We all know stuff like E.T. and the kid riding the bicycle across the face of the moon, Marlon Brando screaming “Stella!” in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” or Hannibal Lecter talking about fava beans and a nice Chianti.
But I am talking about tiny little things that make you laugh, or make you cry or make you smile. I just watched The Bourne Ultimatum again and the bit at the end when Julia Stiles, as Nicky Parsons, smiles and you realize that Jason Bourne is not dead sets up the ending perfectly and made me smile again.
I probably have a hundred of these but let’s hear one of yours.
In Tombstone, at the OK Corral shootout, Doc Holliday has the drop on a guy, pulls his trigger, and…click, empty. The guy says something like, “Now I got you!” and Holliday says, “You’re a daisy if you do.”
Of course Doc shoots him with the gun in his other hand.
There is a great little scene in **Raising Arizona **where John Goodman is explaining some criminalistic topic to Nicholas Cage while eating a plate of cold chicken. At one point, Goodman says “Think about it, H.I.” As he does so, he holds a chicken leg up to his temple. Classic.
This one is really obscure, from Disney’s Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins goes aboard the ship and has a confrontation with a sentry where he manages to kill the pirate with the pistol Long John Silver gave him but is wounded in the process. He climbs down from the mast where the incident occurred and then takes the skull & crossbones pirate flag down and slowly hoists up the Union Jack.
The dinner scene in While You Were Sleeping. “*These mashed potatoes are so creamy.” “John Wayne is tall.” “John Wayne isn’t from Cuba.” “Ricky Ricardo is from Cuba.” “Ricky Ricardo isn’t tall.” “These mashed potatoes are so creamy.” * I’ve been at that dinner.
That certain scene in The Big Heat where it suddenly changes from a decent but not spectacular crime-drama turned noir into a very gritty and rather shocking modern film. Took me completely by surprise, I’d never expected them to ever go there.
One of my favorites is the scene in Patton where Patton’s army is pushing toward Bastogne to relieve the seige. There’s this montage where the only thing you hear is Patton reading a prayer for good weather while images of horrific fighting play out. It’s really eerie and affecting.
ETA: and another from the same movie: The battle where the American tanks run out of gas and have to fight it out with the German column. And the aftermath, when Patton comes up on the battlefield and talks to the shell-shocked survivor.
I always get affected by scenes where the airplane finally takes off. I don’t know why – there must be some deep psychological meaning to me about escaping from mundane ties, or something. But when the long-awaited plane finally does take off, despite all the obstacles in its way, I find it very moving. So I love the climax of The Flight of the Phoenix. I even like the Taleoof-at-Dawn scene at the end of Firefox.
i was just watching Forbidden Planet again last night, and I really do love the scene where Captain Adams and Doc Ostrow try to get into Morbius’ house after the attack on the ship, and find Robby guarding the doors. They try to shoot him, but he drains their weapons. They try to logically get past him by invoking the Three Laws (!!), but he tells them they can’t get in that way. They tense for a battle (which will invariably be one-sided. Robby is played by a clumsy guy-in-as-suit, but the script has him lifting solid lead. And somehow managing to transport all those liquor bottles) But suddenly Altaira comes in and stops Robby with an Emergency Override.
That so damned intelligent, so unexpected by the tropes of bad movies, that it still affects me. We need more intelligent science fiction movies, dammit.
My favorite moment in “The Dark Knight,” surprisingly, didn’t include either Batman or the Joker.
It was on the prison ferry, where the big, scary looking tattooed convict told the warden, “Give me the detonator, and I’ll do what you should have done ten minutes ago.”
And when the cowardly warden obeys, the convict tosses the detonator overboard. It was such moments that made “The Dark Knight” more than your average superhero flick.
During the big battle at the end, an RPG hits a APC. The explosion is just smoke, dust and debris and the soldier who was manning the gun just flops over.
During the same battle, when they’re leaving the building and we see about a million soldiers standing around. Fighting erupts again and the building is covered in little puffs of smoke from all the gunshots. Beautiful scene.
Earlier in the movie I was floored by Michael Caine as a dope-smoking hippie. I loved his joke about why women couldn’t make babies any more and the best part was when he repeated the punchline, all baked: “Eatin’ the fuckin’ stork!”