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04-08-2006, 11:51 PM #1j7wild Guest
50 Greatest Moments in Movie History !!
Source: TV Guide Magazine (March 24-30, 2001 issue)
If you don't agree with this list; write your Congressman
50. Goldfinger (1964) - LASER SURGERY
The quintessential James Bond movie, director Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger has it all: a great theme song, the best gadgets, the most memorable villains and, of course, Sean Connery at his coolest and nastiest. Goldfinger can also claim the most famous scene in all of Bond-age, wherein Agent 007 is strapped down in a spread eagle with an industrial laser veering straight for his manhood. The bons mots fly: "You've made your point, Goldfinger," Bond says, dry as vermouth. Then later, "Do you expect me to talk?" to which Goldfinger so memorably responds, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."
49. Heat (1995) - TWO GODFATHERS
About halfway through this highly charged crime-caper opus, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) pulls over a car driven by master criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and offers to buy him a cup of coffee. For the next six minutes, viewers are treated to a long-awaited clash of acting titans. Pacino and De Niro, arguably the premier actors of their generation, had never appeared together on-screen (though they both starred in The Godfather, Part II). The pairing was worth the wait. The coffee talk simmers with foreboding, all but guaranteeing that these two characters will meet again under less pleasant circumstances. No shouting, no scene stealing. Just two pros at the top of their game.
48. The Matrix (1999) - FREEZE FRAME
The Wachowski Brothers' tale of cyber-messiah Neo (Keanu Reeves) and his head trip down the alternate-reality rabbit hole introduced cutting-edge technology that sent ancient martial arts (and movie effects) into the 21st century. Reeves trained for four months with choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, and the mano-a-mano finale between Reeves and Hugo Weaving set the standard by which all action scenes will be judged for years. Effects such as the midair freezes and rotating camera angles have inspired Mission: Impossible 2, Charlie's Angels, and even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. As Keanu would say, "Whoa."
47. When Harry Met Sally... (1989) - FAKING IT
Meg Ryan's afternoon delight in a crowded New York deli personified man's deepest fear: that it (yes, it) can be oh-so-convincingly faked by the opposite sex. Lovable goofiness gave way to an untapped sexual oomph as Ryan wryly dimmed her good-girl aura for an ecstatic impromptu performance over one hell of a sandwich. Realizing his prowess is no match for a woman waxing orgasmic, Billy Crystal has a look of mortified excitement that says it all. But Estelle Reiner, mother of director Rob Reiner, gave the scene its real climax: As a customer placing an order at the next table, she deadpanned, "I'll have what she's having."
46. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963) - NUCLEAR RODEO
Gliding from savage satire to faux-documentary realism, Stanley Kubrick's devastating black comedy about nuclear annihilation remains the ultimate Cold War time capsule. While an inspired Peter Sellers gets the spotlight in three showy roles, the most memorable moment belongs to character actor Slim Pickens. As Air Force Major T.J. "King" Kong, Pickens rides a nuclear missile like a bucking bronco, smacking it with his cowboy hat until it explodes into a massive mushroom cloud.
45. Big (1988) - PIANO MEN
Why does everyone love Tom Hanks? Because he knows how to hit just the right notes, of course, as he displayed with giddy abandon in Big. In his tender, goofy turn as a 12 year-old trapped in a grown-up's body, Hanks (along with his boss, played by Robert Loggia) performs a crowd-rousing rendition of Heart and Soul on a floor-size piano keyboard in a toy store. Today (which seems a lifetime later), the scene holds up as a sweet salute to boys and their toys, no matter how big.
44. Star Wars (1977) - THE CANTINA
While the lightsaber duels, blaster battles and dogfights drew the oohs and aahs, a visit to a bizarro-world cantina packed with a menagerie of grotesque and hilarious aliens - or "a wretched hive of scum and villainy," as Obi-Wan Kenobi described it - immediately became everyone's favorite scene. A space-age homage to the barroom brawls of vintage Westerns, the bit was spoofed on TV shows and commercials, while the phrase "This looks like something out of the Star Wars bar scene" remains an apt description for all places freaky and geeky. The once dazzling special effects now seem quaint (director George Lucas found it necessary to provide a digital makeover for the 1997 rerelease), but cafe society has rarely been such fun.
43. There's Something About Mary (1998) - HAIR GEL
"Is that hair gel?" Those four simple words had a nation howling in giddy horror. And while it may be hard to find the highest (or is that the lowest?) point of the Farrelly brothers' gross-out comedy smash (though Matt Dillon electrocuting that poor pooch is right up there), there's no doubt that this hair-raising moment forever redefined the gag in sight gag. The sticky situation, handled with angel-faced purity by Cameron Diaz as the titular marvel, comes together when we finally witness the awesome holding power of Ben Stiller's, um, handiwork. Truly a seminal moment in film history.
42. Dirty Harry (1971) - THE QUESTION
Clint Eastwood's Detective Harry Callahan - he of the Elvis hair and cobra stare - has had a busy morning infuriating his superiors and mouthing off to the mayor. So when a bank robber interrupts his hot-dog lunch, Harry's in a dirty mood. He strolls up to the lone survivor of a bloody shoot-out, whose hand is reaching for a shotgun. Says Harry, "I know what you're thinking: 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' To tell the truth, in all the excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?" There, then, is our introduction to the best of all action-film characters.
41. Alien (1979) - THE GUT BUSTER
We knew something was coming, we just didn't know what. That face-hugging alien critter on John Hurt's mug couldn't have just vanished, but who expected it to reenter the movie in such a heart-shattering way? Filmed in one take and mostly ad-libbed, the messy mess-hall sequence from Ridley Scott's deep-space scarefest shattered the claustrophobic tension among the Nostromo crew (including Sigourney Weaver in her first lead role) and introduced us to the grisliest parasite ever. When you see this scene again, keep an eye on Ian Holm's character as Hurt starts hurting: His subtle expression suggests that he isn't surprised by the uninvited dinner guest.
40. High Noon (1952) - THE SHOOT-OUT
Just about every great Western features a confrontation between the white hats and the black hats on a deserted, dusty street, but none did it better than High Noon. Conceived as a political parable by writer Carl Foreman (later blacklisted), this morality play turns the Western genre's conventions inside out. With stark black-and-white photography (by Floyd Crosby, father of rocker David Crosby), virtually no action until the finale and the ending more bitter than sweet. Fred Zinnemann's taut classic builds suspense until the moment when Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is forced to stand alone against four desperadoes. In his Oscar-winning performance, Cooper makes pained expressions betraying his fear until everything explodes in the showdown of all showdowns.
39. Saturday Night Fever (1977) - THE SOLO
Who knew that shaking his groove thang would turn Vinnie Barbarino into the king of Hollywood? Fuhgeddabout the hair, the gold chains, the Brooooooklyn accent - John Travolta's Oscar-nominated hustle made him a superstar, and he shines brightest in his sexy solo to the Bee Gee's You Should Be Dancing. Travolta's Tony Manero parted the disco crowd the way Moses did the Red Sea, sending a new musical style into the mainstream. Decades after disco, the image of this patron saint of polyester is staying alive.
38. The Deer Hunter (1978) - RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Two scenes of Russian roulette are played out in Michael Cimino's acclaimed Vietnam War epic, but it's the first one that caught (and still catches) us off guard. A trio of American POWs (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage), old friends from the same Pennsylvania steel-mill town, are forced by their captors to engage in the hideously sadistic game, and the audience suffers right along with them. The film was criticized for the depiction - no incidents of that particular torture were ever verified - but nothing can detract from the scene's nerve-shredding tension. The gunplay remains a powerful allegory for the cruelty and senseless suffering in Southeast Asia.
37. The Graduate (1967) - SEDUCED
No cinematic moment captured the 1960s generation gap better than the seduction of Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock by Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Hoffman became an overnight sensation as the emotionally paralyzed college grad carrying on with the lecherous, lonely Mrs. R. (No matter that, in real life, the 36 year-old Bancroft was a mere six years older than Hoffman.) After Benjamin sputters, "Mrs. Robinson you're trying to seduce me," the desperate tawdriness of the situation becomes all too clear in Bancroft's dirty chuckle, her stockinged leg so memorably framing the graduate, trapping Benjamin in his own future.
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04-08-2006, 11:55 PM #2j7wild Guest
36. The Public Enemy (1931) - THE GRAPEFRUIT
James Cagney's cocky performance as a ruthless racketeer catapulted him to superstardom in this brutally realistic gangster classic. William Wellman's gritty direction evokes a seedy, amoral atmosphere in several powerful sequences, but one scene stands out: Cagney's hood ending a breakfast argument with his moll (Mae Clarke) by shoving a grapefruit into her kisser. The look of shock and embarrassment on Clarke's face was reportedly real, as she wasn't sure what Cagney was going to do until they actually shot the scene. Cagney later said that for years, whenever he would dine out, some wise guy would invariably have the waiter send over a grapefruit. Who could resist?
35. Five Easy Pieces (1970) - THE CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH
Jack Nicholson was just beginning to blip on Hollywood's radar screen when he tried to order breakfast in Bob Rafelson's deceptively simple drama. Nicholson plays a prodigal son (en route home to see his dying father) whose bottled-up rage erupts at a diner when a waitress refuses to bring him an off-menu order of toast. "You make sandwiches, don't you?" he asks, his voice coated with contempt. He calmly orders a chicken salad sandwich on toast, hold the chicken. "You want me to hold the chicken?" repeats the rude waitress. "I want you to hold it between your knees," Nicholson snaps, then clears the table with an efficiency Stanley Kowalski would admire. In one sweep, Nicholson captures the fury of an entire generation sick of playing by the rules.
34. All About Eve (1950) - STORM WARNING
Every drag queen's favorite line, spoken by the ultimate drama queen: "Fasten your seatbelts: It's gonna be a bumpy night." Bette Davis's martini-soaked omen sets the stage not only for a party scene but also for director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's entire backstage saga. Realizing that Anne Baxter's unctuous Eve is a conniving stalker, diva Margo Channing (Davis) tosses off the warning like an old fur. In a film with more bitchy one-liners than an entire season of Sex and the City, Davis shows why she was, like Margo (as George Sanders' venomous critic Addison DeWitt put it), "a great star, a true star."
33. Glory (1989) - THE TEAR
Denzel Washington's incandescent talent blazed with his Oscar-winning turn in this fact-based Civil War drama about a Union regiment of black soldiers. As an angry runaway slave "so full of hate (he just wants) to go out and fight everybody," Washington gave the film its most powerful image: His exposed back criss-crossed with scars from countless lashings, the runaway braces himself for yet another whipping, all the while staring with disdain at his white commanding officer (Matthew Broderick). The stare continues, unflinching, through the whipping, even as a single tear rolls down Washington's right cheek.
32. Cabaret (1972) - HITLER YOUTH
Bob Fosse's ultrastylized direction and a truly star-making performance by Liza Minnelli pushed the Hollywood musical into the modern era. Filled with such wonderful numbers as the title song and the Minnelli-Joel Grey duet Money, Money, the film is never more powerful than when a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy stands up at an outdoor cafe to sing Tomorrow Belongs to Me. As the camera slowly tilts down to reveal the boy's brown uniform and a swastika armband, other fresh-faced Aryans enthusiastically join in. The dichotomy between the lovely melody and its hideous message - as well as the contrast between the Hitler Youth and a disgusted old man - is a grim reminder that life would not remain a cabaret.
31. The Birds (1963) - THE SCHOOL YARD
Alfred Hitchcock followed Psycho with this, his most technically challenging film, which required three years of preparation and used a then-remarkable 370 special-effects shots. The most memorably malevolent scene is a perfect primer for Hitch's cinematic mastery, as he teasingly intercuts an oblivious Melanie (Tippi Hedren) smoking the slowest-burning cigarette in movie history on a schoolhouse swing set while hundreds of crows gather behind her. As a singsong nursery rhyme wafts from the school, Melanie catches sight of one bird in midair. She (and the audience) watch as the crow lands on a bird-packed jungle gym. Other filmmakers of the era would have spared the kids from the ensuing onslaught. But other filmmakers were not Hitchcock.
30. Annie Hall (1977) - LOVE ON A ROOFTOP
Woody Allen has made films more ambitious (Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors) and maybe even funnier (Sleeper) but never more poignant or popular than this Oscar-winning urban love story. He found inspiration in his off-camera romance with Diane Keaton, and while everyone has a favorite scene - the lobsters! Marshall McLuhan! the cocaine sneeze! - the getting-acquainted chat between Keaton and Allen on the deck of Annie's apartment is as charming as the first flush of love. The fumbling, awkward conversation includes running subtitles ("I wonder what she looks like naked?") that peek inside the couple's minds and the brain of the comic genius at work.
29. The Lady and the Tramp (1955) - DOG FOOD
"We don't make films primarily for children," Walt Disney once said. "We try to make them for the child in all of us." Here he succeeded with what might be the most cherished in Uncle Walt's vast archive. Say "spaghetti scene," and even cat lovers go moonstruck. Tramp, the scruffy mongrel, takes Lady, the well-heeled cocker spaniel, to his favorite Italian restaurant (or, rather, its back-door alley). They share a heaping dish of pasta and meatballs to the strains of the dreamy Bella Notte. As they nibble either end of the same noodle, their lips meet in a delightful, unexpected kiss. Score one for Walt and puppy love.
28. Sunset Boulevard (1950) - THE CLOSE-UP
Leave it to a madwoman to deliver a classic line. Descending a gilt staircase, surrounded by a swarm of cops and cameramen, Gloria Swanson's faded, ferocious film star-cum-killer, Norma Desmond, delivers her final performance: "All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up." Her descent into lunacy is pitiful, chilling and, like Billy Wilder's classic Hollywood tale, wonderfully over-the-top. As Norma walks down those steps and over the edge of sanity, we see the true cruelty of fame's fleeting fancy.
27. From Here to Eternity (1953) - WAVES OF LOVE
The surf, the beach, the kiss. Fred Zinnemann's account of James Jones's World War II novel about Pearl Harbor is today best remembered for its beachside tryst, and although Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr's lip lock has been mocked in everything from Airplane to Saturday Night Live, few of the screen's iconic moments so thrillingly capture sexual urgency and emotional frankness. "I never knew it could be like this," says a breathless Kerr, an actress who, until this role, had played only genteel types. Lancaster is the ideal soldier who, having found the love of his life, will give it up for his country.
26. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - UNMASKED
Dubbed "the Man of a Thousand Faces," silent star Lon Chaney created his own makeup for everything from hunchbacks to little old ladies. His crowning achievement, though, was in Rupert Julian's classic, as the disfigured Phantom haunting the catacombs of the Paris Opera house. The instant when the abducted Christine creeps up behind him and rips off his mask still ranks as one of the most vivid in the annals of horror. The Phantom's skull-like, acid-scarred visage is a veritable death's-head, with darkened eye sockets, jagged teeth and hollowed-out nostrils. The makeup was considered so frightening that all photographs were banned before the film's release, and some weakhearted moviegoers reportedly fainted when they saw the hideous kisser. Even today's makeup experts remain transfixed.
25. Network (1976) - MAD AS HELL
With the most memorable rallying cry in Hollywood history, demented anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the "mad prophet of the airwaves," articulated the rage and frustration of a society dehumanized by bureaucracy, the corporate world and, most of all, television. The phrase? "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Beale's declaration galvanized his viewers, and in a scene still capable of sending chills down the spine, the dark streets of New York are filled with the phrase shouted from the city's windows. Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's defiant call has since become part of the American lexicon of outrage and catharsis. Finch is electrifying, and his performance won him an Oscar, bestowed posthumously: Finch died of a heart attack two months before the ceremonies.
24. GoodFellas (1990) - THE FUNNY GUY
The tracking shot through a literally mobbed restaurant is a marvel, but Joe Pesci's terrifying "I amuse you?" speech stands tallest in this picture. As Tommy DeVito, the gangster with a short stature and a fuse to match, Pesci improvised the dialogue after telling director Martin Scorsese about an encounter he'd experienced. As Tommy entertains a group of wiseguys with profanity-laced stories, Henry (Ray Liotta) innocuously calls him "funny." Suddenly, Tommy turns scary: "Whaddaya mean I'm funny?...Funny how? I mean, funny like a clown? I amuse you?" Countless actors and directors have tried to copy this blend of humor and menace. But none can sit at the table with Pesci and Scorsese.
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04-08-2006, 11:58 PM #3j7wild Guest
23. Chinatown (1974) - SLAP JACK
Private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) finds himself in over his head as he unravels an enormous land swindle in booming pre-World War II Los Angeles. "You may think you know what you're dealing with," John Huston's L.A. bigwig tells him. "But believe me, you don't." The audience is in Gittes's boat as it navigates Robert Towne's luminous, layered script, but the mystery in Roman Polanski's neo-noir classic is impenetrable until Gittes literally slaps a scandalous plot point out of a beautiful widow Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway): "She's my daughter [slap]...my sister [slap]...She's my daughter [slap]...my sister [slap]...my daughter [slap]. She's my sister and my daughter!" Even Gittes, who has had a belly full of human nature, is thunderstruck.
22. Citizen Kane (1941) - ROSEBUD
Has there ever been a more deceptively simple beginning to a movie? From the very first frame, the film boasts some of the most dazzling images ever put on screen, courtesy of a 25 year-old genius named Orson Welles. The camera focuses on a snow-covered house, pulling back to reveal a snow globe in a man's hand. The word Rosebud is whispered: the globe drops to the floor and shatters. A distorted shot of a nurse entering the room is reflected in the glass. She pulls a sheet over Kane's head, the lights flicker out, and the mystery of Rosebud begins. So, too, does a new, more sophisticated era in Hollywood filmmaking.
21 . 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - HAL'S HALF CRAZY
Stanley Kubrick's landmark film overflows with celestial sights, from mysterious monoliths to a spaced-out star child. But the defining moment in this cosmic classic is the dismantling of the calculating computer, HAL 9000. As the machine's logic and memory circuits are disconnected by Keir Dullea's astronaut, Dave, HAL's maddeningly calm voice (provided by Douglas Rain), gradually regresses to childlike vulnerability, culminating in its unforgettable rendition of Daisy. Decades before Microsoft became a household name, Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke were well aware of technology's mesmerizing capabilities.
20. North By Northwest (1959) - THE CROP DUSTER
In a movie crammed with impressive locales, from Mount Rushmore to Manhattan's swank Plaza Hotel, an empty prairie forever holds our imagination. When Cary Grant's hunted advertising executive finds himself alone in the forlorn landscape, he learns director Alfred Hitchcock's hard lesson: You're not safe anywhere. A quaint-looking biplane drones into view, buzzing closer and closer, forcing a terrified Grant to take cover in a cornfield. Then Hitch springs his mordant joke: The plane is, of course, a crop duster, and thick clouds of poison begin to fall from the sky. The scene lasts nearly 10 minutes - an unthinkable indulgence by today's rapid-fire pacing - but not a second is wasted.
19. Jaws (1975) - THE USS INDIANAPOLIS
With an eerie calm, grizzled sea captain and World War II vet Quint recalls the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Given true bite by Robert Shaw's haunted reading, the tale holds fellow shark hunters Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider spellbound. Eyes glazed and distant, the flinty fisherman plunges us into the shark-infested South Pacific bloodbath that claimed more than 700 sailors. [This is an exaggeration of the truth!] For a few minutes, we forget the great white shark of the title as we're transported back into history. Originally just a passing reference in the script, Shaw rewrote the monologue that director Steven Spielberg himself considers the best scene in the monster hit. As much as we love that first midnight shark attack, who are we to disagree?
18. The Exorcist (1973) - THE FULL SWIVEL
Who knew a musty old religious rite could be so terrifying? The climactic exorcism from William Friedkin's exercise in supreme horror was one of the single most awaited moments of 1973, the big battle between good and evil finally arriving after more than 90 minutes of pea-soup vomit and satanic verses. As the holy water is splashed and curses spewed, Linda Blair's head-turning performance as a child with demons shifts into overdrive. Fathers Merrin and Karras (Max von Sydow and Jason Miller) faithfully try to cure what ails her, but conventional techniques fail. When the younger priest finally takes matters into his own hands - yeah, he beats the devil out of the girl - viewers were (and are) on the edge of their seats. Or under them.
17. Battleship Potemkin (1925) - THE ODESSA STEPS
Considered by many to be one of the ten greatest films of all time, Sergei Eisenstein's Russian chronicle of a 1905 revolutionary uprising practically invented such now-standard editing techniques as the montage and the symbolic juxtaposition of shots. But this silent masterpiece's masterpiece is the massacre on the Odessa steps. Czarist troops relentlessly march down a long staircase, shooting at innocent men, women and children, culminating in the indelible image of a baby carriage bouncing down the stairs. Today's audiences might know the scene more from the many homages and parodies, in movies ranging from The Untouchables to The Naked Gun 33 1/3, yet the real thing has lost none of its power.
16. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) - THE SAVIOR
Gregory Peck won an Academy Award for his role as the quietly heroic attorney Atticus Finch, but his isn't the only riveting performance in director Robert Mulligan's exquisite adaptation of Harper Lee's novel. Mary Badham is unforgettable as Scout, the little tomboy, and her poignant introduction to the town bogeyman, Boo Radley, is pure wonderment. Arriving near the end of the movie, the scene also introduced audiences to the man who played Boo: Robert Duvall. The actor's lone scene lasts no more than three minutes, but producer Alan Pakula once described it as the "reason to make the film." After rescuing Scout and her brother Jem from a vicious attack, Duvall's Boo appears like an angel come to earth. Scout's wide-eyed welcome - "Hey, Boo" - was the perfect greeting, a child's awakening to the power of good.
15. The Seven Year Itch (1955) - THE SUBWAY BREEZE
Marilyn Monroe and director Billy Wilder would reteam to make a better movie (1959's Some Like It Hot), but The Seven Year Itch earns its place in celluloid history (and pop-culture iconography) with the now-ingrained image of Marilyn astride a subway grate, her white, airy dress billowing high enough to beguile audiences and enrage real-life husband Joe DiMaggio. "Isn't it delicious?" she asks costar Tom Ewell, whose heat-soaked adulterous fantasies mirrored the nation's own. The movie is more discreet than the film's famous Times Square billboard ad: The skirt never flies much higher than the knees. But the image of Marilyn as a modern-day Venus rising from a New York City street remains, in a word, delicious.
14. It's a Wonderful Life (1946) - THE RENT PARTY
At the movies, we like our sentimentality the same way we like our popcorn: in shamelessly large servings. And the final scene in Frank Capra's Christmas classic - in which humble, hardworking George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) discovers he is (as brother Harry says) "the richest man in town" - is the biggest, butteriest tub of all time. Can you imagine anyone but Stewart carrying off the emotional extremes of this role? Of course not. That's what makes him America's most beloved film actor. It's A Wonderful Life is the perfect vehicle for Stewart's heart-on-a-sleeve style, particularly when the despairing George finds out just how much his selflessness has meant to his family, friends, and community. No one but Capra could pull off the topper: When a tree ornament rings and little Zuzu tells her father that an angel just got his wings, George seems happier for his divine guardian Clarence than he is for himself. Go ahead and set aside a box of tissues for next Christmas.
13. On the Waterfront (1954) - THE SPEECH
Elia Kazan's classic about Terry Malloy, a broken-down boxer battling a brutal and corrupt longshoreman's union, was filmed entirely in Hoboken, New Jersey, which would have made it a homecoming for the actor slated to star: Frank Sinatra. But Marlon Brando reversed his earlier refusal of the role and ended up giving Hollywood one of its greatest rides. In the scene that would become one of Brando's signature moments, Terry and his crooked older brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), sit in the back of a taxi, shadow and light flashing across their faces. Desperate to keep Terry from testifying against the local labor bosses, Charley tries bribery and threats. When Charley finally pulls a gun, Terry launches into a speech of equal parts regret, accusation and heartrending sadness. Charley, of course, contributed to his brother's long-ago downfall by cooperating with a rigged boxing match. "I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender," Terry says. "I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it." In lesser hands, the speech would be little more than the bitter musings of a mug with "a one-way ticket to Palookaville." Brando transforms it into poetry.
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04-09-2006, 12:01 AM #4j7wild Guest
12. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) - THE AMBUSH
At the time of its release, Arthur Penn's film was criticized for its violence, particularly the stunningly edited finale in which the Depression-era outlaws (played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty) are ambushed and riddled with bullets. Fairly tame by today's graphic standards, the bloody ballet of death created a furor that, in part, overshadowed Penn's artistic vision. Penn's bank-robbing killers were stuck in a sad and pathetic bid for notoriety as they tried to escape the poverty of dust-bowl Texas. Midway through the film, a sense of doom descends over Bonnie and the audience as the couple's grim fate becomes clear. Yet the roadside ambush - in its brutality, loving close-ups, slow motion and, yes, strange beauty - is no less shattering for its inevitability. Penn blew away not only his antiheroes but the romance of a criminal life.
11. Taxi Driver (1976) - MIRROR IMAGE
To gear up for his role as Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's searing study of alienation and psychosis. Robert De Niro spent a month driving a cab in New York City. He didn't need any on-the-job training for the movie's most celebrated scene, though: Standing before a mirror, Bickle practices his quick draw while belligerently demanding of his reflection, "You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else...You talkin' to me?" It's a stunning depiction of a disturbed soul coming unhinged. Until this point, Bickle has drifted through his dark night in a tentative fashion, dead-eyed and disconnected. As he delivers his screw-loose soliloquy, he is transformed with passion, purpose and threat. At the end of the speech, De Niro looks at the mirror and says, "You're dead." Whether he's speaking to his enemies or himself is anyone's guess.
10. Titanic (1997) - THE SINKING
The splashiest moment in the greatest disaster movie ever made. James Cameron's three-hour-plus, $200 million recreation of the sinking of the Titanic is the most expensive movie in Hollywood history and pays off fantastically. Say what you will about the sometimes pulpy screenplay: Cameron's scrupulous work - from his own visits to the ocean floor to the slavishly detailed replica of the fabled White Star liner - all comes together as the massive ship plunges vertically into the icy Atlantic. Technology made it look real, but Cameron's skills as a director made it feel that way. The awesome destruction and deafening cracks (especially when the ship snaps in two) are balanced with smaller touches of human tragedy (an elderly couple embracing in bed as the water rises), proving that old-time movie magic still holds a place in high-tech Hollywood.
9. A Night at the Opera (1935) - THE STATEROOM
Packed with riotous routines, sidesplitting sight gags and hilarious one-liners, director Sam Wood's A Night at the Opera fully captures the inspired insanity of the Marx Brothers. In its wildly unruly set piece, one person after another (including Harpo and Chico, naturally), crowds into Groucho's cramped ocean-liner stateroom, squeezing every laugh from the situation. The chaos ends when the great Margaret Dumont opens the door and all aboard come pouring out. Many (if not most) of the Marx Brothers' films tried too hard to contain their anarchy. A Night at the Opera lets it spill all over the place.
8. Singin' In The Rain (1952) - THE RAIN DANCE
MGM really knew how to churn 'em out during the golden age of Hollywood musicals, but no other song-and-dance routine is as foot-stompingly exuberant as Gene Kelly's glorious rain dance. Pulling triple duty as the film's codirector, cochoreographer and star, Kelly hoofs his way through 14 songs, most often partnered with plucky newcomer Debbie Reynolds and rubber-limbed Donald O'Connor. Although not the movie's most elaborate number - that honor goes to the big 14-minute Broadway Melody ballet - Kelly's waterlogged tap dance to the title song remains the tour de force of this (or, for that matter, any) musical. In his tweed suit and jaunty fedora, Kelly takes to the sopping streets. With the sun in his heart, he is clearly a man in love, splashing through puddles, swinging around a lamppost and tipping his hat to an officer in blue to create one of Hollywood's best-loved moments, musical or otherwise.
7. The Wizard of Oz (1939) - THE MELTDOWN
Is there a baby boomer alive who didn't once quake at the snide threat, 'How about a little fire, Scarecrow?" L. Frank Baum's children's story got the full Technicolor treatment when Victor Fleming set to work on his MGM adaptation, but the special effects were (at least by today's standards) a bit crude. So why does America still watch, year after year? Easy: The film's pyrotechnics take second place to its emotional truths. The long-in-coming confrontation between Judy Garland's Dorothy and Margaret Hamilton's green-faced evil one (need we mention that both actresses are splendid?) ends with a simple act of bravery - a bucket of water thrown to rescue a friend. And as a bonus, we get one of the all-time great exit lines. As the witch liquefies in a puff of steam, she laments: "Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?"
6. Gone With the Wind (1939) - FRANKLY, MY DEAR...
Rhett Butler may not have given a damn, but audiences did and do. Even before Victor Fleming's lavish $4 million adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's best-seller, Scarlett O'Hara and her love-struck rogue were national obsessions. Casting took two years - Vivien Leigh won the role of the tempestuous belle over Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead, to name just a few - and even Mitchell was misguided enough to think stuffy Basil Rathbone would serve the dashing Captain Butler better than sexy Clark Gable. Good taste (or luck) won out, and the pairing of Gable and Leigh percolates for more than three hours before coming to full boil in the film's famous finale: Rhett's kiss-off to the tearful Scarlett. "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" closes the door on a tortured romance and Hollywood's most treasured epic.
5. Psycho (1960) - THE SHOWER
Director Alfred Hitchcock wanted no one allowed into theaters once the projector had started to run Psycho. Publicity stunt? Perhaps. But the master of suspense knew that timing was everything. Psycho begins as the story of an embezzling secretary (Janet Leigh) on the run. Half an hour into the movie, as rain starts to fall and Bernard Herrmann's brilliant score swells up, she pulls into the Bates Motel. A little chat with the proprietor (who seems to have a few hang-ups about Mom), and it's time for a refreshing shower. The ensuing scene lasts only 45 seconds, but its screeching violins, piercing screams and flashes of knife and skin have made motel guests and shower takers nervous for decades. And think about this the next time you draw the bathtub curtain: Hitchcock experimented - gleefully, we can imagine all too clearly - with a variety of melons before settling on the slicing sound of a nice casaba.
4. King Kong (1933) - BIG APE MEETS BIG APPLE
The greatest monster movie of its day still shouts a mighty roar. OK, so the "Eighth Wonder of the World" was an 18-inch metal model covered in rabbit fur, but Kong (he was crowned "King" only shortly before the film's release) cuts a towering figure in movie history. Like the Empire State Building itself, stop-motion animation and rear-screen projection were state-of-the-art in 1933, and the marvels helped power the adventure yarn into a blockbuster that rescued RKO Studios from bankruptcy. Nearly seven decades after the film's release, Kong's last stand atop the New York City skyscraper packs a surprising wallop, as the weary, embattled ape, releasing his beauty (Fay Wray), takes the final plunge for love. Yes, Depression-Era audiences got the erotically monumental symbolism. And yes, even today the Empire State Building always seems a bit naked without that monkey on its back.
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04-09-2006, 12:02 AM #5j7wild Guest
3. The Godfather (1972) - THE MANE SCENE
You could fill Little Italy with great scenes from this film, but if you have to choose one, this is it: As a rosy dawn breaks over the Hollywood Hills, a movie-studio chief, Jack Woltz (John Marley), who had rejected a deal pitched by Robert Duvall's mob consigliere, awakens in his Bel Air mansion. He notices something wet in his silk sheets. Then he sees it: blood. Throwing back the bedding, he uncovers a shocking sight - the butchered head of his priceless, favorite stallion, Khartoum. Woltz's horrified scream echoes through the mansion, a wake-up call that drops us into the savage world of Don Corleone (Marlon Brando). In that ghastly instant, we fully understand how ruthless the Mafia boss can be when his offers are refused. Animal lovers said director Francis Ford Coppola was just as blood-thirsty in his quest for perfection: The director had tried numerous props for the scene but was unsatisfied until he imported an actual horse's head from a New Jersey slaughterhouse (the blood is chocolate syrup). Coppola called the reaction absurd. "Thirty people were shot in the movie," he once said, "but people only talked about 'cruelty to animals.'" He should have taken it as a compliment. The scene was, and it's still is, a kick in the gut.
2. Casablanca (1942) - THE LONG GOOD-BYE
Bogie and Bergman will always have Paris, and we'll always have Bogie and Bergman on that foggy airfield. Firmly entrenched among Hollywood's great love stories, the Warner Bros. wartime classic was originally to have starred Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan as the star-crossed lovers torn apart in Nazi-occupied French Morocco. And even after director Michael Curtiz assembled the dream team of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman on that landing strip, Bergman didn't know which of her two costars (Paul Henreid played her long-suffering husband) would wind up accompanying her on the plane to Lisbon. When it was decided that Bogart, making his debut as a romantic leading man, would shoot the mustache-twirling German general and go into hiding, more than a beautiful friendship was launched. The tough guy's "Our problems don't amount to a hill of beans" speech to the luminous, tear-streaked Bergman might be the finest statement of sacrifice ever committed to film. Here's looking at you, kid.
1. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - D-DAY
The most wrenching, realistic combat movie ever filmed, Steven Spielberg's World War II drama did more than destroy a few Hollywood cliches: It rewrote history, changing forever the way we see our past, how we view war and how we define the word hero. Within the first 30 spellbinding, unforgettable minutes, Spielberg evokes - no, resurrects - the terror and chaos of D-Day, first with a close-up of a soldier's quaking hands as a PT boat hurtles toward Omaha Beach. What follows is a horrific sequence of hellish images - a leg blown off, a soldier carrying his own severed arm, a pile of spilled intestines. Out of the chaos emerges Tom Hanks's commander, leading a small group of U.S. soldiers taking a German bunker. When the terrible (and ingenious) cacophony of ricocheting bullets and exploding grenades finally goes silent, our sense of combat and courage can never be the same. The camera returns to the soldier's quaking hands, and we see that they belong to Hanks. Heroism, fragile and shaken, is given a human face by one of our finest actors in the finest war movie of its or any other time.
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04-09-2006, 07:48 AM #6
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No «I'm your father» ?
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04-09-2006, 05:26 PM #7
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I don't have any problems with this list, especially given the fact that Saving Private Ryan happens to be my favourite movie. JM doesn't bring up a good point. That scene from Empire is more memorable than the Catina scene from Hope. The problem with these lists is that it's purely subjective. I'm sure if the AFI were to do one, I think this is was one of their top 100 lists, it'll be different. But that's what makes art so great.
You're waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter - because we'll be together.
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04-09-2006, 06:06 PM #8j7wild Guest
They left out George C. Scott's speech to the troops at the beginning of 'Patton'!!
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04-10-2006, 12:39 AM #9
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I know, I'm monothematic, but where is "Gandalf vs. Balrog" or other scene from LOTR trilogy? Where is "T 1000 reborn" from "Terminator 2"? And where is best car chase in cinema history from "Bullit"?
Someone can say - on other list. Yes, this from TV Guide Magazine is very subjective as chernabog_ca say. My is different, but I've seen other movies than TV Guide Magazine jurnalists.
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Originally Posted by Jedi Master
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I remember when I first saw Goodfellas and Joe Pesci scared the hell out of me. Funny Guy should be lower on the list.
Sgt. Johnny Beaufort: He says, "The Apaches are a great race," sir. "They've never been conquered. But it is not well for a nation to be always at war. The young men die... the women sing sad songs... and the old ones are hungry in the winter."
Fort Apache
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Great list, not full, but still.. For ex: where is that Rocky's shout Adrienne. someone already mentioned i'm your father...and others
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04-10-2006, 05:43 PM #13j7wild Guest
I saw this movie when I was a teenager of barely 16 and this scene will always remain in my mind as the Greatest Movie Moments In History:
http://rapidshare.de/files/17692742/...story.mpg.html
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Yes I agree missing a few but great nevertheless
seems like this list was made up by either a film student or a film professor as these films are all taken straight out of a Film 101 textbook. Besdies, who the **** saw Battleship Potemkin huh? It's a black and white communist film, not like Blockbuster has it Guranteed in Stock or something lol.
Saving Private Ryan is definately the most intense movie in terms of action I have ever seen and certainly deserves the first spot.
The list definately lacks some brilliant scenes from Pulp Fiction, Wall Street, The French Connection and perhaps Gladiator or Fight Club. Still a worthy compilation by someone who obviously knows his stuff.
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