Everyone loves a montage, except for the part where everyone hates a montage.
So what are some of your favorite montages from movies/TV? And some of your least favorite? Best: Titanic - as the orchestra plays “Nearer my God to Thee”, we see how various of the people around the ship are dealing with imminent death, including the Irish mother telling her children a story, and the old rich couple cuddling in bed as the water rushes over them
Worst:
Various episodes of Lost have had ridiculously corny montages, in which the music swells and the people on the island, always well-lit and well-groomed in their cutely rustic but not actually threatening surroundings, enjoy each other’s company, and revel in the newfound emotional growth they’ve experienced yada yada yada. Maybe it’s not that they’re so awful, as that they were so frequent for a while.
School of Rock: a training montage, which is what a montage should be in good '80s film tradition. Great Ramones song (“My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)”), cool clips of Angus Young et al., kids getting better at their instruments - it’s all there.
One of the funniest and most self-referential is in Team America: World Police, in which one of the puppet characters is training hard, learning to be a badass commando, to the tune of “You’ve Gotta Have a Montage!”
Not a movie, but close enough: the “TMC Remembers” montage on Turner Movie Classics for the celebrities who died in 2006 was awsome. I think TMC took it down but it’s out there somewhere (Youtube, maybe?).
Best: the montage from the first episode of the Children of Dune mini-series. Moves the story along and wraps up several characters’ fates, all set to an amazing piece of music: ‘Inama Nushif’
For some reason I’ve always been partial to the frat house remodeling scene from “Revenge of the Nerds,” along with the talent show segment which almost counts as a montage as well.