"As she did in her breakthrough film Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence anchors this futuristic and politicized elaboration of The Most Dangerous Game with impressive gravity and presence, while director Gary Ross gets enough of what matters in the book up on the screen to satisfy its legions of fans worldwide. (...) On the other hand, the costumes and makeup are a riot of imagination designed to evoke a level of topped-out decadence comparable to that of Nero's Rome or Louis XVI's Paris. (...) At the center of things most of the time, Lawrence remains compelling all the way."
by Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter
"The screen Hunger Games radiates a hot, jumpy energy that's irresistible. It has epic spectacle, yearning romance, suspense that won't quit and a shining star in Jennifer Lawrence, who gives us a female warrior worth cheering (...) But even wearing a PG-13 harness to ensure profitability, The Hunger Games gets your pulse racing. It's about something pertinent, the mission to define yourself in a world that's spinning off its moral axis."
by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone
"This Hunger Games is a muscular, honorable, unflinching translation of Collins' vision. It's brutal where it needs to be, particularly when children fight and bleed. (...) And Jennifer Lawrence, previously dressed as a backwoods scout in her galvanizing breakout, Winter's Bone, is, in her gravity, her intensity, and her own unmannered beauty, about as impressive a Hollywood incarnation of Katniss as one could ever imagine."
by Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly
"The first novel in Suzanne Collins' bestselling trilogy is a futuristic fight-to-the-death thriller driven by pure survival instinct, but the creative equivalent of that go-for-broke impulse is absent from director Gary Ross' "The Hunger Games." Proficient, involving, ever faithful to its source and centered around Jennifer Lawrence's impressive star turn, this much-anticipated, nearly 2 1/2-hour event picture should satiate fans, entertain the uninitiated and take an early lead among the year's top-grossing films. Yet in the face of near-certain commercial success, no one seems to have taken the artistic gambles that might have made this respectable adaptation a remarkable one."
by Justin Chang in Variety
OSCAR POTENTIAL CATEGORIES:
- Best Picture
- Best Leading Actress (Jennifer Lawrence)
- Best Adapted Screenplay
- Best Costume Design
- Best Makeup
- Best Original Score
- Best Editing
- Best Sound Mixing
BUT...
the movie released before the Summer season, which hurts its awards chances, in spite of being the year's biggest box-office sensation so far (the World IS watching!)
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