In Diogenes’ review of Evan Almighty, he pointed out a fairly large number of “Wha?” moments (such as animals who show up to be saved from a flood which is nowhere near global in scope).
What movies have you seen which contain the most such moments?
Any farce. Airplane!, for instance. (Is Evan Almighty a farce? I haven’t seen it.)
I seem to recall a few in the latest “Spider-Man” movie. (Spoilers for the two or three people that haven’t seen it yet.)
Scientists performing the experiment where Flint Marko becomes the Sandman detect an anomaly but assume it’s a bird that will fly away when the experiment begins. You would think that if they can detect something is in there that shouldn’t be, they should be able to tell the difference in size between a bird and a person. If not, shouldn’t someone go check it out instead of just assuming everything will work out OK?
and
Spider-man saves the daughter of the police commissioner from falling out of a building after an out-of-control construction crane tears a hole in the side of the building. He never bothers to stop the malfunctioning crane, though.
and (in all of the Spider-Man movies)
Shortly after Peter Parker begins exhibiting spider-like symptoms, they establish the concept of “spider-sense”, then quickly forget it, as Spider-Man seems to get blindsided numerous times in all three movies.
Every “sci-fi” movie ever made*.
[sup]*Remember, there’s a huge difference between “sci-fi” movies and science fiction.[/sup]
*Airplane *is a parody, not a farce. I don’t think Evan Almighty is a parody. At least not intentionally.
Wha? 
And that huge difference is?
**Film With the Most Non-Sequiturs **
Can’t it be both?
Implicit in the wording. Science fiction is the literature of the possible – what might be the case on some planet or at some future time on this one, or if hypothesis N proves to be valid. That is, it’s fiction founded in one or more of the sciences.
“Sci fi” is movie masturbation using gimmicks riffed from science fiction.
That’s both harsh and incorrect.
“Science fiction” is what I’m pointing to when I say, “That’s science fiction.”
“Sci-fi” is science fiction I don’t like.
Or, more seriously, science fiction is a form of fantasy where the fantastic elements are assumed to have a “scientific” explanation.
Un Chien Andalou has got to be right up there.
For aggresively nonsensical plots, I nominate Last Year at Marienbad, though really any artsy experimental flick could qualify. For a mainstream American movie with huge plot-holes, I’d put Total Recall up there somewhere.
That wouldn’t be surprising, seeing as the books that inspired the movie are full of them. Those Stupids really are stupid.
I always thought Battlefield Earth(the movie) was the leader in this area.
I can’t even begin to list the leaps in logic this movie takes.
I agree.
I pretty much agree with this.
Real science fiction movies are almost never referred to as such, because that would devalue them in the audience’s eyes. The Truman Show, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine, all grapple with science fiction’s standard ideas but science fiction is never used in the marketing.
Sci-fi is spaceships and explosions. And superhero comic-based movies today have started being called sci-fi. And movies on the Sci-Fi Channel are sci-fi. I’m not sure they ever show science fiction movies.
Two different genres.
[hijak to answer a question in an area I actually qualify as an expert in (how often does that happen?)]
I suppose it could, but Airplane doesn’t fit the deffinition of a farce. In school (theater dept at UCLA) we were taught that you could break up humorous plays into two catagories, comedy and farce. The shorthand I was taught in school is:
Farce=normal people in funny situations
Comedy=funny people in normal situations
Airplane’s situation would be, an airplane is crashing. Nothing funny about that, so it isn’t a farce.
[/hijak taaqiaaiaqaaei(hodth?)]
What about funny people in funny situations?
Heh, I added the reference to The Fifty Worst Films of All Times to that entry.