The Hunger Games and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Equal parts world building and action.

Since both these movies follow the same format I'm not going to be talking about them separately. On this world the ruling Capitol forces a "mandatory viewing" televised fight to the death from randomly drawn participants taken from previously rebellious districts. One of these is Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who ends up unintentionally stirring the flames of rebellion once more.

I know I'm late to this movie series but I was quite surprised at how effective it was spending nearly half the run time on simply world building, to give the audience the same helpless anger the protagonists (and basically almost all the characters) feel towards the Capitol - even before the killing starts! That said the killing is pretty quick and decent fights are few and far between but that doesn't matter since it's the surviving that counts. Good script, decent acting and nice effects leave both of these as entertaining and enjoyable movies. Recommended!