Attention Movie Makers

I love to watch movies. But, because I'm willing to watch a lot of movies that I've never heard of, I can usually be counted on to stumble upon some really terrible movies in that mix. Movies that never should have gotten past script-writing, let alone green-lit. The thing about it is, there are common threads throughout these bad movies and if people would just take the time to see if their movie has these then they could be removed and maybe a decent movie could be salvaged. Here are the ones that spring to mind:

-The characters are having a serious conversation when one of them comes up with this classic: "You act like this is just some big game. Well, it's not a game, it's my life!" See, up until then you were winning me over. Now I want the other guy to win.

-The movie features a scene when one character opens a door to reveal another character doing something they shouldn't (drugs, sleeping with someone's wife, etc). Rather than say anything they just lock eyes for a moment before the character in the wrong slowly begins to look away in self-disgust. The other character just wordlessly (and slowly) closes the door. This was once a powerful moment, now it's an over-done cliche.

-It has a musician in a starring role. Let me just break this one down for you - musicians can't act. That's why they became musicians. You might, might, be able to coax a good scene or two out of them, but if you expect a musician to carry a film then you should also expect that movie to go straight to DVD.

-It features one action scene that just over-does the laws of physics. I understand that watching movies requires a little bit of letting go of reality. But not to the point that it goes from far-fetched to impossible. What happens next is the movie watcher spends the rest of the time thinking, "They never would have survived that fall. Never."

-There are 15 plot shifts in the last 30 minutes of the movie. "We're friends... no we're enemies... well, we're enemies who can be friends for the moment... and now I've betrayed you once again." I see what you're doing. You want to be clever and have the trailer feature the phrase "with a twist you'll never see coming." Only we've seen every twist at this point so, actually, we probably did see it coming. All it really ends up doing is muddling up the movie and making us think you wrote it at the last minute.

So, there you go. Take a moment, screen writers of America, and think about whether or not your movie features any of these flaws. If they do, schedule a re-write and fix them. You'll thank me later.