CURRENT MOVIE CLICHES

A very overworked cliche is the person trying to get into someone else’s apartment lobby. Nobody answers the buzzer & he/she has to wait until someone else comes in or out when they can then squeeze into the lobby.

We were always warned in Manhattan not to let someone tailgate into the building behind us.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Super-cut of "I can't kill you, but 'X' can"

If a movie comes out after the 90s, but is set in 90s New York, it seems there is a need to mention Gulianni.

aa

loved this

Brooding on rooftops at decks at sunset or at night.



Every hospital has a roof that our hero can access for a long meaningful moment of contemplation. Our protag will be shot from behind. We see what he sees. Hopefully, we "feel" what he feels (and there is a good chance that music is being piped in to convey this feeling to us. Whether it be Dr. House on the roof, Deniro looking off at the city, or William Peterson staring off at the horizon. We take a break from the action to be in a moment as our hero processes what has happened and what needs to be done.

Sequel everything
Spinoff everything

The whole let’s stop in the middle of the dialogue to make lame jokes about a character’s appearance.

Sounds like MSNBC! (rimshot!)

Is it possible for anyone to die in a series or film where there's not a pool of blood seeping out around the body?

It's now such a hackneyed cliche that I'm surprised directors still use it. I swear, if a guy dies of a heart attack they'll still show him laying in a pool of blood...

Good point. Old westerns would always have always have bloodless gunshots which seemed fake. Now it seems fake to us if there isn't blood everywhere.


Also, there is a conspicuous overuse of glistening sweat to emphasize tension, fear, and danger.

The last couple posts reminded me of punch sound effects in movies.

This is similar to a post I made long ago about knives and swords - how they must always be accompanied by the sound of metal on metal no matter if they are pulled from a sheath or thrown (neither of which make a sound, and even if they do on the most close up level, it's not one of metal scraping metal, but rather; for a sheath; metal scraping leather).

So, we're all familiar with the punch sound in movies, but in reality punches don't sound like that (excluding perhaps in the sport of boxing where the gloves hitting skin do make a sound). The sound of flesh striking flesh in an openhand slap is much more relatable.

If punches do make a sound, it is more likely the vocalizations of the person being punched or even the person throwing the punch, but the impact itself would have a very low & blunt sound (if any perceivable at all), but nothing like that produced in the movies.

Body shots to a clothed person are relatively silent, except, again, for the grunting or sounds of forced out air from the victim.

Even if you don’t like Bullitt, you must admit McQueen never did sweat. The cool of the cool.

Direct-to-streaming, actors signing on exclusive Netflix deals, simultaneous internet and theater releases. More low budget small films than ever before. With the technology of digital cameras the picture quality is great across the board no matter what the budget is.

This all adds up to being beneficial for film-makers as they can practice their craft more often with less stops along the way, creating what seems like limitless opportunity to develop talent. Flip side is with all the extra competition small studios have less chance to make a buck. Big studios must be annoyed.

You're so right. When I think way back about the earlier westerns, a punch to the head always had the sound effect of a loud "crack". Pretty funny, but we didn't think much about it, even when the guy's hat didn't fall off.. Yeah, the sound of a punch landing is more like a dull thud.


How about all the different wild sounds used for gun fire?..

This one's probably been mentioned: but people shot by a gun who get knocked off their feet and go flying several feet backwards (often through a guardrail, wall, doorway, or through a window to add to the effect that they've been blown backwards).

This has been shown not to happen in real life (yet it's practically a prerequisite in movies).

A typical bullet wound is so small & precise that it has no kinetic power to move an entire body. In fact, most people who are shot fall forward (as the reflex to sudden injury is to attempt to cover organs with the arms and curl up into a ball - when standing, these reflexes cause a body to fall forward).

However, the kick-back effect is usually on the firing end of the gun (depending on the type of gun) that the shooter must brace against to get off a good (on-target) shot.

Desperado and The Last Man Standing both give Sir Isaac Newton the finger in this regard.



The new wave of gun-movies is a very tacti-cool, pious about showing people with fingers off the trigger finger until they're ready to shoot and doing funky press checks and reloads. People don't fly so much any more as have interesting blood-mist terminal ballistics added in post as our hero shows us "how it's done."



Kilmer's reload in HEAT has been used as example of a quick reload of a black rifle by some trainers, allegedly. Cruise's quick draw to drop two assailants in Collateral has been praised as being on point, with some people copying it as a training drill. Art imitates life imitates art.



This is mixed in with parkour gun-khana nonsense (which seems to start in America with Christian Bale in Equilibrium). Kind gun-fight break-dancing, MMA stuff.



Audiences are now convinced of the necessity for proper form and technique of some sort to be a BA (no longer just shooting from the hip like Harry Callahan) and that people who are really good must look cool while doing it.


There is a cultish verisimilar style that is now engrained in cinema. John Wick is the prime example tacticool gun-khana. Expensive race-guns that cost as much as cars and the latest gun-trainer mumbo-jumbo are the new aesthetic. This is American gun culture back with a vengeance (although I think video games are the "gateway drug" for most kids).

A character banging their head against something is becoming an overused trope in horror movies. It was creepy in Hereditary, now it's a little predictable.

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Not just in horror movies. In Norway’s Blind, the heroine purposely walks into a wall to injure herself. Boy, did this look & sound real. Scary.

Oh, an Eskil Vogt film. Must be good then