I have read the book twice and just saw the movie. The person I went with had not read the book. Here is my quick review.
The gore: not bad; as bad or worse on early evening tv; there were some 9 to 12 yr old children in the theater when I saw the movie.
If you have not read the movie, I think a few things will be confusing..
If you have read the book, you will like the movie.. it is better than most movies made from books. As usual the book however is better than the movie.. the emotions of the reader are touched much deeper.
The Good: the acting; the story
The Bad: the jiggly camera and camera angles. Rue's role is not given enough play. The final arena scene is not nearly as powerful as the book.
The worst: the CGI on the Muttants at the end.
The Best.. I read the actors have signed contracts for 4 movies. .. one for the final two books in the trilogy and the final movie I am not sure about.

Isn't it interesting that the AMC Theaters in Leesburg and the Bellview Cinema have a contract with LIONSGATE Films, but TV attorneys and theirs just seem to not be able to work out a glitch? How hard are they trying?

They will I hope try harder to get Lionsgate's Dirty Dancing to the Villages' theaters. It is opening the Summer of 2013. http://www.deadline.com/2011/11/lion...for-july-2013/

They should have 24 screens, at least, here in the Villages by then.

Hunger Games
 

I thank all of you for clarifying why Hunger Games won't be playing in our theaters. Will head to Leesburg to see it. The books were beyond description. Totally captured my imagination.
It's sad to think that TV wants to "filter" our entertainment opportunities if they are the distributed by a so-called liberal group. - sigh-

Since I have not read the books or seen the movie, I can only make a general comment. I have the feeling that teen literature has become too dark. Perhaps it has to keep pushing the boundaries to keep selling. The steady darker progression from Harry Potter to Vampires to Hunger Games makes one wonder what the next "big thing" will be. That being said, growing up we had our own share of violent teens to read about and watch, i.e. Animal Farm, Blackboard Jungle, The Wild Bunch, Soylent Green, etc. I plan on downloading Hunger Games to my Kindle, so I may soon be able to make a better informed comment.

I have read the books and enjoyed the movie. Camera work is a little shaky. Jennifer Lawrence who plays the lead character, Katniss, is excellent!

I resisted reading this series for months because I was so put off by the subject matter. My son kept pleading with me to read the books so we could talk about them (what mother can resist a child who WANTS to talk with her?!!) so I finally took them on a 2 wk cruise in the fall and DEVOURED them! I found this review on Amazon, which in my mind, totally sums up the worth of these books in today's society and what we can get out of them. I hope you will enjoy!

"Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3) (Hardcover)
This was a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy. I can only compare it to "Ender's Game" - and that is extremely high praise, indeed.

When I first closed the book last night, I felt shattered, empty, and drained.

And that was the point, I think. I'm glad I waited to review the book because I'm not sure what my review would have been.

For the first two books, I think most of us readers have all been laboring under the assumption that Katniss Everdeen would eventually choose one of the two terrific men in her life: Gale, her childhood companion or Peeta, the one who accompanied her to the Hunger Games twice. She'd pick one of them and live happily ever after with him, surrounded by friends and family. Somehow, along the way, Katniss would get rid of the awful President Snow and stop the evil Hunger Games. How one teenage girl would do all that, we weren't too sure, but we all had faith and hope that she would.

"Mockingjay" relentlessly strips aside those feelings of faith and hope - much as District 13 must have done to Katniss. Katniss realizes that she is just as much a pawn for District 13 as she ever was for the Colony and that evil can exist in places outside of the Colony.

And that's when the reader realizes that this will be a very different journey. And that maybe the first two books were a setup for a very different ride. That, at its heart, this wasn't a story about Katniss making her romantic decisions set against a backdrop of war.

This is a story of war. And what it means to be a volunteer and yet still be a pawn. We have an entirely volunteer military now that is spread entirely too thin for the tasks we ask of it. The burden we place upon it is great. And at the end of the day, when the personal war is over for each of them, each is left alone to pick up the pieces as best he/she can.

For some, like Peeta, it means hanging onto the back of a chair until the voices in his head stop and he's safe to be around again. Each copes in the best way he can. We ask - no, demand - incredible things of our men and women in arms, and then relegate them to the sidelines afterwards because we don't want to be reminded of the things they did in battle. What do you do with people who are trained to kill when they come back home? And what if there's no real home to come back to - if, heaven forbid, the war is fought in your own home? We need our soldiers when we need them, but they make us uncomfortable when the fighting stops.

All of that is bigger than a love story - than Peeta or Gale. And yet, Katniss' war does come to an end. And she does have to pick up the pieces of her life and figure out where to go at the end. So she does make a choice. But compared to the tragedy of everything that comes before it, it doesn't seem "enough". And I think that's the point. That once you've been to hell and lost so much, your life will never be the same. Katniss will never be the same. For a large part of this book, we see Katniss acting in a way that we can only see as being combat-stress or PTSD-related - running and hiding in closets. This isn't our Katniss, this isn't our warrior girl.

But this is what makes it so much more realistic, I think. Some may see this as a failing in plot - that Katniss is suddenly acting out of character. But as someone who has been around very strong soldiers returning home from deployments, this story, more than the other two, made Katniss come alive for me in a much more believable way.

I realize many out there will hate the epilogue and find it trite. At first, I did too. But in retrospect, it really was perfect. Katniss gave her life already - back when she volunteered for Prim in "The Hunger Games". It's just that she actually physically kept living.

The HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers", has a quote that sums this up perfectly. When Captain Spiers says, "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."

But how do you go from that, to living again in society? You really don't. So I'm not sure Katniss ever really did - live again. She just ... kept going. And there's not really much to celebrate in that. Seeing someone keep going, despite being asked - no, demanded - to do unconscionably horrifying things, and then being relegated to the fringes of society, and then to keep going - to pick up the pieces and keep on going, there is something fine and admirable and infinitely sad and pure and noble about that. But the fact is, it should never happen in the first place.

And that was the point, I think."

I saw the Hunger Games today -- enjoyed it a lot. Now I want to read the trilogy. Would I let a pre-teen see the movie -- no -- too much violence. I agree with the too-jiggly camera during some of the action scenes. Jennifer Lawrence (Catniss) is definitely an actress to watch as she was nominated for Best Actress last year in an independent film called Winter's Bone -- maybe she will get a best actress nomination out of Hunger Games also.

The ending of Hunger Games definitely calls for a sequel -- maybe in 2013?

There are going to be 4 Hunger Game movies as far as I know with the next one Catching Fire coming out around Thanksgiving 2013. http://videoeta.com/month_theaters.html?month=all They are going to make the third book in the Hunger Games into two movies.

Taltarzac, thank you for this info. I should have time to read all three books by Thanksgiving 2013.

Where is Nancy Drew when you need her?:smiley:

Saw The Hunger Games today. Seemed like more of a movie for tweens and teens than adults. Can see why many people in the 10 to 20 age group though would want to see it again and again.

Hunger Games
 

So my question is...Why is this top running movie not running here in the Villages?

Good question.

I contacted 'TheatreInfo' about why they are not showing the Hunger Games here in The Villages. Here is what they said:

"Thanks for your inquiry.
Unfortunately, we do not have a Contract with LIONSGATE Films. Our attorneys and theirs just seem to not be able to work out a glitch. Until such time as they can, we will not be showing any Lionsgate Films, which this title is one.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
TheatreInfo"