“Woodstock” - the extreme close-up shots of the latrine stalls being cleaned. Just show us the musical acts and the space cadets, please. A hose that sucks up “shite” just doesn’t jibe with the groovy age of aquarius vibe.
I just rewatched Out of the Past, which is just about my favorite film noir. The one thing that always bugs me about it, though, is that everybody is always wearing their standard-issue film noir trenchcoats all the goddamn time! Most of the time the coats are buttoned up all the way to the top and belted, even indoors. There’s even a scene with Robert Mitchum in a sunny meadow and he’s wearing that damned trenchcoat!
Casablanca: “Oh Rick, you have to decide for the both of us, because I’ve been much too strong, smart and independent during this movie so I must pay for those transgressions by suddenly becoming spineless and stupid.”
It’s just a small yech in an otherwise great film, but it bugs me.
It is to add verisimillitude to the story.
The song and dance bit in Kane is pretty corny.
Seen again over the weekend, at the beginning of The Battle of the Bulge Henry Fonda tells the pilot of his recon plane to gun the engine as he flies low over the open car carrying a German officer so the officer will look up at it, into the camera, allowing them to i.d. him. When the photo is shown, it is almost a profile of General Rommel’s face looking up to the left, not into the camera. Quite implausible.
But without it you wouldn’t have gotten that greate “Simpsons” parody of it with Mr. Burns and Smithers!
There is a man/A certain man/A man whose grace and handsome face are known across the land/You know his name/It’s Mr. Burns/He loves a smoke/enjoys a joke/Why he’s worth ten times what he earns…
Burns!
Casablanca: Rick’s line when they were in Paris: “Who are you, and who were you before? What did you think, and what did you do?” That line and its delivery always irritated me.
Rope. The scene at the end where Jimmy Stewart figured out their crime, and says (paraphrasing) “Well, now you’re going to DIE!!” and shoots the gun out the window. You then hear a bunch of concerned voices, followed by a police car’s siren heading their way. It took me a while to comprehend why shooting a gun out the window was going to kill them.
Charade. All of Cary Grant’s “silliness” grinds it to a halt. First there’s the “drip dry” suit scene where he takes a shower in his clothes, then there’s the end when he sneaks into his real office to receive the stamps from Audrey Hepburn, and makes a silly face at her. Ugh.
Ummmmmmm…guys?
There are no musical – piano or harp – scenes in Duck Soup.
Just Groucho’s song at the opening (“Just Wait Til I Get Through with It”), and the big chorus scene near the end.
:smack: Right you are. No wonder it’s their best movie. Animal Crackers has a couple of musical numbers that get in the way, though.
Friendly Persuasion one character who is supposedly black is a white actor done up in blackface. Not the white around the mouth blackface, but rather it looks like he is covered in lampblack. It is jarring to say the least. Why would they do that?
I have to vouch my support for the coffee scene in Pulp Fiction - I think it’s Quentin’s one shining moment as an actor. Why? Well, it’s pretty simple: Quentin’s a well-meaning dork, and Jimmy’s a well-meaning dork.
But in the movie, it’s the direction and the performance that make it so horrifying. I think there’s room in the script to make it silly and worth a chuckle.
In 91 years I’m sure there have been some directors (sorry, speculation- no cite) of both Pygmalion and stage versions of My Fair Lady who have managed to make it funny. But in the film version it is just disturbing.
As much as I hate to almost agree with you, I almost agree with you. I do think that scene with the shower was important because it seemed to show Grant (I can’t remember what name he was supposed to have right then), as feeling very lighthearted while Hepburn was busy finding out things. Er, unless I’m forgetting where in the movie that occurs. Doesn’t she get a telephone call from Walter Matthau while he’s indulging in his foolishness?
The silly face was just weird, though.
The score of The Third Man. Yes, I’ve read the essay that says the score is supposed to be irritating, but I still hate it. It’s the exact same line repeated over and over, much too loudly.
Okay, “Tommy” may not be a classic but the moment that makes me laugh every time is the XCU of young Tommy’s eyes. Young Tommy’s big, BROWN eyes. The shot then changes to a grown Tommy. You know, the one with Roger Daltrey’s big BLUE eyes. Didn’t anyone catch that in editing?
Well, cataracts can both cause blindness and cause the eye to take on a bluish color, but that’s obviously not the case here. (Both because Tommy doesn’t have cataracts and because Daltrey’s eyes are unclouded.) And yeah, I always thought it was a bit silly too, although there are plenty of worse things in that movie! Take Oliver Reed’s singing…please. But seriously, how hard could it have been to find a blue-eyed child? There are more blue-eyed children than there are adults! If you’re going to have a movie where so many shots focus on the main character’s eyes it seems you’d want to be careful about this kind of thing.
Suspicion – Selznick’s stupidly happy tacked-on ending.
To Have and Have Not – The way Lauren Bacall’s character calls Bogart by his name (“Steve…”) way too many times. Maybe the screenwriter’s intent was to portray her as trying (too hard?) to appeal to Bogart, but it comes off as clumsy and uninspired. (Especially as Bogart’s character is supposed to be named “Harry Morgan”.)
The Empire Strikes Back – The extremely complex ecosystem the Millenium Falcon hides out in in the asteroid field, eventually revealed to be the GI tract of a huge snake-like creature inhabiting an otherwise-barren chunk of rock, sans atmosphere and everything else understood as necessary for life, amongst the other asteroids. I know that scientific nitpicks are really pointless for a genre that portrays sounds and jet aircraft-like maneuvering in space and where seemingly every intelligent species in the universe speaks or at least understands English, but this scene always bugged me.
As long as your not refering to the sequence with Chico messing around with the piano and being constantly interrupted, I’ll agree with you.
[Chico goes through the same line of “Sugertime” for the umpteenth time]
Chico: “I can’t think of the finish”
Groucho: “That’s funny. I can’t think of anything else”.
Chico: “I think I went past it”
Groucho: “Well, when you come around again, jump off”.
That’s hilarious, one of my first favorite Marx moments (I hadn’t seen Duck Soup yet). I was thinking of the songs between the lovers… the woman has this line about “Some would say I’m much colder than… Fri-gi-daire.” Blah. 