The leading man...no matter how objectionable ...how ugly...how out of shape....how old...always gets a young pretty girl. Even the 'not so beautiful, plain' girl is usually very attractive -- never overweight (unless thats the brunt of jokes), or homely. Can't the 40 something man date a 40 something woman who looks 40 something????
The one problem that I had with LOTR is how corny Frodo is. If I here him say "oh Sam" and look at him like he was about to lick his face and dry hump is hairy ass one more time I swear I will kill someone. And Sam would cry over every little thing that happened. STOP BEING SUCH A ****ING p***y SAM!!! GET A ****ING SACK!!! Besides those two complaints, I loved those movies beyond comprehension.
Yeah, I hate actors who play the same guy in every movie. I was glad to see Denzel do a brilliant turn as a totally worthless, evil sonuvabitch in Training Day. Suffice to say, I think that was his best performance ever. Like Vin Diesel's famous line that made him sound like he was passing a kidney stone: "But the buster kept me out of handcuffs!" I think most movies are pretty ****ty these days, but there are few that come along, like Finding John Malkovich, Donnie Darko, Momento, originial Matrix and Pulp Fiction that give me hope that original filmmaking is still alive and well.
When someone is totally unarmed and has a gun pointed at the back of their head. Once...just once...I wish the guy with the gun would blow the other guys head off the second he goes for the gun. There's always a "distraction," the guy with the gun looks off, then the guy without gun makes a "move" and ends up getting away or killing the other guy.
sad movies that have the tear-jerker scenes then they are followed immediately by a happy scene involving dancing and a song by the temptations or some other old group. it's like the dancing solved all of their problems or something. whatever. ex: stepmom, hope floats, and several others that i can't think of right off hand.
Slow motion death of a character, a friend screams "No!" in slow motion, gains new strength, goes to friend only to have that friend die in his arms, reaching out for him, a teary eyed moment, then the fury. Example: LOTR Two Towers with Aragorn and the gay-elf on the wall. Character is believed rolleyes to be dead. Upon return, a friend greats him with either "You're late", "You look like crap", or "About time". Example: LOTR Two Towers, Aragorn and Legolas. Courtroom scenes where the lawyer's dialogue is ludicrous, i.e. shouting matches with the witnesses. Example: A Few Good Men - (Although Nicholson makes the scene not only palatable, but friggin amazing.) Black guy and white guy in a car. Dispute over radio channel. Or even worse, wow they both like rap music. How cool. This one is covered better by a Maddox article.
Oh yeah...disaster movies where they focus on a dog narrowly escaping danger. Who gives a **** about the thousands of people who just died...the important thing is that the golden retriever is safe. Actually, the sad thing might be that the director does such a poor job making the viewer sympathize with any of the characters, that you end up caring more about the dog's safety than any of the jerk characters.
I "love" these scenes. The very best has to be Saturday Night Fever, of course, but there's also Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. And then, there's stuff like "the Goonies..." Yes, every director has his own special way with that trope.
LOL. Actually, more than a few posts in this thread are worthy of a If I might add: I hate it when directors always have to TELL us something. They have to TELEGRAPH ideas or emotions because, of course, they assume their audiences are stupid (sometimes they're right, but, hey, often they're wrong). For example, "Last Samurai." Every scene seems to scream, "AM I NOT NOBLE AS HELL? AND DON'T I LOOK NOBLE AND MANLY IN MY NEW BEARD?" Even the great Peter Jackson is guilty of this. When the Fellowship comes into the room where Frodo has just awakened and Gimli wipes a tear.... (sigh) Come on, now. No need to push it. I almost cried for real a couple times anyway ("My friends, you bow to no one.") Even if this was shameless tear-jerking as well, I won't complain at that scene. Having read LOTR, I took the Frodo/Sam relationship in stride. I tried to be an adult about it. But I couldn't help thinking (when Frodo and Sam were on that protruding rock with all the molten lava around them, and Frodo saying, "I'm glad you're with me, Sam, here at the end of all things") that Sam might say, "Well, Mr Frodo, I figure we've got twenty minutes before we're turned into hobbit-kebob; so let's not waste it crying! What do you say? Can you get it up for one more adventure?" Ten seconds later: "Who's the Lord of the Ring? Who's your Master?" "You are Mr FrodooooAAAARRRGH!" Let's see, what else? Really really bad chick flicks. Stuff that would make even the Lifetime channel blush, and that no man would go see unless with a date that he had a reasonably sure guess would put out later that night. Think "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," "Mona Lisa Smile." When I hear females talking about wanting to see such movies I have the same reaction they often do to LOTR and such:
Horror Movie: White girl runs through woods, trips and sprains ankle Action Movies: Protagonist's ability to dodge bullets Everybody kung fu fighting Car losing control, hitting a fruit stand and crashing through a window Sex Scenes: Ugly non-rich men can pick up hot chicks. Every woman has an orgasm Dramas: Even though you love each other, it's just better to break up and be miserable because love just isnt enough. Comedies: Everybody has a friend who can get them into Yankee stadium so they can have a picnic at home plate and impress their girlfriend. All Movies: Nobody ever really works. Nobody ever uses coupons. Nobody ever needs a root canal. Nobody ever gets their calls routed to India.
"Love interests" in movies like Godzilla, Titanic, Jurassic Park, etc. Every movie does not have to have a blatant appeal to women. Just give me the man-eating monster.
What about the sex scenes where the lovers involved do the passionate "lock fingers together" with each others hands?
No matter how good of a shot the character is supposed to be, when it really matters he can't hit anything. Or even worse, that guy's partner has a machine gun with a seemingly infinite amount of amo and can't hit **** from two feet away, then when all seems lost and he is down to his last round he hits the shot of the century. I just wish I had invented the squib, I'd be a frickin billionaire by now.
1. When they base a movie on a book, and then make the movie radically different than the book. Hey jackass, the book was pretty f-ing good or you wouldn't be making a movie out of it. How about not tearing it to shreds. I understand that some changes need to be made because the movie is a different medium than the book, but other times it is changed for some idiotic reason. A couple examples from Jurassic Park: In the beginning of the book, first there is this big thing about the origins of InGen, it wouldn't play well so you cut it, fine. Then there is a part where a little girl is vacationing with her parents in Costa Rica and is bitten by a dinosaur. Sound familiar? That is because they decided to include it at the beginning of the Lost World, which is nothing at all like it's source material. At the end of the movie, the T-Rex eats the velociraptors and Hammond agrees with Grant that maybe the park is a bad idea. Why? Because Spielberg said he wanted the T-Rex to be the hero. Who cares that the movie ends at the halfway point of the book, that the second half was really awesome, and that the T-Rex would have no reason to save them (a device which is used again in the third movie, lazyness)? No one will notice cause the dinosaurs look f-in great. This stuff seems to happen more with Michael Crichton books than anything else for some reason. Anybody compare the book Timeline to the movie? 2. Why don't the bad guys ever win? I don't remember a good movie where the bad guys win since the Empire Strikes Back. They had a chance to do it with the Matrix, Neo is dead and the machines are in Zion, but instead the machines agree to let the people live, and then there is some r****ded scene with a sunrise. 3. Deus Ex Machina - see the above mentioned ending to the Matrix movies. 4. George Lucas Dialogue - Write an outline and then hand the project off and go play with your computers Georgie, cause your writing is crap. The dialogue is the worst, but the finer points of the storylines aren't to great either. 5. Flamboyantly gay characters - some movies and/or tv shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) have gay characters that act like normal people and are gay, then there are movies or shows where anyone who is gay is like some amalgamation of Christopher Lowell, Liberace, Jack from Will & Grace, and that blond dude from Queer Eye. Way to keep up those stereotypes. 6. Rampant drug use with no/rediculous consequences. In Half Baked they are passing out drugs at random to people on the street. The only one who gets in trouble is the guy who feeds a diabetic horse. They are later pinched for B&E, but of course they proceed to get the cops high so its all good. 7. White people = goofy morons who just need black people to teach them the right way to act (eg. Bringing Down the House). Yes your average white person and black person may act a little different. White people are not all idiots and stuck up jerks, and black people are not all thuggish dressing convict geniouses with a heart of gold. Some of us on both sides are just regular people. 8. Cheap sympathy shots. There is some character that they want you to feel sorry for, whatever the reason. They put in what they want you to feel sorry for them for. That should be enough. Then you get the shot of them crying about it, either in a close up, or a shot of them sitting on the floor with their back against the wall (with or without knee-hugging). Yeah, we get it. They are in a crappy situation and we feel sorry for them. Can we move on now. That should hold me for now, but I reserve the right to b**** some more later.
Stupid scenes in terminator in which the older version just happnes to win, even though the newer version is smarter, better, faster, and almost indesdtructable. Bend it Like Beckham. They had to win the championship game. Elf. Santa had to end up as the victorious one, and everyone had a perfect family . No one made fun of the girl for singing. Heck if anyone gets up on a car and starts singing, I would be the first to bust out laughing
Thanks for ruining the ending for Revolutions without the slightest warning beforehand, I hadn't seen it yet.
