Too many of my favorites have been listed, including the Hopper/Walken True Romance and the final scene in The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.
I nominate the very end of The Exorcist.
“No! NO! TAKE ME! TAKE ME!”
I was absolutely riveted to the seat.
I also like the scene inBridge on the River Kwai when Alec Guinness stays in the “box” for weeks on end, on principle. Also at the end, “What have I done”
The Usual Suspects:
Verbal in the office with Dave Kujan:
Verbal: How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?
You can feel the goosebumps!
In about 10 months, the scene in “Kill Bill” with the fight in the House of Blue Leaves will be ranked among the great scenes of all time.
Here are a couple that come to mind, and Im sure everyone will agree that there are so many more that we are missing here.
Philadelphia -The very end, at the wake for Andy, the camera pans around the apartment as “City of Brotherly Love” by Neil Young plays softly in the background. After panning, the camera settles in on a candlelight vigil, and then onto a TV that is showing old home movies of Andy at the beach and at the park. The music cues up, and the combination of the beautiful song, the visual and the fact that at this point in the movie you have become so attached to Andy’s character is overwhelming.
Starman Again the final sequence where Jenny Hagen (Karen Allen) and the alien (Jeff Bridges) are running down into the crater, escaping the military. The alien’s ship arrives, lowering into the crater from above, and suddenly the whole crater bed is filled with a red light and it starts snowing. Jenny and the alien do their goodbye thing, and she is left watching him walk out of her life, as the camera comes in for a close up on her face.
Somewhere in Time The first time Richard sees Elise’s framed photo in the Hall of History, the way he is drawn to it. Now, flash forward (or back, depending on how you look at it) to the scene just after Elise has finished the first act of the play, she sits down to get her picture taken. In walks Richard as the photographer is trying to get her to smile, and as she sees him, her face lights up, the photographer says “perfect,” and poof, the very picture that Richard fell in love with was the result of his own doing. Probably the most brilliant portrayal of visual irony in a movie I have ever seen.
The spirit scenes at the begining and end of Grave of the Fireflies. Beautiful and tragic at the same time.
The Marseillaise scene in Casablanca
The “high noon” scene in High Noon ie. the shots of the various townspeople at noon when the gangster comes back.
The scene in the episode of Babylon 5 where the crew takes place in a Mimbari ritual involving revealing one secret about yourself that no one else knows to someone else.
Garibaldi : “Im’ afraid all the time.”
Franklin : “I think I have a poblem.” (refering to his drug addiction)
Ivanova : “I loved Talia Winters.”
My other favorite from this series would be when G’kar says to Molari: “As the humans say, up yours jack!”
There are others but it has been a while since I last watched it and those 2 just stuck with me.
In ROCKY:
Ther beginning of the 15th round, Rocky comes out of the corner with a “c’mere, c’mere” gesture with his gloves, and Apollo Creed has a dejected “aw, man” look on his face.
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner: The near final scene where Spencer Tracy sits everybody down, tells them what he’s been confronted with that day, how he went through the rollercoaster of emotions and now, how he feels about it. Brings a tear to my eye every single time. If I could be so eloquent once in my life I’d die a happy man.
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Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade: Love the whole movie, but the flashback sequence with River Phoenix as young Indy just makes it for me. The whole chase on the train, with the Just-So bits with the whip and how he got the scar on his chin and his fear of snakes – terrific. But then at the end, when the sherriff makes him give the Cross of Coronado up, and the lead “bad guy” with the leather jacket and the fedora, says “You lost today kid…but you don’t have to like it.” He then sets the fedora on Indy’s head, unknowingly setting the future of this boy. Fantastic.
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I’m going to jump on the Babylon 5 bandwagon here. Great series, occasional clunky dialogue or illogical premises but still one of the best SF series ever made. The last episode of the fourth season “Deconstruction of Falling Stars,” which is shown after the finale of the Earthwar story arc, shows the future of Earth and the Alliance. The third sequence, a thousand years in the future, depicts an Earth that had regressed to the Dark Ages. And yet even here, the Rangers are working in secret to rebuild Earth’s civilization. “And this time,” the covert Ranger vows, “we will make it better.” Brings tears to my eyes.
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2010. The tense sequence where they need the Discovery to fire its thrusters so that the Leonov can get back home. Dr. Chandra is trying to convince HAL to continue the countdown, even though there is something strange going on with Jupiter and the monolith. Finally, Dr. Chandra tells him the truth: that if they all stay, they might die; if Discovery fires the thrusters, everybody would get away but HAL might be destroyed. A long pause, then HAL says, “I understand now, Dr. Chandra,” and continues the countdown. He thanks Chandra for telling him the truth. Chandra offers to stay with HAL on Discovery, but HAL declines, saying it’s better for Chandra to rejoin the others. He then asks Chandra (referring to a earlier scene in the film) “Will I dream?” Chandra tearfully replies that he doesn’t know.
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Sneakers. One of the laugh-out-loud funniest endings ever. James Earl Jones of the NSA wants the Black Box that Robert Redford and CO. have snatched from the bad guys. Redford just wants his record cleaned up (he’s an old-time hacker wanted on a fugitive warrent) and the government out of his life, in exchange for the box. His compatriots, though, have a shopping list of demands:
Dan Aykroyd: I want a Winnebago!
James Earl Jones: This isn’t a car dealership, pal!
Redford: Man wants a Winnebago, get him a Winnebago.
Aykroyd: Burgundy interior.
JEJ: Can I have the box now?
Sidney Poitier: I have never taken my wife on a trip to Europe.
JEJ: I’m sorry to hear that. The box?
Poitier: You will buy me two round trip tickets to Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, London and Scotland.
Redford: Don’t forget Tahiti.
JEJ: Tahiti’s not in Europe!
River Phoenix: When you get the box, then you can give us geography lessons. Until then, this man goes to Tahiti!
JEJ: Alright. Tahiti!
Phoenix: (indicting one of Jones’ agents, a young woman). The young lady with the Uzi, is she single?
Redford: (to Jones) How 'bout a lunch date? You could chaperone! I mean, the FBI would give them twins!
(The two lovebirds introduce themselves)
JEJ: I’m going to be sick!
The scene in Network where Howard Beale totally loses it on his newscast and tells everyone to go to their windows and yell “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” The whole thing should be laughable, but by that point in the movie it’s right at the very edge of being acceptably realistic and satiric. And you can just tell that he’s tapped into something irresistible, and it will have to play out no matter what happens. The whole movie captures plausible absurdity better than any I’ve ever seen.
If you haven’t seen this in a while, or ever, rent it. It was brilliant when it came out, and it’s even better now.
?I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess, I confess, I pray still to feel the touch of my lover?s lips, his hands upon me. His arms enfolding me. Such surrender has been mine. I confess I hunger still to be filled and inflamed, to melt into the dream of Us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, always, this is mine. You, all of you who hunger so for what I have to give, but cannot bear to see such power in a woman, you call God?s greatest gift, ourselves, our yearning, our need to love, you call it filth, and sin, and heresy. I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.?
Veronica Franco, Venetian Courtesan, on trial before the Holy Inquisition for Witchcraft
from the movie Dangerous Beauty
Sorry for bumping this thread, but I had been thinking of creating it until I used the SEARCH function. Not sure if some of these are the BEST in the movie, but they are indeed my favorite.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail: The entire “Tale of Sir Lancelot” sequence, with the Prince of Swamp Castle.
Silence of the Lambs: When Dr. Hannibal Lecter meets Senator Ruth Martin.
“They say amputate a man’s leg and he can still feel it tickling. Tell me Senator, where will it tickle you when your daughter is on the slab?”
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure: Large Marge and when they’re viewing the movie based on Pee-Wee’s adventures with James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild.
“Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya! Ah ha ha ha ha!”
A Clockwork Orange: The Ludivico Treatment sequence.
Amadeus: The “Abduction From the Seraglio” opera sequence (the opera they’re viewing right before Emperor Joseph tells Mozart that he uses “too many notes”).
I’ve got three, actually. In no particular order:
Boromir’s death in Fellowship of the Ring. I didn’t really even like the character as portrayed in the film until that last couple of minutes. I hadn’t read the books at that point [i have now] so I had absolutely no warning that that was going to happen.
Haldir’s death in The Two Towers. I didn’t see this one coming, either, but this time I’d read the books. I didn’t really care that there were no Elves in Helm’s Deep in the books, but when he died I just went into shock. That most certainly did not happen in the books. It was such a jarring sequence. Ugh.
And finally . . .
Most of Titus, but most specifically the scene in which Lavinia is standing on the tree stump with twigs attached to her wrists because her hands have been cut off. She turns around to see her uncle and opens her mouth, and this river of blood comes out. Most definitely one of the most disturbing, but beautiful, scenes in any movie, ever.
Oh, and the last speech in American Beauty. I hated most of that movie, but the last speech made me cry.
Pulp Fiction was a whole big classic scene. You can’t just pick one from it.
The Train station scene in The Untouchables.
There is a great scene in **Dark Star ** where one of the crew members is trying to win an philosophical argument with a bomb, frantically trying to convince it not to blow up. Very funny.
A Few Good Men: Any of the scenes with Jack Nicholson, though the courtroom scene at the end is probably the best. It’s amazing that he’s only in something like three scenes and yet he totally owns that movie.
Braveheart: It’s been parodied to death, but Mel Gibson’s “Sons of Scotland” speech to rally the troops gets my blood pumping every time – it makes me feel like goin’ out and crackin’ skulls.
Lawrence of Arabia: the approach of Omar Sharif – long shot of the desert with a tiny speck on the horizon that gradually grows into Sharif Ali.
Another vote for the “La Marseilles” scene in Casablanca and the ending scene of It’s a Wonderful Life. Both choke me up but good.
I don’t know if it’s the “best” but I love the end of Rear Window where Grace Kelly, seeing that Jimmy Stewart is asleep, puts down her copy of National Geographic and picks up a copy of Vogue.
On the technical side, it’s not a great movie, but The Bonfire of the Vanities opens with a several-minutes-long tracking shot of Bruce Willis walking all over the place that’s pretty damned impressive.
Out of the top of my head , in no order, guaranteed to be incomplete…
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Deer Hunter : when DeNiro goes back to Vietnam to fetch Walken from the Russian Roulette “club”.
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Saving Private Ryan : Landing at Omaha Beach.
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Bangkok Hilton : Nicole Kidman finds out Elliot’s her Dad.
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Return of the Jedi : The final battle between Vader/Skywalker.
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Bridge on the River Kwai : The climax.
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Doctor Zhivago : The end (contrived, yes).
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Das Boot : The docking and subsequent air raid.
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Dr. Strangelove : President’s phone call to Russia.
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A Few Good Men : Nicholson as a witness.
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Full Metal Jacket : Gomer Pyle blowing his brains out.
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Fargo : The kidnapping scene.
Hell yes! For a movie that ended playing everything up to such ridiculous melodrama (IMO), that was such a well-done scene. Just stunningly moving and beautiful and still understated. There was another great moment in there, if not an entire scene – when Kristen Scott-Thomas and the main guy are giving their otherwise melodramatic speech underneath the bleachers, she bumps her head as she turns to leave.
Another vote for the helicopter scene in Superman. That one scene has everything movies are about.
In Amelie, when she guides the blind man. You think she’s just going to help him across the street, but she takes him through the market, vividly describing everything he can’t see. She leaves him at the metro station and he looks up, then is covered with a brilliant white light. The woman I saw the movie with was making fun of me afterwards, because after that scene I had tears streaming down my face. Even just now, I popped the DVD to watch that one scene again and it still had me tearing up.
In Miller’s Crossing (my favorite movie ever), the scenes with the attempted hit on Leo, and Tommy’s scenes at Miller’s Crossing, are both excellent. But my favorite is the scene in Caspar’s room, when
He kills the Dane with a fireplace shovel, while the wrestler is screaming in terror. “ALWAYS PUT ONE IN THE BRAIN!”
In the anime Pom Poko, there’s the scene at the end where the main character leaves Tokyo to join a pack of tanuki dancing in the woods. It sums up the whole movie, and it always gets to me.