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One thing I am noticing more in movies is scenes where the main characters do something in public that by all accounts should attract a lot of attention, but don't because the screenwriter couldn't be bothered to have the characters interact with anyone but each other. The worst recent example is in Trouble With the Curve where Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams (who is his daughter in the film) are in a bar, and some random guy starts getting handsy with Amy Adams. Clint pushes the guy up against a wall, breaks a beer bottle and threatens to slash the guys throat with the broken bottle. Eventually they are pulled apart by Justin Timberlake's character. No one else in the bar notices or reacts to any of this. Everyone just goes about their business like nothing happened. I get that the bar they are in is supposed to be a rough and tumble place, but come on, this movie takes place in the real world, not some Hollywood version of the Wild West. A bar fight that comes within inches of being gruesome murder is going to attract some attention and probably get those involved kicked out. Clint's actions in that scene make sense in the context of what we learn about his character later on, but it was such lazy screenwriting to not handle any of the likely ramifications.
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May 13, 2014 16:27
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Zaphod42 posted:The Star Wars movies generally don't get very in-depth about things like spaceships engines and relative speed or even how hyperdrive works and they're better for it. If you take the original trilogy at face value and completely forget the prequels and EU, I get this impression that in the Star Wars universe know one really knows how anything actually works. Everything just looks kind of cobbled together. I like that vision so much better, where the Empire is almost kind of an Idiocracy-type system where everyone is using technology that was built years before but no one's left who actually understands how it works or how to replicate it. That would also explain things like AT-ATs which look cool but make absolutely no sense as weapons.
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Jul 15, 2015 21:03
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Maybe it's unfair of me to expect the plots of kids films to make sense - but my kids have been watching the recent Annie remake over and over again as kids are want to do, and one of the first things that struck me is that the main villain's plot makes absolutely no sense. So in the original Annie, as I recall, the plot of the bad guys was to pose as Annie's real parents, collect the reward, then drown Annie in the river and run off with the money. I guess for the remake they decided that was too violent/scary so instead they have the evil campaign manager plot to have a fake set of parents claim Annie, making Stacks look like a hero for re-uniting a child with her parents, then, in his words, "dump her back into the system". Except - in the time Annie was living with Stacks she had become a huge celebrity. Was he thinking no member of the media would do any follow up at all on this huge news story? Did he think no one would find it at all odd that this girl who was supposedly reunited with her parents was suddenly in foster care again? And the fake parents he hires don't even try to pretend to Annie that they are her real parents the moment they are away from Stacks, pretty much assuring that she'd try to get away from them. Funny thing about that movie, pretty much every review talks about how horrible Cameron Diaz is in it and how shes the worst part of the movie. I had the opposite reaction, to me she's the only one who realizes shes in a really dumb movie and just goes with it, while everyone else actually tries to act and it's totally embarrassing. One other irrationally irritating thing about Annie (sorry, I've seen this like 40 times over the past three weeks): - EDIT: Never mind - oddly enough this scene came on in the next room after I typed this and I realize Stacks is actually singing this song in character, so it goes along with being a musical. - Early in the movie an inspector comes to Hannigan's apartment, and he's played by Mike Birbiglia, who is a really funny comedian and great comic presence - and he does nothing. He has no funny lines or ever shows up again. Unless something got left on the cutting room floor, why do you hire a talented comedian for a role and give him nothing to do? letthereberock has a new favorite as of 20:16 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 20:09
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Fil5000 posted:Did Brosnan have any rapey moments? I'm pretty sure Dalton didn't. Unless you count him tearing off a woman's blouse to use her boobs as a distraction for some guards. I seem to recall things get rapey between him and Teri Hatcher in Tomorrow Never Dies. Then she gets killed. Off-screen. And Bond is upset about it for like three seconds. drat those Bond films really know how to write for female roles!
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May 21, 2016 19:21
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EmmyOk posted:The screenplay was by people who have worked with him plenty of times before and it has cast most of the Sandler pals. The Hotel Transylvania films are surprisingly tolerable for Adam Sandler films but the strangest thing to me about HT2 is that they introduce a whole new villain and conflict with only about 15 minutes left in the movie because I guess they decided they needed a big action set piece. When the main antagonist of your film doesn't show up until 85% of the way in you might want to revisit the screenplay.
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May 23, 2016 13:33
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Marmaduke! posted:Another movie with a scene in a lab, and so another scene with the scientists guzzling coffee while they work. I'm a scientist and I'm appalled by the idea of eating or drinking in a lab, but why does seemingly every single scriptwriter have to shoehorn in a drinking-in-lab scene in every lab in a film? Drinking coffee/eating in a work environment is almost always movie shorthand for "these people have been working at this for a long time!" Bonus points if there are multiple paper Chinese food cartons with a single pair of chopsticks poking out. Then again, I can't imagine doing ANY job without a steady stream of caffeine in my system, so I guess I'd be a really lovely scientist.
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Aug 3, 2017 16:15
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Wheat Loaf posted:
The Shadow is such a weird movie, I'm always surprised almost no one remembers it. It has a really dark scene where the villain mentally commands an innocent security guard to shoot himself in the head, and also contains a scene where the hero and villain playfully discuss ties. Also Tim Curry chewing the scenery like a guy...who...likes to chew stuff. Sorry can't come up with a good chewing scenery joke.
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Sep 26, 2017 17:28
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Terrible Opinions posted:Has there ever been a movie which was improved by taking a character from a fantastic world and dropping them into 1990s New York? Garbage Pale Kids?
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Sep 27, 2017 15:22
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Morpheus posted:It annoys the hell out of me when there's some sort of disturbance, typically a gunshot or something, and only a single cop shows up without a partner, investigates, inevitably gets killed (because all cops are useless unless they're the main character), and literally no one else shows up to investigate. Speaking of cops being useless in movies, what exactly are the police/FBI/ATF/Interpol doing over the course of 8 (?) Saw films? I mean, a body count approaching triple digits, kisnapping with impunity, setting up these elaborate murder fortresses all over the place...at no point is anyone able to track a credit card receipt or something?
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Jan 31, 2018 18:47
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synthetik posted:The scene in Django Unchained where Waltz pops into the frame is hilarious. The running (heh) gag in Silver Linings Playbook of Jennifer Lawrence jumping into the frame is a funny (and intentional) example of this as well. There’s no way Bradley Cooper wouldn’t see her coming, but it makes sense given his mental state at this point in the movie. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-yAXNOsEo80
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Feb 1, 2018 15:39
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SiKboy posted:Wait... Is liking the rocketeer unusual? Because I like that film, and while you rarely hear people talking about it, I didn't know "rocketeer bad" was a popular opinion. Rocketeer got mixed reviews at the time and not that many people remember it, but it’s hardly an infamous flop. The guy who was the creative force behind “Ted 2” is hardly in a position as an arbiter of taste. I feel like this happens a lot. For years I had assumed that the original Tron was universally considered a terrible movie because The Simpsons made a joke about people being embarrassed to admit they’d ever seen it. letthereberock has a new favorite as of 18:34 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 18:28
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In any reality where wishes exist, someone will eventually make a wish to negate all prior wishes.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:46
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One of the things that really bothers me in action films is when you have a villain, the movie spends its whole length showing you how evil and cruel and arrogant this villain is, to the point that you desperately want to see them get their comeuppance. Then, at the end, the villain is defeated, but is dispatched in a way that they totally don’t see coming, and they literally believe they’ve won right up until the split-second they get blown up or whatever. Maybe it’s because of how depressing the real world has become with terrible people getting everything they want - but drat it, I like it when villains KNOW they’ve been beaten! I want them to have their faces rubbed in defeat, I want them to know in no uncertain terms that they’re hosed and that everything they’ve worked for has crumbled into dust. The Dark Knight Rises did this, where one villain gets killed instantly out of no where, and the other dies thinking she’s won.
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Feb 7, 2018 22:40
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Or when you have two people having a conversation in a restaurant- and the scene starts with the food already on the table, but one character will say something like “so how are you doing?” or something that implies that the conversation just started. That means that between ordering and the food arriving, the two characters just sat in silence and looked at each other awkwardly.
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Feb 8, 2018 16:16
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yeah I eat rear end posted:I guess, but it still felt a little forced to have a guy that age be that into Kiss. If that was the only movie in that genre where their name came up or they were actually in it I might be less bothered by it. Or maybe if I actually knew a Kiss superfan I could at least relate to it second-hand. It’s probably really hard for filmmakers when a plot point is that one or more characters are really into a band. If you pick someone too contemporary, you risk instantly dating your film if that artist then never goes on to have any more major success. Picking an older band is always going to be a safer choice.
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Feb 12, 2018 14:43
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Another funny music cliche - it seems like in any movie or tv show where an older, more wizened character is introducing a younger character to more interesting music, it’s ALWAYS The Clash. Most recent example being Stranger Things. Don’t get me wrong, The Clash was a great band, but there are other interesting bands out there people - can’t The Smiths get any love?
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Feb 12, 2018 15:46
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SiKboy posted:Also, you rarely see people on the internet arguing that "Pol Pot did nothing wrong" or that "The Hutu may have gone too far, but you cant deny that there needed to be a solution to the Tutsi Problem". Or that theses genocides didnt happen, or downplaying the numbers. There’s a tankie thread in this very forum that will show you otherwise.
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Feb 18, 2018 01:24
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Memento posted:So when do we get a Cerebus film that is hailed as the MRA incel alt-right holy grail? The only way a Cerebus film would work is if they gave it the Starship Troopers treatment and essentially made a film mocking everything the original creator believed in.
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Apr 27, 2018 17:47
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Zaphod42 posted:He was really edgelord grimdark in the 90s. Everything in the 90s was edgelord grimdark and it was really popular. Christ on a cracker Eric Larsen was a terrible artist. I always hated Venom as a villain because his motivation for hating Spider-Man never made a lick of sense. But because people loved his appearance so much they had to turn him into a half-assed hero.
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Apr 28, 2018 04:56
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Megillah Gorilla posted:In comics, this is done by beating up Wolverine. If you were to watch the 90s X-men cartoon without any prior knowledge of who they were or any of the characters, you’d come away thinking Wolverine was some pathetic weak dude the rest of the team let hang around because they felt sorry for him. Reason being of course he can’t use his claws unless they’re fighting robots and even then the show never lets him go full on bezerker mode.
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Feb 4, 2021 18:50
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sticklefifer posted:It irrationally bothers me when a title is an overly on-the-nose double entendre. I don't mean stuff like Shaun of the Dead or The IT Crowd where it's a pun or a word replacement. I mean the kind of title where it definitely seems like the writer came up with the title first, thought it was amazing because it has two meanings, then wrote an entire movie/show around it. There was a buddy-cop movie that came out last year called “Coffee and Kareem” where, I guess, the one cops last name is Coffee. I’ve never seen it and never will, but there is no way that the title didn’t come before everything else.
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Feb 15, 2021 15:00
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I think we are all trained not to expect people in movies to resemble the people they are related to in the movie or tv show. If you can believe the 3 Dunphy kids on Modern Family are related to their parents and to each other you’ll let anything slide.
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Feb 18, 2021 18:25
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Pope Corky the IX posted:I wish I looked like the milkman because that would mean we had a milkman and I always wanted a milkman but there was no milkman. Milk delivery was actually never really a thing. The whole “milk-man” myth was just a cover for super horny dudes banging other men’s wives.
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Feb 19, 2021 18:44
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When you see milkmen in old movies or tv shows that was just the writers way of getting jokes about wife-swapping past the censors.
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Feb 20, 2021 00:39
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HopperUK posted:i know there are good storytelling and time-saving reasons we don't see things like people properly saying goodbye on the phone, or people paying taxicabs, or whatever. But for some reason it's starting annoying me that nobody on TV or in movies ever has to pee right when they wake up. Surely it's the first thing almost everyone does in real life. And it's not even that I want to see it. It just annoys me that I don't. I don't know what I want. Reminds me of a teaser Fox did for 24 back in the day with characters from Family Guy: Peter: I don’t get this 24 show....when does he go to the bathroom? Brian: Do...do you really want to see him go to the bathroom? Peter: ............................................................................yes
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Feb 21, 2021 16:42
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christmas boots posted:Ian McShane is great and all, but I knew it was doomed the moment they didn't cast Rip Torn as Wednesday. Every time someone mentions Rip Torn I briefly think they are talking about Rip Taylor and I have to recalibrate my brain to adjust to the new reality. Essentially American Gods needed more confetti
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Mar 30, 2021 19:54
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I just watched Concrete Cowboy last night and while it was pretty good, it contained two separate instances of this cliche that has become really weirdly prevalent lately that I now can’t stop from noticing. You’ll have one character trying to explain something to another character. Usually the one explaining is a more wizened character while the other is more naive. At some point, the explainer will stop talking and say, “come with me, let me show you something”, and then the film will jump cut to the two characters at some other location where there is something that somehow allows the explainer to make his point better. The funny thing is, while the cut is always instantaneous, it’s implied that the characters had to travel some distance and time to get there; but their conversation will pick right back up where it was, meaning the two characters did not talk AT ALL the whole trip there. There’s no way that would happen in real life, the second person at some point would be like “tell me where the gently caress you’re taking me or I’m not going!”
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Apr 13, 2021 19:16
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Your Gay Uncle posted:A competent editor killed Judd Appatow's parents, which is why he swore to stay away from them. I have never wanted a movie to end as much as This Is 40. I swear it felt like it was 6 hours long.
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Apr 13, 2021 20:09
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oldpainless posted:In Schitts Creek, the episodes I’ve seen have Jonny rose and Stevie giving the guy Roland something to do but he always messes it up or bungles it. Why would you continue to place any responsibility in someone who has consistently proven themselves unreliable? Roland is a screwup and a pretty gross person but he’s also had Johnny Rose’s back at some crucial times throughout the series so it’s understandable Johnny would still include him.
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Apr 14, 2021 19:57
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Karma Tornado posted:many film shootouts are designed to subtly reinforce the notion that police are constantly outgunned by vicious supercriminals and are held back by "rules" and "laws" and "civil rights" The 1997 North Hollywood shootout is partially to blame for this. It was an instance where the cops were briefly outgunned and is now used as justification for why cops always need military grade gear. Funny thing is they made a TV movie about it and there’s a total writer-insert scene where the cops need to commandeer a local gun shop and one of the cops says something to the effect of “I can’t believe it’s legal to sell this stuff!” Because lol that a member of the LAPD would ever make the connection between legal AR sales and heavily armed criminals.
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Apr 19, 2021 15:57
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Growing up my mom used to have daytime soaps on and I remember multiple times a character would come into a scene and a narrator voice would just say “In today’s episode Dr. Strongsteel will be plaid by Brock Manhammer” and then everything would continue as normal, I guess because the normal guy called out sick.
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May 13, 2021 15:51
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Cowslips Warren posted:For zombies, why the gently caress aren't they literally full of maggots? You should be able to hear the flies buzzing way before you see the horde. Zombies are just magic - full stop. Every property that tries to get all scientific about how zombies work is just embarrassing. They’re just magic monsters.
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May 13, 2021 16:20
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Android Apocalypse posted:Has there been any zombie movie that runs with the "this is magic causing this"? I would like to watch that. I mean, the whole concept originated from Jumbies or D’jumbies that are magical, malevolent spirt-type creatures. It’s only more recently the whole “no, it’s actually a virus causing this and these corpses will chase you forever but they never decompose or starve to death and have an unlimited supply of energy but I assure you it’s not magic!” has been a thing.
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May 13, 2021 16:58
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