[QUOTE=plnnr]
That Keanu Reeves has any acting ability at all.
That’s a leap of imagination that I can’t make.
[/QUOTE]
I liked him in My Own Private Idaho. I have the feeling that right around then, he sold his soul to ensure continued financial success, and the devil took what little talent he could muster.
[QUOTE=mlees]
I assume by “the show”, you are speaking of the Dukes of Hazard. (I mentioned no show.) TV series, or movie?
Wiki on the TV show: The Dukes of Hazzard - Wikipedia
If the car you speak of indeed survived the TV show, it was because it was either never used for stunts, or one of the few that has been rebuilt after said stunt(s). Heh.
[/QUOTE]
General Lee #1, the first General Lee, the one shown in the TV show intro, survives to this day. Apparently, it took the jump in the intro pretty decently. I’m not saying you can expect a car to survive much more than that, but it looks like a '69 Charger can take a decent bump into the air.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
And the way the bad guy does die of explosive decompression at the end is completely unrealistic (as are the decompression deaths in Outland) – as is the possibility that the ancient Martian “air plant” could pump out enough to increase the ambient pressure to anything near to one atmosphere in the time allowed.
[/QUOTE]
Of course it was unrealistic! As if it were happening in a dream…or in an artificial memory.
What everyone seems to miss about Total Recall is that Quade had exactly the adventure he asked for when he went to the memory vacation place at the beginning of the movie. Five minutes (or less) after the movie ends, he wakes up back in the chair at the memory store.
The implausible things we see during the movie, from the thing with the air to the parasitic twin to the impossibly-large electronic booger, were all signals to the audience that Quade’s adventure wasn’t actually happening.
[QUOTE=Troy McClure SF]
Perhaps I’m being whooshed, but is there any chance in hell that Manhattan wouldn’t be the recipient of a bit of search-and-rescue action?
[/QUOTE]
It’s possible, but it’s equally possible that the rescue missions began because Randy Quaid called for help. Again, the missions begin AFTER he finds his son. Having him call for help (even if it’s not explicitly stated on screen) is the most logical reason for them.
Plus, I love a good disaster movie and I think Day After Tomorrow is (unfairly) maligned a lot for this one particular plot point.
[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus]
Batman Begins is a fine move, except for the small point that the master plan of the Scarecrow involves vaporizing all the water , yet somehow manages not to vaporize the water in the people, just the water in the pipes.
[/QUOTE]
I just imagine it’s a precisely focused beam. It helps a little.
I agree with Morbo on the holding the breath thing. Whenever a character goes under water or whatever I always take a deep breath and see if I can match them. I never can. I do realize that some of these characters are perhaps highly trained and athletic, and that people in crisis can achieve more than the average movie patron. Still, I’m a good swimmer, and when the character can hold their breath for 30 to 40 times longer than me it just ruins the moment. My wife gets annoyed at me for doing it though.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Add to that: Cars that explode when they crash. I’m sure you’ve driven past a lot of accident scenes on the highway. Have you ever seen something that looked like the aftermath of an explosion?! I’ve seen cars with their engines on fire and they didn’t explode!
[/QUOTE]
BG, I hate to say it, but explosive collisions do happen. They’re rare, and usually the result of great speed, but… locally, this accident is still having huge repurcussions. (Sorry for the CNN link - the local paper kills it’s free archive after a week.)
For the OP, there are a lot of movies that kick me out when they break my suspension of disbelief. Die Hard 2 is a particular bugaboo for me. As was Jurassic Park.
But the story that really gets me is CSI. I’ve only watched a few shows, and not by choice. Part of it is that I really like the real crime forensic science shows - they’re endlessly fascinating and informative, I think. But because of those, and the readings I’ve done as well, the procedural errors, the science errors, and simply the wrong-headed thinking… I can’t enjoy the show. I mean if you’re going to list possible medical conditions that might give someone an odd body odor, wouldn’t diabetic ketosis be the first condition one considered? :mad:
[QUOTE=Fiver]
Of course it was unrealistic! As if it were happening in a dream…or in an artificial memory.
What everyone seems to miss about Total Recall is that Quade had exactly the adventure he asked for when he went to the memory vacation place at the beginning of the movie. Five minutes (or less) after the movie ends, he wakes up back in the chair at the memory store.
The implausible things we see during the movie, from the thing with the air to the parasitic twin to the impossibly-large electronic booger, were all signals to the audience that Quade’s adventure wasn’t actually happening.
[/QUOTE]
I’m with Fiver. Also, one of the techs comments as Quaid is being strapped in for his memory implant, as he handles the cube, or tape, or whatever
“Hunh, Blue sky on Mars…” or something like that. And isn’t that pretty much the final shot?
I’ll echo the sentiments about ordering “a beer” at a bar, or even worse, just sitting down at a bar and lifting a finger in some kind of beer salute and then being rewarded with precisely what you wanted. Nothing blows the moment away quite like that for me.
[QUOTE=Soul]
I’ll echo the sentiments about ordering “a beer” at a bar, or even worse, just sitting down at a bar and lifting a finger in some kind of beer salute and then being rewarded with precisely what you wanted. Nothing blows the moment away quite like that for me.
[/QUOTE]
Depends. I can walk into a couple of taverns in this area and know that all I have to do is nod, and a pint of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale will be placed in front of me. There are some advantages in being a regular.
I don’t know a single thing about fighting, but head-butting… you know, I just don’t see how using your head to hit things (even noses) is ever the right decision.
There’s also the “back of the head knockout with no long (or short) term health reprecussions”. I don’t watch much TV but Buffy and Lost wouldn’t be able to advance their plots if people weren’t getting knocked unconscious every other episode. You’d think that of Xander, Willow, Spike, and Giles that at least one of them would start slurring their speech a little bit by season 6, season 7.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Add to that: Cars that explode when they crash. I’m sure you’ve driven past a lot of accident scenes on the highway. Have you ever seen something that looked like the aftermath of an explosion?! I’ve seen cars with their engines on fire and they didn’t explode!
[/QUOTE]
Action movies are set in an alternate universe where nitrocellulose is widely used as the main plastic in automobiles. 
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Never mind that – why does he have scissors for hands?! What was his maker thinking?! If he could make a mechanism by which Edward could manipulate scissor blades, he could make him hands of some more practical shape, even’t if it weren’t lifelike.
[/QUOTE]
Well, the Inventor took a heart-shaped cookie off the Rube-Goldberg-Peewee-Herman’s-breakfast-cookie machine, and held it up against the chest of the coleslaw-chopping robot (that every well-appointed cookie factory has) over along the wall. This was what gave hm the idea to build Edward in the first place. So he didn’t build Edward from scratch and somehow get the daft idea that he should put scissor hands on it while he taught himself how to make human-looking hands. He took a pre-existing invention and started adding parts…
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
I mean if you’re going to list possible medical conditions that might give someone an odd body odor, wouldn’t diabetic ketosis be the first condition one considered? :mad:
[/QUOTE]
Welll sure, if you’re going to think like a doctor. There are detectives.
Just so you know, I’ve never seen CSI.
[QUOTE=Aspidistra]
The helicopter flying through the tunnel (that’s actually my husband’s favourite)
[/QUOTE]
It’s worse than that. The chopper is flying in a tunnel with an electric wire overhead. Zap.
[QUOTE=dysonsphere]
Using a Mac to write a virus that can completely debilitate an advanced alien race’s supercomputers, as seen in Independence Day.
[/QUOTE]
This is actually explained in the movie. I mean, I don’t want to try too hard to defend it, but the movie does actually explain that Goldblum’s character deduced details of the alien technology by studying their communication transmissions. What he does is more like a Denial Of Service attack.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Never mind that – why does he have scissors for hands?! What was his maker thinking?! If he could make a mechanism by which Edward could manipulate scissor blades, he could make him hands of some more practical shape, even’t if it weren’t lifelike.
[/QUOTE]
He was only supposed to have scissors in his prototype phase. Possibly the handmaking is the most difficult part of the construction (I can imagine the double joints can be tricky to coordinate). Now, why he had to have *scissors *instead of say, sticks… I cannot say.
Regarding the beer thing, I have ordered it like in the movies (though I didn’t think of it like that) at several occasions: “A beer please”. Say the words and the barkeep simply proceeds to select a beer of his choice or what is popular among the rest of the clientele. This is not rocket science people.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
And the way the bad guy does die of explosive decompression at the end is completely unrealistic (as are the decompression deaths in Outland) – as is the possibility that the ancient Martian “air plant” could pump out enough to increase the ambient pressure to anything near to one atmosphere in the time allowed.
[/quote]
Well, it’s not just implausible that it pumped out so much. The bigger problem is that if it did, the result would have been even more dramatic than in the movie. More like the planet gets resurfaced, and probably fried, or even molten from the frictional heating.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Besides, if the ancient Martians had a machine that could restore their planet’s atmosphere, why didn’t they fucking use it?!
[/QUOTE]
See above. Perhaps there was a label in Martian saying “Incredibly Stupid Machine; Do Not Use.” And on this board I bet someone actually gets that reference
Seriously, that never bothered me; I just assumed some super-advanced race had left it there for us to use, someday. Throwing a toy to the primitives.
Or the Martians were still there, in stasis or something waiting for when the Stars Are Right and it’s time to wake up and restart their ecosphere, and Arnie screwed up their plans by prematurely turning the machine on. Which would likely seriously irritate them, and might have made a nice sequel.
[QUOTE=Fiver]
Of course it was unrealistic! As if it were happening in a dream…or in an artificial memory.
What everyone seems to miss about Total Recall is that Quade had exactly the adventure he asked for when he went to the memory vacation place at the beginning of the movie. Five minutes (or less) after the movie ends, he wakes up back in the chair at the memory store.
The implausible things we see during the movie, from the thing with the air to the parasitic twin to the impossibly-large electronic booger, were all signals to the audience that Quade’s adventure wasn’t actually happening.
[/QUOTE]
At best, that undercuts the movie in a different way. He’s supposed to not be able to figure out if it’s real or not - if physically impossible things start happening, that’s not a problem. If the stuff going on was as impossible in that universe as they are in the real world, he would’ve popped that pill he was offered near the end and woken up.
And as I understand it, he doesn’t wake up; he gets lobotomized; that’s why the screen fades to white at the end.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
in the later series and movies (hence its eligibility for movies) they seemed incapable of anything other than quadriped humanoids, which irritated me.
[/QUOTE]
And eventually (Voyager and DS9) they seemed to get so lazy or cheap that most of those aliens were just people with some odd bit of rubber stuck to their head.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
People walking into a bar and ordering “a beer.”
[/QUOTE]
Why? I often (well, used to, anyway) just order a beer. The bartender picks one and gives it to you, accepting money in exchange.
[QUOTE=silenus]
OK, let me be the requisite Buffy freak who points out that in “Once More, With Feeling” this actually had a rational (in the Buffyverse) reason for happening, and it was key to the whole plot.
[/QUOTE]
Same with Xena’s first musical episode “The Bitter Suite”.
[QUOTE=Fiver]
Of course it was unrealistic! As if it were happening in a dream…or in an artificial memory.
What everyone seems to miss about Total Recall is that Quade had exactly the adventure he asked for when he went to the memory vacation place at the beginning of the movie. Five minutes (or less) after the movie ends, he wakes up back in the chair at the memory store.
[/QUOTE]
We don’t know that. That’s the whole point.
L&O: SVU has done a little better with the beer thing. Elliott will point in the direction of something behind the bar “One of them”. Or “domestic draft”.
It actually takes me out of the moment because it’s such a refreshing change.