Stretching roughly half of Suzanne Collins’ final Hunger Games book out to 118 minutes, Mockingjay – Part 1 proves to be something of a test for the franchise’s fanbase. In their co-commentary, director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson congratulate themselves on expanding Collins’ passages about heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) adapting to life below ground in bunkered District 13, but it makes for a turgid first act, mainly boardrooms and brainstorms, until shit gets real out in District 8.

Francis Lawrence’s action direction is strongest, but it’s relatively light here with much happening off-screen. The first rule of screenplays is Show, Don’t Tell, yet the epic decimation of Katniss’ native District 12 is recounted by Gale (Liam Hemsworth), sans flashback. Elsewhere, the vast sets swamp the story, director Lawrence having spent the $125m budget on a life-size Star Wars playset here – stormtroopers, rebel alliance, vaguely incestuous love triangle and all.

When human moments do manage to resonate, they achieve great emotive impact. J-Law has never been more impassioned as Katniss than when issuing a call-to-arms amid the blazing remains of 8, while the use of ‘The Hanging Tree’ – sung by Katniss then broadcast across the land, soundtracking the snowballing rebellion – is goosebump brilliant.

The main extra, a 12-part documentary, is longer than the feature, production footage spliced with talking heads, and there’s a standalone 11-minute tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman with intriguing excerpts of informal rehearsal footage. Lorde waffles on about the soundtrack in another featurette and there’s her video, and nine deleted scenes. Most are superfluous but two, Peeta with President Snow in his mansion, and Katniss and Effie remembering Cinna, should have made the final cut, really. Bugger the boardroom, show us their souls.

Extras:

• Commentary
• Making Of (BD)
• Featurettes (BD)
• Deleted scenes
• Music video

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The post The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 Blu-ray review appeared first on Game News.

With two films in two years he’s taken a leaf out of Terrence Malick’s playbook, only in a far more multiplex-friendly way.

Having emerged from the Toronto Film Festival with the Audience Award in tow (beating Ben Affleck’s front-runner Argo ), Silver Linings Playbook is poised to become this autumn’s most crowd-pleasing comedy-drama – thanks to its feisty, feel-good romance, triumph-over-mental-adversity theme and two of the hottest stars around right now, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a bipolar sufferer freshly sprung from a state institution where he’d been banged up for eight months after knocking out a work colleague he found banging his wife (Brea Bee).

Moving back into his dysfunctional family home with parents Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, Pat finds rebuilding his life isn’t that simple, especially as his social filter is clogged and his anger management leaves something to be desired.

Fortunately, there’s a ‘hilarious’ Indian psychiatrist (Anupam Kher), colourful inmate buddy (Chris Tucker, emerging from semi-retirement and brightening Playbook with every appearance) and a difficult but delectable young widow (Lawrence) to soothe his fevered brow.

At a certain point, Playbook ’s audience-ingratiating elements begin to, well, grate.

Russell’s script whisks together sports-team obsessions, ballroom dancing and home-made Italian cooking, along with a splash of spicy mental struggle (but not too much!) and some of the cutest darn kooks that you ever did see (De Niro’s played-for-laughs OCD gets especially exhausting).

But looking on the bright side (one of the life lessons taught here), Cooper and Lawrence do generate terrific chemistry.

The former doesn’t dip too deeply into his character’s dark side, but neither does he flinch when the time comes to expose a few ugly truths.

But it’s our Hunger Games heroine who gives SLP its kick and watchability, her sullen, stalker-ish Tiffany offering much-needed salvation both to Pat and the viewer.

The post Silver Linings Playbook review appeared first on Game News.

Pity the same can’t be said of this hand-me-down horror, which sees Lawrence’s new girl in town alternately attracted to and freaked by the diffident loner (Max Thieriot) who lives by himself in the dilapidated pile next door.

It turns out his parents met a gruesome end at the hands of a menace that might not yet be finished lowering property values in this scenic corner of Pennsylvania.

Sadly, any hopes Mark Tonderai’s US follow-up to 2008’s Hush could have some Cabin In The Woods -style surprises up its sleeve are swiftly dashed as its talented lead is reduced to being just another scantily clad babe getting stalked by a psycho.

It wouldn’t be so bad had this House starred some pneumatic bimbo off the Hollywood casting couch.

But you expect better from the star of Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games , especially after the rave reviews she received for Toronto award-winner Silver Linings Playbook .

Oh, well: at least she gets to sing and play guitar when not extricating herself from a car boot or stumbling around a darkened basement like a wannabe Clarice Starling.

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