Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!

This week's film is the recently released The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth among many others.

I've reviewed the two previous films, Catching Fire and Mockingjay Part 1, here on the blog, and thinking back to all of them (even the original), I think Mockingjay Part 2 is the best of the bunch. It is a culmination of all of the plot threads of the franchise, and is an emotional, intense film. Everyone's performances are great, the action is awesome, the stakes are high and as someone who didn't read the books, I didn't know what was going to happen next.

I've warmed to this series more and more because I think the films have gotten better as the series went on as they focused more on the revolution than the Hunger Games since those were at best just different unusual action set pieces without much personal connection to what was going on. This movie is deeply personal, heavily narrative driven, and is just a thoughtful story.

I knew going in that some people did not like the ending from the book, but watching the movies and seeing what they emphasized, I felt as though the ending was good and made sense for the story. I really enjoyed how much the movies went into the politics and mechanics of a revolution versus it being just an action movie without any depth. How a revolution uses propaganda, treats the enemy, and transitions power are all interesting concepts to watch unfold on screen here and are just intriguing to me in general.

I encourage folks to check this entire franchise out (you can stream the first three installments). It is a great young adult franchise that seems to me to be far superior to the Divergent or the Maze Runner movies, which seem to be poor copies of the Hunger Games franchise (while they aren't exactly alike, they both seem to be going for the same exact market of dystopic light sci-fi action stories for young adults).

Thanks for stopping by!