Watching Spider-Man 2, my favorite super-hero flick, I was struck by an fact. To my taste, the best part of this movie–the most memorable sequence, the part that makes the movie work–is quite unlike the majority of the movie. I specifically refer to
the sequence in the middle of the movie when psychosomatically-powerless Peter confesses to his Aunt May that her husband’s death was his fault, and later she forgives him and gives him a pep talk about the worth of heroism that convinces him to resume being Spider-Man again
It’s a quiet little scene, no special effects, no fights, no masks or tights: just good, understated acting, mostly wordless on Tobey Maguire’s part. I just love it.
My liking for this scene reminds me of another favorite movie of mine, Down With Love. This film is a homage to the Hudson-Day sex comedies of the early fifties and is full of fast-paced wordplay, jazzy music and beautiful sets and costuming. That said, the funniest bit is
when Barbara Novak, in a two-minute, music-less monologue, reveals to Catcher Block that she’s the author of an insanely complicated and improbable plan to make him fall in love with her, punctuated by his getting a telephone message from a detective he’s hired to look into her, said message confirming every word she’s said.
Like I said, I love both these movies … it just strikes me as odd that my favorite bits from each of them is perhaps the most atypical moment from each.
I felt this way about Paris, Texas – the pinnacle of that film, the reason for its existence, is clearly the sex-phone scene (that isn’t, really) between Harry Dean Staunton and Natassia Kinsky. Very impressive, well-done scene, and the rest of the film feels like a set-up for it, and completely unlike it.
Fabulous Creature in Down with Love you chose the scene that destroyed a film that was mildly acceptable up to that point. I found that scene rambling, tacked on and contrary to the character of Novak that had existed to that point. After that scene, I thanked heavens that I had not paid to watch the film in a theater.
The scene I would point to as an illustration of your OP was Jaws. The final portion of the film where the three men battle the shark, I feel is in marked contrast to the rest of the film which is plodding and almost soap-operaish. Of course the book is like that too.
The Messenger: The Joan of Ark Story was perhaps one of the stupidest movies I’ve seen in my entire life. Shrill and horrible acting framed by a ridiculous plot. Worse than Titanic. Worse than Caligula. Worse even than Plan 9 form Outer Space. How refreshing, then, when
Dustin Hoffman, as Satan, offers Joan a number of mundane alternate explanations as to why the sword ended up in the field, instead of her simply assuming God put it there for her. It was a masterful debunking.
Satisfaction was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen in my life, for basically the same reasons tdn gave for The Messenger. But late in the film, there’s a scene in which Justine Bateman, who fancies herself having a relationship with Liam Neeson’s character*, goes to his house one evening and finds Deborah Harry already installed there. Harry waits out Bateman’s consternation, then crisply agrees with her that, yeah, maybe she (Bateman) had better leave. Not a great scene, but a realistic one, and Harry is not a great actress, but is shown to be a competent one. So for one brief moment, it was like watching an actual movie, instead of a bunch of kids fooling around in front of a video camera.
*Neeson later justified his presence in the film by stating that prior to this, he’d played a mute homeless man, after a series of bit parts, and when his agent told him he’d been offered a chance to co-star with four teenage girls in a lot of beach scenes, he asked no further questions.
I loved that scene in *Down With Love *too. But the first thing I thought of when I read the OP was Alan Rickman in Robin (Ack Barf) Hood. One of the worst movies ever made, containing one of my favorite performances of all time. Alan Rickman was just in the wrong movie.
A couple of obscure B-movies, Fatal Instinct and Sleeping Dogs, contain scenes that apear to be bondage fantasies slipped into otherwise unremarkable (and really dull) B science fiction films. The effect was so pronounced that I titled my review of them “Pieces of A Dream,” pointing out that they were like dream imagery slipped into the movies. In the scenes, a crew of 8 or ten beauties clad only in electronic chastity belts, electronic branks (a metal gag and collar set) and skimpy tees. They were working as emerald processors, which is why the brank and chastity belt (no slipping the jewels into body cavities). The rest of the films were standard stoopid SF fare, although it was interesting to see a screen labelled “Orion Women’s Prison - 2030.” So we’ll be building interstellar women’s prisons in less than 30 years, eh? That’s quite the bold prediction!
I agree completely. Not for any single scene, but for every scene he was in. Every single time he was on screen he convinced me that I was actually watching an interesting movie, only to be suddenly disabused of that notion when I had to look at Costner again.
A good example of what the OP is talking about is From Dusk Till Dawn. It’s like two seperate movies.
One thing I must take issue with, though, is that the scene the OP describes from Spider Man was anything but horrible. What a waste of screen time! The audience already knew the whole story from watching the first movie. We didn’t need to hear it again while Peter explains it all to Aunt May. All they needed to do was start him talking and cut away with some dramatic music. That way the audience would know that he told her and be done with it.