Badmovies.org Forum

I am sure we are all familiar with Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary. Well, why not apply these to all those film terms we hear bandied about. Yes, these will and should be more than a bit unfair.

To start:

Character study - Boring story with unlikable characters.

Period Piece: Boring story with unlikable characters set in the past. 

 :wink:

Imndependent Film - Someone is gay, uses drugs, or has a disease.  Or all three.

Lifetime Movie: Some woman gets abused, then exacts revenge and meets a better man.

Art film: A film that uses technical shortcomings to disguise pretentiousness.

I watched a "period piece" once and was very confused.  There was no blood, no bloating, no men making mad dashes to buy chocolate to soothe the beast. 

Popcorn movie~ has no storyline, usually has terrible dialogue and acting and exists only to make you go eww, ahhhh, look at the pretty colors.

2: or vice versa

3: Uses ridiculously long runtime, one-liners, pontifications, & overuse of exploitive elements to disguise an otherwise incoherent script.

Disaster Film: 12 washed-up actors and actresses portray characters who cheat on their spouses, drink too much, run for political office, and try to save a terminally ill child . . . all while running away from a lava flow caused by a plane that crashed into a research station on the side of a volcano.

Cult Classic:  Move that was so bad that it was despised by critics and lost tons of money at the boxoffice, but 517 people have seen it 50 times each and have memorized all the dialogue.

Horror Comedy - <oxymoron> These movies are usually neither horrific nor funny and, 9 times out of 10, star former porn stars (with the inevitable cameo by rug monster Ron Jeremy) or up-n-coming porn starlets (meaning actresses willing to appear nude without any plot justification) and are oten produced/directed by former porn directors.  These movies suck, but not in a good way.

 :cheers:

Summer Box-Office Hit!: Paper-thin storyline and overpaid household-name actors that the sheepish masses quote whenever they can because others of the sheepish mass did and the rest of the sheepish mass laughed.

Political consciousness-raising film:

Boring piece of crap that makes the viewer lose consciousness.  :tongueout:

Romantic comedy - a woman with a laundry list of neuroses quirky character traits eventually breaks a man's will breaks through a man's outdated notions of gender roles and forces him to completely change his life to suit her comes to make him accept her for who she is.

Action movie - f**kING EXPLOSIONS!  EXPLOSIONS ROCK!  YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  YOU ASK WHY A CAR EXPLODED JUST BECAUSE A GUY SHOT ONE BULLET AT IT?  WHAT THE f**k ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF MOVIE CRITIC?  EXPLOSIONS, f**k YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  BOOOOOOOOBS!   YEAHHHHHHHH!

Black Comedy:  May or may not star actual black people.

Documentary: a subjective editing job of selected material to make one's own point.   :tongueout:

"Quirky"--term used to describe a movie that substitutes character traits for characterization and eccentricities for jokes

"FEEL GOOD" MOVIE OF THE YEAR - Piece of crap in which a stereotypical underdog achieves a nearly impossible feat . . . and at the end of the movie, the entire main cast jumps up and down smiling and waving in slow motion, while confetti flies and inspirational music plays.

SPECIAL EDITION - A release containing lots of promotional trailers for other movies from the same studio, closed captioning and/or subtitles, alternate audio options (usually Spanish and/or French), and an inflated price tag.

ULTIMATE EDITION - A re-release of the SE in new packaging.  Sometimes a direct port sometimes not, even so 80% of the time the only differences are in the trailers/promo material.  Often comes in a card board sleeve, which jacks the price up even more.

DIRECTOR'S CUT - Longer, boring, more pretentious cut/re-edit of an already overtly long borderline semifinal cut of a film.   Often comes in a lenticular card board sleeve with 'holographic' gimmickery, which really jacks the price up.

FINAL CUT* - Shorter faster paced cut of the longer, boring, pretentious Director's Cut.

LIMITED EDITON/COLLECTOR'S EDITION - Can be a release containing any of the above, usually in some gimmicky packaging like a tin, a coffin shaped box, a lunch box, or whatever and may contain a toy, book ends, et al.  Price?  It'd be cheaper to pay for X-rays out of pocket.


(*) These releases tend to only appear when a movie is so utterly pretentious and boring that a studio has to keep re-re-releasing DVDs to recoup the millions of dollars it has sunk into advertising and hype.

SPECIAL UNRATED EDITION - This movie was never released theatrically

Based on a True Story - Only slight less respectable than, "Swear to God, you guys, this really happened to a cousin of mine..."

...

Titillating! - There are semi-naked people in this film (nothing showing).

Sexy! - There are naked people in this film.

Erotic! - There are naked people in this film, but they are shot in low-light, close-up shots; you have no way to tell what's what.

Raunchy! - There are naked people in this film, but they are mostly men.

...

Re-Imagining - A remake without even the original's inspiration.

 :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :teddyr:

No, I assure you, having "sexy" in the tagline or whatnot just means there is candid discussion of the act, usually by snarky chicks sitting around a table -.-

Send-up: Selling a well-loved television idea to those who really hate it

"So bad, it's good": What pompous critics trying to be trendy call Plan 9 from Outer Space (Which they often have not seen)

"So bad, it's horrible": What pompous critics call every other b-movie

Homage: A cross between satire and mediocre execution

Remake:  Solid excretory product evacuated from the bowels.

I got some of these from another site (not sure off-hand which.. think it was Jabootu's)

Atomic grenade: when an explosion occurs that is FAR bigger than whatever caused said explosion should have been able to produce ("Whoa, that one gas can with a rag in it took out the WHOLE BUILDING, must have been an atomic grenade in there.")

Cabbage head: when someone doesn't know something (usually technical or scientific) and they have to have it explained to them (and thus, explained to the audience).  Often used in situations where the character SHOULD already have this knowledge

ex Event Horizon, Sam Neil's character explaining what "space folding" is to a bunch of people who live and work IN SPACE

Trailer: All of a movie's best lines and best scenes, edited together out of their original context in order to raise expectations to an unrealistic level.

Movie Star: Someone who manages to be a successful actor without being a good actor.

Reboot: 1. People were sick of remakes, so we came up with a euphemism.  2. The cinematic equivalent of a Mulligan, for cash-cows that have gone sour.

Sam Neill would have words with you.

Still, the thought of Bill Paxton as Weir makes me chuckle.

"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see, buttwad!"

DOH!  Guess I was thinking of Aliens or something....

I was tired, forgive me Sam!!

"Visually stunning" means the story and acting suck

Twist Ending
An ending you more than likely A.) Saw coming hours before or B.) Really has no shock even if you didn't see it coming or C.) will prevent you from ever watching the movie again with any interest.

See Also: M Knight Shamalamadingdong


Direct To Video Sequel  
A.) Film that absolutely had no chance in hell of attracting anyone to a theater.  Even if was a free showing on a rainy Saturday.  
B.) A film that will contain less than 5% of the actors and charm appearing in the original.
C.) Another sickening attempt by Disney to have parent shell out money for crap their kids will beg them for only to lose interest after 5 minutes of viewing.  

"From The Producers Of..."
A film that has hardly a chance of popularity that needs to ride the coatails of a mediocre film for some attention.  Usually has no effect of the film's suckiness with or without the producer involved.

Erotic - You see the woman.

Pornography - you see the man too.

Oscar Worthy - Way too highbrow to be appreciated by the kinds of people who actually watch movies.

Sumptuous - Fully one quarter of the film is dedicated to lingering, pointless shots of scenery and/or bodices.

Mise-en-scene - Put short, film-making. A special term used only by film school-graduates, who have since went on to write reviews for their local paper, to prove that $30,000 worth of education makes them more deserving of being able to say "My opinion on movies is more nuanced and valuable than yours."

Timeless - So bland and boring that relevance ceases to be an option.

Family-friendly - All of the jokes involve flatulence, instead of other bodily fluids.

Twist-ending! - "I put this in my review to completely rob the impact of whatever surprise ending this film tried for. I do this because I hate you, the unwashed plebeian audience that did not appreciate my usage of the term mise-en-scene."

Scene-stealing performance - The lead actor is a dead fish. They are the star, though, so we must describe all the decent actors as "scene-stealers."

Epic - its long.  Really long.  And not always in the "we've got a lot of story to tell so this will take a bit Lord of the Rings" long but in the "let's pan over the scenery very, very slooooowlllllly Apocalypse Now long."  Often includes having way too many characters to keep track off.

Atmospheric - lots of poorly lit scenes with cheap "jump" scares and/or some exotic locale that's way more interesting than the actual film.

"Fun For the Whole Family": Only the kids could possibly enjoy this trash.

"Top Film of the Year": In reality, only one or two film critics think this.

"Electrify Performance By...": Means the acting is average, but considered great compared to everyone else who stinks

"Limited Release": The producers can't afford to have the movie shown in regular theaters.

Summer blockbuster - thoroughly unexceptional movie except that the sound is turned up very loud to make it exciting

"AND STARRING **** ****** IN HIS MOST UNUSAL ROLE"

A has-been comedian is playing the psycho killer or a drunk.

Exotic Thriller - Yes theres boobs...not enough though to hide the awful plot which is neither exotic or thrilling.  

Featuring Academy Award Winner... - Ok, so they're in it for about two minutes in a cameo that you'll probably forget about but dammit...they're in the movie.

Biopic - a movie that's not accurate enough to be a documentary or interesting enough to be fiction

Alternate definition:

Biopic - A chance to see how well one celebrity imitates another celebrity.

Ouch!

 :teddyr:


re: Twist Ending

I'd update that to read something like -

Twist Ending
1. An ending audiences members not high, drunk, or under the age of 5 more than likely A) Saw coming hours before or B) is intended to genreate shock yet has no real shock value due to it's obviousness, or; C) makes the viewer feel like they just wasted a couple hours of their lives on something they will never watch again nor have any interest in discussing.  2. Catch-phrase used in TV promos and trailers by marketing morons who don't understand that a twist ending, by definition, is supposed to be A MYSTERY and/or A SURPRISE to work effectively.

Whoever the studios have cutting their trailers for them are idiots.  There's been so many movies I was kind of interest in that they gave the entire movie away in their promos/trailers so I saw no point to see it in the theatre.  Way I see it if they think that little of the movie then I'll just waite for it to hit the bargain bin or satellite.

Just me?

low budget b movie: Really cheesy movies :teddyr:

Romantic Comedy- Predictable films with unlikable characters, usually following a female protagonist with an unresolved issue who meets a man she absolutely hates, but finds out she has more in common with him than she originally thought. 

Remake- What execs do when they feel lazy.

Avant-garde- Depictions of random events made to look like highly intellectual metaphors.  Usually contains some gay reference or another.

Sleeper Hit- A film that no one bothered to see, but three people that did, who are probably overweight secretaries, enjoyed it.

Hallmark Films- Films that lack substance and storytelling, but make you feel all warm and fuzzy when they're done.  Said to show "good values."