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Channel24 and Women24 team up for a dual review of the new Hunger Games movie


Cape Town - The latest installment of the Hunger Games franchise hits cinemas this weekend. Our two reviewers have their say.



It has been a long build up to the penultimate installment of the Hunger Games franchise with endless teasers and trailers.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 begins exactly where Catching Fire left off. After destroying the arena, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself underground in District 13. Believed to be destroyed, District 13 is a thriving community of rebels who have impressive artillery. It’s pretty bleak in the District as everyone wears a uniform, everyone eats together and a very rigid schedule is kept.

Joining Katniss in the District are the familiar faces of Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) , Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) and Finnick (Sam Claflin).

Katniss is plagued by the guilt of having left Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) behind. She struggles to come to terms with being without him. Peeta is held captive in the Capitol where he is used to promote the Capitol’s agenda.

The District is run by President Coin (Julianne Moore), she’s stern and stiff and has absolutely no personality.

Read the rest of the review here.


WARNING: This review may contain spoilers for the previous movies. If you haven’t watched Catching Fire or The Hunger Games yet, you’ll probably want to avoid this.

Lately, there seems to be this annoying trend where film franchise producers opt to split conclusions of book to movie adaptations into two parts.

From the Harry Potter series, to Twilight, The Hobbit and the forthcoming movies in the Divergent trilogy, the movie business buffs are certainly hell-bent on taking advantage of opportunities to make as much money as possible from what is often, not necessary to expand upon in the first place.

When I first heard that Mockingjay was being split into two, my immediate reaction was one of visceral annoyance.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly love the book, but I’m not blind to its faults.

My biggest problem with the last book in the trilogy has always been the fact that it spends most of the time setting the scene (which I didn’t mind because it was so beautifully done) and too little time giving us a showdown that should have been far more epic than what it ended up being (this was my biggest gripe and the one that had me convinced that a two part movie was unnecessary).

Read the rest of the review here.


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