The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Essential on continuity, and the one that divides people. Splitting the last book in two was a commercial decision taken across the industry at the time, and this is the half with no arena, no Games and no conclusion, which is exactly the complaint most reviewers made.

The defence is that it is the only film in the series actually about its own subject. The whole thing is a production office. Katniss is no longer a competitor, she is talent: a symbol being filmed by a rebellion that needs footage, directed by people arguing about whether she performs better scripted or improvised, while the Capitol runs its own broadcasts with a prisoner it is visibly breaking on camera. The scene where a propaganda crew takes her to a bombed hospital and the resulting clip is cut together in an editing suite is the most interesting thing the series does.

What it lacks is incident. Two hours pass in a concrete bunker with a rescue at the end, the pace is deliberate to the point of inert in the middle stretch, and the film stops rather than ends. Anyone watching these back to back will barely notice; anyone watching one a week will feel every minute of the padding.

The Hanging Tree sequence is the high point and the single best use of music in the franchise. Julianne Moore's Coin is introduced carefully here and the care matters later. Watch it, but watch it immediately before Part 2 if you can.