21. Gary Ross' Terrible Direction (The Hunger Games)
One of the major criticisms of the first movie is that Gary Ross' (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) direction is, well, not good. Granted, he's heavily restricted by the PG-13 rating, but he made the misguided choice to shoot the majority of the combat scenes with shaky cam in order to avoid showing grisly injuries, resulting in terribly shot scenes like the above. The combination of bad camerawork and overly busy editing makes it hard to make sense of what's going on, and it's further proof that an R-rating would've given the film more opportunities to faithfully follow the book's tone. Thankfully, Francis Lawrence boarded the sequels and had a better solution, to artfully conceal the violence with clever shot selections rather than...this.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
