From the Theater: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The Hunger Games The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is one of the best movies I've seen in the past 5 years, it is also the best film out of the five film series. Director Francis Lawrence and his team are working in lockstep here with , the book's author Suzanne Collins , delivering an exploration of war and its consequences that never talks down to its intended audience. This is a film that teens and parents should be paying attention to, because it not only delivers a compelling story, but it also illustrates how book to film adaptations can be as thematically dense as one another. A good adaption is neither straightforward nor destructive, it is a conversation. That stance ls on full display here, amplified even further by Francis Lawrence's experience with the franchise having directed three of the four previous installments. It should go without saying here that the performances from the young stars are uniformly...