The Hunger Games

That post-film analysis involved an analogy with the Dawson-Joey-Pacey love triangle is cause for concern. Indeed if I had to see another conflicted "teenager" steal a kiss I may have been left with no choice but to throw my eye balls at the giant screen in a hopeless act of defiance against "the system". Instead, I left the cinema feeling that most strangest of things: satisfaction.

Perhaps the "difficult" films I watched in the last week set me up nicely for a good ol' adventure. Nicholas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives was, as the title suggests, unmerciful. I had to look away from something that is supposed to be looked at more often than I'd like. Shane Carruth - dubbed by Peter Bradshaw as "the materialist Terrence Malick" - also released an unmerciful film this year - Upstream Color - though it is unmerciful for different reasons. In short, I would struggle to muster up the will to watch either film again. Not so with Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Not since Princesas Rojas have I been as caught up in a story. It is surely no coincidence that both films are centred on a female character embedded in a revolution. Throw in a lazy, smart-mouthed, barely-sober Woody Harrelson - or, just Woody Harrelson - a dastardly Donald Sutherland and the considerable talents of Stanley Tucci and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who can even make a Mission Impossible film look good) and you have a recipe for success. And in front of this backdrop of veterans there are the youngsters, led by the effortlessly charming Jennifer Lawrence.

The film is nearly two and a half hours long, and still I was sorry to see it end. It left me satisfied, but also eager for the final part...which of course has been split up into two films in order to increase profits do justice to the novel. I'm not sure what Harry Potter fans think, but I thought the first part of the final film was dreadfully boring and therefore unnecessary. But then it is the only Harry Potter film that I've seen, so I'm not exactly a qualified judge on the matter. Oh, and I haven't read the books either [watches credibility vanish away...].

Anyway, this is a good film. It's stellar ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic don't lie. I was pleasantly surprised by the first film. I was engrossed by the second. I am now perfectly primed for disappointment, and so are you.