In a lot of art films there are those sequences of lonely, isolated children playing wandering around in nature. I can think of countless movies that have done this(All about Lily Chou Chou, Ratcatcher, Paranoid Park, etc). It can be beautifully shot but I think it’s way overdone now and it has become a cliche. There are other ways of portraying isolation than showing some kid looking out into a lake and cutting to their sad looking eyes.
I’m really tired of seeing characters in movies do that thing where they turn their head to the side, making that hideous knuckle-cracking sound.
When the father has to choose between his job and his family, specifically when it’s the choice between a promotion or the son’s Karate exhibition.
“You were never there for me”!
I guess I’m just tired of over-stylized drivel. Everyone tried to imitate Tarantino following his first couple films…but none of these directors are as good as QT, plain and simple….most of them flat out suck. I’m tired of the brute force cinematography we experience in films today. Nothing visual is left up to the imagination because the directors smack you in the face with their own vision TIMES 1000. Stylistic elements are just overdone to the point that they lose all effect on an audience.
A cliche of film & TV shows is that the police department’s first place to track down suspects is almost always the local strip club. This may have started with Beverly Hills Cop but I think that the cliche even precedes that 1984 release.
The racist or prejudiced person watching some personal interaction and realizing a race or group is actually “just like us.” See Glory, District 9, etc.
boy and girl meet and don’t like each other, something happens to bring boy and girl together, boy and girl start liking each other, boy messes up and they split, boy apologizes to girl and they get back together and everything is peachy.
That new movie “9” was full of these. Off the top of my head:
1) Evil artificially-intelligent machine has a single glowing red eye
2) The main protagonist underdog needs to convince the patriarchal clan to stand up and fight, rather than hiding in safety from danger. Exemplified by the main character yelling, “YOU’RE A COWARD!”
3) When the characters are cornered, there’s a sudden intervention by a character who’s been alluded to, or who has gone inexplicably missing
4) Small characters run across a bridge, larger villain character unwisely elects to follow them.
5) The RPG cast of characters: one “big guy” muscle-man type, one elderly wizard/patriarch, one lunatic/mad-prophet, one unlikely hero.
All the spanish speaking women who play maids are called Maria
Slow motion.
Shaky camerawork.
The character dropping the crucial tool in some sort of countdown situation.
The cop: oversteps authority
The alcoholic : falls off wagon
The immigrant: needs lawyer
All cliches courtesy of House of Sand & Fog
Superfast and flawlessly operative computer displays in movies, decked-out with beautiful graphics-heavy GUIs and drawing effortlessly on linked, comprehensive databases. And of course these are operated by super-efficient drones, often in war rooms walled by a towering display and resonating with loud calls of progress, like “Target sighted!”
You know – the kind of thing certain to be found in films by the redoubtable Scott Bros.
Off the top of my head: the mother-in-law, played by some well-known actress you haven’t seen in anything for a while, is either a conservative kook or a liberal kook, and stays way past her welcome, or intimidates the well-meaning suitor and/or husband. (Because screenwriters can’t write interesting women, especially if they’re over forty.)
Greg: Could you provide a “for-instance” or two, please? I can’t recall many of these mother-in-law characters, not even in Mother-in-Law. Although Jane Fonda is certainly meddlesome (she tries to break up her son’s wedding to JLo), I don’t recall her being particularly conservative or liberal, or overstaying her welcome.
You’re kidding right? Naw, I don’t think I’m going to bother, thanks.
I was NOT kidding, but you’re perfectly free not to respond. Maybe I just don’t see the same movies that you do, the ones filled with wacky, meddlesome mothers-in-law who overstay their welcomes.
If Greg won’t reply, maybe some others can give me a for-instance or three for this kind of cliched character?
I’m not really sure either…nothing comes to mind about that particular character.
I don’t think I’d bother, given his response.
Good point.
three words “on the rocks”
The immigrant story (Slumdog Millionaire, the Kite Runner, etc…):
-somewhat delightful and mischievous childhood amidst poverty
-some kind of horror which forces the protagonist and his family to leave
-along the slow process towards living comfortably in a “first world” situation, he finds a love interest.
-constant references to points in the characters past.
-the end
I also hate the struggling gay character cliche, in which the entire drama of the story is the fact that the character is gay. (Lifetime tv dramas, Logo mini-movies, etc…) This kind of thing annoys me even more than the token feminine gay character cliche.
Veterans exclaiming angrily that they fought in a war.
Veterans exclaiming angrily that they fought in a war.
Villain’s incredibly long rant being recorded on tape, and then only the crucial parts played back. Just because.
Person getting flicked off by little girl in raunchy comedies. Because it’s such a cheap joke.
Disaster movies: person in vehicle fleeing from approaching special effect. It happened at least 3 times in 2012, and I just saw Cruise’s War of the Worlds on TV, and it was definitely in there, too. They always move just a little faster than the explosion/tornado/tidal wave/volcano, and things are always crashing to the ground around them (cars, fireballs, etc). It usually occurs in a car, but at least one of the ones in 2012 was in an airplane. Also, the protagonist always manages to avoid mowing down any pedestrians at full speed.
As a side note, anyone feel like they tend to write in the style of Ebert’s Movie Dictionary books when posting in this thread?
Happy endings
Evan
What film cliches are you most tired of and why?