The Worst Movie Sin

[Dano]

No problem with the other examples, but I saw no demigod superhero character traits in Gibson's character in Signs. Maybe I blinked and missed it, but he just looked kind of sad and lost through most of the movie and just wanted people (and aliens) to leave him alone.
*****  Well... okay, that's true I guess... but I just got the impression from his acting.  It didn't hit you that this guy was a little too much?  Not in the heroic sense per se, but in a pious always-doing-what's-right sense?  Like coming up with the exact perfect things to say to his kids when the aliens were invading his home?  That wasn't too much for you?  I mean he couldn't bring himself to SWEAR.  What kind of person IS that??

Granted - less so than some of his other recent efforts and in a different way.  Point taken.

[AndyC]

Hmmm, I'm not sure Mel always comes off as homophobic. The cops in Mad Max seemed to have some serious gay undertones. Take Max's boss for example. Shirtless guy with a shaved head and big moustache, wearing tight leather pants and a silk scarf around his neck AND the men call him Fifi.

[Dano]

I think Gibson was accused of homophobia because of the depiction of the gay prince in Braveheart as a sniveling twit.  Apparently no gay men in real life are sniveling twits and some group decided to make that point by criticizing the movie.  And when there are so many BETTER reasons to criticize it...

[AndyC]

I agree that failed comedy has few redeeming qualities. I mean, bad sci-fi can at least be funny, as can bad action, bad horror or bad romance. If comedy isn't funny, it's nothing. There is also something inherently annoying in people really trying to be funny when they just aren't.

I'd also agree about the star vehicles, the pretentious films and the message films. All of these fall under the category of a movie trying to be important. Say what you will about cheap genre films, most never pretend to be more than a good bit of entertainment, and they often are. How can we fault them for that? On the other hand, when some overblown piece of crap comes along, billed as the greatest movie of the year (and it's only January), I immediately count a few strikes against it.

However, those are not the worst sins a movie can commit. For me, the one thing that makes a movie unwatchable is the lack of a decent plot. Looking at the movies I've been unable to finish, both bad comedies and bad drama, that is the common thread. Silence of the Hams, Wrongfully Accused and other bad spoofs usually have barely any story to speak of, just enough to go from one bad joke to the next. Pretentious crap like Gosford Park, calling itself "character driven," spends almost the length of a regular movie introducing characters and setting the scene before any sort of a plot appears.

Whether you want to make me laugh, cry, jump, save the whales or even just stay awake, you must tell me a story that holds my interest.

[Chadzilla]

Dano wrote:
>
> Well... okay, that's true I guess... but I just got
> the impression from his acting.  It didn't hit you that this
> guy was a little too much?  Not in the heroic sense per se,
> but in a pious always-doing-what's-right sense?  Like coming
> up with the exact perfect things to say to his kids when the
> aliens were invading his home?  That wasn't too much for
> you?  I mean he couldn't bring himself to SWEAR.  What kind
> of person IS that??
>

Wellllll....the way his character is presented in Signs has more to do with writer/director M. Night's use of the character in the arc of the story than Gibson (unless he had a say in how the script was drafted and I don't think that Shymalan would allow for that, the man has, according to ).  His not swearing was a touch of comedy (and, perhaps, a sloppy hint that his hasn't really lost all that much faith - perhaps if he were boozing it up more, listening to the satanist rock music (check out www.goodfight.org to see what I mean) at all hours of the night, ignoring his kids and, basically, acting like creep rather than a timid lost soul.

More than a few people have pointed out that he runs a farm and has ZERO weapons around the house, and it has been shown he is incapable of using harsh language to frighten off predators that might be damaging his crops, so what gives there.

Still, Signs is one of my favorite movies of the year, right up there with Spiderman, The Ring, and...uh, well...

[J.R.]

There are several "homophobic" (I hate that P.C. term) lines in Lethal Weapon, but that's really the screenwriter's thing.

[J.R.]

One sin I'm seeing more and more of is what I like to refer to as "Fever Dream" filmmaking. It's when the camerawork, editing and direction either don't mesh or go too fast and you're never drawn in to the film. Everything just goes by and you never really get into it.

[wheresthecarrot]

wouldn't it be considered homophobic to stereotype Fifi as much as he was?

[John]

>Basically anything where the actor's ego and pretensions become characters in
>their own right.

How about Barbara Streisand? I recall reading a comment once about how she considers her left side to be her best and has the filmmakers set up each shot to showcase that side. Prince of Tides was on cable one day and I watched a few minutes of it. Sure enough, almost every shot of her was from the left!

I'd also add Woody Allen to the list of stars whose ego is so big that it distracts from the movie.

[AndyC]

If I looked like Barbara Streisand, I'd probably be careful to always show my better side too. I'd keep the bad side against the wall. Although, I think that's the front.

[raj]

She has a better side?

I agree that boring is the worst sin, I think it might even be an Andy Warhol quote.  And now the quick cutaways between shots, where I can't get an idea of what's going on..  People (Hollywood), it takes time to process an image, if it appears and disappears to quickly, i don't get a sense of what's going on, only a headache.