They were effective the first time you read them. So you started using them in your own writing. Now you're a cliche-mongering hack, and you sound just the same as everybody else.

Time to repent, ye hyperbole pilers and adjective slingers.

No more "pitch-perfect" when "perfect" will do.
"Underbelly" we're done with, along with its modifiers "dark," "white," "soft" or "ugly."
"Powerfully faithful" or just "faithful"? Or "faithful to the powerful...etc"?

I recently started looking over pieces I've been writing for my book over the past four years, choosing some to edit and assemble into a book proposal, and the wince factor is high. The lazy habits become prominent. Maybe next time I do a once-over, I'll list you some of my verbal compulsions. Or not: probably too embarrassing to out myself in this way.

But 'fess up. What movie critic cliches are you tired of? Which ones do you use without thinking? Who'll come forward and lay them at the foot of the cross?

In plot synopses (yes, even in critic-penned ones): "...changed so-and-so's life forever." Well, duh. We don't tell stories about events that changed nothing.

Another pet peeve is reviews that talk about characters and insist, without fail, on listing the actors' names parenthetically. The practice almost never helps readability or understanding, and only encourages personality obsession rather than anything about the art itself. Worse, it makes critics look like they read studio press releases more often than real writing. Worse yet, the practice is, of course, exactly what the distributors and publicists are looking for...

My own worst habit is probably not at the phoneme level but the outline level, where I blather on for three paragraphs about art or personal insight before even getting around to talking about movies.

But I must confess that, when I talk about ratings, I can't stop complaining about Norbit. I am, yes, a broken record. Call me Skip.

(I did read "pitch-perfect" in a review just yesterday, though, and thought, "Okay, I've had just about enough of that one." So kudos for putting the kaibosh on that one!)

"Deeply moving." As opposed to what? Shallowly moving?

"Profoundly moving." Or profoundly anything, for that matter.

If every film, book and piece of music dubbed "deeply moving" were actually "deeply moving," people would be going around sobbing all the time.

Because I write most reviews in a hurry to get them posted by release day, I end up embarrassing myself with redundancy all the time.

If I had more time to think, I'd give each review a "hyperbole scan" to try and eliminate words like "most" and "best." Those are usually subjective terms.

"Award-worthy" - I would like to cure myself of praising something by referencing awards. Most award ceremonies are so devoid of integrity that they're not worth mentioning in a review.

I'm with you on the use of "profoundly" and "deeply moving," although I am also guilty of overusing both.

The most successful movie critics (not the best, mind you) seem to speak only in cliches--all the better for blurbs, right? I'm thinking of Gene Shalit and Rex Reed here. "I laughed, I cried" is a double-cliche that has ascended to the group of cliches that cannot possibly be used unaware.

How does one differ cliches from phrases that have become acceptable even as cliches? Is "quiet desperation" an allusion or a cliche? "Cliffhanger"? "Daily grind" (Mark Heard used that)? "Predictable outcome"? Someone having "chops"?

Jeffrey's post on hyperbole is one of the best comments I've ever read in this forum. Worthy of a major award, even.

But seriously, reading some of the great movie critics of old (e.g., James Agee), I'm surprised at how calm and measured their praise seems. Hence, when a fellow like Agee really gets excited about something (e.g., his legendary review of Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux), you immediately sit up and take notice. When he called Chaplin's performance the best acting he'd ever seen, it actually meant something.


It helps to not think of those people as movie critics.

Hey Ron, here's a Shakespearian one for you ("Every time there's an article about a production of 'Cymbeline' it says that it's rarely produced. How do I know this? Because I've read countless articles about countless productions of 'Cymbeline.' It's produced constantly. . . .")

I know. I was deeply moved.

Hey, leave uncle Rex out of this!


It's been used enough that I would say it should only be used when elaborated somewhat: if it's an allusion to Thoreau, then dig into the allusion just a bit. If it's not being used as an allusion, then to my ear it's probably overused, and therefore may be a cliche.


Well, that's passed into general parlance as an almost technical - or at least very specific - term, so I wouldn't balk at using it when appropriate.


But then, he's been dead for a decade and a half. A lot more mileage on those tires in the meantime.


Yes!! Very good observation. In particular, I find references to films or roles as "Oscar bait" (etc) to be not only overused and tiresome, but demeaning. It reduces the artist's work to nothing but Oscar lust.

Yes, calling a Juliet Binoche performance "Oscar worthy" is sort of like calling Handel's Messiah "Dove Award worthy".

Ron wrote:
: It's been used enough that I would say it should only be used when elaborated somewhat: if it's an allusion to Thoreau, then dig into the allusion just a bit. If it's not being used as an allusion, then to my ear it's probably overused, and therefore may be a cliche.

Huh, and here I thought it was an allusion to Pink Floyd. ("Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way...")

: In particular, I find references to films or roles as "Oscar bait" (etc) to be not only overused and tiresome, but demeaning. It reduces the artist's work to nothing but Oscar lust.

Well, sometimes being demeaning is the whole point! And certainly some actors DO take on roles because of the Oscar lust. Where such speculation seems warranted, the term would certainly be warranted too. But yeah, the term should never be used if one merely means to say that the performance is worthy of awards (or of that specific award; hmmm, has anyone ever said, e.g., that an award was Golden Globe-worthy but not Oscar-worthy? actually, I think some blogger somewhere said something rather like that today about Amy Adams's performance in Enchanted...).

I suppose. But I also have a problem with critics demeaning actors based on speculation about their motives.

I think the entire practice of criticism would change real fast if critics were criticized publicly in the same way that they criticize artists. I've often thought of creating a "metacritic" site, reviewing the reviewers, critiquing (or criticizing, if I speculate that their motives are unworthy) the critics. Bet it would fly.

I'm tired of "meditation on."

I'd visit it.

Ron wrote:
: I think the entire practice of criticism would change real fast if critics were criticized publicly in the same way that they criticize artists.

Heck, given how many reviews are written at blogs, and how many news sites and review sites allow "comments" after the articles, that day is pretty much here already.

One critical cliche that's starting to bother me is using the word "unrelenting" wrongly. Often, it's used as a stand-alone adjective, when it needs to be an adverb -- "unrelentingly skeptical" is correct, while "skeptical and unrelenting", for instance, is wrong. Or it can be an adjective describing a characteristic, as in opus's correct usage: "unrelentingly bleak". A characteristic of a work can be unrelenting, but not the movie itself, I think.

The word itself is overused, but if it must be used it needs to be used right.

I would think that if a piece of work has an obvious agenda, then "unrelenting" might be appropriate. Is Sicko unrelenting? How about An Inconvenient Truth?

Keep in mind that it might be a good thing...

How, exactly, is An Inconvenient Truth unrelenting? It's not that I don't have an answer -- it's that I have too many. If a poet speaks of the "unrelenting fates" or something, we know what they mean. But an unrelenting movie needs to be qualified -- unrelentingly partisan, unrelenting in its admonition, etc.

I think "unrelenting" can be used as an adjective, so long as it's applied to a noun that it suits. I agree that it's dodgy to say that a movie is "unrelenting" - fact is, no movie "relents" until the credits have rolled, does it? But it can have an "unrelenting bleakness" or offer "unrelenting violence," can't it? I'm just going by feel, haven't looked that up anywhere, so I might be completely wrong.

Would "relentless" be more correct as an adjective?

PS I see that you've posted something along those lines. For some reason it didn't show up when I went to post my response.

Is the violence unrelenting or is it unrelentingly violent? Those are two different things. One is a component of the film, the other describes the film itself. The violence in Pan's Labyrinth is unrelenting, but I wouldn't characterize it as an unrelentingly violent film. (It is unrelentingly bleak.)

I guess it depends on how many words the writer uses or is edited down to. "Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unrelenting in its depiction of human activity being responsible for global warming" might very well get slashed down to "Al Gore's unrelenting documentary, An Inconvenient Truth focused on global warming", with the writer never seeing the change until it's too late.

Is it appropriate to describe a fast-paced film, whose action never lets up, as unrelenting? Given the context, I'd like to think I'd know what was meant.

And is there an actual difference between the words "relentless" and "unrelenting"?

As a tangent away from the unrelenting conversation above, extreme hyperbole kills me. I'm well aware that I'm guilty of it (which is why I need others to spot it in my writing).

When critics call a film "a miracle," I fully expect the crippled and lame to stride out of the theater, or the 22 oz. fountain drinks to cups to spilleth over with wine. When critics call a movie "a triumph"...I don't really know what to expect. That just sounds too vague. And yes, Oscar-baiting -- especially in an extreme sense ("so-and-so must win an Oscar!") -- makes my interest in the film drop slightly; my favorite films never win or are never even nominated for Oscars.

It KILLS you? Wow.

Yeah, this is Jason's co-worker typing this ... he just keeled over after reading the hyperbole in his sentence.

I'm beginning to feel guilty about using the word "whip-smart" in my review of Juno, now that I've seen it in so many other reviews and even in box-office reports on the film.

I'm a little tired of "the human condition."

The edge of my seat is a little worn out too.

And though this is used more in promotional material than critical, I usually chuckle when something or someone is described as "award winning."

There are a lot of awards out there.

Jason, thanks for the best laugh in a long, long time.
Yeah, that's mostly what I was trying to say.
It certainly sounds more precise, at least to my ear. But I guess they ultimately mean the same thing, with differences in nuance.

Well, actually, no it isn't. There are many scenes which do not contain violence. The violence, in fact, relents quite often.


Well, actually, no it isn't - though here we enter into a matter of interpretation, or viewer perception. I found the climax about as un-bleak as the climax of any film I've ever seen. So there's plenty of bleakness there, but the bleakness most definitely relented, at least in my experience.

I think it would be more correct to say the action is unrelenting. Or relentless. Or perhaps that the film has relentless action, or its momentum is relentless.

But yes, I'd agree, I think readers would know what was meant in either instance.

Of course, relying on the readers knowing what is meant might just be a lazy writer's road to all sorts of... Critical cliches.

How about overuse of "indeed," which is most often used to let a writer agree with oneself, artificially reinforcing a weak assertion?

Oh, indeed! Really, though, this does stand out. Good call.

How about describing a film as 'quirky'? I first noticed this when reading an interview with John and John from They Might Be Giants. They were fairly fed up with that word attached to their music; not that they aren't, but aren't there other, similar words? Ever since I read that interview, I cringe every time I see that word in any sort of review, which is surprisingly often.

Indeed -- because, after all, everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads.

March Sight & Sound; James Bell on guess which film; "The whip-smart dialogue..."

And the March/April fim comment gives us "inimitable style" and "scathing indictment." Does anyone ever write about indictments that don't scathe, or style that is imitable?

It's not just the inevitable, unthinking Siamese twinnings of certain nouns and their descriptors. It's also the fact that we don't even think about what we mean when we write "scathing." To harm or injure, especially by fire. Are there no other words that would describe the effect of an indictment?

I really appreciate this thread, Ron. Your whip-smart style is inimitably and unrelentingly scathing.

Deeply. You deeply appreciate this thread. I know I do. Profoundly so.

I know that this particular complaint is probably the fault of editors, not the critic, but let's stop with "witty" review titles... I can't tell you haw many times over this past weekend I saw reviews with the following titles...

"Speed Racer" limps around track...

"Speed" stalls at starting line...

No, "Speed Racer", No...

"Speed Racer" doesn't win. place, or show...

"Speed" wrecks long before finish line...

...and on and on. When I see a real groaner of a title I usually just skip the review, which would really irk me if I were a critic and didn't have anything to do with the banner over my work. Do the reviewers have any say as to what the review is going to be titled?

Movie reviews aren't the only articles that fall victim to these headline banners. I also see it every day with sports recaps.

Pistons not firing on all cylinders in loss to Lakers... Kings banish Oilers... etc.

No.

Don't be too hard on the editors. Pithiness in four to eight words is a tough business.

From my experience, very little. I had some control when I was editing my college's paper (I also wrote music reviews), but I had no control for some of the more professional publications. There's been a few times where I don't even want to look at my own review after seeing the headline.

Thank you! That's what I'm trying to find out. I know I have probably missed some very wonderful writing all because of a headline that doesn't get me interested in the meat of the reivew. I'm more inclined to read a review that just contains the films' title as the headline, rather than some of the lame puns that I see in many publications.

Oh, the crap I've gotten from readers because of headlines and graphics and other things that I had nothing to do with ... including, for that matter, the fact that sometimes the printed version of a story gave "the last word" to one interviewee and not another, whereas unbeknownst to the complainant, the draft of the article that I actually filed was structured rather differently. (I've got no beef with editors restructuring news stories. I just wish people knew better than to assume that the writer is always responsible for the form in which their stories are published. And I wish people realized that, in the inverted-pyramid structure, the final paragraph is technically supposed to be the least-important paragraph, and thus it's not quite the same as giving "the last word" to someone.)

I'll admit, I've been lurking here a while.

But I had to pop in and say that while I'm rarely edited very much, a certain national magazine decided to change my word "hijinks" to "high jinks". In print. For all to see, for all time.

I'm a little bit nonplussed, but they're paying me a lot, so I guess that's what happens.

That's not so bad, Alissa. From Webster's New World Dictionary:

hijinks or hi-jinks
pl.n.
var. of HIGH JINKS

Oh, I know, but how often do you see "high jinks" in print?

I recently reviewed a documentary in which I mentioned that one of the female interviewees has a "wife", and then I added, in parentheses, "(Yep, she's gay.)" I meant it as a no-big-deal kind of thing, a pop-culture friendly nod to Ellen's coming out (announced on the cover of Time magazine with the words "Yep, I'm gay"), a subtle sign that I wasn't going to make an issue of it because that WASN'T what this particular documentary was about, etc. An editor turned that to "(Yes, she's gay.)" The denotative meaning hasn't changed one iota, but the connotative... maybe, maybe not. I'm undecided. I swing both ways. (Oh, um, well, you know what I mean.) It seems a bit more serious, to me, and it loses the potential bridge-building quality of the original phrase. Or so it seems to me. I dunno.

Another editing change that irked me once, though it happened long-ago enough that I can't remember what the context or article was, or even the outlet: I used the expression "point up" in my review, and an editor changed it to "point out". Um, slightly different meaning, no?

point up
To accord emphasis to: accent, accentuate, emphasize, feature, highlight, italicize, play up, stress, underline, underscore. See important/unimportant. . . .
To give emphasis to; stress: comments that simply point up flawed reasoning.

point out
Call attention to . . .
Identify or bring to notice, as in He pointed out the oldest buildings in the city, or She pointed out an error in our reasoning. [Late 1400s]

I've actually never heard of someone saying "point up" and probably would have edited it that way myself. Good to know! Do you suppose it's a Canadian-ism?

Alissa Wilkinson wrote:
: I've actually never heard of someone saying "point up" and probably would have edited it that way myself. Good to know! Do you suppose it's a Canadian-ism?

Hmmm, that hadn't occurred to me. But FWIW, it appears in The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms and is said to have originated in the first half of the 1900s.

jaw-dropping

visually stunning