I think that’s “Two’s a Crowd” (2/12/78):
Mike and Archie get locked together in the storage room at Archie’s Place and have a long talk.
Perfect scene from “Start Trek III: The Search for Spock”:
Kirk and the Klingon Capt. Kruge have had a devastating battle between their ships over the Genesis planet. Kirk is forced to surrender. He promises Kruge no tricks after his warriors have beamed over (but not before, he he he…).
Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov set the self-destruct on the Enterprise, ala “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”. As they beam off the Enterprise, the Klingon boarding party arrives. They begin searching the Enterprise, but are mystified that nobody is aboard. Upon making it to the bridge, Torg, the head of the Klingon party, has this conversation with his captain:
Torg: My Lord, the ship appears to be deserted.
Kruge: How can that be? They’re hiding.
Torg: Yes, sir. The ship appears to be run by computer. It is the only thing that is speaking.
Kruge: Speaking? Let me hear it.
Enterprise computer: 9-8-7-6-5…
Kruge: [shouts] Get out! Get out of there! Get out!
Enterprise computer: 2-1…
[the Enterprise bridge explodes]
That’s one of those things that sitcoms do over and over and over . . . I also remember it from Alice, Maude, Family Ties . . . It’s almost as overused as the episode where all the characters narrate their own different and self-aggrandizing versions of the same shared event. I remember seeing that used on The Tony Randall Show, Good Times, Magnum P.I., and I’m sure there are many others.
The Non nobis Domine from Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. The Battle of Agincourt is won, but the King and his court are stunned by the unexpectedness of their victory and in mourning for their casualties (few though they be). Henry calls for prayers to be sung for the dead, and a filthy, exhausted soldier raises his eyes to heaven and sings a short Latin prayer. The song is taken up by other voices and repeats several times, building with each verse. While the music plays, the king slogs across the muddy battlefield, carrying the body of a boy slaughtered by the barbarous Frenchies, and the camera presents a tableau of the various secondary characters, showing how each has fared in the battle. The rest of the movie is damned good. This scene made it great.
Yes, yes I know. The dead kid is Batman.
Freaks and Geeks had many perfect scenes. They were always realistic and always sad and funny at the same time.
“Perfect” is a tall order. But…
A Man For All Seasons. The scene between Wolsey and More. Orson Welles is as close to perfect here as anyone can get. And the dialog is great. Wolsey:“The King wants a son; what are you going to do about it?” More: (Dry murmur) “I’m very sure the King needs no advice from me on what to do about it.”
The opening of 2001, showing the sunrise from space, synchronized to Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Becket, the scene where the king has just finished bathing. The dialog makes the scene.
King Henry II: Have you any idea how much trouble I took to make you noble?
Thomas a Becket: I think so; I recall, you pointed a finger and said, “Thomas Becket, you are noble.” The Queen and your mother became very agitated.
…
Thomas a Becket: Honor is a private matter within; it’s an idea, and every man has his own version of it.
King Henry II: How gracefully you tell your king to mind his own business.
…
Thomas a Becket: Tonight you can do me the honor of christening my forks.
King Henry II: Forks?
Thomas a Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It’s for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.
King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork.
Thomas a Becket: Yes, but it’s washable.
King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don’t see the point.
Thomas a Becket: Well, it hasn’t any, practically speaking. But it’s refined, it’s subtle, it’s very…un-Norman.
The scene near the end in Blade Runner on the roof top in the rain was pitch perfect.
Two from the episode of “The Body” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (don’t read, olives) - when Buffy finds her mom’s body, and her shock and denial and just plain barfing, and the second that stands out to me is Anya fighting with Willow and the others because she doesn’t know what to do, and Willow keeps changing her shirt.
One of my favorite movies of all time that I always forget about was on TCM today. “Westward the Women”, 1951, starring Robert Taylor leading a wagon train of mail order brides from Chicago to California. The California settlers had sent their pictures which were put up on a wall, and the women looked them over before the trip, each one picking out ‘her man’ she was to meet with. (The actresses actually went to Wagon Train Boot Camp before this movie to learn riding, shooting, and driving a wagon.) Much hardship and tragedy, many deaths, really a heartwrenching movie. The surviving women pull into town and the impatient men run to meet them, but they are forbidden from approaching until they bring any ‘tablecloths, ribbons, Indian blankets’ - anything the women can make pretty clothes from, and get gussied up after their long trip… At the end, a very proper dance is held, men and women are quietly lined up, and each woman, holding a picture, approaches and picks ‘her man’ out of the crowd. One quick dance and it’s off to stand in the line to be married by a preacher! Somehow this scene makes me teary eyed and happy at the same time. A wonderful movie.
Just because I’ve seen it again recently (twice): in The Big Lebowski, every second of the Jesus’ introduction (if you can call it that: he only has two scenes to begin with) is absolutely spot-on. The segue from his strike to his absurd little dance going into the chorus of “Hotel California” is one of the greatest bits of timing/editing/use of slow motion in movie history. Cracks me up every time.
I’m sure somebody will post an “almost perfect scene” thread someday, but I figure I’ll add this one here: In the Matrix, when Neo and Morpheus are sparring in the dojo, nearly everything is flawless…until Neo does the walk up the beam into a backflip…and in mid-air, for a split second, his body wavers on the wire. 
One of my favorite scenes of all time is where Deniro and Liotta are in the restaurant with the window framing them, and it appears that the window is slowly moving forward faster than the camera is. I forget the name of this technique, but this was the best use of it I’ve seen.
I love long, uncut, action scenes, like the elevator ride in Hard Boiled. But the best was the fight up the stairs in Tom Yum Goong.
The pachinko hall fight scene in Thunderbolt is a classic too, probably the best single fight scene ever not involving Bruce Lee.
Well, hell, let me lay mine on the counter too.
In French Kiss, as Luc (Kline) and Kate (Ryan) are getting ready to go to the dinner party (?) and she is all dolled up and he is giving her pointers on how to really sock it to her ex.
Luc: Non. No no no. It is not me who wants it. I don’t want it.
Kate: Well what do you want?
Luc: I want you… I want you…
Kate: You want me…
Luc: I want you… to… make Charlie suffer. To make him feel like even though you are right there in front of him, he can’t have you.
[he realizes then that he is talking about himself]
The timing Kline uses delivering his lines and the expression of dawning realization are so powerful.
The scene at the dance in West Side Story. You’ve got the two gangs who can’t stand each other in a fairly neutral setting, and you’ve got John Astin as “Glad Hand”, the social worker who wants to show the kids they can get along. So he asks them all to get in two circles, “boys on the outside and, uh, girls on the inside.” At first there’s some hesitation, then the leaders of the two gangs bring their steady gals, call their troops to them, and line up as asked. Glad Hand explains that the girls will go in one direction, the boys in the other, and when they stop they should dance with the person opposite them.
The needle drops on sort of circus march music, and around they go, looking hostile and unwilling. When the music stops, the frame’s lined up so that closest to us is Bernardo, leader of the Puerto Rican gang, and the white girl who stopped in front of him, with his girlfriend Anita and the other gang leader, Riff, visible behind them. For a split second it all stops, then Glad Hand’s whole plan just fails utterly. The white girl steps back, unwilling to even touch Bernardo. He glances at Anita, who is watching to see what will happen, and then reaches behind Riff to take her hand. Riff, in turn, reaches across the circle for his own girl, and in about two beats they’re all back in the couples the started in, white kids on one side of the gym, Puerto Rican kids on the other, more pissed off at each other than when they started.
It’s a tiny little scene in the middle, but there’s nothing about it I don’t love. John Astin, in particular, is perfect as the naive social worker who hasn’t actually got a clue about what’s going on in these gangs’ lives.
“Now, take my hand and swear eternal allegiance to Zod.”
I came to this thread to point out the Anya scene as well, even though I can’t remember the full details it’s always stuck with me ever since I first saw it.
Anya starts out asking all these terribly uncouth and inappropriate questions, and everyone including the viewer gets generally annoyed with how rude and unfeeling she is being, but then it suddenly comes out that she is just as upset as everyone else and just doesn’t have the tools to act appropriately, and in so doing becomes a very sympathetic character, representing universal feelings of powerlessness and anxiety in the face of an unexpected death.
Agreed. Plus Robert Shaw’s words when he returns to his berth are dead solid perfect.
“Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?”
The scene where they blew the mail car safe, (and a good portion of the real estate surrounding it), was worth enduring the rest of the film.
“Terminate the Colonel’s Command…Terminate with extreme prejudice.”
When Martin Sheen is finally given his mission, with a young Harrison Ford at the luncheon.
The opening scene of Inglorious Basterds was the most suspenseful moment of my movie-watching life. It was absolutely perfect in every way.
“Yeah, 'n where do *you *go?”
Two scenes immediately come to mind for me (and I think I’ve mentioned them before here):
Jaws: the penultimate scene where Roy Schieder finally blows the shark to bits. It’s a marvel of cinematic timing from where Scheider says “Smile, you son of a b…” and then the gunshot and explosion.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou: The sirens. The final scene with them has the camera panning to the left and the characters coming in from the left, as expected. But as the camera continues it’s pan to the left, the next set of characters come in from the right and lends a real air of mystery to the scene.