The best way to watch the second Hunger Games movie is to do what the folks hosting the press screening made me do: Before the film, spend a full hour of your life watching a live-stream of Yahoo!-branded professional starfuckers splooge their adoration at the outfits and bodies of the celebrities involved in the film, who were attending the real premiere in LA. The exuberant Hollywood hoopla surrounding this franchise—who’s tweeting what about star Jennifer Lawrence’s legs; “How do you pick out a dress for an event like this?!?!”—is a cunning preamble to the film itself, because it is exactly the kind of mind-numbing garbage the film is about to satirize. If you haven’t read the books or seen the first film, a recap: In a dystopian future, the uber-wealthy Capitol—the seat of both government and culture—forces the children from the outlying districts of a desperately barren North America to battle to the death for the entertainment of Capitol residents, people wealthy enough to gorge themselves and watch reality TV. (The metaphor is not intended to be subtle.) This sequel is set in a time of riotous civil unrest in the districts, where the government is trying to quash a full-scale revolution. Jennifer Lawrence, as the game-winning protagonist Katniss, is expected to parade around the country in entertaining outfits so nobody notices that the districts’ masses look like subjects in a Dorthea Lange photo. As her mentor (Woody Harrelson) warns her, she is “a distraction so people forget what the real problems are.” So to watch actual Jennifer Lawrence, dolled up in an enormous, completely transparent gown, walk down a red carpet—to catch her blink, take a quick breath, look human for a second, and then pop on a big flashbulb-friendly smile… do I need to go on? The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, like the book it draws on, may be heavy-handed and a bit uneven. But its own obnoxious PR machine is a perfect foil to its message, making the questions the film raises about consent, distraction, and revolution feel freshly relevant and complex. (ANNA MINARD)