Five Minor Problems I Have With Movies

It's obvious that I have seen a whole lot of movies, and there are countless things about them that get under my skin....
Today, I would like to focus on five such issues -- all relatively minor, but still irritating. These problems show up in films on a regular basis, and the directors responsible for them should be hunted down, and given a dirty look.

--NUMBER FIVE: Inaccurate Depictions of Computers.
This is one that I'm sure others have noticed, as well. Some guy is using a computer to, say, hack into a government website, and every keystroke seems to generate a little bleep from the machine in front of him. Hokey prompts appear on the monitor, as well. "Access secret files," the character will say, typing at a rate of around 3782 words per minute. "Engage hacking codes. Enhance image re-routing. ENHANCE!" A bunch of cool-looking green and purple characters scroll by, and then a message pops up, saying something like "ACCESS DENIED. ACCESS DENIED!!!" Perhaps those words will be accompanied by a flirty woman's voice, stating the same thing out loud. Then the computer shorts out, as a skull and crossbones appear on the screen.


In real life, computers are much more boring, and do not speak so clearly. In fact, I've never had a computer talk to me in a soothing woman's voice right before it shuts down or blows up. Then again, I've never hacked my way past the CIA's "main databank of known security threat elimination decrypters", either, so maybe I'm full of crap.

On a related note, I also have a complaint about how video games are depicted in movies. However,I've already written an entry on that problem.

--NUMBER FOUR: Inexplicable Lack of Nudity.
Every now and then, I'll watch a film that CLEARLY should contain nakedness, and yet fails to do so for reasons unknown. I find this offensive. For example, I don't know how many times I've watched a sex scene that ends with both participants lying in bed, with the covers pulled JUUUUST high enough to cover their naughty parts. Especially the woman. Are we to believe that a female who just engaged in an intimate and sinful act with a male partner is suddenly feeling so self-conscious as to pull the sheets up over her chest? When does this happen in real life? Look, I don't care what the actress' contract says; find some strumpet who will sign a better one.


Another related problem is that of obscured nudity. For example, in the first Resident Evil movie, there's a scene towards the beginning in which Milla Jovovich (Hollywood's hottest woman) is getting out of the shower. As she reaches for a towel, Milla awkwardly places her hand JUUUUST over the part of her anatomy that otherwise would have been exposed to the camera. That little move has always taken me right out of the movie because it's so unnatural. You can almost hear the director telling her, "Now, Mila J, I want you to cup your hand rriiiiight HERE as you're grabbing that towel. We wouldn't want to offend anyone!" Her character is alone in her own home; are we supposed to believe that she'd be modest for some reason? Besides, later on in THE SAME FILM, she goes and exposes herself, anyway...TWICE. It's not like they were aiming for a PG-13 rating.

(**The above complaint is also related to an even bigger gripe I have with films, and that is the phenomenon of the Bad Sex Scene. Since it's a broad subject about which I could probably write an entire book, I'll save that for another day.**)

--NUMBER THREE: Teeth.
OK, there are two teeth-related problems that I have with movies. First, it bothers me when the characters in a film all have perfect, Hollywood-style choppers. Seriously -- almost everyone in Hollywood has flawless pearly-whites, and they can be seen in countless films. The Screen Actor's Guild clearly has an excellent dental plan, and that's great for them; but it still takes me out of a movie. I don't want to watch a picture about a bunch of homeless people, only to notice that one of them looks like he's spent more on his mouth than I'll earn in an entire decade.


An example of this can be found in an otherwise fantastic movie, The Devil's Rejects. There's ONE scene in which Sid Haig, as Captain Spaulding, has straight, white, sparkling teeth. Then, for the rest of the movie, he's got brown, crooked ones. C'mon, Rob Zombie -- you came SO CLOSE to getting it all right. Couldn't you have gone the extra step?

Anyway, the OTHER dental problem in movies that I want to talk about was actually pointed out to me by my Cousin Bob a few months ago. It concerns toothpaste...or in this case, the lack of it. You ever notice that, often times, when someone in a movie is depicted brushing his or her teeth, there is no friggin' TOOTHPASTE involved? I've seen it so many times that I actively look out for toothbrushing scenes, and applaud any director who gets them right. It completely takes me out of a film if an actor is just rubbing a non-frothy toothbrush across his teeth for no reason. Sometimes, he'll do so vigorously, as if trying to compensate for the glaring lack of realism in the scene.

One offender is The Devil Wears Prada. I find it hard to believe that the character played by Anne Hathaway could look as gorgeous as she does without using basic hygiene products, yet there she is, brushing her teeth at one point with no toothpaste. There is no excuse for this. I don't want to hear about continuity concerns or any other such garbage. Just fix it.

--NUMBER TWO: Screeching Tires.
This is a small one, but it bothers me. I've noticed that in the world of film, it appears to be a rule that a moving automobile must produce the sound of screeching tires, regardless of its speed. In Collateral, there's a scene in which Jamie Foxx drives his taxi cab through an alley. He's going MAYBE ten miles an hour, and yet his tires squeal. Why is this? I've only made MY tires do that, like, five times in my life, and I regularly drive like a maniac. I know, I know -- this is probably the fault of the sound effects guy, but STILL....

--NUMBER ONE: Exaggerated Awakenings.
This has annoyed me since I started watching movies as a zygote. You've seen the scenario: someone in a movie has a bad dream, and then he JOLTS up out of bed, COVERED in sweat, and panting like he'd just run a marathon. It never fails; the guy will practically fly 30 feet into the air, gasping for breath every time. This over-the-top depiction of waking up from a nightmare is in so many films that I couldn't even begin to count them, and it's always made me roll my eyes.

Now, I know that some people who want to pretend that they're psychologically intense will claim that they, too, wake up this way from bad dreams; but I say that they're lying. You know why? Because it's never happened to me, and therefore I assume it never happens to anyone else.


Why can't anyone in a movie ever wake up from a dream by simply opening his eyes? Why does he always have to bolt straight up, absolutely drenched? If I ever make a movie, I'm going to include a nightmare sequence, just so that I can depict the character waking up in a more realistic manner. I'll be the first filmmaker ever to have done so! People will walk out of my film, praising its realism. "I don't know why, but I really connected with that film," movie goers will say. "That director somehow made me feel like he's made a movie about ME!"

Anyway, here's film from someone who I'm sure has noticed all of the things mentioned above. We're two peas in a pod, me and this guy.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/


"A Jewish cinema owner (Mélanie Laurent) in occupied Paris is forced to host a Nazi movie premiere, where a radical group of American Jewish soldiers called the Basterds, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), plans to roll out a score-settling scheme. The face-off is about to go down -- that's if Col. Hans Landa aka "The Jew Hunter" (Christoph Waltz) doesn't get in the way. Quentin Tarantino directs this World War II-set spaghetti Western."

Now, I am not one of those drones who praises everything Quentin Tarantino does and kisses his backside at every opportunity. In fact, I have failed to enjoy a number of his films, and think others are simply overrated. While I marveled at the technical skill apparent in the Kill Bill series, for example, I never really ENJOYED those movies. I also squirmed in my seat through most of Death Proof.

Anyway, I DO admire Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, but since those films were made, like, 15 years ago, I had started to fear that maybe old QT had lost his game. Well, with Inglourious Basterds, I'm happy to say that he hasn't.

Ostensibly, this film is about a group of American soldiers who sneak into Nazi-occupied France to...you know...kill Nazis, as Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) so eloquently puts it. See, the idea is to be as brutal as possible with those Germans, kill them in horrifying ways, and leave their mutilated, scalped bodies all over the landscape. If enough of this goes on, Aldo reasons, it'll start to shake the Nazi's confidence. No holds barred; just some good old fashioned Natzee killin'. I liked the concept right away!

There much more to the plot, however. Throughout the course of this film, we meet a variety of characters who all conspire to kill Nazis in their own ways. There's a German film star...a movie theater owner...saboteurs of various stripes. They all hate them those Nazis, and eventually sort of converge on the same location, leading to a spectacular end sequence.


Quentin Tarantino has always reminded me a bit of Stephen King, in that the majority of any one of his films is devoted to simply building up to a grand finale. He makes us suffer through long scenes of tedious dialogue and character development before we get any real action. At times, QT movies can be downright boring...that is, until the pay-off. Inglourious Basterds follows much the same formula, although the downtimes are simply more interesting in this one, and the pay-off is HUGE. Tarantino has become a stronger storyteller over the years, and the setting for this picture is inherently interesting. Both of these elements have made for a thrilling film.

During the picture's climax scene, set in a Nazi-packed movie theater, I actually found myself laughing out loud (which seldom happens), and then cheering (which NEVER happens). QT builds up quite a story, and then doesn't hold back on us for the ending. It is, on several levels, a real barn burner. AT LAST, someone has made the World War II movie that I always wanted to see!

The only problem I have with Inglourious Basterds is the fact that it really doesn't focus quite enough on the Basterds themselves. In fact, they're really only the main element in perhaps a third of the film. I would have preferred, say, the bar scene to have been shorter, and more Basterd action to have been included in its place. Still, I can't complain much. I had a great time with Inglourious Basterds. It's a triumph of historical inaccuracy, and I recommend it to one and all.

4 out of 5.

b.