When Red first goes for a ride on Seabiscuit.
They clicked, they flew. It was just beautiful.
Every moment in Election where Tracy Flick is thwarted, and stands there fuming as the wild angry native soundtrack comes on.
The opening segment of Dazed and Confused, with the slow motion orange Pontiac entering the parking lot to the tune of Sweet Emotion. The mood is set: We are in high school, looking cool is equal to being cool, and while we know there is more to life, right now all we care about is the next party.
The closing scene of *Places in the Heart *shows us what a mystery the human condition can be, while at the same time, tells us everything we really need to know.
In Witness, When the little boy chances upon a photo of the bad guy, and without saying a word, conveys to the detective the identity of the murderer.
The poker game in The Sting. I’ll put this in a spoiler box for those who haven’t seen it:
[spoiler]Con man Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) is in a poker game with mob boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), and he knows Lonnegan’s preferred method of cheating. Throughout the game Gondorff baits Lonnegan by behaving boorishly and outright insulting him.
During a break, Lonnegan has a henchman stack the deck so that Gondorff will get a good hand and bet high. However, Lonnegan will have a better hand and win.
We see Lonnegan substitute the fixed the deck into the game and exchange a glance with his henchman. Gondorff plays the hand to four threes and bets high. The hand is raised several times to an astronomical amount and Gondorff eventually calls. With a triumphant leer, Lonnegan lays down his cards. “Four nines.” The henchman smiles approvingly.
Gondorff frowns at his cards. He then slowly reaches forward, lays them on the table and says, “Four jacks.”
I swear you can almost see steam coming out of Robert Shaw’s ears.
[/spoiler]
There’s a scene in All in the Family where Meathead gains some insight to Archie’s childhood. I think they were trapped in the basement. That scene gave me goosebumps when Mike realizes why Archie acted like Archie.
“Goodfellas” is jam-packed with them but two that stick in my memory are, of course "funny how?"but also, the whole sequence with the helicopter and the dinner. A better evocation of paranoia and panic you are unlikely to see.
Oh, and in “The Office” Christmas special, The last five minutes with Tim and Dawn’s conclusion and David having a glimmer of self-awareness and happiness was beautifully done. I’m not ashamed to say I had a lump in my throat and that rarely happens.
The ending of the Australian WWII mini-series Come In Spinner (“guess we’ll just have to keep tossing till it comes right.”). The (probably) small numbers of people on this board who’ve actually seen that will know what I mean.
William Munny turning down the whore in Unforgiven. “On account of my wife. She’s at home, watching over the little ones.”
Actually, quite a lot of Unforgiven. That’s a good movie, that.
I’m not ashamed to say I had tears streaming down my face. There’s a meta-brilliance about that scene too when you consider how much Ricky Gervais sought to avoid cliché throughout the series. Such an ending was indeed a cliché - but paradoxically he managed to achieve it perfectly, without it seeming clichéed at all.
I’ve described this scene much better in a long-ago thread like this one, but the whole sequence in Sideways when Miles and Maya are sharing a bottle of wine at Stephanie’s house, and they start in the kitchen, and move to the screened-in porch. They’re talking, still getting to know each other, attracted to each other but shyly moving forward, despite Miles’ debilitating neuroses. The conversation exists on a literal level but the subtext is so much more telling. Maya’s asking Miles why he likes pinot so much, and in his answer, he describes the delicacy of the grape, how hard it is to grow, how only a vintner with insight and the patience to nurture it and care for it can appreciate it and elicit the true brilliance of it… and he doesn’t realize it but he’s describing himself. Finally, he asks Maya what she likes about it, and her response, dripping with longing and an obvious invitation to Miles, is “Because it tastes so fucking good.”
Miles suddenly realizes what the last ten minutes have been about, excuses himself to use the bathroom, and when he returns, the moment is lost.
My first thought was Pulp Fiction, specifically what wikipedia calls the “Prelude to “Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife””.
This is Jules and Vincent’s errand to pick up Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase. Everything from “Royale with Cheese” to foot rubs (my feet are sore), to “let’s get in character” and culminating in Jules’ misquoted Ezekial passage is near-perfect filmmaking.
If I were forced to narrow it down a bit more, I’d have to say Jules’ speechifying takes it.
The setup and performances for this scene were perfection:
Roseanne had worked in a department store restaurant. Her boss was Leon Carp, played wonderfully for Martin Mull. He was the perfect foil for Roseanne, and she hated him.
Roseanne later opened a rerstaurant with her sister, friend, and mother was partners. Mother Beverly was the absolute Jewish mother, and Roseanne and Jackie could not stand working with her. Finally, Roseanne told her she had to be a silent partner.
Leon came into the restauant and ordered a sandwich. Bev & Roseanne started talking about her being a silent partner. The camera is focused on them, as Leon is eating his sandwich in the frame.
Bev: No, I’ve sold my share in the restaurant.
Roseanne: How did you find a buyer in this market?
Bev: Oh, it wasn’t hard.
Camera focuses on Leon just eating that sandwich.
The audiene started laughing so hard Mull had to wait to deliver his next line. He just sat there, eating that sandwich, wiping his mouth, while Jackie and Roseanne stood there stunned, and Beverly just smirked. Finally, Leon said:
She just kept lowering her price. I couldn’t say no.
I was going to say also in the US version, the season ending episode (not enough of a geek to tell you which season…) where Jim returns from the promotion interview and asks Pam out on a date as she’s doing her “camera confessional”. The scene was so understated yet her expression and momentary distraction just said so much.
Only Roddy Piper is a wrestler- the other guy is a regular actor. It is indeed the best fist fight on screen ever… 8 minutes? I think it finishes at 8 minutes.
“Daredevil” is mostly crap but does have the most perfect scene in any super hero movie- Daredevil comes home from a night of crime fighting and you see what a horrible toll it would take on a human body. Scars, pain killers, loose teeth… and at the end Daredevil goes to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber because he can still hear all the sirens and screams for help and gunshots all around him, and he knows what he does will never be enough.
A few not previously mentioned:
-The most obvious to me is the attack on the death star at the end of Star Wars. How many of us grew up with that being the ultimate cinematic experience of our childhoods?
-The scene at the end of The Life of Brian episode of My So Called Life where Ricky and Delia dance
-The Superman scene from The Iron Giant
-Dying Mozart dictates the Requiem to Salieri in Amadeus, or maybe the earlier scene where Salieri is describing the music that starts as just a simple squeezebox, etc.
-I’m having trouble picking a single “perfect” scene from the greatest work ever committed to film, The Wire, but good candidates are “Where’s Wallace”; the final conversation between Avon and Stringer; and Carver’s fit of impotent rage in his car.
-The end of Back To The Future
-The Monorail Song from The Simpsons
This film gets points for using what I’d always assumed was a phrase that only my mom had ever used (excluding the proper name, o’ course): “Now, Randy, wait for Christmas to start.”
The final scene in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. This movie is perfect, but that moment even more so.
A rising tide of angry ohmu threaten the valley. Nausicaa is standing resolutely next to the wounded baby ohmu, her dress stained blue by its blood. The ohmu herd screeches to a halt at the sight of its dying offspring, but alas, they trample the princess to death. The old blind woman and the children of the village weep with agony. One by one, the ohmu stretch out their long, golden tentacles, raising Nausicaa’s body and healing her wounds. The princess stands, fully healed, and begins to walk along their golden tentacles, her arms outstretched with joy.
The old woman weeps, ‘‘What beautiful creatures! Who knew how wonderful and caring the ohm could be!’’
It is at that moment the people of the Valley of the Wind witness the realization of their ancient prophesy.
After a thousand years of darkness he will come, clad in blue and surrounded by fields of gold, to restore mankind’s connection with the earth that was destroyed. And he will guide the people of this planet at last to a land of purity.
After much thinking and reading various geeky fanboy sites online, I am now absolutely convinced he knew. He was too much of a perfectionist, human filing cabinet, and selfish strategist not to know. Why he didn’t kill her at the beginning, or indicate it to her with more than a glass of milk at the end, I can’t work out, but he definitely knew who she was then. The brilliance of that scene is that the audience shares the same doubt as Shosanna while it’s occurring.