Game-changing twist for Girl on Fire

LAWRENCE. Stakes are higher in her final showdown with the Capitol’s tyrannical leader.

Jennifer Lawrence is on fire, but the stretch marks are showing in Francis Lawrence’s “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2,” the long and grim runup to the final showdown between Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland).

There are gripping action sequences and cringe-inducing monsters for the beleaguered heroine and her allies to slay—but, the franchise has lost much of its death-defying urgency and grit, with a perfunctory wrapup that feels trite and anticlimactic.

That said, director Francis Lawrence’s political allegory has thematic aces up its sleeve that keep Suzanne Collins’ dystopian young adult saga viewable—not the least of which is Katniss’ memorable scene with her beloved sister’s purring kitty, limned to thespic perfection by J Law’s Oscar-winning chops.

For Katniss, it’s no longer just about saving her sister Prim: She embraces the role of the Mockingjay to give the residents of the 13 districts who rally behind her a fighting chance against a lifetime of oppression!

This time, all bets are off as the 74th Hunger Games champ teams up with Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth), Johanna Mason (Jenna Malone), Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and an odd army of blood-thirsty warriors raring to liberate Panem—and put a stop to Snow’s reign of terror!

In the fourth and final installment of the science-fiction franchise, Katniss faces an unexpected dilemma: a game-changing twist involving ambiguous resistance leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), while everything—and everyone—she holds dear hangs in the balance. We don’t want to spoil the fun for you, so we’ll keep the details to a minimum.

Suffice it to say that the stakes are higher—and we’re not just talking about the difficult choice Katniss has to make between Gale and the brainwashed Peeta, even after his Tracker Jacker-induced attempt to kill the woman he professes to love!

Katniss’ swan song wouldn’t be complete without fleeting parting shots from the unusually sober Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), Plutarch Heavensby (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Hunger Games’ commentator Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) and the lovably loopy Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), who’s back to make sure that Katniss is at her loveliest when she faces new foes in Coin’s “symbolic” Hunger Games—ironically intended to signify the end of tyranny!

Brad dotes on Angelina

Angelina Jolie’s intimate drama, “By the Sea,” operates on an interesting premise: Three years after a string of miscarriages, the marital woes of washed-up writer Roland Bertrand (Brad Pitt) and his emotionally volatile wife, former dancer Vanessa (Jolie), come to a head when the New York couple travels to a rustic seaside town in France and meets the young newlyweds next door, Francois (Melvil Poupaud) and Lea (Melanie Laurent).

As it was in “Mr. And Mrs. Smith” 10 years ago, the film benefits from the photogenic couple’s scorching chemistry. —But it’s ultimately weighed down by a lingering pace devoid of urgency and dramatic peaks.

With its brooding atmosphere and a storytelling style that is mannered and agonizingly slow, it spends too much time telling what is actually a simple story.

As a filmmaker, Jolie tells compelling but often incohesive tales (“In the Land of Blood and Honey,” “Unbroken”), compromised further by yarn-spinning skills that lack punch and focus. Just the same, it’s hard to take your eyes off Brad and Angie peeping through holes, trading dramatic barbs—and making thespic sparks fly!