Kid, it ain’t that kind of movie.
Bad gun handling. Like smokers/non-smokers and empty coffee cups, people mishandling guns or weird gun stuff always jumps out at me.
Actors holding guns in strange stances, It’s clear they have no knowledge of what it would be like to be in a firefight. Most of us don’t, of course, but that’s why they have technical advisors.
Holding pistols too close to your face. I get it, the director wants the highly paid actor’s face and his gun both in frame but that wouldn’t go well IRL. I saw a De Niro movie where he literally had it on his cheek.
Racking a pump action gun repeatedly for effect. When I see and actor rack a shotgun for the second time in a scene, I’m always waiting for the first shell to come flying out.
There’s an active thread on this very topic. Lotsa folks agree with you!
More basic than that. Don’t point a gun at a cop and expect to have a long conversation. It’s so common that I barely notice anymore. Bad guy and good guy pointing guns at each other and having a dramatic talk.
Yeah, I have pretty much conceded to the‘Mexican standoff’. It’s so ridiculous. If two people have guns on each other the first one to pull the trigger wins. Simple.
Just stumbled onto Closing the Ring (2007), a melodrama about US airmen in WWII. The first thing I noticed was the non-period haircuts on the GIs. Then a B-17G with a chin turret and a shiny aluminum finish landed at an AAF base in May 1941, two years before the type first flew. I gave up trying to take the movie seriously after that.
This is less a failing of the movie than of mine but in crime dramas when detectives ask potential suspects “where were you last October on the Saturday the 12th?” And they always have a ready answer. I can’t remember where I was on Monday, much less where I was a month or two ago.
Documentaries where the film editors obviously don’t know the provenance of their stock footage. I’m talking about things like American Dauntlesses dive-bombing Pearl Harbor, or P-38s being unloaded in Murmansk Lightnings went mainly to the Pacific after 1942, while the USSR got planes like the Airacobra and the Havoc.
Yeah, same here. Mind you since retirement, I could likely say “Ay home, reading a book” and be pretty close.
Filmmakers who think they can turn a sunset into a sunrise (or vice versa) by reversing the footage. NO YOU CAN’T!
In the northern hemisphere, the sun rises up and to the right. If you see the sun rising up and to the left, that is either a southern hemisphere sunrise (unlikely) or reversed footage. DON’T DO THAT!
Not only do they somehow remember, in the next scene, an underling will tell their superior that “Their alibi checks out” implying that they found someone else that remembers it as well.
And the new Sense and Sensibility is off the list, too. You are not a ten-year-old child, get that damn hair off your neck! You can play around with side curls but HAIR. GOES. UP!! And when you’re walking outdoors in company, wear your damn bonnet!
Lazy and ignorant filmmakers may think that modern-looking loose hair conveys how a 19th-c character is a “free spirit” and “not like other girls”, but it only shows they don’t have the knowledge or creativity to think of a way to dramatize this that actually works in-period.
Not dressing and covering your hair appropriately for the occasion was not “daring” or “cool”, it was just startlingly unkempt, like walking around with your boobs hanging out of your dress. And it’s not like we can’t see the actress’s face perfectly well with an updo and a bonnet, anyway.
Like I said about The Odyssey, it’s one thing if you’re deliberately putting everybody in fantasy versions of historical costumes and there’s no such thing as authenticity. But when you’ve got a character in period-appropriate Regency attire from toe to chin, it just looks incongruous to have her hair flapping around like a roadside beggar girl’s. These characters would not have considered such dishevelment fun to do or attractive to see, just get a clue already.
“When it’s time to shoot, shoot – don’t talk.”
And how well do period-authentic hairstyles communicate to the vast bulk of the audience who have no idea about what actual e.g. 1800s dress was like?
What hairstyle (or clothing style or …) would have communicated “free spirit” in the 1800s? Was there such a thing? Would a 2026 audience recognize it now for what it meant then? etc.
If filmmakers were serious about authenticity, then period language would be used too. Old French and Old English for stories set in Merrye Olde Englande, and incomprehensible gibberish for any SF space aliens.
We’re communicating with a mass audience of 2026 era people and must use language they understand. “Language” in the large sense of any meaning-carrying symbol; words, images, clothing, hair, social behaviors, etc.
I’ve always liked this xkcd. Which in talking about the future is actually saying something about how much current audiences don’t know about the past.
Or this comic, set in an even more distant imagined future:
Or this clip:
Bad spelling, especially where correct spelling should be a no-brainer. I mean, I don’t think a marshal or marshal’s office would put up a permanent sign stating “Marshall’s Office.” And what cemetery owner invests in a fancy arch over the entrance stating “Middleton Cemetary?” People get signs wrong from time to time, but you’d think that a whole production crew would have someone able to notice that the signs are not spelled correctly.
Don’t even get me started on newspaper headlines, instruction manuals, and maps that are shown on-camera.
Corollary: the bartender with the photographic memory.
Detective: (shows photo of suspect) have you seen this man?
Bartender: I dunno. My memory ain’t so good these days, unless, y’know, somethin’ jogs it.
Detective: (slides a $20 bill across the bar) will this help jog it?
Bartender: Ohh, that guy. Yeah, he came in last Saturday the 12th, at 9:37. Had a blue suit on with a red and blue striped tie. Came in with a 5’ 7” blonde woman in a green dress. Mole on her left cheek, close to her nose. Stayed for an hour and a half, ordered 3 Tito’s vodka martinis with two blue cheese-stuffed olives for him, a couple glasses of Chardonnay for her, kinda cheaping out with the Kendall-Jackson. They seemed a little nervous or agitated, talking about some ‘job’ coming up they were worried about. His phone rang about 10:03, and he walked away to take the call. When they left I happened to look out the bar window and saw he was driving a late model white Lexus with the license plate number FKE123. Sorry, that’s all I can recall.
I think you may have somehow mistaken an episode of Police Squad for a serious show.
Well, I was exaggerating a wee bit to make a point.
I admit, I can’t say I wasn’t entirely I influenced by this scene though:
