Totally put me off....

[Mini]

It's very rare that the mention of a real life band doesn't put me off a film (or book, for that matter), particularly if it's done to try and make a charcter seem hip.

I agree; The Smiths in (500) Days of Summer, Paul Simon in Like Crazy...

[madhair60]

Ugh god, what film is it where Natalie Portman's character declares that "The Shins will change your life"? Such a gaping hole for the director or whoever to just force feed his favourite band in. It'd actually be better if you just used them in the soundtrack, regardless of if the song fit the mood of the scene or not.

The bit in Juno where they watch HG Lewis films and talk about Argento boiled my piss for a similar reason.  OH but the worst is Bill Murray in Zombieland.  LOOK EVERYONE IT'S BILL MURRAY LOL WHAT A LEGEND IT'S INHERENTLY FUNNY THAT HE IS HERE AND THE OTHER CHARACTERS WORSHIP HIS MEDIOCRE FILM CAREER.  Zombieland is the worst film ever.  FUCK.  So yeah bits like that pull me out of a film.

[CaledonianGonzo]

However:

My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit.   That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

is a thing of wonder.

[Depressed Beyond Tables]

The use of talking whilst eating in films can fuck off.

Also the wrong 'clip clop' walking shoe sound can ruin any film beyond the point of redemption. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

[momatt]

OH but the worst is Bill Murray in Zombieland.

That made the film for me.  For pretty much the same reasons that you hated it.

[Gavin M]

OH but the worst is Bill Murray in Zombieland.  LOOK EVERYONE IT'S BILL MURRAY LOL WHAT A LEGEND IT'S INHERENTLY FUNNY THAT HE IS HERE AND THE OTHER CHARACTERS WORSHIP HIS MEDIOCRE FILM CAREER.  Zombieland is the worst film ever.  FUCK.  So yeah bits like that pull me out of a film.

I'd hate to be in the room when you watch Space Jam.

[Buelligan]

Also the wrong 'clip clop' walking shoe sound can ruin any film beyond the point of redemption. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

And engine noise - why is it impossible to show a bike/car[nb]more often a bike[/nb] with the correct engine sound?  Would you show someone playing a piano but force the audience to listen to a violin?  This is inexplicable and unforgiveable.

[danyulx]

Happy endings always put me off, they simply don't resonate with me. Any film that's worth its salt should at least end with the central character's suicide. Failing that, at least have some kind of poetic, enigmatic ending that makes absolutely no logical sense. But for God's sake, don't go out on a so-called high note, e.g. a marriage or someone winning the lottery or something, no matter what, unless signalled as a clear pisstake.

It's why I'm such a major fan of the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. All his films -  all forty-odd plus of them - are pretty much the exact same film, just filtered through different styles, and all end with someone either topping themself or going insane. Roll end credits.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Conversely though, I don't like the trend for really bleak endings. It's kind of depressing when you've been with a character/characters for 2 hours and then they die horribly at the end. I think it works for films with an overall "message" like Brazil, but if it's just a regular horror/drama or something it's a bit of a downer.

[danyulx]

It's kind of depressing when you've been with a character/characters for 2 hours and then they die horribly at the end.

They would have only went and died on us a few years later after the film's ending anyway, or decades, if they're lucky. You may as well end the film with it, their death, if you're making one about them. Or I would anyway.

[holyzombiejesus]

I was really enjoying the Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes and then they had this ridiculous shot. The film is a superior crime drama and filmed in the appropriate style. Then, all of a sudden, when there's a stake-out at a football match, they drop in the most ridiculously jarring scene. The camera starts from a Goodyear-blimp distance above the stadium and proceeds to sweep down, first gliding over the stadium, then swooping down and capturing a player scoring a goal. The camera continues it's journey into the crowd and gives up a close up of the main character's face, all in the one shot. It was audacious and technically brilliant but it all it did for me was to jolt me out of the film that I'd previously been immersed in and start wondering how they'd done it and why White Ribbon or A Prophet hadn't won the Oscar instead.

[holyzombiejesus]

Any film that uses a character's love of jazz to signify a cool indifference with a steely intelligence will suck. Particularly if they smoke. And are a disc jockey.

Ditto a character's love of K Records/ Belle & Sebastian style indie-pop to signify their kookiness and adorable complexity. In reality, all this should signify is that the film should be thrown in a bin.

[billtheburger]

Pretty much commercial cinema. If it has to sell itself on the basis of having famous American actors and trailers, it's likely to be low on anything original.

Since watching the Charlie Brooker screenwipe with loads of screen writers I also turn a film off if a male calls a woman "sis" just to show they are not a couple. Lazy writing.

[BlodwynPig]

Also, I'm not that big a fan of over-the-top big, stupid twists in films, especially near the end. Either I see them coming a mile off or they come out of nowhere and make no sense, have been crowbarred in there to Wow the plebs. That the recent 'The Kill List' was a good example on how to piss on a perfectly decent film in this way.

joker, you mad joker

[Blumf]

Not a deal breaker for me, but sugar glass, it never cracks right.

[Egyptian Feast]

They would have only went and died on us a few years later after the film's ending anyway, or decades, if they're lucky. You may as well end the film with it, their death, if you're making one about them. Or I would anyway.

That would make Baby's Day Out a total bummer.

[dr beat]

I started at Sheffield Uni in autumn 1995, just as Goldeneye was released, starring of course local favourite Sean Bean as the main villain.  At the same time he also starred in When Saturday Comes, a cheesily enjoyable football film in which Bean indulgently gets to play for Sheffield United.  We also saw that, the week before Goldeneye.  At the same time he was also in 'Sharpe' on TV. 

When we did get round to watching Goldeneye, none of us could take Bean seriously as a Bond villain, particularly as he struggled at times with the RP accent, and sometimes lapses into broad Yorkshire at key moments in the film ("tastes o'strawberries, Jerms!") So for us, the fourth wall had no chance of being constructed in the first place, having seen him in said football flick.  That said, we did think it would have been better if Bean's villain character had also been called Major Richard Sharpe.

[thecuriousorange]

Whenever a fictional character says the name of a real life actor in a film, I find myself doing a 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' thing in my head, to prove that it's technically impossible for the two of them to co-exist in the same universe. I find that very distracting.

What I found distracting was Sigourney Weaver playing a character who turns up halfway through Be Kind Rewind, even though the film Ghostbusters, which she pretty much starred in, exists in that universe and is referred to quite explicitly near the start. And no it wasn't some clever in-joke.


On an unrelated note, Woody Allen's Match Point was spoiled a bit when the main character was questioned in a police station by a detective played by

Spoiler alert

James Nesbitt

[close]

.

[mycroft]

I always forget that the policeman near the beginning of Hook was played by

Spoiler alert

Phil Collins

[close]

. Even as an eight-year-old in the cinema that brought me right out of the film for a second. Not enough to spoil it, mind.

[gatchamandave]

...Spielberg having already done quite enough else in that film to do so.

Speaking of whom, I was completely taken out of Empire of the Sun when we open, post intermission, in 1944 as Jim ducks and dives his way across the camp, trading with other inmates in an attempt to stay alive. Alas, the gritty nature is completely destroyed by the decision to score it with flirty flutes and cheery strings more appropriate for, say, a Quidditch match. As a result a Japanese POW camp becomes slightly less menacing than Hogwarts when Snape's in a mood. For me, the film never recovers and later moments of supposed poignancy become tests of patience and credibility, no matter how genuinely reflective of real experiences they are.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not a film, but it's weird in The Sopranos when Anthony is talking about his favourite films, and mentions Goodfellas (a film the actor was in). Also, Marlon Brando getting mentioned in Scarface, when Al Pacino co-starred with him in possibly both of their most famous films.

[Buelligan]

The music in Inglourious Basterds.  It totally ruined the film for me.

[Nuclear Optimism]

Not a film, but it's weird in The Sopranos when Anthony is talking about his favourite films, and mentions Goodfellas (a film the actor was in).

Was Gandolfini in Goodfellas? I know Christopher, Melfi and Phil Leotardo were, and about half the rest of the cast. A lot of those references were self-knowing (Christopher shooting someone in the foot, Phil stabbing someone in the boot of his car), so that makes it okay. TV Tropes, of course, has a whole page on the phenomenon.

I actually don't mind the idea that actors in a film watch a film which may feature those actors, but I do mind when the characters in a film are said to resemble the actor. Like in Oceans 11 (or 12 or something) when the Julia Roberts character has to pretend to be Julia Roberts (yet Clooney and Pitt go unnoticed).

[Mini]

I actually don't mind the idea that actors in a film watch a film which may feature those actors, but I do mind when the characters in a film are said to resemble the actor. Like in Oceans 11 (or 12 or something) when the Julia Roberts character has to pretend to be Julia Roberts (yet Clooney and Pitt go unnoticed).

That must be one of the worst plot devices I've ever seen.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Was Gandolfini in Goodfellas? I know Christopher, Melfi and Phil Leotardo were, and about half the rest of the cast. A lot of those references were self-knowing (Christopher shooting someone in the foot, Phil stabbing someone in the boot of his car), so that makes it okay. TV Tropes, of course, has a whole page on the phenomenon.

Sorry, I meant Christopher! There's also the bit where he shoots someone in the foot and says "It happens" (a reference to his famous scene in Goodfellas)

[madhair60]

I ended up really enjoying the film, but the bit at the beginning of X-Men First Class where young Erik goes NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIN was so silly that it took me right out of the moment.

[Borboski]

Steven Spielberg's Girl in the Red Coat in Schlinder's List. Which screams LOOK! HERE! IT'S TIME TO FEEL! EMOTE! ETC.

I used to think that - but in retrospect I think Schlinder's List is a pretty respectful portrayal of the holocaust, I don't find that section, it's only a few seconds long.  It's not as though the rest of the film isn't emotionally effecting...

[Goldentony]

HIS MEDIOCRE FILM CAREER

What?! Jesus!

[kidsick5000]

Like in Oceans 11 (or 12 or something) when the Julia Roberts character has to pretend to be Julia Roberts (yet Clooney and Pitt go unnoticed).

Possibly the worst decision in film plotting.
Up till that point Ocean's 12 was a rather ace film, why they couldn't have said A N Other famous actress.
But then the film does suffer the curse of Izzard. Though, the hard light hologram feels less far-fetched as time goes on, but that was a crap idea too.[nb]A theory I put forward that as well-meaning and affable Eddie Izzard might be, he's a bit of a Jonah when it comes to films[/nb]

[kidsick5000]

Something that should annoy me but I actually really like is portrayals of punks and/ or nightclubs.

Nightclubs are rarely done well. The biggest crime being that of easily having a conversation.