I know there are 1,000,000,001 thread like this one… but this is unique I think, so I started a new one.
American Beauty is one of my favorate movies, but there are two things in the movie that piss me off. A person may roll their eyes at me for these complaints, but here it goes.
Lester buys a brand new firebird car, when his wife Carolyn finds out she gets pissed. IN THE SAME SCENE, almost WANTING to be noticed by viewers, she warns Lester that he will spill beer on the couch. “IT’S JUST A COUCH!” he says. “This is so-in-so, so-in-so-hundred something-er-other… it’s not just a couch.” Maybe the couch and the homes furniture is to her what Lester’s car is to him sort of. They are both possessions, and I doubt Lester would be very happy if one were to spill beer in it,
I got pissed when Angela told Jane that she *69 her on the telephone This is no big deal, but I think it would have been better if she said she saw Jane on her caller ID. This is a classic film, and I just don’t know if *69 will be around for ever, and not everyone now even knows about it. If she said caller ID, it would have been self explanatory to everyone… just in case *69 didn’t last.
“Welcome to America’s weirdest Home Videos” Ricky Fitts says while videotaping Lester work out. YEAH!? He says that right after his flaming Jane on their lawn.
So these aren’t necessarily mistakes I’m talking about… if they were I would bring up the fact that Carolyn mistakenly met Lester at his new kissing another man, as if she wouldn’t have been told about the new job from Lester at some point in there arguing, he DOES say “I already have a job.” It seems like he would have told her or already did… just looking for the little things that you would have changed. It’s all politics.
I know there are a lot of movie threads out, but I’m interested in what you guys and gals come up with.
I get seriously peeved when people waste food in movies. Two instances that really have me yell:
In Pee Wee’s Big Adventure he sits down to this wonderful breakfast that was made by a funny looking invention. Eggs, bacon, toast. Mmmm. So he pours Mr. T cereal over it, takes two bites, and then leaves it!
In Home Alone Kevin sits down to eat macaroni and cheese that he has prepared. But then the clock strikes 9:00, the time in which the guys are going to show up. So he just leaves the dinner. Unlike Pee Wee, he doesn’t even take a bite!
BTW,
Lester got the burger job the day he quit the other. There must have been another day that went by when she came home and he got the new car, THEN the next day when she was caught kissing this guy at the burger place, all that time went by without him telling her?
But…it bugs me that in the whole *69 scene, Jane is in the shower…and then the SECOND the water is turned off, she comes out the bathroom door wrapped in a towel, drying off her hair. Chick works fast.
Last night, DeathLlama and I saw Lord of the Rings. We were bugged by Gandalf’s frequent “And this is so and so, a horrible beast…swords are no good…run!” Couldn’t he have said RUN first, and the others would figure out it ain’t a good idea to stick around?
Given that their relationship was terrible, I can well believe that Lester did not mention that he was slinging burgers. Sheesh people, we’re not talking about a loving, communicative couple here.
Something I always do is check my watch whenever there is some announcement in a movie as to how much time there will be until a specific event takes place (“This bomb is going to blow up in 30 seconds!” “One minute to showtime!”). The real time never matches up. In some movies this is excusable (the scene cuts to different locations, so we may be seeing action consecutively that is taking place simultaneously), in others it is not. A classic and much overused example of this would be the action movie where the countdown clock is shown, then we see the hero fighting with the villain for some time, and the countdown clock is shown again with only a second having passed. I hate this. I don’t know why the filmmakers can’t simply figure out how much time they need for the big fight scene or whatever and then simply adjust the countdown to allow for that amount of time.
At the end of Aliens, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is hurriedly trying to escape the planet before the nuclear self-destruct destroys the entire spaceport/docking area/whatever. You hear the voice on the intercom say something to the effect of “You have 14 minutes to reach minimum safe distance.” I can’t remember off-hand what the exact time is, but I have seen this movie enough that a one time I actually timed to see if it matched. It did–including the updates (“You now have 5 minutes…”)–and she did in fact escape with time to spare, although not much.
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[li] kids that don’t listen - someone tells the kid to be quiet, and stay put, while someone or something is stalking them, trying to kill them. Damn kid wanders off or makes some kinda noise. ARRRRGH. If I was a little kid and something was trying to kill me, you damn well bet I’d stay put and quiet. The smartest kid in any movie I recall was “Danny” in Kubrick’s “The Shining.”[/li][li]Person is trying to get away from something trying to kill them, and the car won’t start! Even though it started just fine every other time in the same movie.[/li][li]synchronized lightning and thunder. This doesn’t happen in real life!!! There is always a slight or few second delay between the two. arrrgh![/li][li]Not shooting the bad guy in the head the first time. Bad guy gets pumped full of lead, everyone thinks he or it is dead, and he/it gets back up and THEN they shoot it between the eyes. arrrgh![/li][/ul]
Really bad horseriding in movies. I can’t stand to see riders banging on horse’s back, and simultaneously kicking and yanking the reins. Poor horsies. Also, movies with supposedly “good” riders where they exhibit absurdly bad form. (A good example is the cover of the video “International Velvet.”)
This one is realy splitting hairs but in the Lord of the Rings “Flight to the Ford” scene, Arwen has a tight hold on the curb rein of Asfodel’s double bridle. A curb rein uses leverage and offers powerful “stopping power.” So basically, she’s hollering “faster! faster!” while saying WHOA with her hands. Um, just a hint, but he might go faster if you let up a little, Arwen.
The same exact sound effects used over and over. I hear the same car horn in something at least once a week. How hard is it to go out and record some traffic?
It bugs me when somebody wets their pants in a movie. For one thing it’s not necessary, and also it never comes out at the right place. If it’s a guy, it comes out at the bottom of the pants leg and puddles on the floor without getting the pants wet. Or if it’s a girl, it comes streaming down right between her legs without getting her legs wet.
In the spirit of the OP (as in, actual choices in specific scenese made by the filmmakers, as opposed to boneheaded slipups or recurring cinematic cliches), there is one line in my favorite movie, Fight Club, that just makes my skin crawl every time I watch it.
After the ‘human sacrifice’ in the back of the convenience store, when Raymond K. Hessel is making his getaway, Tyler yells after him “Run, Forrest, run!” Rrrrrrggggh. This crass, dated humor doesn’t fit his character, and it just bugs the hell out of me every damn time. Man. I’m bugged now, just thinking about it.
I don’t like it when an actor/actress has to say a phone number as part their lines, and, 99% of the time it’s a “555” number. Yeah, we all know those 555 numbers are basically used as “dummy” phone numbers for t.v./films, but geez – I mean, it’s like instant deflating of the trying-to-be-real aspect of the film. boom. crash. gone. Oh, yeah, I’m watching a movie. :rolleyes: I mean, can’t the writers just maneuver their way around “having” to say a particular phone number?
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*Originally posted by MagicalSilverKey * [ul]
[li]Person is trying to get away from something trying to kill them, and the car won’t start! Even though it started just fine every other time in the same movie.[/ul][/li][/quote]
How about the reverse of this problem: They don’t want to start the car, but it starts just fine? Happened in The Sound of Music, vhen ze Baron vas tryink to qvietly schlip avay from ze Nazis.
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**[ul]
[li]Not shooting the bad guy in the head the first time. Bad guy gets pumped full of lead, everyone thinks he or it is dead, and he/it gets back up and THEN they shoot it between the eyes. arrrgh![/ul] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Like in Shaft in Africa: Richard Roundtree (as Shaft) is attacked by a big African thug wielding a stick. Shoots him in the chest. The thug whacks him, captures him, and takes him to Bad Guy HQ. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, of course. Shaft tells him, “Next time in the head, mo’ fo’.”
And it didn’t bother you that a movie that so railed against the mainstream starred Brad Pitt? That a movie that had so railed against materialism and consumerism had so much much product placement?
:rolleyes:
FC was the most hypocritical piece of cult-wannabe junk I’ve ever seen.
How about overused product placements? Evian bottled water comes to mind. I lost count a long time ago how many movies I have seen that prominently feature this product.
Hello Again mentioned the bad horse riding–in a similar vein, it bugs the crap out of me that EVERY TIME a horse is on camera, they find it necessary to add a special-effect whinny. If the horse is struggling to get to its feet, knocked over in battle, running in a canyon…whatever it is, they just HAVE to whinny in case ANYone watching didn’t realize they were horses.
In all my years around horses, I have heard them whinny about as many times as would fill ONE episode of Wildlife Rescue.
