Especially that little exhalation of breath after the line – as if to say, “Silly little hobbits.”
Woody Harrelson in his … er … last scene in No Country for Old Men. Absolutely the best acting I’ve ever seen him do. Granted, that’s a pretty low bar to clear, but when the phone rang andWoody jumped a little, it made me jump a little.
I second this - it’s easily as good an “outsider comes in and shakes things up by force of personality” performance as Alec Baldwin’s in Glengarry Glen Ross. Brimley’s role really put a charge into the movie, one that dissipated after he left, when Sally Field came back onscreen.
On the other hand, Brimley’s character was sort of a deus ex machina - he’s just some irresistable force that came in from outside, solving all remaining problems (with the exception of Fields’ and Newman’s relationship, of course*) with a mere wave of his hand and 10 minutes of blather. But the plot was pretty convoluted and the writers/studios/directors/actors probably weren’t intent on making a 2.5+ hour movie. So the solution became to have Brimley come in and, like Alexander, cut the Gordian’s knot that was the DA corruption subplot.
Guess I should nominate one - Tom Hanks really does do an outstanding job in Forrest Gump. The scene where Jenny tells him that he has a son is one that I always think he brings off wonderfully.
*That would’ve been really impressive: “And you two! Stop dickering around and shack up - you’re both too cute to be perpetually single. Got it?” 
Some even shorter scenes that I loved from GF that actors nailed:
Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) as he realizes that Michael’s onto him and he’s about to die. He seems to go through the five stages all at once.
The doubletake and immediate recovery of Joe Zasa (Joe Mantegna) when Vincent says he needs killing and Michael says “Then kill him. What’s this got to do with me?” Just for a second Joey is truly afraid that Michael’s actually given the order.
In the film version of The Crucible there’s a scene not in the play when Goody Osborn is brought into court. She’s played by an actress I’ve never heard of named Ruth Maleczech and she’s only on screen for about a minute or two, but that one or two minutes is a positively absolutely BRILLIANT performance. The character is deranged, and Maleczech puts so much dignity/humor/pathos/tragedy/etc. into that tiny performance that she should have gotten an award (and it’s beautifully framed by the dignified-to-the-point-of-being-a-statue Paul Scofield). The movie’s worth seeing for her two minutes (along with the rest of the movie, of course.)
Slightly off-topic, but the following sequence (in the linked video) where Schwartzman gets off the elevator in slow motion is a spoof/homage of some other movie, but I can’t remember what movie. Does anyone know?
There is an unexpected tear-jerker scene in The Dukes of Hazzard series, where Rosco (James Best) has to tell Uncle Jess that Bo and Luke landed in a pond and never came up. James Best manages to walk the delicate and strange line of being silly as Rosco, but still tearfully telling an old man that his nephews are gone. It’s a very moving scene, primarily because he doesn’t break character and still manages to show genuine remorse for the loss. He misses them.
It’s been mentioned, but I’ll repeat Kevin Spacey’s death scene in LA Confidential. The life just drains out of him, you can almost see it leaving his body, his eyes just sort of die. A little scene in the movie, but eerily well done.
I was watching Best in Show last night and was reminded of another one: when Harlan Pepper is grooming his dog and Christy Cummings comes up and gets in his face about how he should know who she is, etc. When she leaves, he gives her this annoyed LOOK. It’s his only glimmer of intelligence; he’s on to her.
His eyes really seem to dim in that scene. I’ve never really understood what he did or how he did it, but that scene is what I thought of when I saw this thread.
I remember that scene. I was very annoyed (in a good way) because I coulnd’t help crying. At the FREAKING DUKES OF HAZZARD!!
Kirsten Dunst blew me away in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The scene where the doctor and his wife reveal to her that she had once had an affair with him and he erased her memory of it. The look of horror on her face at that moment is priceless.
There’s a not good paint-by-the-numbers melodrama called Welcome Home in which Kris Kristofferson plays a Vietnam veteran presumed dead by his family for 15 years who it turns out is “not dead yet”. His dad is played by Brian Keith, a very likeable and capable enough actor but not generally thought of as a great thespian, but the scene where he’s fishing and sees the son he assumed was dead show up on the bank is actually fantastic acting: shock, disbelief, catharsis, etc., all in just a few seconds.
An elderly southern actor who plays a blowhard prosecutor during the courtroom scene of Fried Green Tomatoes is perfect even though he’s only on screen for about a minute. You know the character.
Thomas Mitchell’s “We will ask Mrs. O’Hara” scene, the one where Scarlett realizes that Pa’s now nuts, is well played, as is Mammy’s walking Melanie up the staircase after Bonnie Blue’s death, and both she and Vivien Leigh were perfect in the morning after-glow scene as Scarlett’s singing and Mammy’s complaining about her arthritis in her back and Scarlett [though she loves Mammy dearly] isn’t listening and couldn’t care less. (Mammy was by far the best performance in that movie imho- I was watching a documentary recently and a critic made the comment that while other actors would have played the role for comic relief or Stepin Fetchit “Man I loves me some white folks!” one dimension, Hattie McDaniel (daughter of former slaves and a former maid herself) “was coming from a real place” and thus could completely take over a scene with a look or emphasis.)
Yes, that look she threw Scarlett after delivering the line “I don’t see Mr. Wilkes asking you to marry him” was the best bit of the whole movie, IMO. It tells us who Mammy is, what she knows, and that while Scarlett can manipulate just about everyone else in her world, she can’t put shit over on Mammy. All with just one shrewd expression.
I would imagine that extremely subtle special effects were used, but yeah. it’s a great scene from a great movie.
Also when she tells Scarlett, who has just torn down the green velvet curtains to make a dress, that she is going to Atlanta with Scarlett and her new dress.
Definitely a memorable scene. Andre Braugher was the reason I watched that show for so many years. As soon as he left, I lost interest.
There’s one scene in Serenity that I thought was beautifully done. When the Operative first approaches Inara at the temple, she’s standing in the doorway, calm and composed, smiling to greet her visitor. She becomes fearful as soon as she realizes who’s coming up the stairs, but the change in her expression is so subtle that it’s almost imperceptible. I was never a big fan of Morena Baccarin on Firefly, but she did an amazing job in that brief scene.
A movie that gets zero respect, Proof of Life has this little scene ( which is quite pivital to the plot, but Russell Crowe bullshits and charms his way into a room filled with Bad Guys Who Have Guns. He distracts them beautifully enough to allow his own men to get the jump on the Bad Guys.
That scene sums up the whole of the character that Crowe plays right there. Ballsy, charming. The kinda guy that every guy wants to be and every woman wants to screw.
In the crapfilled Scoop there is a very little scene with Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansen, where he is introduced to her. He is some higher up in the royal food chain. His manners and gestures are impeccable. The rest of the movie is shit.
And then Carol Burnett, in one of the funniest moments in TV history, pretending to be Scarlett o’Hara and dressed in the curtain dress ( complete with a curtain rod, said, " Ah just saw it in the window and had to have it." or something like that. Brilliant x10.
I honestly don’t know how Harvey Korman and Tim Conway and Lyle Waggoner made it through the show sometimes. So many times I have seen Harvey Korman freeze on stage, knowing if he breathed, opened his eyes, or took a step, he was going to completely lose it.
It’s like the actors didn’t care if the audience was there or not, they were there specifically to see if they could make each other crack up.
Yeah, that was almost as good as when she eats the strawberry on the first damn episode. She’s an amazing actress.
That’s the inimitable Christopher Guest, better known for cranking his amp up to 11 in Spinal Tap and for playing opposite the star in the mother of all nailed scenes- he’s Count Rugen, the Six-Fingered Man in The Princess Bride. But he also has a perfect scene in Little Shop of Horrors, the musical remake one- he’s the guy who walks into the shop and buys a hundred dollars worth of roses. Perfectly over-the-top.