I agree that Jen’s fall into the waterfall is a beautiful scene, I don’t think you need a pretty girl for cinematic artistry. Therefore we must call your equation only one solution to the problem…and it could easily be screwed up by bad lighting, bad pacing, bad staging, bad composition…etc.
You need not apolgoize for loving Titanic. Not only has it the great and goddess-like Kate Winslet, it has her boobies.
The House of Mirth, when Selden confronts Lily. Everything about that scene leaves me sobbing. I love how it was shot. Almost all of Suspiria. I guess the scene with the mirrors stands out the most, though.
I’m totally cheating here, but I’m going to say Final Fantasy X, too. The ending cinematic on the airship is absolutely beautiful.
The entire Kiss the Girl sequence from Disney’s The Little Mermaid.
Definitely Days of Heaven. Every single shot in the entier film is beautiful.
Many scenes in The Right Stuff. A scene of the X-1 being fueled in the morning, with vapor hissing around it. A scene of the X1 being dropped from a B-29, when the sunlight suddenly streams into the cockpit. A shot of Gordon Cooper coming around the Earth into the sunrise when he says, “Oh, Lord, what a heavenly light!” - and you see it reflected in his visor and chest mirror. The scenes of the atronauts watching the fan dance, cutting to Chuck Yeager spinning out of control the YF-104. Many more. It’s just a beautiful film.
Top Gun’s real strength was its cinematography. The opening scenes on the aircraft carrier are gorgeous, with the dawn breaking and the deck crew doing their dance in slow motion through the mist of jet exhaust and heat waves from the engines. The shot of Tom Cruise driving his motorcycle parallel to the runway while jets are taking off. In fact, the entire movie is beautifully shot from beginning to end.
It’s a little hard to seperate emotionally touching from visually and audibly beautiful but I’ll try.
Ditto for Odo shapeshifting around Kira and the end of The Color Purple.
I kind of thought that the scene from Buffy in The Gift where she throws herself into the mystical vortex to save the world and her sister was both emotionally touching and visually and audially beautiful.
Ditto for the last episode of Lost where Desmond turns the key to save the world while the hatch is tearing itself apart, and we hear Penny’s voice over as the screen fades to white.
Criticized as it may be, the Neo death scene and Matrix rebirth scenes in M3 were cinematic.
The Dark Crystal, where Jenn thrusts the crystal shard into the great crsytal just as the three suns converge.
Serenity, where the tiny ship shows up to confront the government armada, vastly outnumbered, and then suddenly hundreds of reaper ships burst through behind it.
Almost all of Legend. Particulary the flower petals flowing through the air while Tangerine Dream sings.
The Big Blue during the dream sequence as the bedroom fills with water and dolphins appear.
The Clark proposes to Lana scene in Smallville.
Rescuers Down Under, where the boy is carried by the flying eagle, and thrown off the waterfall before being caught again.
Fight Club when the buildings come down at the end as they hold hands. (Which reminds me of the last scene in Empire Strikes Back for some reason).
Several of the flights in Neverending Story.
The scene in the last episode of Six Feet Under as Claire drives away.
Several scenes in the episode where Xena and Gabrielle die and are caught up in the battle between heven and hell.
Most of 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
If not for the soundtrack score, you coulda made that movie a silent, and still been just as impressive.
Lord of the Rings, when Arwen is thinking about how Aragorn will die and she (having chosen to stay with him) will be too late to join her family in the Undying Lands.
The sequence includes Aragorn’s body morphing into his tomb and Arwen walking through woods alone.
Fabulous.
Road to Perdition, when Paul Newman’s character gets gunned down in the rain.
I came in to mention just the scene, one of the only death scenes that I think can rival Roy Batty’s.
As far as LAwrence of Arabia goes it is hard to pick individual scenes as the whole movie is so beautiful. But my favorite shot would have to be Lawrence blowing out a match and cutting to that stunning desert sunrise.
Hearty agreements with the nominations for Lawrence of Arabia, The Right Stuff, Henry V, and LotR.
To these I add my own selections:
LotR: Return of the King - Gandalf’s description of the afterlife to Pippin. That was, to me, the most beautiful moment in a movie comprised mostly of beautiful moments.
Henry V - The Saint Crispin’s Day speech. Makes me want to draw a sword and charge against an unstoppable foe every time. The depiction of the Battle of Agincourt is pretty stunning in and of itself
The Duellists - The whole damned movie, really, but the “cavalry” duel was especially gorgeous.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World - Again, the whole damned movie. But the scenes that especially stand out are the opening attack, the storm, and the funeral.
The Polar Express, the flight of the ticket.
I just saw Cars this weekend. The desert scenes and the depiction of the run-down (and later revitalized) town of Radiator Springs were stunning. Worth seeing on the big screen.
Other movies that were awesome in the theatre were Dances with Wolves, The Empire Strikes Back, and Madagascar.
I’d second a lot of what’s been mentioned already, especially the LOTR movies and the scene in Serenity with the ships and the fighting and the Reavers.
The scene from DS9’s “Chimera” … Idunno. That whole episode never sat right with me. Odo always seemed inferior in his abilities to the other changeling. Ah well. I would like to suggest the climactic battle of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. Chang is invisible, ranting and raving in Shakespeare quotes (“I am constant as the northern star!”), and then you see the gas-detecting torpedo loop around slowly, almost lazily, as Chang watches it on his screens.
“To be, or not to be …” BOOM
Hee. I’m such a dork. Anyway, the other one I’d like to suggest, on a lighter note, is the chase scene in The Incredibles, where the goons in hovercrafts are chasing Dash. Absolutely breathtaking.
Luke looking at the double sunset.
The forest sequence in Sleeping Beauty.
Bill Murray hitting a golf ball (in front of Fuji-san).
I think that all of the imagination sequences in ** Finding Neverland ** are wonderful
In “The Man From Snowy River”, when the hero- his name escapes me at this moment (Gona have to watch it again! 
) rides at a dead gallop down the mountain at the end in slow motion, that little buckskin horse plunging over the edge without question or hesitation. It always chokes me up.
In “The Black Stallion”, Alec and The Black playing on the beach of the deserted island, especially after I read the story of how that moment came to be… it was not a planned scene for the movie, but was actually the actor and the horse just… playing, and the film crew saw, and filmed it. sniff
The end of “All of Me” where Steve Martin is dancing with the stableman’s daughter, whose body Lily Tomlin’s spirit is now inhabiting, and in the mirror, it is Lily Tomlin reflected.
I couldn’t agree with you more. When you add in the stirring music that accompanies these scenes, it gets to me every time.
The Last Samurai.
Toward the end when Cruise is confronted by the three thugs and has to use his newly learned samurai sword skills. The scene is a typical quick cut action film sword fight. The part that is beautiful is that the fight is then replayed in slow motion in the same sepia tone overlay that is used for the earlier flashbacks to the indian massacres. Equating this bloody battle to the carnage he witnessed earlier. Death is death and death is brutal.
The Six String Samurai (a wonderfully kitchy and weird indie post-apoc rock and roll fable) when the kid picks up Buddy’s guitar and and his black suit (which is of course far too big for him) and his horned rimmed glasses and continues the journey to Lost Vegas. The final shot is an homage to the Wizard of Oz with the Kid (now effectively Buddy) walking the yellow brick road to the “Emerald City”.
I’ll have more later, but the boss don’t pay me to stay after 5.