Kinda Quiet - So Let's Start Something

Michael Paul Cote | April 14, 2006
I recently watched the movie "Wolf Creek" - Not bad, as horror flicks go. However, considering that it was based on real events, something was put in the film for what I can only assume was shock value, that allowed that little bit of disbelief to slip in. It was tiny and seemingly inconsequential, but it made me think, hmmmm. So, I was wondering if anyone else had single moments in movies that they otherwise enjoyed, that kinda spoiled the rest of the film for them?

Spoiler ahead -



The part that I was referring to is where the bad guy, with one swish of his knife, lops of the fingers of one of the characters hand. Had the hand been on a table or against some solid structure, I'd say ok but she was just holding it in front of her.
Reminded me of the swashbucking movies where the guy slices through the candles with his sword and they don't fall until he blows on them.

Jackie Mason | April 14, 2006
[hidden by request]

Kris Weberg | April 15, 2006
I still argue that the worst moment in Titanic, a film seemingly constructed of two hours' worth of lousy moments that ends with some very nice scenes of a ship sinking, involves the scene in which Jack, handcuffed by Snidely Whiplash (played here by Billy Zane) to a pipe in a flooding room, utters the immortal line: "The room is flooding!"

Yes, it is. And on radio, that line might have been purposive.

But since that hardly counts, I'd have to nominate as my "bad moment in an otherwise enjoyable movie" the dreadful scene in The Fifth Element in which Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) suddenly discovers that humanity is capable of horrific violence and becomes a doe-eyed ball of emo.

Not only is it a ludicrous effort at weightiness in a film whose pleasures are entirely in its elaborately empty sophomorism, it also makes minimal narrative sense given that Leeloo herself has spent the previous hour or so of the film beating the crap of out and being shot at by humans and aliens alike. Luckily, stupid violence and half-assed "witty' dialogue return a moment later, so the movie largely gets back into gear for the finale.

It also occurs to me that "Crappy Sentimental Scenes in Over-the-Top Comedies" needs its own special section.

Scott Hardie | April 15, 2006
Vague Harry Potter book 4 spoiler...

That scene from Wolf Creek that you described, Mike, reminds me of a similar fleeting moment in the Goblet of Fire movie. I don't object to a character cutting off a hand with a knife in a "children's" movie because the whole point of the later books is that they get darker, and it's pretty damn dramatic. But the apparent ease with which a plain knife was pressed through the character's wrist like it was a stick of butter was so unbelieveable as to ruin the moment. Maybe the book goes into more detail and it's some kind of magic wrist-amputating blade, I dunno.

Scott Horowitz | April 20, 2006
Hey Scott, shouldn't that be a "vague Harry Potter Movie 4" spoiler?

hehehe