Two faves:
The scene near the end of Titanic where the boat is nearly vertical, sticking up out of the water. One CGI person falls off the stern, tumbles thorugh the air, and ricochets off the huge prop. Masterful.
In Starship Troopers, the space battle scenes between the large ships. There’s one shot with a huge ship broken in half showing all the decks on fire that’s amazing.
As a lifelong animation fan, I have to give my top votes to the animation by Harryhausen, Willis O’Brien, and others (Jim Danforth, David Allen, Ernest Farino). Others have also been mentioned in this thread – the CGI in Jurassic Park and its sequels and in T2 and Dinosaur.
But I still give a place to the ground-breaking work in 2001, whose hand-drawn mattes aren’t going to be duplicated ever, I think. And to the ahead-f-their-times effects in Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still. A lot of the saucer effects in FP still look great. The opening eye ray from Gort still stands up well after all these years. And I give a big “thumbs-up” to the destruction of Altair 4 in FP, simply because it’s done realistically, without the ship-shaking effects it would feature today (a la Star Trek VI). The simple swelling of Altair IV into a blue sphere and dwindling away is far more effective, dramatically, than the destruction of Dantooine in Star Wars, and more dignified.
T2 has some of my favorites:
The scene where the liquid metal Terminator character is slammed into the wall face first and changes to face-out without moving.
The scene in the hospital where we realize that the Terminator had been camouflaged as the black-and-white tile floor.
Both made my eyes bug out…
Oh, yeah – although the movie was terminally stupid, I loved the CGI bugs in Straship Troopers, especially the Bombadier Beetle when it gets blown up.
The T-1000 rising up from the tiled floor in T2 has always been one of my favourites. I’m also blown away by the Arachnid effects in “Starship Troopers” every time I see it. Stan Winston just did an amazing job there.
Another thing that readily comes to mind here is the scene in “Nightmare on Elm Street” in which Freddy steps through the bars of a jail cell (comparable to the scene in “Terminator II” so many years later). It’s the only photographic effect in the entire movie (the rest was done with mechanical effects), and it’s probably exceedingly simple, but it made a big impression on me nonetheless.
Also, I’m a big Harryhausen fan, so “Jason and the Argonauts” has got my vote.
Least favourite: the T-800 “skeleton” effects in “Terminator”. For some reason the ancient art of stop-motion never managed to get robots looking right (see also Robocop II).
Not to hijack, but * Starship Troopers * is a brilliant (if not very subtle) critique on totalitarianism and uninformed war-time behaviour and not “terminally stupid”. But maybe I should start a thread on that.
KLATU BARADA NIKTO !
Oh yes indeed, Gort was somethin else, thats for sure.
And when they investigate the Krell city/power source in Forbidden Planet (nice matte work).
The SFx in The Thing (the remake of the Thing from another world, which is a great movie) were pretty awsome for the early 80’s.
KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES !
Can’t think of a favorite right now, but my least favorite is probably the drop ship crash in Aliens - takes me out of the movie every time.
I’m a special effects geek, and although I realise it’s a rather poor aesthetic, I will often go and see movies and love them just for the effects work. Some favourites from the past and more recently:
Skeleton swordfight by Harryhausen in Jason
the seven-headed Hydra villainess in another Harryhausen epic, probably one of the Sinbad movies
the fight sequences in The One which combine bullet time and real time
the ATATs battle sequence from Empire Strikes Back
the way the vampires dematerialise in the original Blade
most of the T1000 effects from Terminator 2
the ‘effects that don’t look like effects’, such as the pan down form the top of the Thatcher memorial statue to the base in Citizen Kane. The shot originally began from the base, as the top didn’t exist. Then Welles decided he wanted to pan down from the statue on top. So they made a miniature statue (maquette), shot it, and invisibly joined the two shots together.
the wire removal work fight sequences in Crouching Tiger
Fred Astaire dancing on the walls and ceiling in one of his movies
the shots in Apollo 13 showing external views of the damaged module careering out of control - realism beyond real
the bad guy turning completely into gel and then water in X Men
the morphing faces at the end of the Black or White video
lots and lots of the work in the LOTR movies, but especially the seamless merging of two different scales, as in Gandalf visiting Bilbo, and of course all of Gollum
the web shooting in Spiderman. It just couldn’t have been made any better.
As for worst, where to start? I think one truly dire example that stands out for me was the CGI alien baddie at the end of Signs. Lousy movie anyway, but to cap it all, one of the worst pieces of 100% unconvincing CGI ever to appear outside of a neophyte animator’s demo reel.
Ha ha… I managed to get through all of my previous lengthy post without remembering the most stunning piece of visual effects mastery I’ve ever seen. It’s the scene in Being John Malkovich where JM goes inside his own head and the entire world is just populated by JM clones.
I’ve watched this sequence over and over again, frame by frame, and it really is something. Even with a good knowledge of digital manipulation and compositing techniques, it’s hard to fathom how they put this together. The ‘main’ JM bumps into others, careers into them, brushes them aside and otherwise interacts with them to a incredible degree, and what’s more many of the background clones look at what’s going on with perfectly accurate eye registration, as if they really were watching and following every movement. I’ve seen scenes where one actor was digitally copied before, but the degree of integration in this scene is truly mind-blowing.
While I’m revisiting - another ‘worst’ vote. Pretty well all the not-so-special FX in Superman IV. The Salkinds, who had produced the first three fairly decent Superman movies, sold the rights to the Golan/Globus Cannon empire, and they went ahead and made a really cheapo, cheesy Superman movie with a special FX budget of about 10 dollars with no regard for quality whatsoever. All the blue screen work is crap, and at times Superman’s blue costume even looks green because the film processing was so poor. Just awful.
Actually, gonzoron, I think that should be taken as a tribute to those shots. I know why I didn’t mention them: Because I had forgotten that they were even special effects at all. Now, that’s a good effect.
Oh, yeah, and the comet impact from Deep Impact was very nice, as well.
Yeah, that might be it. I’m reminded of another similar effect:
In The Panic Room, there’s a completely uneccessary, but wonderful shot where the camera sweeps through the kitchen, and goes through the handle of a teapot. Took a minute to register from “hey, that was neat” to “waitasec, how they heck is that possible!”
Speaking of Fincher, I also love the Ikea catalogue shot in Fight Club. That was the moment I realized why people were actually liking this movie that looked like junk in the trailers.
Wow, a lot of my faves have already been mentioned, but here are some more. . .
. . . Samara emerging from the TV in The Ring
. . . the fusion bugs launching plasma bombs into orbit in Starship Troopers
. . . the matte paintings to depict Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest
. . . the ship turning over in The Poseidon Adventure (you gotta hear it on a good 5.1 sound system)
. . . the flying head in Zardoz
. . . the Loch Ness monster growing larger in The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao
Least favorite
. . . the painfully obvious CGI of Spiderman swinging along the Manhattan skyline in Spiderman
. . . the Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns
. . . the concluding shot of the new planet Zyra in When Worlds Collide
NOBODY has mentioned the battle of Helm’s Deep in LOTR: TTT? That was the most amazing imagery I have ever seen put on film! The sheer size of it left me feeling unbalanced! The hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of evil creatures charging, the arrows flying, the boulders crashing down, oruk-hai falling off the siege ladders… and then it gets serious when Gandalf and the other army arrive. The white light, the two lines colliding… I wanted to weep at the sheer enormity and power of it. Hands down the best ever, IMHO.
LC
I’m pretty sure that many of the other JM’s were people in impressively made latex masks, which explains the eye action and the interaction. I’m not sure of how many were digital doubles played by JM at different times and how many were masked, if I’m even right. But I think I am.
Oh, my vote for worst has to go to the American theatrical version of Eyes Wide Shut, in the orgy scene with the ludicrously digital looking figures put in unnatural positions to cover only the naughty bits and nothing else. They might as well have just put a big black bar that said CENSORED over the happy couples. Geez.
Spock’s use of rocket boots in the turbo lift in Star Trek V.
Any movie where the actions of the driver of a car don’t match the movement of the car as seen out the rear window.
Not movies, but…
In CHiPs, the way they make cars appear to speed by having every other car going 20 MPH on the freeway.
Also in CHiPs, the way a car will fly up in the air and do a flip upon striking any other car from any angle.
In Dukes of Hazzard, when the General Lee goes off a jump and the front end is demolished on landing for just a split second, then the Duke Boys continue to drive with the General Lee in perfect condition in the next clip.
All very funny…
Gee BearFlag70, I remember those as being pretty bad examples, myself… 
The storm in Perfect Storm, that was done very well.
I can usually spot the CG stuff, but those rough seas looked pretty damn real to me.
** Ianzin**, apart from the latex masks (which I know nothing about) many of the people JM bumps into are simply look-a-likes. It still is an amazing scene though.
The tigers in the arena in Gladiator were awfully cheesy for a BPOTY winner. I didn’t like them at all.
I thought the cityscape in Bladerunner was pretty awesome for it’s time. There wasn’t a whole lot to it but it was effective.