Citizen Kane (lotza stuff in this one, but here’s my favorite): The beginning of the movie includes the camera passing through a skylight to introduce the scene. Later, that sequence is repeated, but the skylight has been broken. Presumably by the camera.
In Clerks, Randal and Dante are having a conversation about jizz moppers in nudie booths (specifically what one is and how much they make). Jizz moppers wipe the windows clean in nudie booths. Anyway, as they talk, a customer walks up to the counter. The customer is “highly offended” by hearing this.
However, if you look on the counter, you’ll notice that he is buying Windex and paper towels. This brings to mind the question; just what does he plan to do with those purchases?
Thought of a few more:
In Brazil, all of the different signs all over the place: “The Truth Shall Make You Free”, “Information - The Key To Prosperity. Ministry Of Information”, “Help The Ministry Of Information Help You”, “Be Safe: Be Suspicious”, “Loose Talk Is Noose Talk”, “Suspicion Breeds Confidence”.
In Fight Club, the different subliminal shots of Tyler and his appearance in the “Welcome!” clip on the hotel closed-circuit television show, before he is introduced.
Or when the Raptor is attacking Laura Dern in the generator room and its head brushes against the naked light bulb, you can see its skin searing from the heat.
Ray Harryhausen AFAIK did the special effects for a King Kong movie, the one where Kong fights a T-rex and for one brief instant during the fight the T-rex stops, scratches his nose, and continues, neat! Apparantly this was as much a side effect of being locked in a darkened room doing nothing but stop motion filmatography as anything else.
Terminator 2, when the T1000 is smashing up the mall it pauses to look at a shop dummy which looks just like itself, completely silver and featureless.
Is that true? I always thought they were saying, “He is Jesus the Lord. Give it a rest.”
In Dr. Strangelove, when George C. Scott is walking backwards in the war room and trips, falls, get back up. Classic.
A lot of Stanley Kubrick movies in this post, because he always puts such interesting touches to his movies. Small details, and what not.
During the opening credits of The Shining, you can hear Danny riding his tricycle in the soundtrack. Other neat touches in that movie is Jack’s typewriter refills itself during the scene where Wendy is bothering him. When Jack is talking to the ghosts, or meeting one, he’s always facing or talking to a mirror.
(I mentioned this in another thread that died) In Toy Story, the carpet outside of Sid’s room matches the carpet in The Shining. I love that, and I don’t know why.
In A Clockwork Orange, when Alex is in the record shop, you can see an album cover of the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also, in the same movie, when Alex is being dragged in the country side by Dim and Georgie, the two’s helmet numbers are 665 and 667, with Alex in the middle being 666.
In Beetlejuice, I’ve always loved the part where they’re dancing to Day-O and in the background, you can see Lydia cracking up. The camera never focuses on her, but it’s a funny sight.
Along the same lines as eunoia mention of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, I like how in Willy Wonka you can cleary see the string on the glass elevator.
I probably have more, but have to think about it.
In “Toy Story”, the tool box that the evil kid next door has in his room is labelled for ‘Binford’(or something like that)… anyway, it is the company that sponsor’s ‘Tool Time’ on Tim Allen’s “Home Improvement”
That just reminded me. In Toy Story 2, Jessie the Cowgirl says, “Sweet mother of Abraham Lincoln!” The mother of Lincoln was Nancy Hanks, whom Tom Hanks (Woddy the Cowboy) is related to.
Wait…is that a “touch”?
Well, I don’t have a copy here to check, but from memory, I’d swear they were chanting *Kyrie eleison, miserere Dominus", which translates to “Lord, have mercy” in Greek and Latin.
Which leads to a neat moment in A Fish Called Wanda, when the first little dog is being buried. The boy choristers are singing, Miserere, Dominus. Canis mortuus est, which translates as “Lord, have mercy, the dog is dead.”
The Monty Python monks are definitely saying Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem, which comes from the Requiem Mass and roughly translates to “Sweet Lord Jesus, give them rest.” (Saw it at the movie theater yesterday – woo-hoo!)
In Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, I always liked all the little Shakespeare references on the billboards: Prospero Fine Vintage Whiskey, a strip joint (I think) called Mistress Quickly’s, and (my favorite) Rosencrantz’s wiener stand.
In Roxanne, the Steve Martin remake of Cyrano DeBergerac, Steve Martin’s character, C.D., is supposed to be this incredibly bright, sophisticated, but insecure, Renaissance man (with an incredibly long schnozz). There’s one scene where he and the hunky dolt Chris are in C.D.'s home that does a wonderful job of establishing C.D.'s character just by the set design. Steve Martin is casually whipping up some gourmet dinner while trying to get Chris to write a love letter, and in the process of panning through the room you get a view of books and models and art – it’s just obviously the room of someone who’s smarter than the average bear.
This may be a little dark, but Number Six reminded me of something I liked from Bodyguard from Beijing.
In so many movies, there’s an annoying little kid who causes no end of trouble for the hero yet manages to waltz through the most dangerous situations without a scratch. In this movie, they shoot the kid! Not fatally, but in the big fight scene at the end, the little brat takes one in the leg. IIRC, he was even doing something annoying that caused him to get shot.
Now, I don’t advocate violence in real life, especially against children, but this was such a change from so many other films I’d seen, I couldn’t help enjoying it.
–sublight.
In The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, the way that Helen Mirren’s dress changes colors whenever she walks into a different room.
Actually, I could probably mention a lot of things in Peter Greenaway’s films…
I remember this part too, and theres another example from that movie thats in the same vein: near the beginning of the movie, when Pee-Wee goes to the shopping center and chains up his bike, he takes a ridiculous amount of chain out of the “saddlebag” on his bike (the gag being that theres no way he could have that much chain in the saddlebag). However, you can quite clearly see that the chain is really stored beneath the saddlebags, offscreen, and is being pulled up through a hole in the bottom. It’s pretty obvious and HAD to be done intentionally.
I just love that Hitchcock appeared in all of his films.
I also love it when big stars do a walk on, like many did for Robert Altman’s brilliant spoof of Hollywood “The Player”.
This isn’t from a movie but I still thought it was neat.
In Madonna’s What it Feels Like(for a girl) video, she slams the door to her motel room, #669; The 9 swings down(held only by the bottom nail) and the room # appears as 666. Very cool. 
In the novel Silence of the Lambs, in the scene where Clarisse meets Hannibal, he makes a little speech about what he can tell about her from her appearance, citing her “cheap shoes and good handbag” and her “add-a-bead necklace.” In the movie version, which follows the novel fairly closely, Hannibal doesn’t use the “add-a-bead necklace” line, but Clarisse is wearing one. I liked that.
In Contact, when there were big crowds around the radio antenna facility, there was a Chevy Vega owners club in the crowd, which I thought was clever. May have been in the book, too, I haven’t read it.
In Raiders, when they first open up the Well of Souls, Salla is scared by a carved head that gets lit up by lighning. Then he recovers with “Sorry, Indy.”
In the final battle scene of Army of Darkness, Ash chops off a skeleton’s head with his sword. The skeleton turns to watch his skull go flying. I don’t know how they animated the skeletons for that movie - stop motion or whatever, but I just loved that they made a headless skeleton “look” at his own skull.
I always liked the “Objects in Mirror Are Closer…” in JP.
Another thing from JP which I didn’t even notice until I went to the Internet Movie Database, is Dennis Nedry’s name is an anagram for Nerdy Sinned. I guess that should be attributed more to the book, but still.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure- I really liked how at the end, when they’re giving their presentation, they interview Freud. Freud “examines” Ted, and then asks Bill if he’d like to be psychologically examined, too. Bill responds, saying, “Nah, I just have a mild Oedipal complex” an the camera pans to Missy, his hot stepmom. The whole moment was really great for some reason. I liked that even though it’s just a “fun” movie, they would include a term that not a lot of people might know. Not something they would do in a more recent flick, IMO.