Jennifer Lawrence is a titan in the third Hunger Games movie. Dressed in an androgynous jumpsuit, she stalks the corridors of the secluded thirteenth district looking like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Like Weaver, Lawrence intuitively conveys that special mix of strength and humanity. Her Katniss is a worthy figure to pin a franchise on.

After a dizzying rescue from the last games she awoke in district thirteen - the headquarters of the underground resistance. The Capital is now crumbling amidst a violent uprising. Emboldened by the winged symbol of the Mockingjay, which has come to represent her powerful public revolt in the games, people are prepared to die for a chance at freedom. The president of D13 (Julianne Moore) wants…

While the splitting of the final novel in the Harry Potter film series was more than justified by the adaptations that followed, it also gave these major Hollywood studios another idea of how to milk any franchise for all its worth, thus resulting in few unnecessary expansions of final chapters of many other franchises into two films & The Hunger Games series is the latest to join this particular league.

While I wasn't completely won over by the first two films in this franchise & watched them with half-hearted interest, the films weren't as terrible as I expected. Both instalments did make up for some nice lightweight entertainment & fabulously exhibited the screen power of Jennifer Lawrence but the only reason why The…

Man, I really miss Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was great seeing him in this but it literally pains me knowing he won't be in anything new again. Rest in peace.

Anyway, funny that my friend suggests we see the latest Hunger Games film two days after I rewatch Battle Royale. What's even funnier is I had no intention of seeing this in the theater - I enjoy this series but I can definitely wait for their home releases - but I somehow ended up enjoying Mockingjay - Part 1 the most. Even despite it's much-complained-about lack of action and basically just being a set-up for the big finale of the series, there was something about this one I truly loved…

“I have a message for President Snow: If we burn, you burn with us!”

When Francis Lawrence took over director duty for the second film in the Hunger Games franchise we got a much more serious YA adaptation from Collins’s novel. The film had a great sense of pacing and storytelling while introducing us to the Capitol and the other districts and not just focusing on the actual Hunger Games. I thought it was a much better film than the first, but I still loved them both. They ended up in my list of the best films for the year in which they were released, so my expectations for this third film were huge considering Lawrence was back in the…