The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Jennifer Lawrence, of course, is the real draw. Female role models come and go, and Lawrence's Katniss is one of the better ones.

A safe, serviceable, carefully crafted action drama in which the subversive seeds planted in the first story take welcome root.

Dismiss it as a popcorn movie if you must, but at least they've bothered to serve it with real butter and truffle salt.

The success of this sequel will demonstrate, beyond doubt, that flesh-and-blood females can dominate the boysy, blockbuster landscape. How apt.

A devastating indictment of pop culture as propaganda - about its power and the limits of its powers - and an upending of the typical teen-girl romance movie.

Catching Fire may be missing the surprises and shocks of the first chapter, but it moves the characters and the world forward in a way that hints at greatness for the two-film finale.

... Francis Lawrence... adds some important new pieces to that group and expands the world in a way that doesn't throw out Ross's film, but that uses it as a way to get to something even better.

Boldly builds on the world first seen in Gary Ross' 2012 film.

As an action movie, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an improvement on the original. But as a social, political and pop culture satire, [it] is by definition a mixed bag.

Catching Fire expands Suzanne Collins' novel beyond the confines of the arena to tackle some seriously brutal truths - plugging gaps and sowing seeds for a two-part finale that will have to work hard to match its grit.

Like Katniss ducking a poison-tip arrow, the keepers of Suzanne Collins's trilogy of fantasy novels have dodged the perils of the sloppy second franchise film.