I don’t doubt that some of them might do that. However, I have been a bartender and server for a number of years, at up-and-downscale joints, and I never just chose unless they specifically ask me to surprise them. Whenever I decide to make their decisions for them, Murphy’s Law perks up its ears and more often than not there is some kind of problem with the choice I made.
ETA: Anyway, server tangent, sorry. Back to the OP’s topic: it just drives me freaking nuts that almost all characters in movies seemingly have no beer preferences. I refuse to believe that Frasier Crane, for example, would drink just any old beer, or liquor, or whatever.
When two people have a conversation while riding motorcycles or in a light plane – no shouting, just having a regular conversation.
It used to be that people who got shot on TV somehow died without having any bulletholes in them or spilling any blood. Okay, I can accept it was a censorship issue and live with it.
But I was once watching an episode of Wiseguy where the bad guy had captured one of the good guys. And he told another good guy, who’s undercover as one of the bad guy’s henchmen, to kill the captive. So he drags the captured guy over to a wall about fifty feet away, in full sight of the bad guy, and shoots him with a sub-machine gun. The captive falls over “dead” and the bad guy is impressed by the undercover guy’s ruthlessness.
Of course, it was all a trick. The undercover guy had loaded his gun with blanks and the captured guy just dropped down and pretended to be shot.
Now like I said, I could accept that there were censorship issues and the networks couldn’t show a bloody body. We, the viewers, were supposed to just pretend the body was covered in blood and looked real. But this instance violated the agreement - it was based on a dead body actually looking like an intact body.
I’ll never forget watching “Gandhi” for the first time, being totally immersed in the story, feeling like I was really watching history — and then here comes Candace Bergen, this great blond Valkyrie striding among the poor downtrodden Indians.
It was like somebody threw a bucket of water on me and yelled, “This is just a movie!!”
Worst casting decision ever. I’m sure she’s a very nice person and a very good actress, but you just can’t look at her and not think, “Hollywood,” no matter where the movie was actually shot.
The bogus computer searches where nobody uses search engines. they just type something in somewhere and the page immediately goes to just the right website.
It really bugs me when they go into dance clubs and such and don’t have to shout.
As someone who has seen the inside of a few mental wards (make whatever jokes you like), ‘Girl, Interrupted’ was downright unwatchable for me. Except for the burn-victim character, all the major patient roles are Hollywood hotties: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Brittany Murphy. In a real mental ward, everyone is either too fat (from medication side effects and little to no exercise opportunity/inclination) or too skinny (medication side effects and too depressed to eat), and there are no more amazing cheekbones and perfect teeth than you’ll find in the general population. Less, if anything. (Beautiful people tend to be happier and more successful, according to studies like this onehttp://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html.
ETA: actually, I should say studies like the ones mentioned in this article. Towards the bottom is the info to which I am referring; the so-called ‘halo-effect’.
Not positive they were flying, but it looked to me like they were getting out of an airport when the strange old guy put the old lady up against the wall and asked who she was working for.
I believe the former is because in the Clerks universe, there is only ONE brand of cigarettes, ‘Nails’.
And the latter is because it’s a reserved exchange guaranteed to not actually be anyone’s real number. But I agree whenever I hear it I think “MOVIE!” and it takes me out of the scene as well 
Another execption: After the big showdown in the village, the police in Hot Fuzz all had do “a considerable amount of paperwork.”
But as Jophiel said, it wasn’t a commercial flight. If they pay some private plane guy a bajillion dollars, and they probably have more fake ID tricks than Jason Bourne, then it’s not that hard to suspend disbelief.
I didn’t even have a problem with the hit squad shooting up Bruce Willis’s entire house and not hearing a peep from the neighbors. I just figured that the neighbors were soiling themselves while on the phone with 911 and Bruce left before the local cops got out there. The shooty stuff took all of what? Three minutes? Cops probably didn’t get out there for another 5 minutes or so. It looked pretty rural/suburan.
What drives me nuts is when a couple of characters are talking and one describes something technical or reaches a conclusion aloud for the audience’s edification… when clearly the characters would never have such an exchange otherwise. It happens all the time in forensic, crime, and legal dramas. While it’s true that I (as an audience member without said expertise) often benefit from the info, the unnatural-ness of it all totally distracts me.
Kind of like this…
Me to husband: I see you bought yourself some new underwear.
Husband: Yeah. The waistbands in my old ones were getting streched out.
Me: Oh… I see. With wear an washing the elastic eroded and lost its tension.
Husband: Riiiiiiiight. Without tension in the waistband, the fit gets looser. The only thing for it is…
Together: …buying new underwear.
UGH!
Dan Brown is calling. He wants to use this scene in his next book.
The whole bit in Die Hard 2 where the controllers at the airport are trying to find some way to communicate with the planes that are waiting to land. They even send the chief engineer out to some new comm link at a part of the airport that’s being renovated, as if that’s the only option. He is ambushed by the bad guys, who knew that’s where he’d have to go.
Movies make lots of mistakes about planes and flying, and I can usually let it go, but that one is too central to the plot to just shrug it off. Every plane has a transmitter on it. There must be dozens parked on the ground right there. Go in, turn on the master switch, tune the correct frequency, and you’re on the air. The movie even gets it right at the end, when all the pilots in the circling planes are talking to each other.
Ever see The Adventures of Ford Fairlane?
“Ford Fairlane: Hey, look. Write down my number: 555-6321 Got it?
Twin Club Girl: Yeah. Wait a minute. 555 is not a real number. They only use that in the movies.
Ford Fairlane: No shit, honey. What do you think this is? Real life?”
Oh, so you were the guy who saw the movie.
Why are you mocking my marriage?
I have a rough time whenever they use improper military uniforms. Like a young person cast as a current Iraq/Afghanistan soldier wearing Vietnam ribbons, or marine (actor) wearing army ribbons/unit patches/etc.
This may be from a bad projectionist, not the film. There’s supposed to be a mask on the projector, that hides things that aren’t supposed to show up on the screen. Certainly there are mistakes in movies where booms and shadows are in the scene, but from what I’ve read on SDMB if it’s a high quality movie and it happens it is usually the projectionist’s fault.
I’m not sure why the prints contain stuff that isn’t supposed to be seen, but they do.