Likewise, in the Naked Gun, there’s a joke that runs through a scene that Drebin’s refrigerator is full of some nasty spoiled food, culminating in something actually pulsating on top of the refrigerator.
I thought we were certainly meant to think Fred was stoned. Guy even asks him if he’s high when he comes up with the idea of teleporting the rock monster.
It took at least two viewings of Miller’s Crossing for me to figure out that three of the characters are in a gay love triangle – in part because there’s no stigma attached to their homosexuality by any of the characters who discuss this, even though the film’s set among macho (mostly Catholic) gangsters of the 1920s. (The closest to homophobic judgement I remember any character getting is when Tom Reagan/Gabriel Byrne puts a bit of a sneer into the word “friends” in a discussion with Bernie Bernbaum/John Turturro. But he’s got plenty of reasons to sneer at Bernie.)
EDIT: The characters also display plenty of ethnic bigotry, so it’s not like they’re a bunch of tolerant live-and-let-live types.
“Mr. Kidd” in Diamonds are Forever[ similarly pushes the button sending the coffin containing Bond into the crematorium furnace (after making flamboyant swirls with his fingers – meant to indicate that he’s gay, I guess – also using his middle finger.
OTOH, I don’t think the use of the middle finger is always meant to be insulting. In the Hal Roach Babes in Toyland, Stan Laurel’s character tries to re-attach Oliver Hardy’s moustache with his middle finger, and I don’t think that was intentional (especially in a kid’s movie)
Every time I watch Pulp Fiction (and I’ve seen it at least ten times), I notice something in the background that acts as a continuity marker. In the opening shots at the diner, f’rinstance, you can see Vincent in his blue T-shirt, trudging to the toilet, over Yolanda’s shoulder.
It also took me a while to recognize the significance of Butch’s line to Fabienne, “I don’t remember my dreams.” It’s because of his dream with Captain Koons telling him two men never abandon one another that he decides to say in the pawn shop and rescue Marsellus.
The Coen brother movies seem to keep on giving in this regard - there is always something new to notice or learn - you need to watch more than a few time to appreciate.
In The Big Lebowski, one of my favs, I did not at first notice that The Dude (Jeffrey Lebowski) appears in every scene in the movie. Even the one scene where they are showing only the gang ordering at the waffle shop (with Amiee Mann’s chopped-off toe) - he is in Walter’s white van in the background. I read this somewhere and had to watch again to confirm.
In No Country for Old Men, at the end, when Anton is driving away from his latest murder down a neighborhood street, and is broadsided by another car at an intersection and severely injured, I did not notice at first he actually has the green light: Thinking about what he said to Carson Wells earlier, before he shoots him: “If the rule you followed, led you here, what good was the rule?”.
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is my #1 desert island film that I’ve watched dozens of times over 45+ years on TV, the theater and various forms of video on everything from a 13" B/W set to a 55" HDTV, and I see or hear something new at each viewing. When I first got my Laserdisc edition, I watched the film twice (nearly 7 hours), the second time with film critic Donald Ritchie’s outstanding commentary bringing up points about how Kurosawa carefully composed the background of each scene with everything heavily calculated.
Since then, I love watching what’s going on in the background of variety shows when the celebrities think the cameras aren’t catching their actions and reactions!
Two things from The Wizard of Oz (shown last night in Phoenix on the big screen):
Maybe it’s because every time I watched it during my youth was on a B&W TV, but I never noticed until last night that when the Tin Woodsman cries, he has rust trails under his eyes. I know they always said “Don’t cry, you’ll rust”, but I figured that was just an exaggerated warning, not a shown fact.
Second, despite not having a brain, it is the Scarecrow that comes up with the plan to rescue Dorothy.
And conversely, on the big screen it is very obviously a bird in the woods and not a suicidal Munchkin.
During their adventure to get the broom the Lion displays bravery, the Tinman displays emotions, the Scarecrow displays intelligence. Like Dorothy, they “always had the power”.
(If anything, the diploma makes the Scarecrow stupider. He botches the Pythagorean Theorem.)
Hunh. I wouldn’t know from looking at this still.
Good catch.
The box which Eddie Morra receives from the threatening Russian loanshark in Limitless containing the cut-off hands of his late bodyguards is marked “Hand Delivery.”
Got another good one from The Thing…
SPOILERS below if anyone hasn’t seen the 36 yo movie yet 
The last scene of the movie when MacReady and Childs are the only two survivors… they’re talking and sharing the bottle of whiskey while the camp burns.
We only see MacReady’s breath in the cold air. We don’t Childs’ breath because he’s not human. :smack:
Link to Youtube clip: https://youtu.be/GA4Ozqt7338
Excellent!
I re-watched Michael Clayton recently for a 3rd time and first recognized the centrality
of his son Henry’s favorite (fictional) book, Realm & Conquest. Realm & Conquest can then be
connected up with Arthur’s “post-breakdown” anti-corporate manifesto, A Summons to Conquest.
Even the horses on the hill at dawn were resolved (for me).
I was on my third or fourth viewing of the Kenneth Branagh version of Henry V before I noticed the long scene in which the King carries the dead Boy across the field of Agincourt (while the chorus sings “Non Nobis” on the soundtrack) was filmed in a single take. That must have taken a LOT of rehearsing.
From IMDB:
John Carpenter confirmed that Mac and Childs were both human at the end by endorsing The Thing (2002) as canon in relation to his film. In the game, Mac and Childs are revealed to be human.
Is it weird that I’ve seen all but one of the films mentioned in this thread?!
Prior to Carpenter’s declaration, I see the ending as ambiguous, visible exhalations or not.
Yeah, Michael J. Fox looked surprisingly good in drag.
Apparently there’s an ongoing debate over the ending. I didn’t realize.
I had read below, and thought that was the big reveal, but maybe it’s not.
“[Carpenter] said he never understood where all the confusion came from. The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russel (sic) and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit. It’s completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russel is breathing and Keith David is not.” {Emphasis his}
https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Has-John-Carpenter-Explained-Thing-Ambiguous-Ending-35887.html