Movies/scenes you "professionally hate"

OK, so not long ago The Hurt Locker was on TV and although I've seen it before, I decided to watch it for the 2nd time and wasn't disappointed one bit (don't worry, this thread won't be dedicated to Hurt Locker). Afterwards I checked how many awards it won (the answer: a lot), but was really surprised at quotes like these: "...if you know anything about the Army,<...> you'll be so distracted <...> that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me" or "I was amazed that a movie so bad could get any kind of accolades from anyone" and so on. Apparently, this was the reaction of many war veterans, professional soldiers and other people associated with army. I myself found the movie very suspenseful and realistic, but then again I have little to none knowledge about army dealings in general. And thus I started thinking about movies that were more or less ruined for me just because I have an extensive knowledge about certain things portrayed in them.
For example, as a professional poker player, I almost fell of the chair laughing at a Casino Royale final poker hand. I won't spoil it much for whoever is yet to watch the movie, but I can honestly tell that it was the single most ridiculous poker scene I've ever seen. To say that it was unrealistic would be an insult to the word itself, I mean the chances of it playing out the way it did are the same as surviving being hit by lightning 7 times (and yes, that is a lame Benjamin Button reference). I know it may seem that I'm just too proud and arrogant about what I do or whatever, but that's really not the case: for example, Rounders has so many bulls**t scenes about poker shown and told in it that you could write a book about it, but I understand it was supposed to appeal to wider audiences than professional poker players and I think they succeeded very well - and I loved the movie myself. But in Casino Royale it was done so ridiculously badly, that I couldn't help but see the writers as really lazy, at least regarding that scene.
Also, it's similar with many basketball and football (for you my American friends, read: soccer) movies. As a life-long fan of both sports, I'm yet to see a movie that came close to realistically portraying these sports. As far as I'm concerned, Space Jam came the closest - at least they didn't pretend to have a realistic story, and there's still credit because of Michael Jordan doing real moves for the movie.

So, my question is - what movies or just particular scenes you found laughable, boring or downright insulting because of having extensive knowledge about one or other thing? Maybe you're an avid boxer and thus couldn't bare The Fighter or Raging Bull? Maybe you're a some sort of law enforcement guy and can't stand watching terrible police work in movies? Or maybe you're a tough mafioso and inaccuracies in Donnie Brasco drive you mad? Let me know!

I'm not a professional poker player and I hate the way the game is portrayed in Rounders (despite liking the movie).

What I've played of poker, which is probably more than the average player but less than a pro, is that you have to play the cards and not the other players. Doing well has nothing to do with reading tells and watching other players. Playing well is knowing odds and understanding the strength of your hand. No one reads the other players for tells, especially considering most pros are sitting with people they've never played against before!

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You're right! I'd never try to read someone's tells without knowing them well! And specially in a time where most people play online.

But I do read the way they bet... That's probably what I think more about.

on topic: I usually try not to judge a movie based on what I know about a specific theme... For instance Le Concert and Jenseits der Stille are both movies about classical music that have serious technical mistakes but I still love them!

My brother hates the inaccuracies in Pearl Harbor. Namely the angle-decked aircraft carriers in the Imperial Japanese Navy over a decade before they were invented. Plus frigates with modern bridges.

Good thread, by the way.

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“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

While it's still important to have at least basic knowledge of physical tells (when deciding if your opponent is playing with "scared money" or simply is an unskilled amateur), it's definitely true that the importance of it almost completely gave way to mathematical aspect of the game - mainly because of the rise of internet poker. Physical tells were very important before internet poker era, but of-course when Matt Damon's character started calling exact cards of other players just because they flinched one way or another, I couldn't help but roll my eyes over

It's good to know that someone hates Pearl Harbor because of a different reason than "it's Michael Bay's film" (which is still a valid reason by the way)

Richard Brody on Whiplash, "Movies about musicians offer musical approximations that usually satisfy in inverse proportion to a viewer’s devotion to the actual music behind the story. Few, if any, fictionalized musicians are played onscreen by real-life musicians of their calibre. Most good music in movies is played by musicians playing themselves..." In other words, leave the professional work to the professionals. Why would you look to a movie if you want to see something portrayed with practical accurately is beyond me.

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Mubi

Year of the Dog

Everything about this movie just made me want to scream.

The movie is about a woman, played by Molly Shannon, whose dog ends up dying when it gets into a neighbor's yard and eats snail poison. The woman rushes her dog to the veterinarian but it's too late. So the receptionist, played by Peter Sarsgaard, tells her that he has this great dog that needs a home. She agrees to take the dog and the two strike up a friendship. Only that "great dog" is a food aggressive, dog aggressive German shepherd who tries to bite her and eventually kills one of Sarsgaard's dogs. After which he takes her dog to the shelter and has him put to sleep without her knowledge.

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I was a center air traffic controller for five years, and movies which have ATC are almost ludicrous in the way they depict the inside of an ATC building, how controllers talk, what they do, the altitudes planes fly, etc. They act like a plane a thousand miles away at 39,000 feet would talk to its destination airport. Films such as Pushing Tin, Die Hard 2, Ground Control and most of the Airport movies are phony, if anybody cares. I try not to let it affect my enjoyment of the films though. Some films which use ATC very believably are the original Airport, Julie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and United 93.

I was also a teacher for a long time at inner-city public schools too, and I have some opinions on movies set in those places. But I'll save it for later.

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I gotta admit I didn't really get the point you were trying to make, so I'm just gonna reassure that I'm not watching movies in hopes that everything portrayed in them would be perfectly accurate in comparison to the real world. However, I do expect a movie to be accurate in its own terms of reality. For example, I think it's safe to assume that Bond movies are set in the real world, the one that we live in. Sure, the story is obviously fictional, and there might be some gadgets or stunts that are unrealistic, but they still work in the realms of what the audience can grasp and understand. So if this movie - which established itself as working by the real-life rules - portrays a certain poker hand, I'm expecting it to be played out like a real hand could play out (unless it says differently, which it doesn't). Now as far as I'm concerned, the way they did handle that scene was so over-the-top ridiculous, that they might as well throw Bugs Bunny at the end with super-triple-quadruple royal flush, which would beat Bond's hand. To put it simply - in that particular scene, the movie didn't make sense in the reality that movie itself established. And it did kinda threw me off.

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound like I can't enjoy the movie unless it doesn't bulls**t about the subjects I find myself knowledgeable of. I can, and I do And I'm sure others do, too. I'm just interested in how other people are affected by these things, and also interested in some particular "mistakes" in movies I've seen that will get my attention the next time I watch them. As with the example in my opening comment, I found myself intrigued that movie I thought of as very realistic turns out be a baseless fiction in many people's eyes Even if that doesn't change my opinion about the movie itself, which I found really good.

There is so much fake crap out there. Nearly anything with a gun. Definitely anything with a silencer.
Anything that involves computer hacking. For a long time anything that involved computers in general.

All you can really do is try to avoid the bad stuff. I don't tolerate those kind of movies, I turn them off or leave.
Occasionally a movie will be good enough that I can keep watching, like in taken when neeson hides from bullets behind a couch. So incredibly stupid. But I liked the hand to hand knife fights.

I know a boxing fan who hated Rocky for the reasons you're describing but thought Raging Bull was the closest film for accurately depicting a fight.

What do you think of the amazing United 93 scene where the planes nearly collide, best scene of the whole movie, one of the most intense scenes ever imo.

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Rounders is a lot better than all the other poker scenes in big movies. I've played a lot of poker and it's laughable in films like Maverick or Casino Royale, at least Rounders shows believable hands of poker, slow played flopped straights, or full house beating lower full house. In big movies it's always royal flush beating quads, which is super rare.

I've never lived through anything like that, but yes, it was totally believable and chilling. The worst nightmare of a controller is that the safeguards will fail and a collision will occur - it's a very helpless feeling. It's also very scary to have an aircraft go silent.

Mark, did you ever have one of those days where you told yourself it was a bad day to quit sniffing glue?

As for Casino Royale, I'm with the original poster. I'm no professional poker player, but that whole poker scene ruined what otherwise was already a mediocre movie. It's like the filmmakers forgot anyone could watch a few minutes of the WSOP and know what real poker looked like.

As for what bothers me, I can't stand how Leon's sloppy techniques were portrayed in Leon: The Professional. Professional by butt! Oh, wait, I might be revealing too much. Carry on.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

I am not usually bothered by the fictional views on biology (and there are reasons to be), but Jurassic world and the whole Indominus Rex thing was just too much to take. It was an incredibly childish display of genetic engineering, assuming that simply by putting several foreign DNAs in a blender we can get a super-dinosaur with the most fitting attributes of each animal. I wouldn't even care if it didn't try to look serious and academic while shoving this bull down my throat.

Actually you've just reminded me of one of my professional hates – nothing to do with films – which is when the Silurians were brought back in Doctor Who a few years ago. They were given the scientific name "Homo reptilia" which is apparently grossly inaccurate. The funny thing is that even if they'd got this part right I would have still hated the redesigned appearance for being nothing like the original creatures.

As a cat(s) owner..
Inside Llewyn Davis scenes with the cat.. don't hate them.. but they are a bit unrealistic..

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I watch a lot of professional boxing, a lot! The boxing fights in the rocky movies are ludicrous - especially the sequels. I used to love them now they are just comical. Rocky one though is still a great film regardless.