Tattoos: Fill & Download for Free

★★★★4/5 stars for this. Definitely well-deserved in my opinion. Hunger Games 1 was 5/5 and Hunger Games 2 was 3/5. First, let's just get it out of the way -- the books are short, go read them. They're awesome. The reviews online seem to paint Hunger Games 3.1 (part 1) in a rather unfashionable light because they complain about it being drawn out and lots of dead moments -- weird. I disagree with the reviews. It kept my attention and the music was pretty spot-on as for influencing my emotion.SPOILERS BELOW (actual review)So Natalie Dormer (plays Cressida, a bad-ass filmmaker) is in this movie. That's freaking awesome.Bad ass tattooed head as well.I really liked her part. Sadly, they also had to remind me that Cinna (played by Lenny Kravitz) died in Catching FireSo there's that. I liked him a lot as well. Sucks. At least Natalie Dormer replaced the gaping hole that was him. Two other castings I need to point out briefly.Philip Seymour Hoffman (Plutarch Heavensbee) died and he was definitely a fantastic plot driver throughout the movies here - and feels like it's a little underplayed compared to the books. But at least the movie was dedicated in his memory, which was definitely sweet.Julianne Moore (President Alma Coin). Who? Nancy Donovan on 30 Rock, The Big Leobowski, Boogie Nights, etc. Pleasantly surprised to see her here. So seriously stoked. Decent casting at least always gets me excited. On to the actual movie.The Actual Movie, with more actual spoilersSo it starts out kinda slow. A brief remembrance of what just happened. We're slightly in the dark. But so is Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) so clearly, the movie again revolves around her. Of course, she's inside the whole District 13 underground bunker. I think I've seen this exact bunker before in a bunch of other movies (pretty sure you see it in Escape Plan (2013) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) ). She's still trying to understand what's going on. A lot has happened.We're not in a blown-out war yet as far as anyone can tell, but there's a lot more unrest and lashing out, both by the rebels (District 13 + scattered peoples) and The Capitol. This is effectively the Civil War. The districts aren't united though, and that's a major point in the movie.President Coin is basically your powerful female figure who is brash and quite concise. She knows what to say, she knows how to stay focused, and she's the forward-thinker of the movie. She and Plutarch need a Mockingjay, basically the face of the rebels. The problem is that the districts aren't united, and part of this is still fear of The Capitol. Katniss gave them hope in the prior Hunger Games and she's clearly Plutarch's favorite. Coin is begrudingly convinced by him, and there we have it. She gets donned in absolutely bad-ass gear.Effie (Elizabeth Banks) is feeling like a prisoner of war, being ultimately rescued from The Capitol. Plutarch convinces her to support Katniss as she needs someone she can trust, in completely new surroundings.HER SUIT IS RIDICULOUS. And it was designed by Cinna. Almost like a last will and testament kind of thing. He saw it coming and he knew how important she would be later. He certainly wasn't wrong.Now, here comes the first test for Katniss which is to make a propo, short for propaganda, to motivate the other districts to join her (District 13, the rebels) against The Capitol. And so it begins. But of course, the first time feels rehearsed, and blah blah blah, Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) comes in and convinces everyone that he knows all about her and that everyone only loves her when she goes off the scripts.So... she goes to District 8. With some backup Gale (Liam Hemsworth) for example and the bad-ass film crew. The point is to start rallying the districts and this is presumably the closest. She wants to see the people. So... she visits a make-shift hospital, people are sad, hurt, she's sad and hurt, people unite with her.Moments later after she leaves, the hospital gets bombed. People dead.She gets emotional, makes another propo there to rally the districts. Also shows a video of her completely destroying two bombers using an arrow with incendiary packed into it. Totally seems plausiable. Again, you should start getting the whole point here. Katniss is being used to rally everyone to the rebels' cause. Is it noble? Who knows? At least she's not being tortured like Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). Spoilers. More on that later.Meanwhile in The Capitol, other propaganda is being spread using Peeta as a dangling bait. President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is obviously taking no chances here. I'm pretty sure if there was an evil genius who knew how to manipulate everyone and still remain 3 steps ahead - it's this dude. He's probably bad-ass at chess too. Meanwhile, you've got this longing feeling that something bad is going to happen, just lurking around every corner. There's a lot of really confusing things that aren't answered right away.Does Katniss love Peeta you wonder. President Snow seems to think so, and I seem to think so, so does most everyone... except Katniss and Peeta. So what's a couple separated by a civil war to do? They communicate somewhat covertly through the propos, except wait -- it turns out The Capitol is blocking all incoming rebel signals. Damn them. Peeta has no idea that District 12 (where our star-crossed lovers are from) is completely obliterated. Gale tells a heartwarming (heart wrenching?) story about what happened. The peacekeepers all up and left, he started pulling people into the forest to get them to the fence. 915 survived out of 10,000. Gale should have done more. Katniss wasn't there because she was firing an arrow at the time in Catching Fire. So all this time, President Snow is being sneaky and only showing people what he wants them to see -- effectively being the media for The Capitol. The Capitol doesn't know the extent to which Snow has bombed districts or tortured people.Let's talk about Peeta for a second here. So Snow is using him as bait. Caesar (Stanley Tucci) continuously interviews him at multiple times throughout the movie. He kinda looks almost exactly like the above picture the first time we see him. He's being used as a weapon against the rebels - and being painted as a traitor. What gets really confusing is why he wants a ceasefire and he seems to be afraid of what would happen if Katniss keeps inciting the rebels. We guess he's being tortured. But he looks mostly fine for the first and second interviews. However, by the 3rd and 4th or w/e (sorry, I lost count), he's clearly distressed. Something's happening to him, but we don't know. All of a sudden, he warns District 13 about an impending attack, giving them 8 extra minutes to hunker down in the bunker, before being cut off transmission for this.Katniss wants President Coin to save him. She already sent a rescue mission to get the three Tribute Victors out of The Capitol. This seems to go off without a hitch - The Capitol didn't have any power (thanks to a retaliation by a district); but they gain power back during the middle of the rescue mission. As they fly back out, all anti-air guns are on them, but President Snow doesn't attack. Weird right? During this whole thing, Katniss is talking to President Snow to buy the rescue mission more time thinking he doesn't know about it. But of course, the twist is that he DOES know about it. Damn son, I told you all he was three steps ahead. How he knows, isn't quite clear yet. Maybe we won't see that happening. So now you have to wonder why he let the rebels take the victors back (including rescuing Peeta). My guess is poison. Or killing the rebels from the inside. Again, the problem is The Capitol has no idea where the rebels are, and they continuously try to force them to reveal their hand so they get an update picture. Yet they're left ironically in the dark.Katniss and Peeta are reunited.. or are they? Almost immediately, Peeta attacks Katniss choking her nearly to death before he gets bludgeoned in the head by Boggs (Mahershala Ali). Katniss wakes up, but can't speak, and Boggs is there to calm her down. Again, we've lost some time because we're now confused by what's happened. President Coin is making the announcement to the districts that they've executed a covert rescue mission which has succeeded and using it as propo to try and get more rebel support behind their backs.Meanwhile, we learn that Peeta had been continually tortured since he's been in The Capitol using tracker jacker venom -- the same that stung Katniss in the first movie. Remember that scene?Anyway, tracker venom causes severe hallucinations to the point that The Capitol, President Snow, who loves his venom, has been reprogramming Peeta's mind by stripping his memories and relocating all his fear towards Katniss. Now Katniss has a problem - the man she loves is so scared to death of her that he will kill her to stay alive, even if he really has nothing to fear, because this is so ingrained into his brain. So Peeta becomes President Snow's weapon. And the movie ends with Katniss walking into an observation gallery overlooking Peeta being strapped to a gurney in a white room with lights on him, violently trying to escape the restraints.So what was good about this movie?Unlike the previous two movies which took a lot of place in The Capitol. This one focused more on Katniss's home, something we haven't seen much of to be honest. We haven't seen what it's really like outside of The Capitol, so this was a welcome change.Katniss is also closer with her family including Prim (Willow Shields) and Gale. That's kind of nice. She's obviously a lot more comfortable and in more familiar surroundings, even though she's never been into District 13 until now. Her home, District 12, is completely abolished. She doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere until being Mockingjay gives her some purpose.We get to really see war from outside The Capitol. I mentioned before that President Snow had a media blackout of outside communications trying to convince everyone that things are more peaceful than they really are. So we see all the struggles, all of the emotion that goes on with war, instead of just a lot of the inter-character fighting inside an arena. It is slightly symbiotic that once Katniss broke out of the arena in Catching Fire, she simply made the world her arena. The war hasn't really reached The Capitol yet and is mostly taking place on the district territories.There's a significant amount of strategizing here. And I like it. A lot of puzzles and a lot of things that just make you think about what the other guy is going to do. Instead of seeing it happen, you're with the characters trying to figure out the best move and what the other guy is trying to do moves ahead of you. It really is a giant game of chess.There's a lot less action here, but this was to be expected. What we're seeing in this movie is the build-up. The climax isn't until near the end. And man is the build-up fantastic. The acting is aces so I didn't have a problem staying hooked into Hunger Games 3.1. There's a lot more of a 1984 dystopian-feel, as propaganda is being made with the purpose of convincing people which side is better and trying to keep some sense of civility within their ranks, even as a war is looming in the near future. There's a feeling of bleakness and impending doom (no thanks to the music) and it just sticks with you throughout the whole movie. This becomes a lot more politically-focused and you spend the whole time trying to figure out why something happened and what will happen next.I came expecting some action, I stayed for the emotion and acting.