Things that almost always ruin a movie

Cafe Society
141

I don’t think he is, but you certainly are. I have the same question **smeghead **does. I can get behind most of the other issues people have listed here (although complaining about FedEx and Jeep seems a little trite- if they had created generic substitutions, people would complain “it’s so fake, it took me right outta the movie!”), but this one really puzzles me.

It has nothing to do with the writing, development, direction, production, acting, sets, props, plot, or post-production- all things you’re really not aware of until you actually go and watch the movie. Rather, it happens to be the actor’s name, which you do know about going in. If you have such a strong aversion to any work product from an actor with diacritical marks, don’t go see it. Unless you’d purposely go see it so you can have the movie ruined by it, so you can then complain about it on a message board.

142

Negative-- Carmina Burana was perfectly used precisely once, at the end of the movie “Glory.”

Although, I admit to finding it strange to using classical music written long before the movie but long after the event to score the sequence. It’s akin to hearing a Dylan song in a movie set in the 1940s (Watchmen, anyone? :).

143

RE: CGI and physical weight/reality of movement, personally I think the best CGI is the subtle CGI. CGI used to take the rough edges off of reality, rather than substituting an artifical image for reality.

CGI for living animals is really, really difficult to pull of convincingly. Even when it looks great, it’s still not “real.” CGI for real people is even harder.

I disagree with anyone who defends the physics of Spiderman-- especially the last film, which was just awful in every sense of the word. The problem there, as in many movies, isn’t that you’re watching something fantastic-- it’s that you’re watching something that’s TOO fantastic. How about slowing it down, using fewer edits, lingering on shots and absorbing the scene? Most filmmakers won’t do that, because they somehow feel that the only way to make CGI convincing is to use it quickly-- fast editing, motion blurr, loud noises.

Movies like Spiderman and Transformers aren’t good uses of CGI-- they are examples of distracting CGI. Or, perhaps more accurately, a director distracting the audience from knowledge of his/her use of CGI.

I like directors who embrace CGI as art, not as a substitute for reality. Do that, and I’ll be impressed.

Or, even better-- use CGI to simply hide the wires and green-screen effects behind the plastic models you’re using. Models have weight and presence that even the best CGI today never quite gets.

144

Smiley noted, but surely you can’t take issue with the brilliant joke of using “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to set up a frakking alternative history.

Besides which, the film is not set in the 1940s, about half of the opening credits show stuff that happened in the 1940s, and followed up with stuff that happened as the Watchverse timeline diverged further and further from our own.

And rain, don’t forget rain. :slight_smile:

145

When two characters are having a dialog, I want to hear what they’re saying godsdaminit! Instead, the sound mixers typically give us something like this (two characters having a conversation over lunch in a diner):

“do you really th<clank of silverware on plate>ink he could have<cab honking it’s horn outside the window>responsibile?” “Well I<rustle rustle rustle>-see how anyone"Order up!“no, it just isn’t<clop clop clop> “pardon” <clop clop clop>”- the body”

146

For me I can tell you what fails right off. I have yet to ever see a CGI jump or fall that obeys falling body acceleration. It is almost always a constant linear velocity throughout the jump or fall falling a rapid impulse at the start of the jump.

Also, the motion capture is almost always based on track and field long jumpers, who are gyrating and stretching trying to gain linear length in their jump. To see that same motion capture applied to vertical parabolic superheroic jumps seems very misplaced. Why Spiderman has to do the Carl Lewis flail, I don’t know.

I saw a hand animated movie recently that actually got it right. In The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, there is a scene in the background of people bouncing and setting a volleyball around that was animated perfectly. When watching I was so happy to see it that I suddenly stood up and point at the TV “That’s it! That’s Newton, bitches!” My wife continues to think me strange.

147

True… although there is one case of this being the point of the entire film. It worked well in The Conversation. He’d kill us if he had the chance.

148

I cannot frakking believe someone beat me to that.

149

Not closing doors behind them when the actors enter a house. Where were you raised, a barn?

150

[QUOTE=Smeghead]

All fine and good, if a bit judgmental. But how does that ruin the movie?
[/QUOTE]

Again, from what I perceive lissener to be saying, it’s about pretentiousness of the actor. If an actor applies diacritical marks to their name, that is a sign they have a higher perception of their abilities and worth than is warranted on the merits. Just like going by one name (Roseanne, Cher, Beyoncé, Jackée, etc).

[QUOTE=Chingon]

Not to speak for smeghead, but you basically rule out any movie with hispanic cast members. Unless of course you forgot that we still count as American.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, that’s what lissener is saying. :rolleyes:

Hispanic people have diacritical marks over their names because their names are SPANISH. Thus, the diacritical marks are required for proper pronunciation. Same thing with certain Europeans and an umlaut.

Geez, it’s not that hard to understand what he’s saying, why is this hard to grasp?

[QUOTE=corkboard]

It has nothing to do with the writing, development, direction, production, acting, sets, props, plot, or post-production- all things you’re really not aware of until you actually go and watch the movie. Rather, it happens to be the actor’s name, which you do know about going in. If you have such a strong aversion to any work product from an actor with diacritical marks, don’t go see it. Unless you’d purposely go see it so you can have the movie ruined by it, so you can then complain about it on a message board.
[/QUOTE]

DUDE! He has listed it because it has something that through experience he has learned. That means that now he avoids movies with actors with diacritical marks in their name because they are probably going to suck. How is it you can’t understand that?

151

Speaking only for myself, because it seems to me to be an incredibly arbitrary reason to reject a movie. The actors’ names have literally nothing to do with the quality of a film. That’s why I asked him to clarify.

152

Correlation may not equal causation, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worthless.

153

Americans can have SPANISH names. Yes citizens!

At the risk of more derailment let me clarify.

Here is the entirety of lisseners point:

*Also, an addendum to the final item on my original list:

* Any American actor with an accent, or any diacritical mark, on their name*

An ungenerous reading would be that any Hispanic-American (or any other American who happened to have a name with a natural accent or diacritical mark in it) actor ruins a movie.

An other reading would be that NO American actors have an accent in their name unless it is an affectation. Which basically says that either people like me are pretentious twats or not really American.

In the end its clear to me that lissener wanted to make a clever addendum to his list, but didn’t realize what a large net he casted. I don’t think he wanted to say the ungenerous interpretation, but in the end he still takes an inadvertent swipe at American actors with natural accents in their name by implying they are either pretentious or not real Americans.

No biggie, I just thought I would let people know why someone might take it personally.

154

Literary economy is not a cliche. It’s a NECESSITY. In any story in any medium, there is a limited amount of space and time to present information. Most things that “happen” in the world of the story don’t get disclosed, because they distract from the central aim of the story. And please note that I did not write “distract from the plot.” Some stories are about plot; some theme; some character. Items that don’t help the author* create the effect he/she desires is necessarily jettisoned; item that do serve that aim get highlighted. How else would you tell a story?

155

No, it’s a convention.

156

Character (usually woman) knocks the bad guy down and he appears to be dead…instead of giving him an extra bullet in the head or an extra slash of the neck or whatever, to ensure that he is actually dead, she inevitably leaves him lying there as soon as he stops moving…**BUT ACTUALLY HE’S NOT DEAD!!!1111ZOMG **and he gets up while she’s not looking, and grabs her!

This situation, which occurs in far too many movies, is more infuriating to me than any other film cliche.

157

In regards to the Spider-Man films, the second movie has a far worse offense to the laws of physics in the scene where Doc Ock is fighting Spider-Man on the train. He takes Spidey, throws him forward, whereupon Spider-Man, landing, tackles him from behind. I don’t really gripe about violations of relativity or quantum mechanics in movies, or sound in space, or whatever. But when you start violating basic Newtonian principles… that’s what takes me out of a movie.

The Spider-Man cartoon back in the late 60s used to show SM swinging thousands of feet over NY, his web apparently attached to nothing. But it was crappy sub-Hannah Barbara animation anyway, and doesn’t really count. Apparently, according to the Wiki page, they also had a 6-legged spider displayed on his suit… not like I caught that at the age of 5.

Don’t know if the above ruined the shows, however. I would say that a movie is ruined if I walk out of it, and I’ve walked out of the following films for their corresponding “ruinous” sins:

The Mummy, seen it before. I’m guessing the next plot points five minutes before they happen… 45 minutes of this and I’m thinking that the bookstore would be a far more fascinating place to be, so I left.

Knocked-Up, cursing. I actually walked out of a movie because of cursing. But, seriously, the amount of gratuitous f-bombs in this movie was astounding - not like The Wire or Pulp Fiction, where the cursing added verisimilitude or was an integral part of characterization. These characters just weren’t the f-bomb type, it added nothing to the scenes, and it kept jarring me out of the story.

The scene that I walked out on was when she started having labor pains and Seth Rogan was on the phone, yelling and screaming and cursing at the doctor scheduled to deliver the baby. WTF?

Coast to Coast, abysmally stupid and derivative. The first movie I ever walked out on.