Anything with Christopher Walken automatically qualifies as good dialogue. Well, cool sounding dialogue anyway.
Lots of these films are based on successful plays, so most of the dialogue is already written and proven on stage. Examples: A Man For All Seasons, The Philadelphia Story, Arsenic and Old Lace, A Thousand Clowns, His Girl Friday, Becket, The Lion In Winter.
(I’m an outlier with respect to that last film. I watched it recently and I didn’t like it nearly as much as when I saw it when it was first released. At that time it was generally considered rather shocking. Now, not so much.)
I would say that the dialogue is about the one good thing in most of Tarantino. The rest is just too pretentious, and now even his dialogue is getting that way, too (CF Jango).
It’s not what she says, anyway. She just says, “My name is Pussy Galore.” (If she had said it as suggested above, it could have been great meta-dialog.) I think what most people actually remember is Bond’s response (“I must be dreaming.”)
The only monologue in the movie is Alec Baldwin’s “brass balls” speech, and while it’s a great scene it’s a very short part of the movie. The ongoing banter between the characters is really great dialogue. It didn’t hurt that they had a phenomenal cast to deliver the lines.
Tin Men is another sales guy movie with great dialogue but nowhere near the talent of the Glengarry Glen Ross cast. Glengarry may have had a slightly better script, but the acting blew Tin Men out of the water, and I liked Tin Men.
I’ll nominate “No Country For Old Men” as a movie that has natural-sounding dialogue that, while not showy, illuminates the characters every time they speak. Great casting didn’t hurt, either.
Dark & surreal & even nonsensical, perhaps, but watch Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks-Fire Walk With Me, Dune, and even Eraserhead & tell me there’s not some damn fine dialogue in there. Yay, David Lynch.
Ron Shelton’s films: Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump, Tin Cup, etc. tend to have terrific—as well as intelligent—dialogue.
“Its gonna be hard to eat corn on the cob…with no fuckin teeth!!”
"Your children. I want to buy your children. How much fir the little girl?
“We have both kinds of music. Country AND Western.”
“If the shit fits…wear it.”
I cant believe no one has mentioned The Blues Brothers; dialog so good Shakespeare is envious of it.
I have to their acceleration added the hind’rance of glue. Strong stuffe.
It hasn’t been mentioned yet, but I would include Clue in the list of movies with wonderful dialogue.
I don’t know if it’s the scripts or the way he delivers his lines, but Robert Duvall’s movies always sound very conversational to me, not contrived.
Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson in The Sunset Limited. It is all dialogue. Two men locked in a room discussing life. it is based on a play by Cormac McCarthy.
In Bruges
The Big Sleep*
Good Will Hunting
Fletch
When Harry Met Sally
(*already mentioned in this thread)
These are mainly he “snappy, witt, funny dialogue” variety. For deeper stuff, I think of the Linklater/Delpy/Hawke films already mentioned. (It seems we’re sticking with spoken English for this thread, BTW). Woody Allen is good at both varieties, usually within the same film. A lesser-known example is “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
And Mamet dialogue is very peculiar – you either like it or you don’t. I love it. House of Games, Spanish Prisoner, Heist…
Practically any adaptation of a play:
Biloxi Blues
That Championship Season
Man for All Seasons
Frost-Nixon
Twelve Angry Men
RoboCop has moments of greatness.
Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead.
More of several monologues but Good Morning Vietnam.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail has some silly, witty banter.
MASH* had some great dialogue.
And a +1 for Tarantino (it’s unlikely a film could ever reference McDonald’s or tipping waitresses without the viewer thinking of his stuff) and Coen Brother flicks.
In case anyone takes this one seriously I must cast an alternative vote declaring this to be the most pretentious conglomeration of booshwa ever concocted.
Now you can criticize my choices:
Maltese Falcon
Casablanca
Chinatown
The Last Seduction
Also a couple by Paddy Chayevsky:
Hospital
Marty
The Americanization of Emily