Saturday

[The second part of this special feature written by our guest editor, Alex.]

...In that area you really feel that the title should tell you something about the movie you're going to see. So Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars and 12 Angry Men all tell you exactly what you're going to see.

So usually the one word title can handle ambiguity better than longer titles but that's not always true. The Silence of the Lambs is a great title and yet is five words long and ambiguous.

I think part of this is about how complicated the movie is to explain to your friends. It doesn't matter that the title of The Silence of the Lambs has an ambiguous title because this is the conversation you'd have:

A: What's it called?
B: The Silence of the Lambs
A: What the hell is that some kind of farming behavioural instructional video?
B: No it's about a serial killer who eats his victims. And the detective trying to catch him is a chick.
A: I'm so there.

Here's the same two guys with the title The Remains of the Day:

A: What's it called?
B: The Remains of the Day
A: Oooh sounds good? Do they only have the remaining hours of the day that they are in to save the world from almost certain destruction?
B: No it's about a butler
A: Like Batman?
B: No it's a butler who falls in love with some woman but he can't go out with her because he's British.
A: That sounds rubbish.
B: It's got Anthony Hopkins in it, he was awesome in The Silence of the Lambs.
A: Yeah The Silence of the Lambs was great, should we watch that?

So yes. That's the danger with ambiguous film titles. When I heard about The Remains of the Day I thought it was going to be like "24" but with butlers. Boy, was I disappointed.