The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

• I have a funny story behind this movie. Now that I think of it, it isn’t actually funny, but you know. I had never seen any of The Hunger Games until this one came out, and the only reason I wanted to watch it was solely because it came out. Does that make sense? I saw the first trailer for it several months ago, and I was like, oh look, another Hunger Games, I guess I need to watch them all. Anyways, none of what I just said matters. The movie itself was very good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s definitely not my favorite, but still really good. I still like ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Catching Fire’ better than this one. But this still gets at least an A for my Enjoyment Score. The story was really intriguing, and a nice change of pace from seeing the original Hunger Games storyline. I did really miss seeing JHutch, but I dealt with it. I really, really want to read the book series now after seeing all these. Hopefully the movie is accurate to the source material. I absolutely loved seeing the character development and backstory of President Snow. Even though he’s a bad dude, you really learn to appreciate his character. It was also really nice to see the early version of the Hunger Games. It was ALSO really nice to see Viola Davis and Jason Schwartzman. They absolutely killed it. Peter Dinklage, too. In fact, literally everybody did, with Blyth and Zegler being the highlights. Although, my favorite character is easily Wovey, and I was so ticked off when she died. I’m taking off lots of points for her death. Anyways, the soundtrack was really good, the costumes and sets were fantastic, and it was just a good movie. Despite my ranting, I don’t think it’s the best movie ever made, and there’s a couple aspects that bring the Movie Score down from an A (the runtime was long, and this could’ve been two movies). But it’s still up there as one of my favorites of the series, and of the year. I’d definitely recommend it to Hunger Games fans, old or new. This film is officially Berry Approved, so go see it now!