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Your Favourite Scene From a Film -- and why

Started by An tSaoi, April 06, 2010, 05:01:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

bennett

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on April 09, 2010, 03:10:15 PM
A film that falls short of perfection due to some dreadful acting/improvising by Katrin Cartlidge and Greg Cruttwell. I just wish they weren't in the film so much. Their presence actually prevents me from confidently recommending the film to anyone.

I totally agree.

Goldentony

Quote from: Rowlands on April 07, 2010, 08:02:14 PM
Argh, people have stolen my Network and War of the Worlds suggestions, you cunts. By the way, Speilberg's WOTW was terrific, I've no idea why so many people lambast it. Roger Ebert was a right cunt about it in his review.

I watched this for the first time at the weekend and my main problem with it was the complete inability to take Tom Cruise seriously after throwing a peanut butter sandwhich at a window in a FURIOUS RAGE, and his smooth wax expressionless face not changing at all throughout the entire thing, even when he
Spoiler alert
sends his teenage kid to war
[close]
. Annoying kid syndrome was a big thing in this one too. Both of those motherfuckers were just horrible and grating throughout. No sympathy for them whatsoever, especially the little wise arse daughter who just wouldn't shut up about any fucking thing on screen. That annoying quip when they're sleeping sleeping in the basement and she mentions that she has back problems or something was the final decider. Tim Robbins was ridiculous too in his evil cloak and popeye facial expressions.

Serge

The Martians were fucking brilliant, though.


Goldentony

Yea, the scene where the martian telescope shite is hovering around the basement and the martians eventually start to crawl around the basement and get annoyed at the bike falling off the wall are good scenes, plus the bit not long after where everyones stuck in the cage attatched to the martians themselves, but on the whole it just seemed like gloopy wooden misfired big american shite.

Johnny Townmouse

I think the introduction of the alien tripods and the noise they make was stunning. I found myself watching the film a few weeks ago on TV and turning off after the first 30mins or so. I wish I had seen this in the cinema because the sound of those things genuinely shits you up a bit.

Emma Raducanu

Jodie Foster's mystical flight - Contact

The special effects are fantastic and the images of space are lovely. The juxtaposition of the lightening fast time/space travel depicted through the violence of Jodie Foster's chair being sucked into the celing and her face mutating into two and the peacefulness of her floating round, witnessing the beautful colours of the universe provides excitement and wonderment. I like it when her face turns into a childs and that she's seeing a new world no one else will ever know about.

Even though it starts off looking like a Michael Jackson video, I especially like it when she lands on the beach where she touches the sky and it plays a little jingle. The meeting with her dead Father is a bit mushy but so arrested by the tranquility of the setting, it doesn't really matter. That no one believes she went anywhere, renders it a more special, personal experience similar to when Gordie Lachance saw a deer in Stand By Me.

Phil_A

Spirited Away - the train journey.

The train.

Japanese writers have always been in love the symbolism of trains, and this is a great example. The heroine, Chihiro, is on a journey to see the good witch Zeniba in order break a curse on Haku(currently trapped in the form of a dragon), but to get there she must board the train that carries the spirits to the afterlife. Although there's very little dialogue and not much happens, the whole scene is imbued with a real feeling of mystery and a powerful sense of poignancy, in large part due to Joe Hisaishi's beautiful score. I particularly like the subtle use of CG elements to enhance rather than dominate the visuals, a technique which I'd like to think is unique to Miyazaki's work.

And this leads me on to another train scene from a Ghibli movie...

Grave Of The Fireflies - introduction

grave of the fireflies part 1 English

The placing of this scene right at the start is an unusual choice, hitting the audience with one of the film's most emotionally powerful moments right off the bat. And it only serves to make the actual ending seem all the more cold and empty, as it denies us seeing Seita and Setsuko reunited after all their suffering. But as it stands, this is undeniably one of the most powerfully moving starts to a film.

Apparently in it's original release, GOTF was shown in a double bill with My Neighour Totoro. I assume the logic was that the emotional extremes of the two films would balance each other out and make the audience less likely to go out and cut their wrists after the trauma of "Fireflies".

Catalogue Trousers

More.

Just because this is where Bertolt Brecht meets comedy/drama/musical Western - and EVERYBODY wins.

Cat Ballou

Santa's Boyfriend

Cowboy Bebop - The Movie - Part 10 (Eng-No Sub)

Never liked the English dub very much, but the aerial dogfight scene in Cowboy Bebop is one of the best dogfights ever put to film.  The fact that it's set on Mars makes it even more crazy, and the level of detail and thought gone into how the Mars colony works (and the ships fly around) is fantastic.

lipsink

This startling scene right from the middle of Your Friends and Neighbors. Jason Patric is phenomenal in that film and this scene is probably his highlight.

Jason Patric's ultra creepy character in Your Friends and Neighbors

wherearethespoons

This is one of my many favourites. From 2001: A Space Odyssey;

2001 - HAL takes out Frank

The whole film is one hell of an experience. The tension is created perfectly, and, as the scene goes on, a little beyond this clip, it's hypnotising and creepy to watch as Frank's body continues to fall through space.

Serge

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on April 09, 2010, 05:23:09 PMI think the introduction of the alien tripods and the noise they make was stunning. I found myself watching the film a few weeks ago on TV and turning off after the first 30mins or so. I wish I had seen this in the cinema because the sound of those things genuinely shits you up a bit.

It was definitely one film I'm glad I saw at the cinema, as you're spot on with that. I remember my first thought was that the aliens were communicating with music, like the aliens in 'Close Encounters', but rather than having a nice little tune to show they're friendly, they have one atonal note to show that they're bad. The scene where the tripod
Spoiler alert
appears on the hilltop as Cruise and his family are trying to get on to the ferry
[close]
is fantastic, especially as the martians had been offscreen for a while at that point.

Santa's Boyfriend

I still can't believe they didn't recognise the awesome potential (and potential awesomeness) of doing a period adaptation of the book.  They wouldn't have to stick to the book like glue, but for goodness sake, how cool would it have looked?!

(I know there is one in existence, but it's apparently beyond shit.  And listen to those accents.)

One of my fave films, Dead Man's Shoes, and so many scenes that Considine just amazes me with his "Richard" character. However this is probs the one that stands out for me the most.
 
Dead Man's Shoes clip

Johnny Townmouse

#74
Quote from: Pinckle Wicker on April 10, 2010, 07:35:25 PM
One of my fave films, Dead Man's Shoes, and so many scenes that Considine just amazes me with his "Richard" character. However this is probs the one that stands out for me the most.

Yep, brilliant. One of the greatest scenes ever for sure. Here is a better quality version of it:
Dead Man's Shoes

And Serge - what I really liked about the sounds they made was that it, as you state, rather reminiscent of Close Encounters, but also that they decided to keep the original WOTW description of the machines having trumpet like horns. They could easily have dispensed with that and nobody would have noticed or cared. Instead, they used it creatively and made something other-worldly and utterly terrifying.

By the way, did you know that the first time Orson Welles and HG Wells met each other was not their famous radio interview in 1940, but a few years before. Shortly after The War of the Worlds was transitted on the radio, H.G. Wells was driving through San Antonio in Texas and stopped someone to ask for directions. Yes, the person he stopped was Orson Welles.
Apparently they spent the day together. Not withstanding their similar names this seems an utterly amazing concidence.

If you knew this already this is less amazing.

Artemis

This scene is best experienced in the context of the entire movie. Here are 12 men, charged with reaching a verdict on a murder case. They're the jury. They start, for various reasons, finding the defendant guilty. All but one. As the movie goes on, gradually the jury change their positions through an analysis of argument and personal agenda. It's one of my favourite movies of all times. Throughout, one guy has been fairly clearly prejudice against the ethnicity of the guy in the dock, but until this point it hasn't been explcitly expressed or handled. This is what happens. Within context, it's one of the film's more powerful scenes.

12 Angry Men - This is how you deal with prejudice.

Another awesome scene... 'The Cowboy'. This scene enraptured me when I saw this movie. It makes no more sense than any of the rest of it (and the popular 'second act was dream' theory cannot account for this) but it's just superb.

Mulholland Drv - The cowboy

kidsick5000

One of my favourite films is Layer Cake, which considering it's Matthew Vaughn's firsttime directing has plenty of pretty masterfully shots scenes. (Also pretty much got Daniel Craig the Bond gig.

Anyway, standout scene for me is the cafe fight. Craig's (we never get to know his characters name) posh drug dealer is discussing a bad situation with his sage advisor/bridge to the crime world, Morty. A tramp called Freddie comes in who knows Morty from the old days. Morty gradually loses his cool it all kicks off.
What is brilliant about it is that MOrty was previously the reasonable, level headed one.
His reaction to his old mate is a stark reminder to Craigs character of just how dangerous this seemingly gentrified underworld can still be.
But filming wise it's from the point of view of the guy being beaten up, done by putting the camera in large polystyrene ball and letting the actor go to town on it.
With it not having to be choreographed, it being a one man fight scene the viciousness is amplified.
It the music that truly sets the scene off. It's Duran Duran's finest film moment. Of all tunes its Ordinary World playing anonymously on the cafe radio. Once the glass hits the face its the full blown soundtrack, but as the beating goes on, the music detunes, skips and distorts with every pounding.

Layer Cake - Ordinary World

What it does is add a fresher twist to that old movie trope of playing nice music over terrible violence. The distorting of the sound, while sounding gimmiky actuals takes you closer into Freddie's POV.
There's also the smart almost subliminal intercutting of another scene featuring Lock Stock wanker gangster the Duke and his screeching mrs. It doesn't register at first but it's not till later that the full situation is revealed. Smart because it triggers a sense of chronology. It sorts out the when of it happening.

Desi Rascal

 This Scene starting at 1.50 from bluff master "30 special days"

Bluffmaster (w/eng subs) Part 7

boxofslice

Not because it's a great film but this scene is something of a touchstone for me and my friends.  I've lost count of the amount of times we would say "It's not a too-more" to each other in our best Ahnold at any inopportune moment, even once during a funeral.  This also applies to the "Who is your daddy and what does he do" line.

Kindergarten Cop


Serge

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on April 10, 2010, 08:27:23 PMAnd Serge - what I really liked about the sounds they made was that it, as you state, rather reminiscent of Close Encounters, but also that they decided to keep the original WOTW description of the machines having trumpet like horns. They could easily have dispensed with that and nobody would have noticed or cared. Instead, they used it creatively and made something other-worldly and utterly terrifying.

I'd completely forgotten that that was in the book. I must re-read a bit of H.G. - my dad's just been re-reading some of his short stories and raving about them all over again.

And 'Dead Men's Shoes' is an amazing movie. It's weird to see a film shot in Matlock and recognising places in the background. I'll never be able to see Riber Castle in the same light again. Also, on the subject of coincidences, it always tickles me that Considine and his onscreen brother in 'Shoes', Toby Kebbell, have both played Rob Gretton, Considine in '24 Hour Party people', and Kebbell in 'Control'.

gepree

Without any doubt,
Spoiler alert
the final few minutes
[close]
from The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Link

Cerys

Quote from: Ginyard on April 07, 2010, 07:05:57 PM
The Requiem scene  -  Amadeus

Salieri's a jealous swine who wants Mozart dead for being so much greater than him, but he's keen to get a glimpse as to how a real genius gets the job done. A mixture of fascination, fury and envy encourages Salieri to urge the desperately ill and exhausted Mozart to work through the night, offering to do the donkey work by writing it down for him. He wants the mass for himself, he's a greedy bastard who wants to stick his finger up at God and plans to pass the work off as his own just as soon as Mozart's signed on the stave and snuffed it. Its his writing on the manuscript now to boot. SCORE!

I always see that scene as an affirmation of how much Salieri admires Mozart's genius, and how, if it wasn't for Wolfie being such an unpleasant little man, they might have been close colleagues.  Salieri seems, to me, to regret what he's done to Mozart, once he sees that Mozart is prepared to destroy himself for his music.  It's a point at which Salieri becomes close being to a tragic hero - he sees his hatred of Mozart as being the flaw that will destroy him, but too late to change the fact.  The fact that he tells Constanza 'I was assisting him' when she notices the score to be in Salieri's writing suggests to me that he has finally accepted his inferiority to Mozart.  Instead of trying to claim ownership of the score, his first impulse is to save the music, and not himself.

But then I'm a softie.

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Serge on April 11, 2010, 11:50:28 AM
And 'Dead Men's Shoes' is an amazing movie. It's weird to see a film shot in Matlock and recognising places in the background. I'll never be able to see Riber Castle in the same light again. Also, on the subject of coincidences, it always tickles me that Considine and his onscreen brother in 'Shoes', Toby Kebbell, have both played Rob Gretton, Considine in '24 Hour Party people', and Kebbell in 'Control'.

I watched Dead Man's Shoes the other week and it's an amazing film, my favourite Shane Meadows. In fact, I spent last Saturday (yesterday) in Matlock, mainly in response to seeing the film, and I scouted out a few of the locations (as well as going for a wander around the surrounding countryside!). My first point of call was Riber Castle. I was hoping to go for a wander around the grounds, but it's pretty much all fenced off now, impenetrable and forbidding. I also wandered up to the social club in which the great scene linked above is set! Seriously great film, that.

Serge

Quote from: Neville Chamberlain on April 11, 2010, 04:25:48 PMMy first point of call was Riber Castle. I was hoping to go for a wander around the grounds, but it's pretty much all fenced off now, impenetrable and forbidding.

Really? Blimey. I remember when there used to be a little children's zoo inside there. I'm sure I've got photos of my brother and I when we were kids inside Riber Castle, I'll try and find them.

Quote from: gepree on April 11, 2010, 02:25:27 PMWithout any doubt,
Spoiler alert
the final few minutes
[close]
from The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Yep. Utterly fantastic.

JPA

Quote from: Artemis on April 11, 2010, 04:16:46 AM
This scene is best experienced in the context of the entire movie. Here are 12 men, charged with reaching a verdict on a murder case. They're the jury. They start, for various reasons, finding the defendant guilty. All but one. As the movie goes on, gradually the jury change their positions through an analysis of argument and personal agenda. It's one of my favourite movies of all times. Throughout, one guy has been fairly clearly prejudice against the ethnicity of the guy in the dock, but until this point it hasn't been explcitly expressed or handled. This is what happens. Within context, it's one of the film's more powerful scenes.

12 Angry Men - This is how you deal with prejudice.

Great choice, one of my favourite films too.

I watched Death Proof last night, which was largely poor, however the car chase sequences at the end were really good and at least made me feel the film wasn't a complete waste of time. There's an extra on the DVD where Tarantino talks about car chases from various films, and different approaches to them, and how he really wanted to make his stand-up against the best ones. He also makes a big thing about there not being many long-shots of overheads, he wants you to feel like you're in the chase, and that's something it does really well.

An tSaoi

Heh, I watched 12 Angry Men today for the first time in at least ten years. It's a brilliant film from start to finish.

CaledonianGonzo


Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: Serge on April 11, 2010, 07:42:41 PM
Really? Blimey. I remember when there used to be a little children's zoo inside there. I'm sure I've got photos of my brother and I when we were kids inside Riber Castle, I'll try and find them.

Apparently the zoo was closed and the animals sold off in 2000, and had gained a reputation for poor conditions. I spent a few minutes sitting on a stone next to a fence around the grounds, just a couple of metres away from one of the animal pens, which was itself an abandoned wreck. I'd read a lot about people getting into the closed-off grounds as late as last year, but there was no way I was going to do that. Some of the holes in the fence people had obviously used to get onto the site had clearly been since patched up and reinforced. You can imagine how disappointed I was after the unbelievably steep trek up from town. I continued my walk into the hamlet of Riber and beyond and saw a few old signs for the wildlife park, although some attempt had been made to cover the signs up. It was all very strange and a bit creepy considering the Gothic horror nature of Riber Castle itself, lurking there on the brow of the hill...!

By the way, seeing as you're a native, how do you pronounce Riber?!?

madhair60

I can't list a definitive favourite sequence, so here's one that stands out.

Fred Astaire - Recreation Center (from the movie The Band Wagon 1953)

The Band Wagon.  Always enjoyed the colour and vibrancy of this scene, since I saw the film with a good friend at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse.  It was a repertory screening for the elderly, so various old ladies were singing along to it.  Lovely stuff.



Mr Colossal

Quote from: kidsick5000 on April 11, 2010, 07:13:14 AM
One of my favourite films is Layer Cake, which considering it's Matthew Vaughn's firsttime directing has plenty of pretty masterfully shots scenes. (Also pretty much got Daniel Craig the Bond gig.

Anyway, standout scene for me is the cafe fight. Craig's (we never get to know his characters name) posh drug dealer is discussing a bad situation with his sage advisor/bridge to the crime world, Morty. A tramp called Freddie comes in who knows Morty from the old days. Morty gradually loses his cool it all kicks off.



Yeah.  There's really not that many vicious scenes that actually make you wince.  I remember the guy from gangster no 1 breaking into his home, waiting,  and then going to town on the rival gang boss which was similarly graphic-  watching his life ebb away in full POV mode...