The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE Jennifer Lawrence steps back into the ring, but will the odds remain in her favour?

Jennifer Lawrence steps back into the ring, but will the odds remain in her favour?

The Hunger Games franchise is blessed with Jennifer Lawrence as its heroically defiant protagonist Katniss Everdeen. No matter how much darker, more drastic and deranged developments get in the world of these Games, Lawrence is a touching, authentic and watchable focus for our sympathetic attention.

DVD: Silver Linings Playbook

Jennifer Lawrence puts in an Oscar-winning performance in a pleasing romcom with a difference

David O Russell's multi-Oscar-nominated film is a romcom with a difference, dealing as it does with mental-health issues. Bradley Cooper, more usually found parlaying characters with arrested adolescence, here plays Pat Solitano, a man with a condition for which he hates taking his meds because they make him both physically bloated and mentally foggy

Silver Linings Playbook

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK Jennifer Lawrence bags the leading actress Oscar playing a force of nature in David O Russell's jagged, off-kilter charmer

Jennifer Lawrence is a force of nature in David O Russell's jagged, off-kilter charmer

If Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games had somehow left you in any doubt about the magnetic screen presence of Jennifer Lawrence, prepare to surrender your remaining misgivings. Playing outspoken, emotionally damaged young widow Tiffany, Lawrence is a firecracker, a powder keg, a force of nature. Watching her, you feel simultaneously secure and on edge, as though you’re in safe hands and yet as though anything could happen. 

DVD: The Hunger Games

Contender for teen novel of the decade travels from page to disc intact and feisty

Being such a massive phenomenon has made The Hunger Games an easy target to tilt at but the truth is that, staying close to the Suzanne Collins novel, this film adaptation is a lean, smart science fiction thriller that there’s much to like about. 

X-Men: First Class

Superhero prequel feels like it came back from the future

If there's one thing Hollywood hates more than people bootlegging its latest blockbusters on mobile phones, it's letting a lucrative franchise go to waste. Thus, after the initial three X-Men films and 2009's Wolverine spin-off, you are invited to roll up for the prequel, skippered by Brit director Matthew Vaughn, of Layer Cake and Kick-Ass fame.

DVD: Winter's Bone

Jennifer Lawrence deserves her Oscar nomination for this powerful mythic backwoods thriller

The timely arrival on DVD of Winter’s Bone as it heads for the Oscars ceremony gives a fresh chance to dwell on the film’s unshowy riches. Jennifer Lawrence plays 17-year-old Ree whose father has disappeared, leaving her to care for an invalid mother and a much younger brother and sister. If she can’t find him, a bail bondsman will repossess the family house in the Missouri backwoods.