What do You Hate about Movies?

My Warren | 01/01/2002 | Mad Bunny

[Long Cut]

PH is a shining example of how NOT to make a movie. LOTR, however, should be viewed by everyone in Hollywood, especially Lucas and Spielberg. Methinks Mr. Jackson is looking to school the both of them.

[snake pliston]

I would have to go with all of the stupid movies directed towards teenagers that are put out. These things are horrible, with absolutly no plot and raunchy humor that gets old after the first 10 minutes. The writers to these movies are lacking material so much that they are forced to limit most of the shows to at most 90 minutes. My favortie part of these movies are when they end! What ever happened to classics like Terminator 2 or even ones like Enemy of the State? These kept viewer interest and had a plot.

[Emmanual_Goldstein16]

I think it's kind of stupid when I watch a comedy that isn't funny. Most comedies I see aren't really that funny. When I sawThe Whole 9 Yards, I was pretty dissappointed. The humor was pretty dry and I thought it quite pathetic when something obviously was supposed to be funny and I didn't find it so. I dunno, I guess comedies these days are aimed at people that find sex as a funny thing and unfortunately, that applies to many, especially my generation.

[wizr]

You just struck my nerve, Doc. What ever happened to the good old SCARY movies, where the tension builds, and you visualized what happened in your mind (like the shower scene in "Psycho".)? NOW, we are treated to every gory detail, AND every producer has to one-up the last GREAT movie of the genre.

[Long Cut]

I've got a URL for that JPII review I mentioned earlier. It's at www.jabootu.com/lostworldnugget.htm if you're interested. It captures a lot of what's being discussed here. I wish I could, but I can't seem to post a link. Perhaps one of our resident computer whizzes?

[NickRails]

Yeah, Hollywood do a little resaerch and get some of the details right. And what also bugs me are cop movies where they get the basic methodology, procedure or terminology wrong. Such as, when carrying a pump shotgun, maybe you should have a round chambered before confronting a deadly suspect, instead of yelling, "Stop!", then racking a round.

I agree on the "Hollywood stunt grenades" which all seem to have a trampoline like effect.

[mel]

Exactly and if I am that desparate to see sex scenes I'd just go down to the Paris Adult Theatre on Summer Avenue in Memphis TN and see the real thing. This gratuitious sex scenes are totally worthless in my book.

[Sungirl]

ALL:

The sex scenes. It's voyeurism and very embarrassing. I can't go to a movie with my parents becuz of the sex scenes...its distastful, unnecessary and like I said... voyeurism. Anyone who likes them must like to be a peeping tom.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

I don't get a cartoon, short subject and a newsreel before the main feature, just a bunch of commercials. Gimme a Woody Wooodpecker cartoon & the Three Stooges, I say.

[Dr. Frank fan]

Don't generalize too much. The baddie that lets all the ghosts lose in Ghostbusters is from the EPA.

Interesting example, but it may be the exception that proves the rule. Notice that Ghostbusters was made in the '80s during the Reagan administration.

I don't expect one could think so readily of examples of films in which someone from the EPA was a villain during the Clinton administration. Just my guess....

[1 FELLOW FREEPER]

Call it the Steven Spielberg Syndrome. From E.T. to Juraissic Park.

[DaughterofEve]

What bothers me:

The need to insert obscenities or graphic scenes or dialogue into a movie I might otherwise like to see.
I read a detailed review of all movies in advance as I refuse to subject myself to something that I will be
sorry for later (did that too much in my real life!) and it rules most out. Oh well, I guess in the long run
it saves me time and money!

[vikingchick]

I dreamed last night I was writing a script and making a movie. It was about a gorilla, a ghost and a baby.

ROFL!! I hope that you dream it again tonight, and share the plot with us tomorrow. :)

[wizr]

You must hate all those voyeurs looking at you while you are lying on the beach , in public, catching sun, girl.

[Prodigal Son]

When I see a soldier and they have something wrong with the uniform. The most glaring is someone wearing ribbons on their utility (work) uniform, or in some cases the actual decoration and medals.

I'm with you, that drives me up the wall. It's almost stupid in a way because I think I should just ignore it but there it is. If any soldier where dressed like that in real life a Seargent Major would spot him from ten miles away through a dense fog. I usually sit there the whole time fidgeting when I see the medals messed up or the uniform worn the wrong way.

Someone told me once that there is some rule that prohibits Hollywood from showing a military person in exact uniform without specific permission from that military branch (impersonating military personnel perhaps?) I don't know if that's true or not but that would explain it. Gardens of Stone with James Caan and James Earl Jones was one military movie that seemed to get it right.

[x]

I hate how it's so often a cop who turns out to be the killer. It must have been a great shock the first time it happened. Now half the time it's predictable earlier on and comes as no surprise. It took some imagination to think up the cop-as-villain idea the first time. Now it's often a sign of lack of imagination and the constraints of the medium. Still, older mystery films were able to work many suspects into the same 90-120 minute format. I also don't get America's fascination with serial killers.

The whole "rich white guy as twisted villain" goes back to film noir of the 40s and further back to pulp fiction. Curiously, a lot of the writers and directors who promoted it actually were Communists. But it's moved beyond that to become a staple of the American imagination. It doesn't bother me so much, except when they try to identify the villain with specifically conservative causes, associations and beliefs. If you are thinking of a powerful malevolent twisted villain, there's no reason why he couldn't be a democrat or a liberal: LBJ, Wright, Bensons, Gores, Kennedys, Cuomos, Daleys, Dodds, etc. Power and its abuses can't be easily limited to this or that ideology. But Hollywood has a lot of "issues" of its own to work out. Being "rich" and hating "The Rich" produces a lot of cognitive dissonance that has to be handled some how.

[Sungirl]

If I lay out in a bathing suit..its in my own back yard or far down the beach where no one is around. I like leaving shorts on. I don't feel comfortable walking around in underwear in front of everyone. Bathings suits=underwear.

[Sungirl]

...and please don't call me girl.......boy.

[What]

What?

[Mr Rogers]

I stopped going to movies when I realized that sex had replaced romance and violence had replaced suspense.

I think this is because no one wants to take a chance. Suspense is difficult. An error in the pacing, a sufficiently implausible script - and next thing you know, no one cares. Romance between 2 adults is difficult and chancy. Suppose the audience doesn't like one of the characters?

However, exploding bodies and slow motion dismemberment are easy. Slime is cheap. And since people eventually become desensitized to violence, you have to continually up the bet. Hire another special effects team to make the dismemberment even slower and gorier.

Sex scenes are easy. You cannot ensure people will care enough about the characters for a romance to work - but put on an impossibly perfect, mostly nude female body, and all you have to worry about is that she'll stray too close to a hot car engine before filming is finished. The teen age boys will go to ogle. And teen age girls have learnt from TV that sex is all that matters.

Add in the fact that so many scripts are like that, and it becomes impossible to imagine who could play the roles for something else. Who would replace Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in a remake of Roman Holiday? Or Gary Cooper in High Noon? (Both have been remade I believe - I prefer not to know who Hollywood would replace them with...)

A man who has run around killing for fun and shouting obscenities in a dozen films is hard to accept in the role of a gentleman - even if they wrote one. And a woman who has shown every conceivable part of her body in a dozen films is hard to accept in any role other than hooker. So instead of Gary Cooper, we get Bruce Willis, and instead of Audrey Hepburn we get Julia Roberts.

And folks wonder why Braveheart & LOTR are the only films I've seen in a theater in 20 years...(BTW - in LOTR the volume was so loud it hurt. I asked my daughter - she said all films nowadays are that loud. I'm half deaf from too much time around jet engines, so I hate to think what this says about modern hearing levels.)