The Hunger Games - Catching Fire - Reviewed

Whoo, more reviews! As always, spoilers!

Catching Fire

As with many of the movies I watch, I haven't read the books. So I apologize if I come off as ignorant to certain things.

Let me immediately get out of the way that I vastly preferred the first movie to this one. This one builds waaaaay more plot than the first one, sure. But at the same time, that cliff-hanger at the end is quite bad if you know that you'll get to see the rest 2 years or so from now. It's great for the fans of the book, but not if people haven't read it.

So, again, it's great for the plot, but as a "stand-alone" movie it's a bad thing. Admittingly, this'll stop being a problem once the third one is out and you can just watch it right after, but for now, it gets points deducted for it.

The acting, like last time, was great. All the roles were very believable, and it's a nice spin to make actors act in a movie, because when they do it right (which they did) it makes it even more believable and relatable.

The things I didn't like about the movie were not that big of a deal. I didn't like how the movie skipped ahead one year and nothing really had happened in that one year. Katniss and Gale were still so-so about each other and their relationship seemed to develop most (or rather, mostly crash and burn, really) during the small time frame of the movie. Other than that, they both got a decent house but that's about it.


Don't get me wrong, I get why the skipped ahead a year, otherwise it would've been a dull period of waiting for the games to start. But I think they could've done with a time-skip or two of several months as well, if only to explain the changes happening in their lives, the rioting and the districts. I mean, isn't it weird that their victory-tour happens almost an entire year later?

Anyway, I digress. The other dislike I have is how mediocre the actual games were this time around. I mean, I get it, they were planning a rebellion and all that, but half of the candidates weren't in on it. And that aside, if you have access to all the weapons/supplies, and have a ranged marksman on your side. Why would you EVER leave the island in the middle?

Oh, and finally, poison should not be curable by water. Period. Either don't make it poison or make a sponsor send antidotes. Anything other than water would've been fine.

The music was good and appropriate. Not much else to say about it, really.

This probably happened in the book, so it would make sense to translate it over to the movie, but I liked how they changed the arena and the training-station in general. At the very least, it shows they're not lazy and just looking to save on budget.

All in all, it's a movie more focussed on plot. It falls short in some aspects, but overal it's worth watching if you liked the first movie. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. The score might've been higher had it not been for the cliff-hanger at the end.

Ender's Game - Reviewed

It's been a while since I've done one of these. So let's give it another go, shall we? Just like the last two, spoilers are probably ahead!

Ender's Game

Let me start by saying I'm just an average movie go-er and I haven't read the book at all, so keep that in mind if I complain or mention something that has been explained in the books.

Ender's Game was a great movie. I feel a bit conflicted about the child actors, because while they were good, they weren't great. So if I were to compare them to adults, they were alright, but I think the movie would have been better if we had adults; because let's face it, there weren't many child-specific moments in the scene that could not have been done by adults.

I only have a couple of gripes with the movie, really. To get a small one out of the way first, I hated how right before the final showdown in the tournament of the games, one of the recruits on Ender's team twisted his ankle and had to be conviniently replaced (which turned out to be permanent, apparently) by Petra. You don't need to use your ankle to walk in zero-G, damn it.

As for the second one, I disliked how time was irrelevant in the movie. At one point you hear Bonzo mention "At this rate, I'll make it to command school in 6 months." but I got the impression that Ender was advancing in mere weeks, not years or months as it's made out to be.

And finally, just the overal shoe-horned relationship with his sister/family, it felt out of place. It also felt out of place how the enemy tried to communicate with him through his dreams and the video game. Plus it begs the question: How the hell did no one find that egg while building the place. IT'S RIGHT OUTSIDE.

As for the good things, I enjoyed how Ender was portrayed. That with being smart/whatnot usually means you're an outcast when it comes to children, because they're often run by emotion and can't see the bigger picture of how meaningless that is when you're being trained for war.

The soundtrack fit the movie well, no score really stands out to me in memory, but that's how I usually am with movies.

And I have to give very big props to the ending; I remember thinking very clearly with 40 minutes or so left "How are they going to finish this simulation training, fight the war, win, and do a victory scene? Please don't tell me they'll just squeeze the war in a 5-10 minute battle and be done with it." So I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out the simulations were the actual war rather than, you know, simulations.

I don't know if that's how it was in the book, but if not, that's a great way to deal with a rushed ending in a movie, if you ask me.

All in all, I would rate the movie a 8 out of 10. It would've bumped a bit higher hadn't it been for those couple of pet peeves and adult actors. But definitely a great movie, would recommend watching it greatly.