Brilliant moments/sequences in otherwise God-awful movies

Cafe Society
61

Two scenes in Soylent green. The first was Thorn enjoying a meat stew and vegetables for the first time the second was Sol going Home.
Regarding Private Ryan… sorry but that was Spielberg cheating the audience so that Hanks death scene would be a shocker. The hallmarks of the standard flashback were made despite the clue of the pin. (Most of the audience including myself wouldn’t know the significance of the damned thing) Having his face cut to Hanks in that case is film makers shorthand for a flashback and a tie between the two characters the same way the morph at the end let you know he was Ryan.

It is a cheat because it used audience expectations to create a “surprise ending”.

Also the bookends were unnecessary to the story and redundant to the theme.
Personally I hated them. I found them Maudlin and over wrought. (much like most of the movie) I prefered the matter of fact in your face Normandy scenes. Those 20 minutes said everything one needed to know about sacrifice and bravery in the hell of war. The rest was fantasy filler.

62

Watch it again. People think it cuts from Old Ryan’s face to Tom Hanks.

The audience THINKS they know what it is… “Oh flashback” But it doesn’t dissolve and it doesn’t straight cut between old face and young face. Spielberg was able to manipulate the audience by implying somethings and the audience LOVES to feel smart and fell for it.

63

Another brilliant sequence, this one from the John Doe TV series (I just can’t seem to think up brilliant sequences from movies yet I know there are plenty that I know of). Anyway, the scene starts on this long tracking shot moving down a long corridor. The train is filled with what appear to be technogeeks working at various laptop workstations. It feels kind of like some kind of professional operation – everybody dressed in slacks, white shirts and ties, sort of like some kind of moving political campaign or other. In the final sequence, we pass by a desk, a fax machine, a copier, a clearly exhausted woman sitting crumpled on the floor, her wrists chained to a ring set in the wall … and then we see the end of the corridor, and it’s not an office building, it’s a train, because we see the tracks receding through the window set in the train compartment’s rear door. And in a matter of seconds, with the sight of the woman captive and the train tracks, we have to completely rethink our original impression of the “office” and its occupants … very nice.

64

Exactly manipulation. Film has a language that people learn as they watch. Most is based on that part of the human brain which likes to make patterns and associations.

If people didn’t make those then films would only be a bunch of random shots shots running for 1 and a half plus hours. It isn’t the audience “LOVES” to feel smart, it is that pattern seeking coupled with tradition and usage brings about familiarity.

For a cheesy example if someone is shown lying in bed and suddenly the image becomes blurry and wavy and the next shot shows him in a field the audience is conditioned to automatically think “Dream sequence”.

If you have a man standing there in a grave yard and it suddenly cuts to another location in a previous time we automatically associate the previous image with the next, therefore it should represent his past.

Yes Spielberg cut to the tank obstacles on the beach, but the fact is that film language says automatically that the man and the next situation are tied together. The close up on Hanks is similar in size to the Old Ryan which completes the association. It is a cheat, and the fact so many fell for it isn’t that they are dumb or smug but that Spielberg deliberately manipulated expectations for a shocker. If you like unexpected twists I guess that is ok, but I think it makes the bookends a gimmick rather than poignant.

65

The lame so-called love story in Titanic really blew, but the overall look of the sets and the sinking scenes were pretty well done. I commented upon leaving the theater that it was too bad that Cameron had no budget left over after the killer effects to hire a real screenwriter.

66

Um, so what? Why is confounding audience expectations a bad thing? I think it’s a good thing.

–Cliffy

67

Tom Hanks is great in that movie, even if a lot of it is goofy, it’s still underrated, in my opinion.

68

I guess the same could be said for The Sixth Sense.
The twist or surprise of that movie was based on the fact that M.Night took the film language that we were used to and broke the rules. Typical rules tell you that certain cues are there for you to fill in the rest of the story. Just because we never saw Bruce talking to anyone else we just assumed he did during other parts of the day, we just never saw those interactions because they weren’t important to the story. M.Night took that assumption and said “nope, your wrong. The only person that talked to him was the kid because that’s all you ever saw.”

69

I’ll nominate Doom then shall I? FPS sequence made what was really a straight to video affair worth seeing on the big screen. Others may disagree, but as a games player, I loved it :slight_smile:

70

I’ll add that I only watch Cable Guy for the medieval fight that turns into a recreation of the fight scene from Star Trek’s “Amok Time” :smiley:

71

I’d been thinking about this the other night, and realized that I was rather disappointed with the TV anime series: Martian Successor Nadesico, becuase they had a number of awesome scenes early in the series, then just petered out to lameness overall.

One of the best scenes is where the spaceship, the Nadesico, is hovering over a refugee shelter on Mars, having just fought a huge series of battles to get to Mars. The ship is damaged, engines shutdown, and repairs are ongoing, but everyone’s rather excited to find that there are survivors after all.

Then the enemy attacks, and the only thing the ship can do is either raise its shields, or be destroyed. If they don’t raise their shields the ship will be destroyed, and the incoming fire will also destroy the shelter. If they do raise their shields, they’ll have the effect of crushing the shelter, anyways. So, as the fire is incoming, the captain is in a horror about what to do, BGM gets all serious sounding…

Then the captain opens her mouth, and the soundtrack goes absolutely silent. No voice, no f/x, no BGM. Just silence, as the shield destroys the shelter, and the fire is deflected, and the ship limps out of the battle area.

I thought that was an absolutely awesome way to deal with a horrible situation. There are a few other scenes through the first half of the season that are similarly brilliant. But, over all, it turns into just another blob-kun* story.
*blob-kun stories are those anime, typified by Tenchi Muyo, where the sole male lead is a colorless yoick, with no personality. Presumably chosen so the male teen target audience will be able to identify with the character.

72

There is a horrifyingly bad Rutger Hauer flick (yes, redundant, I know) called Split Second. He plays an on-the-edge, borderline psycho cop stalking someone (or something) that killed his partner years ago. His new partner is a clean-cut white-bread stereotype. But there is one fabulous scene in the movie when the partner finally catches a glimpse of the killer (an inhuman monster, natch) and snaps. Any description I could give would pale compared to the reality.

To this day, friends and I will occasionally quip that “we need bigger fucking guns!”

73

Alien vs. Predator wasn’t particulary good (though not God-awful either). But the scene where the last guy has been eaten, and the girl climbs up out of the pit to find herself all alone in the temple with Aliens & Predators running around is great. Silent except for her own footsteps - very creepy.

I disagree. Tenkawa had as much personality as Shinji - it was just likeable this time :wink: Besides, what male teens would rather be a fry cook than a giant robot pilot?

(Though I agree with your overall assessment - lots of potential, but ultimately mediocre.)

74

That was a surrise ending? I never realized. I did not necessarily think it was Hanks in the beginning. I certainly didn’t think he was at Ryan’s grave. You did notice the title didn’t you?

75

The scenes from Robocop 2 that show the unsuccessful versions of a second Robocop - where the cyborgs kill themselves out of horror at what they have become - give me chills, even though I think that they are supposed to be funny. The rest of the movie is worthless.

76

I can’t stand King of the Hill, but that one episode where Peggy is accused of kidnapping a Mexican girl and tries to defend herself in Spanish (“Your Honor, I’m very pregnant…”) actually made me laugh, instead of cringing in horror like I usually do.

77

*Cursed * (werewolf movie with Christina Ricci) was pretty God-awful. But I did like the scene where the werewolf stalks a girl in a parking garage.

Yeah, parking garage stalking is cliche, but this was pretty well done - they really cranked up the creep factor, using the old principle that the less you see of the monster, the scarier it is. Also, the bimbo is not stupid, and does a pretty impressive job of hiding and running away, which was refreshing.

FTR, I love Joe Versus the Volcano. The opening is brilliant, but I like the rest too. When he comes out of the doctor’s office and hugs the dog, I always cry.