Review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) by Bradysmith — 24 Nov 2013

A thought provoking, visually impressive, and very engaging movie. Now, I'm not some fanboy who's going to say it was the best movie ever, because it's not, but it's still a noticeable improvement on the first film, which was good to begin with. The thing I can't quite get past is the lingering youth novel adaptation feel to the movie which it can't completely shake off, even though you can tell that it badly wants to. It's somewhat hard to explain, but you can still tell that it's aimed at older teens and not adults. That's not to say that the movie is immature. In fact its narrative deals with some very mature issues such as fascism, human worth, and rebellion. It delves more deeply into the themes than the first movie did and shows more brutality at the hands of the tyrannical government regime. Jennifer Lawrence was good in Silver Linings Playbook, and all of her other films for that matter, but she's even better here. She shows.

Extreme emotion more naturally than she has in the past and proves a great anchor for the franchise. The new director, Francis Lawrence, who's not related to Jennifer, directs everything a lot more smoothly than Gary Ross, especially the action. The larger budget also helps. Instead of merely being passable, the visual effects are now up there with the best of them. Overall the movie is very engaging and possesses some moments which are truly emotionally stirring, but it still lacks the rapturous grandeur and pure awe of films like Inception and Avatar, and the screenplay, which is good, lacks the precision of films like Zero Dark Thirty, or No Country for Old Men. But, it's still worth going out to see, and even worth buying once it hits DVD and Blue-Ray. I think it deserves Oscars, but that prospect is wildly unlikely. It might have a slight chance in the technical categories, but according to the current buzz, there's way too much competition this year for that to be probable either. We'll have to wait and see.