The Hunger Games.

Spotify? Thin Line by Jurassic 5. I’ll never call myself a hip hop aficionado, but these guys are great. I’ll sound cheesy now (fuck you) but Jurassic 5 really do have the sound of the streets.
LoveFilm? Sitting on my desk right now are The Zookeeper, which is going to be painfully bad. And Laputo – Castle In the Sky which, I’m predicting, will be painfully good. Pain, basically.
Amazon? So I finally did that thing I should have done YEARS ago, and read The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. A measly 200 pages, but fun. Once I get done with this months’ Empire Magazine, it’s Jane Austen’s Emma. I’m hoping it’s less Little Women, and more Jane Eyre. Interesting, not wank, I mean.

*****

This is a short list of things people could say to put me off a movie: “This is the next Twilight!”. Okay, that’s the end of the list. I don’t have anything against that Twilight lot, but I’m not sold on it. So chances are I wouldn’t be sold on anything claiming it’s the next one. They said it about The Hunger Games though. Said it a lot.

For those of you haven’t read the novels, here’s a quick breakdown of the movie first: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in the slums of New York many years in the future, where the poor are very poor and the rich are very rich. Every year, the annual Hunger Games puts 24 slum-dwelling kids into a televised contest, watched by millions Big Brother-style. The rules are simple: kill everyone else, and you win. This year, Katniss is taking part, and winning is a matter of life and death. Literally.

So I’ll come clean: I really loved this movie. This was a very well-made, well-shot film with a great central concept and some great performances. To be honest, mentioning this as something similar to Twilight is an insult – Hunger Games excels over Twilight on every level.

What really impressed me about the movie was the grittiness of it all. Sure, it’s marketed mostly towards teenagers, but this isn’t exactly a date movie. This is literally young children beating and murdering other young children. Mercilessly, a lot of the time, and all for nothing. Rather than shots of gorgeous people in gorgeous places, we follow a battle-worn Katniss with shaky cams. We’re in a warzone, and director Gary Ross never lets us forget that.

But that’s the second half of the movie. The first half is impressive because of how allegorical it is. Comparisons can easily be made to the fantastic Battle Royale, but the two films differ in one aspect. While Battle Royale is an allegory on society too, it doesn’t touch on it nearly as enough as The Hunger Games does. It’s a fearlessly scathing attack on reality TV and the Big Brother world, and it works. Nothing could justify why these poor kids have to kill each other, especially when, beyond staying alive, the winner gains nothing. They just do it because people want to watch them do it. Ratings. Familiar?

But everything else aside, this is a good film simply because of Jennifer Lawrence. Fucking hell, she’s fantastic. She hasn’t been around very long, but has already succeeded in tough, meaty roles. This is one of them. Katniss Everdeen is not a girl’s girl: she is a fighter, a survivor, devoid of expressing herself, but still so vulnerable and fragile. Lawrence embodies all of that. You could argue that her performance here is a watered-down version of what she did in the brilliant Winter’s Bone. The film would live and die depending on her, and she rises to the occasion.

The rest of the cast are alright, but nobody else really jumps out. Elizabeth Banks and Woody Harrelson are good, but wasted. Donald Sutherland is good in a short, but menacing role. Everyone else does enough to not be hated, but they’re all just background players to Lawrence. It’s her movie all the way.

I’ve never read the books (I probably will end up reading them at some point) but you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy the movie. It succeeds all on its own. A sleeper success.

*****

I’m lying in bed right now, writing this. Once I finish writing I’ll, well, remain lying in bed. No better way to spend a Saturday night, I’d say. Oh, yeah, Plan B’s singing Stay Too Long right now. I like him, he ain’t bad. Not a great actor, but I’ve seen much worse.

Okay, shameless plug time. I do that thing they call Twitter - @writeofcentre – and I do that thing they call Facebook. I do other things too, but you’ll have to ask me about them. I might tell you.

Shall I go now? I’ll go now. Gone.