61
votes
Accepted
What is a "soap"?
TLDR: A "Soap" is a serialized show that's about ordinary people having interpersonal drama. There's not a high concept, story arc, external villains, or greater purpose.
Don't confuse &...
49
votes
Accepted
Was The Nightmare Before Christmas meant to be a Halloween or Christmas Movie?
According to the film's director Henry Selick, it's supposed to be a Halloween Movie.
According to The Daily Mail
Henry Selick, 64, who directed the 1993 film recently spoke about its themes at a ...
- 1,862
43
votes
Accepted
What is the genre of movies in which the main characters don't have names?
As Nuclear noted in the comments, the idea of never naming your main character(s) is more of an aesthetic choice - a detail. The best term to use, I think, would be to call it a trope. In fact, TV ...
- 11.8k
39
votes
Was The Nightmare Before Christmas meant to be a Halloween or Christmas Movie?
We can take the director's (Henry Selick) own word on this. From dailymail.co.uk
During the Q&A a little girl asked the director whether the animated film was a Christmas or Halloween movie, ...
- 118k
33
votes
Accepted
Is there a given name for "fake documentaries" posing as educational programming?
2 different terms cover it. Docufiction:
is the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film.
It is a film genre which attempts to capture reality ...
- 67.8k
20
votes
Was The Nightmare Before Christmas meant to be a Halloween or Christmas Movie?
According to IMDB, the movie's original US release was in time for Halloween (29 October 1993), as were its re-releases.
- 335
13
votes
Accepted
Does a horror movie have to have supernatural elements?
No
Horror does not require supernatural elements. The Horror genre is defined by the deliberate attempt to invoke a phychological reaction of terror, fear, shock and revulsion in the audience. It is ...
- 52.2k
12
votes
What is a "soap"?
Wikipedia's definition of soap opera is obviously flawed. If it was a perfect definition of soap opera you wouldn't have any questions about which shows are soap opera and which are not.
Of course, ...
- 5,050
11
votes
Accepted
Is there an over-arcing term for this style of movie?
The term you may be looking for is "Excuse Plot". TV Tropes (obligatory warning: it's highly addictive!) describes the concept thusly:
An Excuse Plot is, in the simplest terms, a plot that is ...
- 22.1k
11
votes
What's the term for TV series / movies that focus on a family as well as their individual lives?
First of all, there almost certainly won't be any one term for this because it would be too broad to be useful. It'd cover one very common detail of a premise: if someone told you "I'm watching ...
- 10.9k
10
votes
Accepted
Is there a criterion to differentiate "thriller" from "horror"?
Your observation is correct: "thriller" and "horror" are often thinly separated in the already vague world of film taxonomy. There isn't really One True criterion for distinguishing the two.
That ...
- 2,498
9
votes
What is a "soap"?
I asked a similar question myself a few years ago because it didn't make sense to me. One of my favorite old shows was simply called "Soap", and as a young kid, I didn't get the joke.
The term "soap" ...
- 557
8
votes
Accepted
What genre is The Shining?
According to Wikipedia, it's considered a horror film.
The Shining is a 1980 horror film produced and directed by Stanley
Kubrick[7] and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson. The film is
...
- 23k
8
votes
Why there is no genre name for sad or crying movies?
There is such a genre: it is called a drama. The widely used symbol is a laughing face and a weeping face:
Since 100% sad movies have very limited appeal, there is little popular demand for them. ...
- 4,780
8
votes
Is The Banshees of Inisherin a fable?
A fable is a moral story [sometimes using animals as characters but not always].
I think the simple fact that the story is perceived as Oîrish* and includes the word 'banshee' in the title is ...
- 53k
7
votes
What is a "soap"?
In the UK the term "soap" is usually used to refer to TV fictional dramas that broadcast new episodes regularly, without a break, featuring recurring characters and on-going plots. Broadcasts are ...
- 2,479
6
votes
How long is an epic?
Source Wiki:
Many writers may refer to any film that is "long" (over two hours) as an epic.
But mainly epic came from poetic genre
Source Wiki:
When described as "epic" because of content, an ...
- 10.5k
6
votes
Why there is no genre name for sad or crying movies?
If you're looking for a word to use to describe a sad movie or set of movies, the one that I found most suitable was "tearjerker."
- 61
6
votes
What makes a comedy series a sitcom?
Situational Comedy
A sitcom, short for "situation comedy", is a genre of comedy centered
on a fixed set of characters who carry over from episode to episode.
Sitcoms can be contrasted with ...
- 23k
5
votes
Why are "audience decides what happens"-movies not a thing?
The book series you reference is called "Choose Your Own Adventure". It appears the waters are being tested with a movie called "Late Shift"
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/...
- 59.6k
5
votes
Accepted
How long is an epic?
Epics are often defined not in terms of length, but in terms of plot - an epic typically is about an Epic Hero that encounters adversity and must overcome it. In this sense, a lot of works in many ...
- 350
5
votes
Does David Lynch consider his own films to be science fiction / fantasy?
Lynch himself, as I see it, takes great pride in the fact that his films are not of specific genre.
In many interviews[1] he implies that not only the meaning of his films are up to the interpretation ...
- 707
5
votes
What is the genre of a movie/character where someone stays low?
It's called an alter ego
Not a genre, it's called an alter ego (Latin for "other I") means alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original ...
- 1,755
5
votes
What genre is Never Have I Ever?
Frame challenge: a work does not have to belong to a single genre
I haven't seen Never Have I Ever, and don't intend to, which means I'm not going to be able to give you a direct answer. But your ...
- 3,737
4
votes
Is there a specific style or genre name for Jackie Chan's movies?
The film style of Jackie Chan movies is "Hong Kong Action Cinema". While Jackie's style is unique, others of the same time era feature the same techniques of Peking Opera influenced acrobatics, Kung ...
- 650
4
votes
Accepted
“Buddy cop show” without two cops?
The TV Trope for this is called They Fight Crime, basically any time two dissimilar people team up to fight crime. 90% of the time, it's a straight man, by the book cop and a funny man unconventional ...
- 67.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Why was "The Big Short" shot in the comedy genre?
The film follows in the tradition of films such as Dr Strangelove By Stanley Kubrick.
In a similar way there was a realisation that the subject matter is so dark, so frightening that the only way to ...
4
votes
What is the difference between the horror and thriller genres?
To give you an example of both in the same movie (although it's not really classified as a horror movie), let's take a look at The Shining.
The creepy girls, the blood from the elevator: these things ...
- 26.2k
3
votes
Why are "audience decides what happens"-movies not a thing?
I've actually attended such a movie screening at a theater back in the mid-1990's in Atlanta, Georgia. I believe it was promoted on a local radio station. Each viewer had a 3-button controller in ...
- 5,182
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible