Name some. I’ll start.
Family Man:
Nicholas Cage looking around plaintively while ringing the bicycle bell, hoping it will call back the angel who has put him in this situation of living with “his” family that he doesn’t know.
Cage really nailed that moment for me and my girlfriend. He looked so little-kid hopeful and desperate.
I’ve never seen Family Man, but Cage has a bunch of those. I don’t tend to find his entire performaces spellbinding, but he hits the little moments well. In The Rock there is a great little scene where he’s gone into an interrogation room to talk to Sean Connery, and he’s explaining who he is. Just great. Actually, if you take Cage in that scene–bumbling, well-intentioned, pleasant–and extend it to a few hours, you get Raising Arizona.
One of the best “little” moments I’ve ever seen was in “Remains of the Day” – the scene where Anthony Hopkins is standing in the room with his father, who has just died. He says nothing, stays expressionless, but his hand just barely touches his father’s chest. It was heartbreaking to watch.
In fact, this whole movie is a must see, especially for aspiring actors, because of Hopkins’ performance. It is one of the best, most underplayed, subtle performances I have ever seen.
The midget on Seinfeld. Now that was some great little acting moments!
Seriously, a moment that many may have found over the top, but sticks out in my mind was in Patriot games, Harrison Ford gives a finger point and a look to an IRA Fundraiser after his daughter was hurt. It said more than any profanity laced tirade could say.
Morgan Freeman’s small facial expressions in Shawshank.
Kevin Spacey’s thin smirks, Russell Crowe’s even dialogue, and Guy Pierce’s head tilting in LA Confidential.
From the Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places
One of the Dukes, talking to Eddie Murphy about what a commodities are: “…or bacon, like you would find on a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.”
After this EM looks directly at the camera and gives a completely blank stare that is held for about 1-2 seconds. Comedy at its very finest. The movie, which is pretty funny otherwise, is definetly worth watching simply for that moment.
Edward Norton has a gazillion of them in Fight Club. Just to pick one out…
…there’s a moment when Ed’s character is lying on the couch late at night, watching an infomercial, and he has a remote control lazily dangling in his outstretched hand. his face is completely slack-jawed and his eyes are appropriately glassed over. the voice-over at that point says (I think):
“When you have insomnia, you’re never really awake and you’re never really asleep, either.”
Norton gave a very nuanced performance, and that was just one great moment of many.
This is going WAY back, but I loved it when Hattie McDaniel, as Mammy in Gone With the Wind, gave Scarlett that little smirk after reminding her that “I hasn’t seen Mr. Ashley asking for to marry YOU.”
Spoiler Alert…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The final, wordless scene, as Harold Shand (Hoskins) is being taken away in a car by IRA operatives for execution. The camera stays on his face as his expressions cycle through rage, despair, cunning, defiance and finally the dawning understanding that he’s not going to get out of this one.
In my mind the modern king of the “little acting moments” is Johnny Depp. I may not always like his films, but there are always “moments” that just stun me.
As I have mentioned in other threads, I made a living in the theater for quite a while and I have never seen an actor who is so good at individual scenes as Depp.
In It’s a Wonderful LIfe, James Stewart is walking downstairs on the day that Uncle Billy has lost their several-thousand-dollar deposit. His daughter is at the piano, practicing a Christmas carol, starting over and over and fumbling it each time. As he steps onto the landing, the loose banister post comes off in his hand.
He hefts it a little bit, looks over to where his daughter is practicing the piano, and for one second you can see he’s so irritated that he’d like to peg it at her.
Then he gently puts it back into place and finishes his trip downstairs.
My favorite moment of the movie.
In Peggy Sue Got Married
(spoiler)
Peggy Sue has just arrived back in time, and is a teenager at her family’s breakfast table. The movie plays up the comedy of Peggy Sue trying to figure out what is going on. After this bit of high energy antics, the phone rings, Peggy Sue answers, says “Hello” and the look on Kathleen Turner’s face just changes completely.
In one instant, the viewer knows exactly what’s going on. It’s Grandma on the phone, and for adult Peggy Sue, Grandma has been dead for years. But the viewer knows all of that by the look on her face, even before her voice cracks as she says “Grandma?”. Her face crumples and looks happy and sad and disbelieving, and at the same time, it is the moment Peggy Sue accepts the time travel situation, because wouldn’t you believe anything if it let you talk to your beloved dead Grandma one more time?
For an otherwise average movie, this scene made such an impression on me and the image has stuck with me for years. I don’t care very much for Kathleen Turner, but I am amazed by her ability to convey the emotion and pretty much the plot points of that scene with merely the look on her face.
On the second to last episode of last year’s The West Wing, one of the guys (Sam or Toby, I think) walks into the outer office to find Charlie (Dule Hill) standing at his desk, holding the handset, staring at it. His body language, the tilt of his head, the expression on his face tell you that something terrible has happened before he says a word. And it’s done without a swelling of music to tell the audience how to feel.
In the Hong Kong film City on Fire, Chow Yun Fat (the greatest actor in the history of action films) is a deep cover cop sent to pick up some guns from a bowling alley locker. The way he hesitates as he looks around for cops or gangsters who might have followed him is a gem.