Catching Fire

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie:

            A group of friends invited me out to the cinema with them.

The Review

            The first movie was a retread of Battle Royale.  This film, initially, promised to go in a different and more interesting direction.  But then, one-third of the way through, it suddenly just started repeating the plot from the first movie.

            If The Hunger Games was a retread of Battle Royale, then Catching Fire is a retread of The Hunger Games.  And by this point the principle of diminishing returns is really beginning to set in.

            On the plus side, it’s got a very talented cast and very slick production values, which make it watchable.

Other Thing I Would Talk About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words

* All the plot holes

Ratings

3 out of 10 Stars (No points for originality, but at least it’s mildly entertaining.)

Link of the Day

Noam Chomsky at Clark University - Part 1 of 2 - September 28, 1994

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: Movie Review

The Hunger Games

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie:

            My friends invited me out to the cinema to see Catching Fire, so I watched this movie the night before as homework.

The Review

            I know Hollywood likes to retread everything these days, but there are certain shockers that can only be played once. Battle Royale really shocked me, but I had limited patience for a remake of Battle Royale.

            Also, Battle Royale was able to set-up its premise within the first 10 minutes.  This movie took over an hour just for the set-up.  My patience was loooong gone.

            Both movies are psychological experiments conducted through fiction—given this scenario, how would people actually react?  I’m not sure I found the emotional reactions in The Hunger Games entirely realistic.

Rating:

2 out of 10 stars  (If this had been my first exposure to the premise, I probably would have rated it higher.)

Things I Would Talk About if I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words

* Expanding on the above points—which scenes in particular struck me as unrealistic emotions.

* More compare and contrast with Battle Royale.

*As to the above point—specifically how Battle Royale attempts to comment on human nature by showing ordinary teenagers driven to do horrible things because of the desperateness of the situation, whereas The Hunger Games uses the same premises to divide its characters into likeable protagonists and unlikeable antagonists and simply produces another mindless action film.

* Apologizing for not having read the books despite a number of you having recommended the books to me, and an acknowledgement that I’m sure the books probably are much better than the movie.

Links

* Roger Ebert’s Review of the film.  (A different opinion than mine, but I still like his analysis.)

* Everything Wrong with The Hunger Games in 3 minutes

Link of the Day

Noam Chomsky - Necessary Illusions 1989 Full

The Hunger Games: Movie Review