Movie Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Here's the thing about sequels: they are usually at their best when they are planned and more importantly, when they come at the center of a trilogy.

"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," the second installment in "The Hunger Games" series, and the umpteenth edition of Hollywood's colon obsession, shines as an outstanding blockbuster long after the end of the regular blockbuster season.

Movie Review: The Hunger Games

Before I start this review, let's get something out of the way: I have not read "The Hunger Games" or any of the other books in the series. I cannot compare the film adaptation to the original book. Therefore, I will be reviewing "The Hunger Games" as a movie, not an adaptation.

I will admit that I ignored "The Hunger Games" for most of its popularity because I associated it with the tweenage wasteland of "Twilight." "The Hunger Games" does not deserve to be put into that category because the story is much more mature, the characters are more complex, and if the movie is any indication, Suzanne Collins is a much better writer than Stephanie Meyer is. The difference is that Collins seems to write about teenagers from the perspective of an adult, and Meyer with the prose of a fifth grader.