Dino wasn’t Italian-American?
In a historical movie, all the retro cars are pristine and all are from the same year or two, like there wouldn’t be any dusty 15 year old beaters in the background.
I greatly dislike it when whatever music is playing in a scene is cut off in mid-measure when they cut to another scene. It’s not for a dramatic jump cut to a new scene meant to jar you, it’s your basic: okay, on to the next scene. Might as well have a needle scratching across the record.
That’s what made it a great action movie. He wasn’t playing someone ten feet tall and made of metal. He was a regular guy in the wrong place at the wrong time who had to do the right thing.
It’s a lesson I wish every writer in Hollywood could learn.
*I promise I will never even think about going up in a tall building again. Oh, God. Please don’t let me die. *
all those cool guys who don’t look at explosions.
Well, actually, it’s mostly children with speaking roles, and romantic comedies. Also of course almost anything to do with animals because it is always gratingly wrong.
Reminds me. The specific case is something I can only remember seeing once, but it was a couple of weeks ago. In “Words” (I think that’s the English title), there is this American character that’s in post-WWII France, who as far as we know hadn’t used a typewriter before getting there (he was illiterate before the war and worked as a butcher after it); he’s working for a newspaper “in his language” so he’s obtained a typewriter and the typewriter’s keyboard is American. Not French or British, but American. Now, maybe there is a reason why he’d have an American typewriter, but it’s not explained at all (if they’d say he was working for an American newspaper, it would have made sense straightaway) and I can’t help but think that it was simply a culturally-relevant detail nobody thought of.
Again, tours still go through the prison, so it’s not closed. And why couldn’t there be a furnace like that? Sure, it probably doesn’t exist, but it could. And asking more of movies is just going to make you unhappy all the time.
5 minutes of exposition/profession of love/saying goodbye in a 1 minute timeframe before bomb goes off/bad guy walks in/poison takes effect.
When the bad guy conveniently keeps a written record of all of his misdeeds that is ultimately used as (often the only) evidence against him, like in the movie I just finished watching, Tower Heist.
Some already mentioned like romance in non-romance movies and the use of computers. I don’t know why it makes me fly into such a rage when I see stupid obviously animated GUI’s pretending to be some active program. Maybe the fact that it would be soooooo easy to simply use some intern’s laptop on the movieset and have it pull up some cryptically-sounding file. Instead they jerry-rig some implausible looking program that looks like its from the DOS era. Just fucking use Windows, that’s not only easier but its realistic as real life high level security computers use Windows!
As an addendum to the above, I have a disproportionate hatred of people using the mouse onscreen, when they actually do. Its so easy to spot an animated screen pretending to be a working program because the mouse cursor moves with alarmingly consistent velocity on its path to whatever button the user’s trying to click. Look Hollywood, I know its boring to show that and I get that. So instead of trying to trick us with a fake screen, just skip it, show the actor’s faces as they are staring at the program. Otherwise, use a real mouse on a real program.
Movie’s seem to often have a color. Horror movies make everything dark and blue. Movies set in tropical locales seem to go with orange in a lot of their shots. I can understand the horror aspect, but if you have a regular movie that’s shot outdoors, just use natural lighting and don’t make everything orange
I hate quick editing and cuts in action sequences, especially fighting sequences. I cannot follow the action. Look, if Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving can be shown fighting without the need for edits to cover up their deficiencies, then other people have no excuse, especially Matt Damon in the Bourne movies. When I see fighting onscreen, I want the camera to pan back so we get a full view of the action, not close ups and edits that obscure the fact that those people can’t fight
I was just watching an episode of Teen Wolf (don’t judge me), and there was a scene set in a gay bar. Someone even makes the point of saying, “Hey, you notice that there are only dudes in here?” and STILL, when the shit goes down, you hear tons of women screaming in the sound mix. And they’re clearly high-pitched female screams, not men-faking-high-pitched-female screams to be funny or something. Production companies must have one or two go-to sound clips of crowds screaming and use them indiscriminately.
Not to mention that in real life, I can’t remember the last time I’ve screamed or heard other women scream. Gasping, shouting “Oh my God, KILL IT!” when confronted by a centipede…sure. Open-mouthed “AAAAAAEEEEEEEE”…never.
On the other hand, Ian McShane and Danny Glover, while both great actors, really pull me out when they’re doing something physical. It just doesn’t look right and they look stiff and unconvincing.
I can forgive a lot in action movies but it has to be at least plausible, no matter how unlikely. If it’s impossible the movie is mostly ruined for me and then I feel like hitting something because the director apparently thinks we’re all morons.
An example would be something like Fast and Furious 5 which was a half way decent action flick right up to the point where they hook their cars up to those enormous bank vaults, yank them out of the buildings and the safes begin tumbling down the street behind the cars like they are pulling toy building blocks.
Those safes weigh at least 40 tons, those cars weigh about 2 tons. This is not possible! Fuck you.
I will give science fiction movies more leeway even though I shouldn’t.
Wounds that magically get cleaned up & healed within minutes. Also people with wounds who are walking around (and running/fighting/shooting etc.) like they’re in no pain at all.
People who get knocked out then wake up much later with absolutely no concussion symptoms.
When something magical or highly technological happens – such as someone beaming in or beaming out – and people act as if it’s an everyday occurance. Even if transporter technology were commonplace, if someone beamed into my apartment I’d be all like “Dude, what the fuck?!? Ever hear of knocking?”
I’ve never seen the film, but I looked up this clip on YouTube, and wow. How does that make it past the storyboard stage? Even the way they look, it’s portrayed so stupidly…the safe is never damaged, the cars appear able to floor it and out run unladen vehicles and yet the safe also crushes cars, cement bollards and buildings as if they are made of potato chips, all while not slowing the cars down at all.
That might be the dumbest scene I’ve ever witnessed.
CGI creatures or objects that are weightless, ala the Garfield moviee.
Over-the-top assholishness perpetrated on the main character just so we can feel good about his comeuppance later. Particularly when we the audience have to sit there and experience all the asshattery. And especially when we are supposed to find this humorous (Meet the Parents, I mean you.)
You guys have gotten close to but not quite hit on another one I hate: easy knockouts by hitting someone on the head that can be done repeatedly with no repercussions. I actually believed this was possible and am lucky I never was in a situation where I felt the need to use that fake knowledge.
A similarly dumb scene can be seen in Batman Forever. Are we really to believe that a safe large enough to hold two grown men can be suspended in mid-air by a thin stretch of cable? The other end of which is being held in place by a hole in a pretty flimsy wall?
That was one thing the later Matrix films got right. Trinity was a hacker, and damn it, hackers use the command prompt! And she used a real exploit.
The only problem is that there is someone off-screen actually doing all this. Most computer displays in movies are specially generated 24 fps material using hardware synchronized to the camera.
Do not click on this link. Just don’t. If you do, you cannot claim you were not warned. It’s like kerning, or the line from the movie 8mm “There are some things that you see, and you can’t unsee them.”
Characters who don’t say goodbye before hanging up the phone. Hello! Nobody does that. Say goobye!
Women taking a bubble bath who stand up without rinsing, wrap a towel around themselves then step out of the bath. From then on I just keep thinking about how sticky they must be.
Writers in older or period movies who type on their typewriter just using their forefingers. Seems the only typists are secretaries. Even in the recent movie Hitchcock, Hitch’s wife Alma, a professional writer, types this way. Argh!
According to my dad (not to mention several other older folks of my acquaintance), it really was like that - the average person in the 1950s/1960s didn’t type as part of their job; that’s what secretaries and typing pools were for.
Dad, incidentally, did (and does) know how to type.