This is the last movie in the Hunger Game Series and the fourth installment; the first movie “The Hunger Games” came out in March 2012 with the main premise being a reality game show where young children were in an outdoor death match that was televised to the world. One thing that stood out the most for me in that first movie was the murder of a young 6 year old child by a 19 year old young man during one of the episodes of this game show.  In the second Hunger Games movie there was another televised death match, but this time with older young adults in their late teens and 20’s, perhaps due to the backlash from the first movie.  How an idea like this spawned 3 books and 4 movies that have been so popular I have no idea, mainly because the fundamental idea behind this story is so gruesome.

Perhaps the author Suzanne Collins was trying to point out the potential disaster ahead for the world because of the prevalence and popularity of reality shows; but to suggest that something as horrific as children killing other children on television becoming popular in any futuristic reality is ridiculous.

During the entire 8 hours of these 4 movies and most especially the last two I found myself continuously confused by the many names thrown around and several scenes that didn’t make sense and were not explained well. This movie series seemed to count on most people reading the books first before seeing the movies and for those who did not read the books, they were going to be out of luck trying to figure out who was who and what was going on a large percentage of the time.

The fourth and last installment in this series had scenes of mass murder and death that even involved children which I thought was extremely misplaced and inappropriate for any movie; even a movie that was trying to be true to the books that the movie was based on.  I for one am glad that this movie series is now over and I am still amazed that these movies have made so much money and the books were so popular.

This movie should be seen by fans of the book series, but for the rest of us,  this last installment should be avoided.

IMDB: The Hunger Games MockingJay Part 2

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Mans inhumanity to man has defined the human condition for centuries. The sick disease many evil people have where they can only feel good about themselves if they make others feel worse or if they can feel superior to other people is one of the biggest plagues of humanity. To think that a short 95 years ago in this country, women finally got the right to vote and in Saudi Arabia this right only came about this year, 2015 is unbelievable. In many other countries around the world, the right to vote came many years after 1920. All of this of course is completely insane and its hard believe how backwards and stupid the beliefs about women have been for so many hundreds of years. The world for women has in fact greatly improved since the 1920’s but the plight and suffrage of women continues to this day with lower salaries for the same work and other injustices that still exist.

This movie is about what it takes to change the backwards thinking of the world and some very stupid and evil people who were responsible for slavery and the suffrage of women. This movie takes place in England in 1912 and shows the horrible conditions of many women working for a textile company. The working conditions and payment for women during this time were horrible and over time the right to vote and the improvement of their lives was the paramount goal of the woman’s suffrage movement in the 1920’s. England gave women the right to vote completely in 1928, a full 8 years after the United States and the struggle during this time involved blowing up mail boxes, houses, protests and many arrests and even torture of women in prison. As a result extreme measures were taken by the Women’s Suffrage movement that involved placing bombs in mail boxes and even in houses. One desperate method to get the attention of the King of England even involved the suicide of a woman named Emily Wilding Davidson who killed herself during a horse race by throwing herself in front of a charging horse. Video of Emily Wilding Davidson Suicide.

In the end, after many years of very little or no improvement, the Woman’s Suffrage movement finally resulted in more equality for women and giving women the vote in 1928 for England and 1920 for the Unites States, but the price that was paid for this equality was very high.

The actress Carey Mulligan does an outstanding job as lead actress in this movie as does Helena Bohnham Carter . The character she plays in this movie gets divorced and actually loses her child to an adoption that was pushed through by her husband only because as a women during this time she had no legal rights to her own child. I was surprised to see Merrill Streep in this movie in a relatively small role as the leader of the Suffrage movement in England in the 1920’s and she was also excellent in her part.

I highly recommend this movie.

Suffragette IMDB

As an avid screenwriter I was at first very surprised that I never heard of Dalton Trumbo before because he could be just about the most awarded and prolific screenwriter in the history of Hollywood. Unfortunately for him his political views made his screenwriting career far more difficult than it should have been and his unique talent for writing great movies like “Roman Holiday” and “Spartacus” came towards the end of a very dark period where he was blacklisted like so many others in Hollywood. During this blacklisting period, Trumbo had to use other writers names or make up names so that his name was not credited with the movie to avoid the boycotting of the movies or lawsuits. Trumbo also worked for very minimal wages for a number of years writing scripts or fixing bad scripts for very low budget producers.  One of the great things about historical movies like this is that you learn about incidents and people and history that you would never have known about otherwise.  We all knew how blacklisting was in the 1950’s but after watching this movie you have a greater appreciation for how bad it was for so many people and how many lives were ruined by having their livelihood taken away by something so unjust and unfair.

Several people were jailed for believing in Communism during this blacklisting era including Dalton Trumbo and several of his friends, one friend was played very well by Louis CK , which eventually dies of lung cancer. Its depressing to realize that due to the fear of Russia, Communism and the Cold War that the United States Constitution and more specifically freedom of speech was completely forgotten in order to persecute, jail and ruin the lives of so many good people.

What most people also did not know is that the actor Edward G. Robinson was involved with the so called Hollywood 10 and he betrayed  all of them them in the end to save his own career and avoid jail time.  Another part of history was the verve that reporters and gossip columnists at the time like Hedda Hopper showed in their zeal to go after Communists and ruin their lives and careers, almost as if she enjoyed destroying other people.

Over time the witch hunt of the McCarthy era waned and eventually actors like Kirk Douglass and directors like Otto Preminger slowly began to have the courage to not only re-hire great writes like Dalton Trumbo but even publish their names as the screenwriters of their movies.

There are many great scenes and revelations in this movie, including several scenes in this movie involving John Wayne going after Communists and trying to ban them from Hollywood and another scene where Trumbo calls out Wayne asking him, “so where did you serve during World War 2”. It was also interesting to see that over time Trumbo adopted to the habit of writing his screenplays in the bathtub and due to the stress of much less money and incredible overwork he tended to ignore his family which caused great conflict with them, most especially his older daughter. Diane Lane had a small role in this movie as Dalton Trumbo’s wife and seems somewhat miscast int his role but Brian Cranston was excellent in his performance and Trumbo and will very likely receive an Academy Award nomination for his role as Donald Trumbo. John Goodman is also very good in this movie as the producer of bad movies and employed Trumbo many times to provide him with an income during this period when he was blacklisted.

One huge flaw but typical problem with this movie is the constant and never ending smoking in almost every scene. The good thing about this is at least they show that one of Dalton’s close writer friends died of lung cancer, so at least they try to show the other side of that disgusting coin. One day perhaps, all smoking will be banned from movies but it sure seems that we are all a long way from that day.

I highly recommend the movie Trumbo and predict it will be nominated for a best picture Oscar.

Trumbo IMDB