The Butler

To shorten the time until midnight this New Year's Eve a friend and I decided to go watch a film, the options were limited, as a lot of theaters weren't open, but The Butler was one film I was interested anyway and it played right into our time frame.

The entirety of black history in the US happens to the family of Cecil Gaines. Cecil himself grows up picking cotton and witnesses the murder of his father that has no consequences to his owner, of course. His older son joins every black movement he finds, from the Freedom Buses to Martin Luther King to Malcolm X to the Black Panthers and finally to politics. The younger son dies in Vietnam. And his wife Gloria is an alcoholic for half of their live together to boot. 

But the actually interesting part is Cecil's work in the White House and his brush with the other side of history happening from the one his older son is on. He started serving in the Eisenhower administration and left under Reagan. He appeared to not be much of a fan of Nixon and took issue (or appeared to be) with Reagan's stance against a boycott of South Africa and his invitation to an event as a guest, seated on President Reagan's table. During the dinner he felt like he was there just for show.

The most memorable president of the lot for me, or rather the portrayal, was President Johnson. The scene with Johnson sitting on the toilet with some advisers and Cecil standing just outside the open door - Cecil handing the president prune juice. 

Cecil himself seemed to appreciate Johnson and Kennedy the most. He is shown wearing a tie that used to be Kennedy's and a tie clip given to him by LBJ when invited back to the White House to meet with Barack Obama.

So yeah, it's overloaded and sentimental. But this is an interesting slice of history.

7/10

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

The second installment in the Hunger Games trilogy marks the beginning of the revolution, long overdue in Panem. The victors Katniss and Peeta are paraded around the districts but rather than appease the public and keep them quite, the mere presence of Katniss - unwilling token of the uprising - inspires people to become defiant. It starts with three raised fingers in district 11, as a thank you from the locals for Katniss' treatment of Rue in the previous hunger games.

To stop any unauthorized behavior the new game runner, Plutarch Heavensbee, talks President Snow into a new kind of hunger game, to get rid of Katniss in a way that would not shed any more doubts onto the government. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the hunger games the tributes will be drafted from the previous victors - two per district, one male one female.

Once in the arena, Katniss and Peeta form an alliance with Finnick and the elderly Mae, arranged for them by Haymitch. From then on, not much goes the way President Snow intended, but very much the way Plutarch orchestrated things. Rather than quench the revolution by distracting the public with the spectacle going on under a dome, a revolution is started on a smaller scale within the dome. Katniss is apparently the least informed of everyone involved.

In the end, the dome is brought down through lightning, wire and one of Katniss' arrows and she and a handful of other survivors are lifted out of the arena. Katniss awakes in District 13, where she learns that while her mother and sister and Gale are there, as well, Peeta and one of their allies, Johanna, did not make it out but are held by the government.

8/10