Francis Lawrence

Interesting twists and turns in this story of a ballerina, Dominika, who breaks her leg badly enough to be unable to continue as a ballerina who then is offered a job by her uncle, a job that will force her to work as basically a honey trap spy. The skills she has gained have made her a lethal weapon but it's not a life she really wants.

It's an interesting watch, there are times it felt a bit stretched out and there were some scenes in the deleted scenes extras that would have made the story show more make more sense to me.

Sometimes it was a bit tough to watch. show less

This film is the second in a wildly popular series based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian Hunger Games trilogy. After Katniss and Peeta tour Panem to celebrate their victory in the Hunger Games, it is announced that the tributes for the anniversary edition of the original Games will be chosen from the surviving victors. Katniss is forced back into the arena, and Peeta joins her. They must find a way to survive in an even more hostile environment while trying to make their act of show more a romance believable for President Snow and teaming up with other victors whom they are not sure they can trust.

This adaptation takes several liberties from the source material, but the changes are largely successful. There is quite a bit of setup for Mockingjay, the final book and films, which helps audience members who may not have read it yet. More setup also means more scenes for President Snow to show just how vast his influence is. Rebellion is more palpable than in the text. The film also manages to take some of the focus away from Katniss (who is still a kick-butt Girl on Fire) and spread it to some of the more compelling characters. Effie Trinket and Johana Mason especially get more attention than they do in the book, at least partly because they are played so well by Elizabeth Banks and Jena Malone, respectively. Some parts of the book could have been treated better (Katniss’s fake pregnancy is forgotten almost as soon as Peeta invents it), but overall the screenwriters kept with the spirit and message of the series and managed to bring some background parts to the foreground.

There is a potential concern about the violence in this film. The first installation in the series was somewhat graphic, but the sequel seems to ramp it up a lot (maybe because this film features adults or near-adults killing adults instead of kids killing kids?). It has a PG-13 rating and it is probably on-par with a lot of other films and what people might see on the news, but it almost seems darker than the book. Some parents may be nervous about sending their young tweens into the theater to watch a man get shot in the head on camera for a brief second, or to see the many gruesome fatalities of tributes. This intensification of the gore may have been used to further emphasize Collins’s societal critiques and to make the film that much more powerful. show less

An unwilling symbol of rebellion joins the propaganda team against a dystopian government.

I can understand how so many critics are indifferent to this movie. It's half a movie - and the set-up half, at that - half a story, half a character arc. If you don't know where the story is going, it probably seems like a rambling mess. But if you're a fan, it's pretty damn great. Much stronger than the first two movies. (If you're not a fan, wait until part 2 comes out, because this does not work on show more its own. If they keep up this level of quality, the two parts together will make an amazing movie, and it's a shame the year wait between them will ruin it for a lot of people.)

Concept: B
Story: D
Characters: B
Dialog: B
Pacing: A
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: A
Music: A

Enjoyment: A

GPA: 3.3/4 show less

The face of a rebellion tries to have agency.

They handle the ending reasonably well - faithful to the book in tone and spirit, not just action - so I'm satisfied with it as a conclusion to the series. It's not a fun movie, though. The dramatic stuff is (by its nature) depressing. The action is irrelevant to the story (she starts the movie broken - there's no dramatic reason for her to spend anther movie watching people die). Phillip Seymour Hoffman is conspicuously absent from most of the show more movie. And above all, everything goes on for too long; it's painfully obvious that Mockingjay should have been one movie.

Concept: B
Story: C
Characters: B
Dialog: C
Pacing: C
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: A
Music: B

Enjoyment: B

GPA: 2.9/4 show less