A rare Sunday night movie viewing continued my civil rights marathon with the excellent IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT.  I really liked this movie that was as much quirky as it was serious about race relations in Mississippi in the 1960s.

The world of the 1960s in Mississippi really is hard to believe.  Just forty years ago you could assault and murder other people basically in public in police presence with no consequence.  I found that people were willing to talk about their involvement in a murder case without a lawyer present shocking, now being so well versed in how arrests and things go from modern crime movies and TV shows.

Sidney Poitier plays the iconic character Virgil Tibbs, a skilled homicide detective from Phili just unlucky enough to be passing through a small Mississippi town on the night a wealthy business investor is murdered.  He let’s himself be arrested with no cause and brought to the police station never revealing that he himself was a cop.  Only once he is only with the police chief does he pull his badge out.  He has a lot more patience than I have!  Then again, being a cop did not keep him from being a target at all.

The racism on the screen in HEAT I would almost say is not overt, at least not like in a movie like MISSISSIPPI BURNING.  The townspeople in HEAT really do not know how to treat the stranger in town who appears to be smarter than all of them combined.  It is great to see the tensions between the local small town cops and Tibbs and who really has the power, and how much.

The movie is not all serious, or at least with the recurring jingle soundtrack playing over transition scenes, and one very strange scene with a diner owner rocking out, there are smiles to be had by the viewer.

Then underlying all this is a very interesting murder mystery plot with numerous red herrings and keen evidence gathering by Tibbs, both physical evidence and his ability to read people.

If there is one criticism of HEAT, is that it never really appeared to be all that hot there!

I had been wanting to watch AMERICAN HISTORY X for a number of years and finally, all of a sudden, watched it tonight.  It was perhaps the movie that had been in the back of my mind to watch for the longest time of any other movie in that mental queue.  I was no doubt motivated to watch it by current events happening here in Florida on race and violence.  After seeing Edward Norton’s intense performance and the powerful story telling I immediately looked up debut director Tony Kaye’s other movies, which surprisingly were of no note at all.

Norton’s character is introduced to us as a neo-nazi very committed to his beliefs, so much so that he has no problem killing.  This gets him a 3-year stint in jail.  The story does not play out exactly linear though, with flashback scenes in black & white showing the influences that lead to his current situation.

All the time his younger brother is looking up to him and following the same dangerous path.  How could he not when his big brother was so strong and vocal in his white supremacy beliefs, and backed them up with action that made him a legend in their city, Venice Beach.

It is very clear from the moment Norton gets out of prison, though, that he wants his younger brother’s involvement in the local neo-nazi gang to end.  The final third of the movie centers on resolving past anger and rage, realizing what has it ever yielded and at last finding out if it is truly possible to put that past away and start anew.

I have never felt more fear for a character than I did for Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in THE HUNGER GAMES.  By the moment she was about to enter the games, I felt petrified for her.  Director Gary Ross allows ample, ample time to build up to the games themselves and being totally unfamiliar with the story, I had no idea when that calm before the storm was going to end and all hell would break loose.  Likewise, once in hell I did not know how the story would play out and was constantly surprised.  THE HUNGER GAMES is riveting and must be seen in a theater, preferably an IMAX theater.

I think 2012 could be a singular year for movies now already with THE GREY and THE HUNGER GAMES.

I am sure reading the HUNGER books must be a great experience and I probably ruined that by seeing the movie first, but it did allow me to have one of my best ever in theater experiences.  I do not see movies in theaters much anymore, but HUNGER has made me realize I really need to.  Then again, not every movie is a masterpiece like HUNGER is.

Again, I knew very little of the story, having only barely heard the words “hunger” and “games” in a title before.  That pairing fascinated me though.  What definition of hunger do they mean?  What is the game?  I am not even sure I knew it was to be a game to the death before seeing the movie.

From the first frame my survival instinct was at 100% and defiance coursed through my body.  Watching HUNGER was a visceral experience for me.  I am glad I sat in a row with an aisle before it with no one in any of the seats beside me because I moved in my chair often, body tensed.

It is difficult to write about the movie itself rather than my experience watching it.  I was totally drawn into the world created on screen.  Only pieces of it are revealed, just enough to give the viewer an impression without force feeding the morals.

I have never seen a greater contrast of decadence with death before on screen.  Again, this was done with just the right touch.  Rich look upon the poor as they kill themselves for the rich’s entertainment.  One does not need to be heavy handed to rile the audience when that is the central theme of the story you are telling.

There was an uprising, and the punishment for it by the government was severe.  The land was divided into twelve districts, each increasingly more destitute.  Katniss comes from the last, the 12th.  The rough country there taught her hunting skills though.  Every year a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are taken as “tribute” to play in the Hunger Games, where they kill each other until only one is left.  Like life on the outside, the game too is titled in favor of the more well off districts.

I do not know how none of them were more defiant, refusing to play along to the pageantry before the start of the game.  I would not give interviews, or if I did they would involve so much cursing and cursing of the people watching I doubt I would get more than a few seconds on screen.

The relationship between the characters grows throughout the movie.  As things approach the deadly time, no emotion goes unexpressed.

THE HUNGER GAMES is a very powerful movie, it is a movie that you experience physically, it is a movie that I will not forget.

–the one thing driving me crazy through the movie though was trying to remember the Japanese movie’s name from a few years ago with a very similar storyline of teens forced to fight to the death, then of course as I was steps from my car after the movie, boom, the title came to me, BATTLE ROYALE.

UPDATE March 25, 2012

I saw a 10:20pm showing on Friday night, which ended around 1am Saturday.  After I got home and wrote and published my review here, I finally got to bed about 2am.  I proceeded to dream about the movie the whole night, even being in the games and in the cave with Katniss.  I have spent the entire weekend thinking of the movie and listening to the soundtrack, especially “Safe and Sound” by Taylor Swift, the song that plays over the end credits of the movie.  Haunting.  I have ordered The Hunger Games paperback and cannot wait to start reading it Thursday night and fill in all the details the movie could not include.

If THE HUNGER GAMES had come out in 2011 I would have put it right at the top of my Ten Best list for the year, by a good distance.

If you are a nostalgic person, love movies, and have loved and lost, then I cannot think of a movie more suited for your viewing than CINEMA PARADISO, the 1988 Italian film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

A young boy in a small Sicilian town spends his days being mischievous and his nights trying to become a movie projectionist’s apprentice. Everyone calls the boy Toto, usually yelling the name when he does something naughty. Alfredo is the projectionist who does much of the yelling, but the boy is infectious and relentless and nothing can keep him from his love of the movies and being in the projection booth.

CNIEMA PARADISO is really a coming of age movie, about a boy without a father who finds one, and grows up to learn his life lessons from this surrogate. It is one of the most touching “father & son” relationships I have ever seen on screen.

The town itself is full of assorted characters all full of life and crazy in their own way, but all of them come to the cinema and yell first to Alfredo to play the movie and then to Toto as control of the projection booth changes to him.

The last third of the movie is very emotional as Toto grows up, falls in love, and learns the dangers to one’s heart for doing so. CINEMA PARADISO expresses very well the importance of nostalgia in life, and how things from the past cannot be sustained nor recreated. Everything is of its own time, and only that time.