Movie Review - The Hunger Games

Most of the women in the extended family (including both daughters and Southern Mother) have read the book so there wasn't much doubt that we'd see The Hunger Games at a midnight premier. It's quite good, with balanced direction by Gary Ross and a skilled and enthusiastic cast that make a fine foundation for the inevitable franchise. The setting is a dystopian future in which the working-class losers of a civil war must provide annual "tribute" in the form of young men and women for a high-tech bread-and-circuses fight to the death. The subtext is downright subversive and the constant images of huddled masses laboring under the jackboot of a central totalitarian government aided by a compliciant media will not please those up for re-election this year. For that reason alone Southern Man hopes it is immensely popular.