The Birth of a Nation (2016)

I must say I was not impressed.

I did not think Nate Parker did as spectacular a job as Sundance would have lead us to believe. The characters were basically caricatures and uninteresting. The storyline was pure melodrama. Basically a rehashed morality play with heavy handed villains and heroes, easily identifiable. It was chock full of used tropes and predictable plot movements. There was nowhere in the movie where I was surprised by a characters actions or thought, "well that's interesting."

His pacing was quite slow throughout. Except during the climactic battle sequences which he seemed to rush through instead of building up to much of an extent. It was more or less, skirmish, big battle, oh wait it's all over now.

The only things I really thought was interesting about the film was the ending sequence involving a transition to the civil war era, and an early scene that mirrors today's police stops.

To have rewritten history as severely as Parker did, I would have expected more of a dramatic payoff for the factual sacrifice. Instead it was more of the same. 12 Years A Slave was a far more powerful and fascinating film for this kind of material. But Steve McQueen is a far more capable filmmaker.

Parker has done one thing with this movie as far as I am concerned. He has proven himself a capable director of the middling film.

3/10.

Pacific Rim (2013)

One of the worst movies I've seen in the theater in a while. I almost got up and left, but I paid ten bucks to see it. I wouldn't have missed much if I had. The acting was the only decent thing about the film. The visual effects were muddy, and for some reason every battle scene was blurred by rain. The respect of the laws of physics was non-existent. And the story, ho-boy the story. While there were a couple of original touches, for the most part it was rehashed cliches. Del Toro even went so far as to steal plot points from not only Independence Day, but also the dreadful Emmerich remake of Godzilla from the 1990's. The rousing speeches all sounded familiar. The conflicts between characters had been done before in every other movie in history. It was overall a very dumb, very boring, very noisy rehash of pretty much every other film of it's genre. I'm only giving it as high a rating as I am because the actors were all quite exceptional in working with what they were given. 3/10.

Assault Girls (2009)

Assault Girls was lame. I was expecting a live action anime full of stylized action and cool visuals. Instead I got a weakly made art film involving cheap CGI and almost no plot. Do not rent. 3/10.

The Hunger Games (2012)

3/10. In a dystopian society, two children from each of twelve districts are sent to a ruling capitol to play in "The Hunger Games", a survival match to the death where there can be but one victor. To protect her sister, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to play.

This film had the biggest opening weekend gross for a non-sequel ever when it was released. It piqued my interest because of this fact. I thought I should check it out, for cultural relevance's sake. Hadn't seen any trailers, but I had an idea basically what it was about.

Saw it... didn't like it.

I didn't like it for two reasons:

First, the direction by Gary Ross. Specifically, his decision to use the deliberately-shaky-handheld-extreme-close-up shot favored by the last two Jason Bourne movies' Paul Greengrass. Only Gary Ross takes it to an all new, highly annoying level. Imagine the shakiest parts of the car chase scene from The Bourne Supremacy, multiply it by a shaky factor of two, zoom in to just their faces, and use this recipe when people are having a conversation or simply walking. Now use it for over half the movie. This should give you an idea of what it was like trying to watch this film in the theater.

Second, the juvenile and predictable script by the original novel's author Suzanne Collins and (again) Gary Ross. I don't fault the script as much as the direction, as it is already based off a juvenile and predictable trilogy of novels aimed at youth. But, not being a fan of, nor having ever read the novels, my eye was untarnished with any expectation of adherence to the source material. Thusly, I couldn't care less if the dialogue is just as dull as the novel, I just care that it's dull and that I can pretty much predict the whole movie after the first half hour.

The only reason that I didn't rate this movie a one or a two was the acting. All of the younger actors did a pretty damn good job with the material they were given, as did most of the adults.

If you're a fan of the books, wait for it to come out on video. This way you can at least marginally see whats going on during the shaky scenes and won't have a huge screen of blur to try and sort out.

If you're not a fan of the books, save your time an money and skip it.