates a conflict and complexity far more akin to humanity than any of the actual humans. The dedication to hard science is both impressive and commendable, and it is this which allows the film to make you think seriously about intergalactic travelling, humanity's role in the universe and the physics of singularities whilst still awing you with the outstanding visualisations of all things extraterrestrial. The issue of of weighing your love for those close to you against the benefit of mankind is explored in a heartfelt and intelligent manner, right up until the last 10 minutes, where Nolan seems to have opted out of genuinely addressing the matter in order to provide a temporarily uplifting but ultimately empty conclusion.

Interstellar is an enchanting and fiendishly clever foray into uncharted (or at least barely-charted) territory for cinema. Despite the appealing family drama of the opening act, there's very little interest drummed up in the characters or in the world they inhabit. This is a problem, but not an insurmountable one, and the sheer gargantuan scope of the journey is itself enough to cause investment. While a lot more ponderous and, well, scientific than a lot of mainstream science-fiction aims to be, it hits most of the same markers: beautifully rendered alien worlds, fascination in the discovery and explanation of new concepts and some dryly funny robots. All this done with added sheen, excellent pacing and intellectualism - the sky's the limit. 

'Hard Candy' review by Captain Raptor

'Hard Candy' review by Jake Boyle
Recently I had a discussion where I was attempting to discern what the most gruellingly uncomfortable scene in cinema was. The self-surgical procedure in Prometheus, the tree-molestation in Evil Dead and the climactic whipping scene in 12 Years A Slave were some of the honourable mentions, but Hard Candy blows them all out of the water several times over. The meeting between a sexual predator and a 14 year-old girl goes wrong in so many ways, just not quite the ones you'd imagine.

Hard Candy is a fantastically stark film, the majority of its runtime consisting of two actors within one house utilising slow-moving shots (which at time creates nerve-racking tension when the camera's path takes it behind furniture, obscuring any view of unfolding events), and almost no music throughout. The acting and events of the story both start out at an equally restrained pace - Patrick Wilson exhibiting a well-chosen calm demeanour (the situation is creepy enough as it is - any enhancement of that would probably just ham the whole thing up) and Ellen Page's character pretending to be the young girl who thinks she's all grown-up. As the film progresses, everybody and everything involved becomes violent, panicked and desperate, but this evolution is done gently enough that it remains oh so dark and serious. Wilson is excellent, playing confidently at the high end of every scale of emotion and never once coming off as anything less than spectacular. And there really is no other actress like Ellen Page, even at such an early juncture in her career. She goes for it both barrels and succeeds entirely, evoking sympathy despite the sheer cold-blooded terror she induces.

At this point, when things start to get twisted, the claustrophobic setting and chilling silence really highlight the total horror and grimness of the situation.  The wince-inducing scenes I made vague reference to in the introduction come in many shapes and sizes - the opening sequence when they're flirting online is creepy enough to provoke a physical reaction, equally so the tension that abounds when they end up at the guy's home for a 'photoshoot', and I won't divulge much about what happens later but it really puts the vile into violent. The utter hatred, anger and pain that runs through the latter stages of the film (especially the dialogue) is electrifying and unavoidable. That's an area where the film really excels: it's brazenness. The topics and themes at the centre of the film are delicate matters, but there's no pussy-footing around them to be found, and the uncomfortableness and awfulness of it all is confronted head-on to achieve maximum dramatic effect.

I think things are getting a mite repetitive here on Captain Raptor. Now the last three films I've reviewed have all been dark, twisted and superlative dramas that excel both in regards to technical aspects and performance. I promise I'll try and watch something different next week. In the mean time, please, go and get a copy of Hard Candy. It's a distinctively shocking film that's both smartly shot and smartly written, The two performances are absolute masterpieces and the nightmarish atmosphere of the experience is a how-to guide of creating tense excitement. An experience that's equal parts as enthralling as it is disturbing.

'Nightcrawler' review by Captain Raptor

'Nightcrawler' review by Jake Boyle

While unfortunately not a spin-off about everybody's favourite German Catholic teleporting mutant, there's still a lot about Nightcrawler to get excited about. Jake Gyllenhaal playing determined and creepy has been a winning direction in the past, and with the release sandwiched between Gone Girl and the next installment of The Hunger Games, we're clearly at a peak time for social commentary on the media. It's not a small undertaking for a directorial debut (not even just of a feature film, Dan Gilroy's only previous experiences are writing credits) and definitely eye-catching in premise.

Louis Bloom, the protagonist of our story, is a spellbinding creation. Like a restrained Patrick Bateman, he is a nightmarish embodiment of stereotypical American entrepreneurial spirit. Taking a can-do attitude to a dangerous, sociopathic extent, Bloom talks entirely in professional-sounding business-speak, whether he's selling stolen scrap metal, attempting to seduce somebody or make threats of physical violence. This alone is so removed that it's blood-chilling, but it also makes the few moments when the mask slips even more evocative. Gyllenhaal is an absolute sensation, demonstrating that he can play both totally unhinged and smoothly subtle. There's great support from Riz Ahmed and Rene Russo as (respectively) Bloom's nervous assistant and the professional-minded fear-monger he sells his footage to, but Gyllenhaal blazes right past them and into the stratosphere as he lectures them about work ethic and alternates between treating them good-naturedly and with sheer contempt.

Tonally, Nightcrawler is nearly unparalleled. Countless wide shots of the Los Angeles cityscape create an infectious sense of isolation and smallness, heightening the electric tension that surrounds the increasingly ghoulish actions of Bloom. The murky, disaffected world of sensationalist news is dissected and lambasted sharply, but never to the degree where it becomes irritatingly preachy or self-righteous, focusing more on the specific nasty deeds of Bloom's and letting the satire seep in through the praise he receives, and the guidelines he's set for them. The dialogue is well-crafted, managing to fully convey menace in innocuous (if odd) positivity. Given the film's overall darkness and subject matter, there's an odd restraint in the level of violence and gore actually shown; maybe it's to avoid any potential hypocrisy given its condemnation of local news reveling in violent crime, but it does perhaps prevent a viewer from fully appreciating the inhumanity of these characters' detachment, which is one of the film's greatest sources of shock and drama.

I don't like the phrase "essential viewing", but Nightcrawler is so utterly fantastic that it's tempting me. Gyllenhaal is indescribably good (thereby making my work hard), reaping great rewards from an inventively twisted character that has to be seen to be believed. An incredibly smart film with a wonderfully dark heart and an expert knowledge of how to both build tension and how to pay it off, this is definitely going to be one of 2014's major highlights, and a big winner at awards season, if there's any justice. Which, according to this movie, there isn't.