I’m tired of any movie where someone goes “undercover” as someone from the other gender - I will extend this to include any of the Wayan’s brothers horrific films.
The Triple-Go means urgency!
For like the last 5 or so, I’ve noticed people in movies never just say “Go!” to their friends when they’re running away from danger anymore. They use a Go followed by a Triple-Go. Oh no, the maniac just ripped Tiffany’s face off and he’s coming for us. “Go! GoGoGo!” You will notice that it’s never “Go! Go! Go!” Those are separate words and the urgency imparted by saying it as one word shows just how pressing a sentiment it is. It just irks the shit out of me for some reason.
This is what I came in to post. How cool could Batman Begins have been if they had the actors do the martial arts instead of the camera man?
I hate Science Fiction movies where the society they introduce is such that there’s only one story that could possibly happen in the environment, and that’s the one we see. It just feels like a very narrow and constrained way to tell a story.
Please try to establish a larger universe than the one the story takes place in.
Examples of this disappointing trend include: Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet, The Island, Equilibrium.
How about “The Mad Bus Driver.”
Character walks into street and faces other character. Is instantly run over by a speeding bus so the movie can score a cheap “gotcha.”
Apparently this inattentive bus driver did not slow down, did not swerve, did not hit the brakes, did not honk; nope, just ran them over at full speed. (Mean Girls, Final Destination, hell, even an episode of Lost, several more I’m forgetting).
Or how about “Lines that betray the character but are added solely for the trailer.”
Examples:
Batman Begins. Gordon sees the Batmobile jump over the bridge into Gotham and says “I gotta get me one of those!” Forget that he’d already seen it and he wouldn’t say something so stupid.
X-Men 2. Charles visits Magneto in his cell. Gas comes out. Magneto says “I’m sorry Charles. I had no choice.” Then for no reason he screams “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance!!” When was Charles ever planning on killing Magneto? No point to that line whatsoever. Unless you consider it was in the trailer.
Too numerous to list: “This just keep getting better and better.”
Desaturated color. I have to admit that a washed-out bluish-grey tint was used well in WWII stories like Saving Private Ryan, the opening battle in Gladiator, and the **Band of Brothers ** miniseries, where desaturation makes the theater of war look especially bleak and dirty. OTOH, the sepia-toned desaturation of later Gladiator scenes and the surreal bronze of 300 look more fake and suggest a desperate attempt to suggest nostalgia or sentimentality (probably a holdover from sentimental scenes shot during the “magic hour” before sunset of so many movies, also a cliche).
I’m sure I’m missing most of the examples out there. Didn’t the first Bourne flick also use some desaturation, like when Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin kills Clive Owen’s assassin character?
And then you have the bilious green desaturation of some of the mall interiors from Zach Snyder’s **Dawn of the Dead ** remake. Snyder also directed 300… he really ought to do something daring, like filming something in true color.
I think if the leading actress is nude it should be a law that the leading actor should be nude too. 
Overdone- Parents attending a school play. Parents and kids stare at each other and share a special moment.
About a Boy
Unfaithful
Love, Actually + hundreds more.
I’m tired of trailers featuring little girls slowing reciting nursery rhymes, as if that was creepy. It’s not as bad right now as it was a year or two ago, but it was a self-parody from the start.
Perhaps it’s the tradition of outdoing your neighbors’ bar mitzvas hamfisted by movie makers into a gentile tradition.
Well, The Fly and The Thing easily come to mind, but I think that plays well off the first point. Those remakes worked because they took the original idea and did several things with it: (1) reformulated the idea so the “monster” manifested itself very differently from the original, (2) updated the science and technology to make the film resonate in a more contemporary way, and (3) took advantage of better special effects and more liberal censorship attitudes to increase the horror by being more graphic (in a largely non-gratuitous way).
Now, modern horror remakes (Dawn of the Dead, The Omen, The Hitcher, The Wicker Man) of films from the 70s & 80s don’t do any of those 3 things:
(1) There is largely no reformulation of the principle idea. A few details (or a stupid “twist” at the end) might be inserted, but that’s all surface trappings. Nothing new or innovative is being explored in the approach.
(2) I’d say technology (computers, space exploration, biological research) took a far greater leap from the 50s to the 80s than the 80s to now, which means that while you might find ubiquitous “upgrades” (cel phones, satellite uplinks, etc.), the films are rarely changed very much as a result, so it’s still more of the same old same old.
(3) Jumping from the 50s to the 80s allowed the addition of explicit content (sex, gore, language, etc.), which talented filmmakers (Cronenberg, Carpenter, Cohen) good use to the enhancement of their films. Now, there’s nothing to do but make remakes more explicit, which results in pandering and gratuitousness which may be slightly “new” but hardly original. Plus, the special FX from the 80s were often good enough that updating things with (often mediocre) CG rarely make them more believable, just more cluttered-looking and expensive.
I’m tired of the tacked on twist ending that has almost no organic connection to the rest of the movie. Recent worst example: The Illusionist.
Texas Chainsaw- sure. Hills- not so much (but I will see Hills 2). Amityville- didn’t see. The Omen- no. Wicker Man (especially as the original was a classic)- hell no!
Dawn of the Dead- Hell, yes!
You’re definitely right that both of those are the two that I recently was made aware of and which prompted this thread. But in both cases, I thought to myself “WHAT, a NOTHER movie of this sort?”. I don’t see why I would have conjured up that reaction out of whole cloth.
(For the latter, The Exorcism of Emily Rose may be what I was thinking of as a previous example… perhaps also The Skeleton Key, or at least the impression I got from its trailers.)
I’m sick of desauturated color photography. It was interesting the first few times. Can we get a fresh look here please?
Not to mention that, as a parent of two almost-adults and a teacher for more than 20 years (on and off) I have never seen a school play that looks anything like those shown in the movies. Extensive costumes, stupid story, music, direction, etc.
Now that I think of it, there was a school play in movie To Kill a Mockingbird that involved Scout dressing up like an onion or something and her brother was dressed like a ham. Was that in the book or has this disturbing trend been around that long? (Who made those costumes for them anyway and why wasn’t Atticus there?)
I like to use the two Jason Bourne movies to compare and contrast good and bad action scenes.
Doug Liman’s direction in The Bourne Identity was wonderfully understated and didn’t get in the way of the of the fight and action scenes. Bourne’s fighting style, a model of economy and efficiency, was filmed clearly in long takes and medium shots and was all the more impressive because of it.
On the other hand, The Bourne Supremacy was a nearly unwatchable mess of shakey pans and flash cuts. It was practically impossible to tell where anybody was in relation to anybody else. It kinda puts a damper on your enjoyment of a scene when you can’t tell who’s doing what to whom, not to mention what or where they’re doing it.
The Halloween pageant with the ham costume was in the book.
I’ve read the book…several times. You’d think I’d remember that. So, maybe that one is acceptable. But other school play scenes
not so much. (was Scout’s costume an onion?)
You may be thinking of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, where Calvin told his mother she needed to sew him an onion costume for a school play about nutrition the very next day.
“You’re lucky you’re not Russy White’s mom! He had to be an amino acid!”
Scout was dressed as a ham. I don’t remember an onion costume.