items tagged with Billy Ray

As you’re probably aware, director Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games is the movie version of the first in a trio of wildly popular young-adult novels by author Suzanne Collins. And perhaps the highest compliment I can pay the film, among the many compliments it deserves, is that unlike with the Harry Potter and Twilight screen adaptations, at no point are viewers such as myself punished for being too blasé or lazy to have read the book.

17 AGAIN

If there were any lingering doubts as to whether the body-switching comedy 17 Again was tailored specifically for heartthrob Zac Efron, you should know that in the movie's very first scene, Efron's character, Mike O'Donnell, not only appears as the star player of a high school basketball team, but quickly breaks into a spontaneous, energetic dance routine with the cheerleaders. That's right, folks! It's High School Musical: Big-ger and Better!

In order of bearability ...

JERSEY GIRL

Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with Kevin Smith momentarily eschewing his predilection for what he terms “dick and fart jokes” in favor of more honest, heartwarming fare, but good God, don’t we Smith fans deserve better than Jersey Girl? In previous films, Smith presented us with a woman who screws a dead man, the Almighty in the personage of Alanis Morissette, and a lesbian who switches teams for Ben Affleck, yet I found his latest work the least believable in his oeuvre, a movie so brazenly phony and audience-pandering that I wanted to hide my face.