Mel Gibson’s The Patriot got a lot wrong, but at least they showed the effect of non-explosive cannonballs during a Revolutionary War battle.
In The Substitute, though reviews of it are seldom stellar, Tom Berenger was constantly sweating bullets, getting into awkward defense stances and gasping for breath during fight scenes, and he made some great goofy “ow, Christ” faces when he got hit by things like sand or a pelota. The movie had its share of goofs, but I thought it was a nice touch. They also used real students for extras.
In Back to the Future, when Marty accidentally interfered with his parents’ first meeting, he and his siblings began disappearing from Marty’s family photo, but in order from oldest to youngest. I thought that was a nice touch of realism. 
The 1980s remake of Breathless with Richard Gere. in the opening scene of the film, Gere’s character is depicted hotwiring a car. The actions shown are indeed accurate. (FTR - I have a mechanic brother who showed me how it’s done. I’ve never ripped off a car, but do know how to do it, at least to a stick-shift.)
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when they are opening the Ark, the guy wearing the High Priests outfit is reciting a prayer. The prayer he is reciting is Brich Sh’mei, a section of the Zohar that is recited when the Ark is opened in the synagogue before the Torah Reading. That part is right. The writers asked someone “what prayer do Jews say when the Ark is opened” and worked from there.
What’s wrong about it is that the Ark in the synagogue has nothing to do with the Ark of the Covenant (which is what is portrayed in the movie). Considering that the Zohar was not composed until R. Shimon Bar Yochai (circa 150 CE) or Moses DeLeon (circa 1300), it most certainly follows that this prayer was not recited when the Ark of the Covenant was opened (which it never was anyway).
Zev Steinhardt
:dubious:
Is that a whoosh? Why would that be realistic? Wouldn’t the youngest children disappear first?
Not a whoosh, just me being silly. The whole ipremise of people disappearing from a photo (feet and hands first?!?) was so preposterous, I thought it’d be funny to nitpick the details of that premise’s execution. And now it isn’t. 
Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy, a film whose praises I never hesitate to sing, has quite a few touches that must’ve required a tremendous amount of effort, but sail a mile over the heads of most viewers.
For example, most of the actors cast as performers in the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company bear a striking resemblance to the actual people they were portraying. That kind of devotion to detail is expected as far as historical personages whose faces are well known – Jim Broadbent as W.S. Gilbert or Alan Corduner as Sir Arthur Sullivan , for example. But how many people these days (other than the devoted Savoyard, of course) have the slightest idea what George Grossmith, Rutland Barrington, Richard Temple, Leonord Braham, or Jessie Bond looked like? The director could have cast any competant actor/singer in these roles, yet he cast each part with an excellent performer who was also a dead ringer for the historical person.
I usually feel like throwing something at the screen during most military movies. The movies that hire Dale Dye as a consultant seem to get all the little things right.
As the guy reciting the prayers was a Frenchman, and thus probably was born and raised Catholic, it would seem logical to assume that he just picked what seemed most appropriate.
I agree. It was clearly made by a devotee.
At the beginning of About Schmidt, when Jack Nicholson was at his retirement dinner in Omaha, the room, the food, the people - everything was so Nebraskan. I had never seen the essence of eastern Nebraska so absolutley, eerily correct on screen.
His RV culture was dead-on, too. Heck, everything about that movie was humor drawn straight from reality. I like the fact that the movie doesn’t turn Schmidt into an anti-Semetic, Archie Bunker-esque bigot the way the book does. Schmidt is a decent, if nebbish and almost completely useless, guy who just wants to keep his daughter from marrying some waterbed salesman/pyramid marketing loser (who’s also a decent enough person…just a loser).
Schmidt’s pile of research, which he hands on to his successor (who then has it tossed out) is spot-on, too, except that it usually just gets shoved in a back room somewhere rather than trashed. That movie is just spot-on. Unfortunately, I think I’m Schmidt. Gotta go now, need to write a letter to my adopted African child about how pathetic my life is…
Stranger
Actually, within the confines of how time travel and alternate timelines are explained in BttF, it’s working right. Doc Brown says that Marty caused a ripple that moves forward in time, starting with 1955 and going towards 1985, so within that explaination, it makes sense that the oldest would disapear first.
What I never understood is why, if George and Lorraine never had any kids, anybody took the picture in the first place.
I spent a couple of days in the pit at a shooting competition. It was impossible to tell which report went with which bullet flying over one’s head; but the louder sound occurred as the bullet passed, due to its shock wave. It was about as loud as standing next to a rifle being fired.
In the second movie, there were two newspaper headlines which dramatized the changes wrought by Biff when he went back in time and got rich off betting on sports. One was “Author George McFly Murdered” and the other, “Crackpot Inventor Committed” (or something along those lines).
When the real history is again put in place, the newspapers change to “Author McFly Wins Award” and “Inventor Lauded” (or something). It seems to me that your point is a good one, interface2x … instead of having a picture where kids merely disappear, they should have changed to a picture Lorraine and her 10,000 cats, or George and his collection of pocket protectors, or something. 
I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the movie but my friend and I used to watch it all the time around maybe 1982.
It was some silly comedy where the characters (one with a lisp) were trying to solve a mystery in a little town running from location to location with clues.
The pace was picking up and their next stop was “the library!”.
Next shot was of them in front of the library with the doors locked. The guy with the lisp says “Aw thit, the library ith clothed on thundayth.”
I just assumed that the picture would’ve disappeared with Marty.
Well, in “Bikini Cavewoman” … no …
In “Star Slammer” they … uh, no …
But in “The Naked Detective” they … wait a minute … they … no.
I’m sure SOME of the movies I watch get SOMETHING right, sometimes!
Wait a minute … no.