Friday Flicks: Critics Have an Appetite for The Hunger Games

Grab some popcorn! Check out the movies you should see (or avoid) this weekend.

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The Hunger Games

Tagline: May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Adapted from the Suzanne Collins bestseller (by Collins herself, as well as director Gary Ross and Billy Ray), and seemingly read by everyone, the resulting Hunger Games movie has somehow managed to garner sensational reviews, ridiculous buzz and made enough pre-release box office to keep Hollywood in the fine lifestyle it’s always been accustomed to.

So what’s been going on here exactly? We (both the audience and actors) have been placed in a dystopian America (Panem), where the story, unlikely as it seems, is all about the post-apocalyptic entertainment industry. Each year, a number of the country’s youngest residents are randomly picked to fight to the death in – yup – The Hunger Games.

At the heart of the picture is Jennifer Lawrence, who impressed everyone who saw her in the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. She plays Katniss Everdeen, which may sound similar to a Bond girl’s moniker, but she’s got the ruthless abilities of 007. (Props to director Ross, who introduces her to us by having her hunt down a cute little deer.) And this coal miner’s daughter gets schooled in the dark arts as Woody Harrelson (a not exactly reliable mentor) and Stanley Tucci (TV compere from hell) watch on.

And those critics watching on couldn’t be happier to give raves. “The Hunger Games is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood action blockbuster that is smart, taut and knotty,” is how the Guardian began its review. “Hunger Games has such a strong narrative structure, built-in forward movement and compelling central character that it can’t go far wrong,” said the Hollywood Reporter. “As thrilling and smart as it is terrifying. There have been a number of big-gun literary series brought to screen over the past decade. This slays them all,” concludes Empire. If this kind of quality is kept up through the trilogy, we could be looking back upon a seriously impressive addition to the canon of blockbuster cinema.

TIME REVIEW: The Hunger Games: The Odds are Not in Your Favor

The Deep Blue Sea

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The auteur Terence Davies, that expert chronicler of post-war England, is about as far removed from The Hunger Games as you can get. But that’s certainly not a bad thing. The Deep Blue Sea marks his first return to drama since The House of Mirth in 2000.

Davies directs fellow Brit Rachel Weisz (read about her recent appearance in TIME here) as Hester Collyer, whose overpowering love threatens not just her well-being but is alienating the men in her life. She’s married to a high-powered judge (Simon Russell Beale), but meeting Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), a troubled former Royal Air Force pilot, throws her life into a spin.

Adapted from Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea has generated pretty positive notices in its native land (and also closed last year’s London Film Festival). The Daily Telegraph plays up the movie’s history: “Every speech and pause is measured, every gesture neat, every line delivered to the back row of the stalls.” Sight and Sound goes with “Davies vividly catches the mood of Rattigan’s tattered post-war England, of painfully observed proprieties on one hand, untameable desire on the other.” And the Guardian concludes that “The Deep Blue Sea is a melancholy film without a doubt, but with great sweetness and delicacy.”

MORE: Too Perfect? Rachel Weisz’s L’Oréal Ad Banned in Britain for Being ‘Misleading’

The Trouble With Bliss

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Tagline: Find your bliss. Then follow it.

If ever there was a title that screamed “first world problem,” it’s The Trouble With Bliss. And when you discover that the main character actually has that surname, your natural inclination is to roll your eyes and state that not even Woody Allen would try and pull off that trick.

But instead of Allen, we get director Michael Knowles (One Night, Room 314, Vampire’s Kiss), and Morris Bliss is played by Michael C. Hall. He’s your classic 35-year-old New Yorker (maybe Woody could relate) seemingly stuck at every turn. He wants to travel but has no money. He needs a job but has no prospects. And he still shares an apartment with his widowed father (Peter Fonda), who treats Bliss Jr. with a mixture of disdain and exasperation. But soon enough, Bliss finds himself figuring out how to deal with the advances of a young daughter (Brie Larson) of a former classmate. She’s half his age and freaks the living daylights out of Bliss by announcing, “by the way, my mom is just thrilled that you’re taking me to prom.” He’s also dealing with his equally forward neighbor (Lucy Liu).

The reviews are what we’d call hit and bliss. On the positive side, the Village Voice says that “the film manages to ingratiate thanks to a script that pleasantly ping-pongs from one digressive dialogue to another and a persuasive performance by Hall, whose natural charisma peeks through Morris’s dour facade just enough to make him appealing.” Time Out New York isn’t as charmed but agrees to an extent, noting that “Hall’s puppy-dog charisma holds up under the strain, but it isn’t nearly enough to keep this messy midlife-crisis dramedy afloat.”

LIST: TIME’s Top 10 Films of 2011

NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: It’s a guarantee that our pick begins with the word “The.” And this week, it’s followed by “Hunger Games.”

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