The Language of Cinema Cliche: This is how you know that ...

Cafe Society
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If there is a cat in a mystery, it will jump out from under the furniture or yowl or both at the most suspenseful moment possible.

And while everybody is staring at Fluffy in relief, the real murderer will emerge from behind the curtains and strike.

The hero will get his man with the first shot. However, the villian’s first shot will always just miss, letting the hero duck and/or take retaliation (see KILL BILL v1, Vernita Green).

Fortunately, one person in a group of foreigners, from the Russian mafia to African mercenery soldiers to Japanese students, can speak broken but perfectly understandable English to the hero.

Women can all run like Marion Jones in stiletto heels.

Joe Random, you forgot about the leafy celery tops that also must stick out of the grocery bag. :smiley:

In older movies, if a male wears his fedora with the brim pushed back on his head, he is a brilliant wisecracker with a heart of gold. A woman in a low cut dress with her hat worn low on her forehead, likewise.

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And sometimes both.

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Corollary: if the character dies without having a chance to deliver parting words, the death is a fake and the character will appear later in the film, on the bad guys’ side.

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Sometimes a convention follows a development rather than foreshadows it. Some examples:

If a scene with incidental music focuses on a baby, a celeste will be heard.

The male lead character will always have a shorter name than the female lead. If possible, both his first and last names should be one syllable.

Unless they are in court, male heroes do not deliver talky solo speeches at climactic moments. Villains and, to some extent, heroines are exempt from this rule.

Decent people forced to use violence do not cream the living shit out of the heavy. They turn their backs and give him a sporting chance to regain his feet and attack again.

If a woman needs to get away from a man, there is a good chance the car won’t start on the first try. A man rarely has this problem.

Professional hitmen fire only one shot into a cornered victim, but it is invariably fatal.

Good guys don’t use silencers. Period. Not even if they’re spies.

A female- or family-oriented crime drama ends with the arrest or death of the heavy, followed by the main characters embracing among emergency vehicles. The vehicle lights flash a soothing blue, and the shot is a slow crane-up-and-back.

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A woman who has sex with a young man who dies a gallant death shortly after will always learn she is pregnant (Titanic being a surprise exception).

The minority character in a drama (be they gay, black, Cherokee or dwarf) will usually have a syrupy story of opression to tell to bring the hero to his senses.

Homeless people are never mentally ill if played by a celebrity.

Rednecks and conservatively religious Christians are one-dimensional bigots.

All ministers, regardless of what denomination they are, wear priestly collars.

Real men prefer women who weight 90 pounds or less and wear size 2 dresses.

All black characters in movies with non-black stars are funny, especially when they make observations about white people being strange. All gay guys are funny, especially when ogling the straight character.

All guys who wear dresses to disguise themselves will be found really hot by a male jerk introduced earlier in the plot.

All high schools are much nicer than the one you went to; it is also not uncommon for the same teacher to have notes on the chalkboard about the Gettysburg Address and the McCarthy hearings and then assign homework about the French and Indian War (or topics equally unlikely to be mentioned in the same class period or same time of year).

Children who are non-verbal due to trauma will always speak just in time to get the hero and heroine together.

All NYC apartments have skylights.

All cool people have posters of foreign movies.

No real hero or heroine comes home to an unmade bed, dirty dishes in the sink, or walks around in underwear and T-shirt after getting home.

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No courtroom is an interior room with artificial lighting- they’re all at least a century old and dark but lit solely by sunlight from the windows.

No lawyers work more than one case at once and thus have plenty of time to do research (much of it by going undercover into dusty rooms).

All gay guys are slim, young, toned and have smashing taste in fashion.

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With the exception of James Bond, of course. But he has a few exceptions associated with him already—like that he always manages to defuse bombs six seconds faster than anyone else—so don’t feel so bad about leaving him out. :smiley:

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When the female lead comes home after work, and the first thing she does is feed the cat - she’s single. And looking to get hitched.

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Also: Anyone who betrays the hero but repents will die heroically furthering the hero’s cause.

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Same cliche sometimes found in monster/sf movies too (viz. Alien.)

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If a character is standing next to a cab talking to someone sitting the the back, he must pound his hand twice on the roof to signal that the conversation is over and the cab can drive off.

Try this in real life sometime. :wink:

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… especially if they had sex only once.

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“That’s a Smith and Wesson, Doctor. And you’ve had your six.”

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In horror movies, the monster will always kill everyone in a quick and painful manner. However, the monster will fail to use this form of death if/when it grabs the hero, giving the hero the oppurtunity to escape.

If the good guys are in a hotel room, and a knock comes at the door, apparently “Room Service”, it will almost always be a hit squad. The only exception is if the good guy expects a hit squad to use this trick, in which case Room Service will have actually been ordered and a poor busboy will be nearly killed/scared out of his mind.

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If the hero is surprisingly shot, after the initial minute or so of him laying there, he’ll open his eyes. Alhough it’s obvious to everyone watching at this point that he’s wearing a bullet proof vest, he must still take the time to sit up, unbutton his shirt to reveal the vest, then thoughtfully rub his fingers over the bullets lodged within.

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You know that the person on the other end of the phone conversation has hung up on the on-screen talker when the on-screen talker LOOKS INTO THE RECEIVER-drives me batshit.

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And when one party has hung up, you immediately hear a dial tone. Even on a cellular phone.

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When you’ve uncovered a conspiracy and finally reveal it to your boss (or other authority figure), if he tells you that you’ve done an excellent job and that he’ll handle it from here, it’s a sure sign he’s in on it and is gonna come after you with a gun in five minutes.

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Almost without fail, if the good guy finds someone he cares about dead on the floor, obviously murdered with the murder weapon right there, the good guy will reach over and get his grubby fingerprints all over the murder weapon, often just in time for the cops to rush in and catch him holding the weapon over the dead guy.

Has nobody ever heard of the concept of “Preserving the crime scene”? How about “NOT GETTING YOUR FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER THE MURDER WEAPON AND MAKING IT EASY TO BE FRAMED!”?

Sorry, this thing bugs the crap out of me.

Also…

People in zombie movies often live in a parallel universe where zombie movies were never made(or nobody has seen a zombie movie), because nobody will ever use the word “zombie” or immediatly mention something about zombies being killed by destorying the brain in all the zombie movies. Hell, people seem to take an awfully long time figuring out that the undead are attacking them, even after it’s obvious the people attacking them can’t possibly be living under normal conditions.

Shaun of the Dead is perhaps the only movie I’ve seen that plays off this.

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And yet, nobody ever seems to have any trouble recognizing a vampire, and everybody knows about their vulnerability to crosses, garlic, sunlight, and stakes through the heart, and that they can’t enter a house uninvited, and all that.