Page 1 of The greatest movie cliches ever

Lists are dead fashionable at the moment, here at Reviewer, so here`s another that should run and run.

Movie cliches.

You know what I mean. Those `oh so unique` moments that happen in a film.

I`ll start with these two :

(1) One person falls over the edge of a high building/mountain/precipice of some shape or form, and is hanging on by his/her fingernails. Person still on terra firma reaches over to grab said stranded person. Two things always happen : (a) the `Can`t Quite Reach` phenomenon - the outstretched hands of strandee and supposed rescuer don`t quite meet up - cue: straining on face of rescuer, who somehow manages to grow extend his/her arm by a few inches; (b) if strandee is male, invariably the entwined hands will slip away from each other, and the male plunges to his death; if strandee is female, she will be rescued by a rescuer (replete with bulging biceps, and veins throbbing on aforementioned biceps in spectacular fashion)

(2) Knife fights. Person on ground is faced with person on top about to shove a blade in his face. The blade quivers several millimetres above the person on ground`s face. Strained faces, bulging biceps, throbbing veins. He usually responds by pushing his hand into the attacker`s face which for some bizaree reason always results in attacker (a) dropping knife or (b) miraculously flipping over.

Bring `em on, kids

Sorry Clayts but gotta point out an exception to your rule number 1 - Cliffhanger - bird plummeting to death.
How about in a multi storey car park when someone is being chased by a car, they never seem to think about running INBETWEEN the cars where they can`t be followed.

One of the newer and ever-growing cliches is the mobile phone phenomenon. Virtually everyone has one now, but in films only one of the gang has one and either the battery is dead, or "There`s no service". A big threat to modern cinema and especially the "Stranded Somewhere" type of movie.

This one just p***es me off all the time:

Every time somebody uses a PC in a film, every button press and mouse click generates a beep or whizz noise, something that doesnt happen in the really real world. Generally computers in films arent actually real computers at all - just some art directors vision of one, as they probably dont know what a PC is or looks like.

Catch my drift?

Aye.

How about the one where in the slasher movies the victim (invariably female) when hearing a noise goes outside in the dark (usually not wearing much), and is then attacked.

Catch me going out if I heard a noise.

Royd

Here`s another one :

Hero is cornered by a group of hoodlums. Rather than all piling in on said hero, a la rugby scrum, the hoodlums queue up to have the crap kicked out of them.

Similarly, when the hero has successfully `knocked out` all of his opponents he will receive medical treatment from a sexy female and, despite his heroic attempts and absolute hammering at the hands of his assailants, will ALWAYS wince and scream like a baby when she dabs a little bit of TCP on his wounds. Go figure...

Punching numbers into a phone, gets me every time, it can range from two digits to around 25 digits. Oh and does every phone number in the US start 555 - something ?!?!?!

Brother gets crippled / killed by lunatic. Remaining brother seeks revenge and manages to cripple / kill lunatic. Cue the plot for every Van Damme film ever made.

Horror/chase movies

When it starts getting creepy, the victims always retreat to the basement or other cold/dark/isolated corner of the building. Of course, the perfect place to go.

Gunfights

When the hero sacrifices himself in the thick of the action (sob, what a martyr), his enemy`s gun will always `click` jam (in reality, the majority of jams will not occur from a dud primer but from the fact that a case jams orinsufficient recoil - hence no click).

Sci fi

Despite having all the galactic universe`s supply of Plasma guns/phasers/radox bombs/moldy underpants, they will be of no effect against an insidious alien threat. However, simple trigonometry, calculus or a neutrino beam (and hence the nerdy kid who paid attention in "math" class) applied to a used bog roll will cause the aliens to wither and die with relatively little effort.

I`d always assumed the 555 thing on phone numbers in American films was to stop anyone actually phoning them in real life. Presumably all 555 numbers just result in no connection, or perhaps in a perfect world there`d be a recorded message something like `You have just called a number from a film. Go away and play with your toys, moron`.