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Created Nov 25, 2013 10:27PM PST • Edited Mar 09, 2015 07:46AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   The silver screen has never seen a contemporary ideal the likes of Katniss Everdeen, male or female. Jennifer Lawrence’s rise to superstardom is wrapped up in her personification of this revolutionary hero, this secular Joan of Arc for our post-modern times. J.Law channels J.Arc to become K.Eve you might say.

   Fortunately you don’t have to grok The Hunger Games’ deeper meanings or know the book to dig the movie. It helps to have seen the first movie, though that’s not necessary given how well told this one is. Familiar or not, the vivid characters are well drawn – Katniss and her little sister Prim; the two guys who love her – Peeta the pretty and Gale the handsome; Hamish the hammered; Effie the fashionable; and so on.

   New behind-the-camera talent probably deserves much of the credit for Catching Fire being distinctly better than even its great origin story. Director Francis Lawrence masters a range of scale from massive to intimate, while classically employing closeups that are bigger than life, especially on a huge IMAX screen.

   Suzanne Collins’ literary creation has deepened in brilliance, imagining a very unAmerican economic and political setting and yet populating it with very American-like people. It’s as if Vladimir Putin ran a country full of Scots-Irish Americans. Now that’s some serious literary alchemy.

   Like the Harry Potter series before it, the end of the HG trilogy is being split into two concluding movies. Given the ascending greatness of The Hunger Games and now Catching Fire, perfection may await in those.

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   Saw it at the Tech’s Hackworth IMAX Dome, which really is the ultimate IMAX theater. I sat in the center of row 7, right next to the projector. This put me a good 20’ above row 1, which suggests how steeply raked the theater is. From this vantage point, much of the movie was literally over my head, though it was easy enough to lean back and watch it. Spectacular.

   One other note about my Saturday night showing: There were some Katniss-like girls scrambling around the steeply raked theater, including one who caught her foot when vaulting over a row of seats, yet managed to right herself before disaster took hold. Very Katniss of you girl.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Jennifer Lawrence has taken Katniss Everdeen to a whole new level in the pantheon of populist heroes: of the people yet apart, soft yet hard, feminine yet Joan of Arc tough. JLaw is such a remarkable superstar, being both glamorous and normal. As an example of the latter, her closeups reveal many moles, the sort most stars would hide or eliminate. Not our heroine, who implicitly declares her humanity by leaving them visible. More significantly, she demonstrates yet again her rare ability to plumb the depths of emotion while remaining a relatable person, as she did so well in The Burning Plain and elsewhere.

   Many of her costars from the first movie not only return, their characters get more development, allowing them to shine right along.

   • Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson as the two guys who love her. Each gets the chance to be a hero, both to her and their people, giving the buff Hemsworth and fresh faced Hutcherson chances to shine.
   • Woody Harrelson as a retired champion who spends most of his time with a bottle. Harrelson deepens our understanding of this superficially amoral character.
   • Paula Malcomson as Katniss’ Mother and Willow Shields as her sister Primrose Everdeen. Both are vivid in little more than cameo roles.
   • Donald Sutherland as an evil dictator: The great Sutherland oozes evil and drips gravitas.
   • Elizabeth Banks as a hyper stylized handler.
   • Lenny Kravitz as an extraordinary clothing designer. Rockstar Kravitz deserves more roles.
   • Stanley Tucci as a ridiculously over-the-top TV host, complete with capped teeth that would better fit in a horse mouth. Toby Jones returns as his obsequious sidekick.

   New in this episode are:

   • Philip Seymour Hoffman as a scheming government official.
   • Patrick St. Esprit as a spittle spewing military commander.
   • Jeffrey Wright as a Hunger Games contestant who uses his brains, an ideal role for Wright.
   • Amanda Plummer as an oddball contestant, another perfect casting choice.
   • Lynn Cohen as an elderly contestant, an interesting and affecting choice.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    The film is a masterclass in pop political posturing, with reality TV employed for propaganda effects that Goebbels would envy.

    Director Francis Lawrence is returning for the two concluding Mockingjay films, albeit screenwriters Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt are not. Pity, their Catching Fire script is elegantly spare.

    That said, the story is occasionally loopy and therefore hard to follow. Let’s see if the new writer can do better with Suzanne Collins’ superb raw material.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Francis Lawrence should have No Relation superglued to the end of his name.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Katniss Everdeen and Effie Trinket and Plutarch Heavensbee are nearly normal names. Masterful.

    The script is politically perceptive while being completely ridiculous, a futuristic story that envisions a Louis XIV character crossed with Vladimir Putin coming to Appalachia. Madness is what it is, brilliant madness.

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Old fashioned big movie music, complete with huge swells and stupendous strings.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Mockingjay blue dress

    The Katniss Everdeen hand knit cowl should become a sensation.

    The crew of thousands includes 75 stunt players, 500 grips, 50 drivers and easily 1,000 illustrators. That many grips gives a sense of how complex and vast are the set pieces. The film was shot in Georgia and Hawaii, each of which gives an earthy sense of place.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.4

    The violence is affecting but largely bloodless, keeping the whole thing PG-13.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.3

    Covered in my Reality Commentary from the origin Hunger Games, just more so here, being a sequel and all.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.7

24. Physical Supernatural 3.1