【英语趣味课堂】电影批判-Movie Critique

Todd: OK. I'm going to talk about movies. I love movies. I think many, many people around the world today love movies. I probably see one or two movies a week on DVD in my room. I watch the movies on my computer so I am a big, big fan of movies, and I watch them all the time, but I have three big complaints about movies, about Hollywood, my country, that I wish they would change. The first complaint is that movies have too many guns. This really bothers me. If you go into a video store and you look at the cover of all the movies, almost on 50% or more of the movie covers there is somebody holding a gun, and I think this is absolutely crazy. In my country, unfortunately there are many guns, but in reality, you never see guns. People have guns, but it's not common to see a person with a gun and in movies, there's always guns and shooting and killing¹ and violence and blood and I just think it's unnecessary, so I really wish that they would not have so many guns in movies and maybe not so much violence. My second complaint is that the stories of most of the movies today from Hollywood are terrible. They're so bad that you can't even watch the movie. I guess most movies now are geared² towards special effects and visual effects so the story is often really bad and I think that's just terrible.

I wish Hollywood would make fewer movies, and concentrate on movies with a really good story, like my favorite movie is a movie called "Wallstreet" and it just has a fantastic story. Another movie I really liked was "The Paper" and also "Field of Dreams" and both these movies have really good stories and almost no special effects, so I think that we don't need so many special effects in movies. And my last thing, my last complaint about movies, is that, or Hollywood, that they stop only using beautiful people. Every time you see a movie, or movie stars, it's always really beautiful people, but in reality most of us, definitely³ myself, we're not beautiful. Most people look average so why don't they just use actors and actresses that look average. I'm sure that there are many, many really good actors and actresses that just aren't beautiful and they would do a fantastic job in a movie and it would be a really good story, compelling⁴ story, but they don't get the role because they're not beautiful and they're not young, and I just think that's kind of sad. I know that movies are the way they are because they are geared towards younger people, but I think there's a lot of older people, like myself, I'm 35, who would like to see more movies with good stories, less violence, less special effects, good writing, and people that look average like everybody else.

 

1 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

2 geared   

adj.连接的

参考例句：

• The programme is geared to preparing students for the world of work. 本计划旨在为学生开始就业作准备。
• The party is all geared up for the forthcoming election campaign. 该党为即将来临的竞选活动做好了准备。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 definitely   

adv.一定地，肯定地；明确地，确切地

参考例句：

• The team will definitely lose if he doesn't play.如果他不参加比赛，这个队肯定会输。
• I shall definitely be home before six o'clock.6点以前，我一定回家。

4 compelling   

v.令人信服的

参考例句：

• Her latest book makes compelling reading. 她新出的书读起来扣人心弦。
• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。