5 Oddly Specific Tropes Famous Directors Slip In Every Movie

Malick is always certain to squeeze in as many fields of tall grass as he can. Sometimes at all costs. Because, and this might be hard to believe, not every story involves people running into wheat fields to frolic artistically. Malick loves grass so much that characters in his movies often wander out into a field for no reason, then plop down to deliver a monologue, or finish a bowl of cereal.

His most famous movie, The Thin Red Line, is about the Pacific theater during World War II. Most movies on the subject are horrific naval battles, high-speed dogfights, and maniacal samurai sword charges. The Thin Red Line managed to condense all of war into 148 hours of Sean Penn crying in the tall grass.

Every time Terrence Malick makes a movie, the national Lyme disease rate goes up 700 percent. The New World, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder ... maybe you haven't heard of any of these films, but they are each the most beautiful lawn mower commercial you've ever seen. They're like fetish films for people who get off on hay fever.

If someone strides through an overgrown field or brushes their hands through some wheat in another movie, critics call them out for stealing Terrence Malick's style. That's how much he loves filming grass -- he basically owns the patent on it. He loves filming grass so much he actually got sued by investors for "forgetting" to make the movie he promised them, because he was too busy cobbling together his nature footage to make a documentary. That's a real story -- the man got taken to court because he couldn't stop filming grass. Call it criminal or obsessive or just weird, but know this -- you will never love anything as much as Terrence Malick loves tall grass.

Inception is all about a father trying to get back to his kids after his wife frames him for her suicide. Nolan has such a bizarre obsession, he even managed to squeeze it into Batman. He's a character famously defined by tragedy already, but Nolan can only wrap his head around a haunted past if it involves dead wives, not just dead mothers and fathers -- so he tied the love of Batman's life to a chair and blew her up ...

A series of dead wives might be dismissed as lazy writing, but we are talking about Christopher Nolan here. This is the guy who labored carefully to make three layers of nonsensical dream logic work. He's the man who hired a black-hole expert to make sure the physics were right when he dropped a character into a black hole to poke at time-spanning bookshelves. It's definitely not laziness, so what is it? Is divorce too complicated to fit into the exposition? Does Christopher Nolan just think a dead woman is more compelling than a fully formed female character? S- should someone warn the women in his life?

Though if you look past all the whimsy and set design, Wes Anderson films can be terrifying things. Especially if you happen to be furry and four-legged. Almost every single one of his movies features some kind of horrific pet attack. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson electrocutes a rat, and in The Grand Budapest Hotel someone throws Jeff Goldblum's cat out the window. And the punchline is Jeff Goldblum saying, "Did you just throw my cat out the window?" There's no irony or wordplay in the joke -- the simple act of cat murder is just inherently funny to Wes Anderson. In the pre-teen love story, Moonrise Kingdom, they kill a dog with a goddamn arrow and show its tiny, loyal corpse with that goddamn arrow sticking out of its neck.

Wes Anderson kills another dog with a car in The Royal Tenenbaums, and in Life Aquatic, Jeff Goldblum walks over to a three-legged pooch and smacks it with a newspaper for no reason. He tells it, "Be still, Cody," which is maybe funny because it was already very still? They eventually abandon Cody on Pirate Island, as he tragically runs after their boat. Now that's funny!

It wouldn't be surprising to discover Wes Anderson keeps a hamster in his pocket, so if there's ever a lull in the conversation he can pull it out and snap it in half for a cheap laugh.

There's dark humor in all Anderson movies, and he certainly uses human death to get awkward laughs now and again. But you can at least count on most of the human characters surviving to the end credits. If you see an animal in a Wes Anderson movie, it's five minutes away from being killed during a Kinks song.

McTiernan also directed The Hunt For Red October, wherein Sam Neill and Tim Curry play Russian submariners with accents like sarcastic Russian actors doing over-the-top Sam Neill and Tim Curry impressions. But at least they tried. Their captain, Sean Connery, filmed the entire movie in his normal speaking voice. In fact, if anything, it seems like he was trying to sound three times more like Sean Connery. John McTiernan doesn't give a shit if his Russian submarine captain sounds like a drunk Scotsman trying to talk your panties off.

McTiernan doesn't just hire actors who aren't great with accents. He hires actors with the most distinct voices possible. If he needs to fill the role of a West Virginia lawyer, he calls Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chewbacca, and no one else. In Predator, he gave the role of an American soldier named "Dutch" to an Austrian man who pronounces every word like two seals having an argument. In The 13th Warrior, the role of Arabian Scribe was given to Antonio Banderas, who was apparently told to make his voice as sexy and Spanish as he could. It's as if every John McTiernan movie hired a casting director who couldn't tell when he was being sarcastic.

The "Kubrick Stare" is made up of two distinct movements. First, you tilt your head slightly down. Then, look up at the world from beneath your eyebrows. Try it at home! On the bus! It works with all kinds of activities -- sharpening knives, masturbation, taking notes for your boss ... there's a reason it's in every Kubrick movie.

General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, Jack Torrance in The Shining, whatever Tom Cruise was called in Eyes Wide Shut ... they all use the same technique to strike terror into the hearts of their co-stars. And it's pretty easy to figure out where Kubrick came up with the move. According to every photo taken of him, it's the only face he has ever made.

It's as if the only note he ever gave an actor was, "Just look at the camera the way I look at fucking everything. You pig fucker hack." We're all lucky. If he was known for his cheery, beaming smile, it would have made a whole lot of those murder scenes even more terrifying.

Barry Scott is a new contributor to Cracked and has a blog for all his petty thoughts, check it out at.

For other things you'll never be able to not notice in movies from now on, check out 5 'Meh' Directors Who Do One Thing Better Than Anyone Else and 5 Bizarre Celebrity Quirks You Can Never Unsee.

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