Your Top 25 Favorite Movie Moments of All-Time

[CJ]

What are yours?

1. The Dark Knight - Rescuing the Hostages/Fighting Joker in the Prewitt Building. An intense finale to an epic movie. Batman getting Joker with his armblades makes me want to fistpump everytime.

2. Home Alone 1 & 2 - Setting up the traps. They're both great montages with excellent music. Really gets you excited for the mayhem about to ensue.

3. The Dark Knight - Ending montage. Nice set of scenes, cut together with some great narration by Bats and Gordon.

4. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Spike in his ship, the Swordfish, trying to get to Vincent, while battling the men from the Pharmaceutical company. The jazzy music was great.

5. Beauty and the Beast - 'Kill the Beast!' Song.

6. Aladdin - 'Friend like Me' song. Probably my favorite Disney song ever. (I list 'Kill the Beast!' higher, because it is a turning point in the story and a lot of stuff is going down.) RIP Robin.

7. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Monorail Fight

8. Edward Scissorhands - Edward remembering the death of his creator.

9. Edward Scissorhands - Epilogue. Really touching, great music.

10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Final battle with Voldemort

11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - Harry using the pensieve to look into Snape's memories

12. Collateral - Club Scene

13. A Christmas Story - Meeting Santa at the mall. Still hilarious to this day. Ralphie's goofy grin as he makes his request for Santa, Santa's obnoxious laughter, the very unpleasant and annoyed elves. It was great.

14. The Dark Knight - Joker burning the money.

15. Batman Begins - Training Montage.

16. The Little Mermaid - 'Under the Sea' song.

17. Wreck-It Ralph - Hero's Duty sequence.

18. The Lion King - Circle of Life Intro. Not really a fan of the the movie (I think Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast were better) but this is where the film really shined. Animation was gorgeous, and the song itself was great, really reflected the scenery.

19. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Tower fight with Spike and Vincent.

20. Shrek - Rescuing Fiona from the dragon

21. Shrek - "All-Star" Intro

22. Shrek 2 - "I Need a Hero" song. I really thought this movie was a disappointment compared to the first one, but this was still a great scene.

23. LOTR: Return of the King - The entire last 30 minutes. Sam carrying Frodo up to Mount Doom, Frodo tossing the ring in the fire, the two escaping Mount Doom, the epilogue.

24. Batman Begins - Monorail Fight.

25. The Shining - Finale. the meaning of 'Redrum' found in the mirror, The 'Here's Johnny' bit, Jack chasing Danny through the hedgemaze, it was all great. Best horror film ever.

Edit: I forgot a few, so here's 5 more..

Spoiler

26. Wall-E - Eve and Wall-E flying around the Axiom in space. Music really helped set the scene.

27. Wall-E - Eve restoring an amnesiac Wall-E.

28. Toy Story 3 - Andy giving Woody away. So sad. Really wish the series had ended here. It's just not the same with Woody having a new owner now.

29. The Emperor's New Groove - Kronk's conscience talking to him. IMO, one of the funniest moments in animated films ever.

30. Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Finale. The scene where they 'killed the car' was hilarious, and was followed with an epic chase scene

 

[gwynplaine]

Top 10, I'm lazyt:

_ Raiders: Rolling Ball.
_ TDK: Pencil Trick and pretty much every Joker scene
_ The Shining: Tuesday
_ Psycho: Norman cleans up after the shower murder
_ Goodfellas: "Shoeshine box" scene
_ Barry Lyndon: Barry meets Lady Lyndon
_ White Heat: "Top of the world!"
_ Soylent Green: Edward G. Robinson's death scene
_ Night of the Hunter: Love and Hate speech
_ Jaws: Quint's Indianapolis Speech

And many more.

 

[thejon93]

The Raid 2 - Kitchen fight sequence

Take Shelter - The ending

Spider-Man 2 - Aunt May's "I believe there's a hero in all of us" speech

American Psycho - Interrogation scene

The Wolf of Wall Street - Quaaludes sequence

Warrior - The final fight

Bullitt - '68 Ford Mustang GT vs. '68 Dodge Charger R/T chase

12 Years a Slave - Ending

Terminator 2: Judgement Day - The final chase/fight

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Second challenge/dragon chase

Bad Santa - Checkers scene

There Will Be Blood - Ending

Sexy Beast - Smoking on the plane scene

Heat - Diner scene, bank heist/shoot-out and/or the ending

Harsh Times - Fight/shakedown scene

25th Hour - "%$#@ you" speech

The Descent - Climatic fight scene/revenge

The Thing - Defibrillator scene

Ratatouille - The ratatouille dish/critic's reaction

No Country for Old Men - Coin toss scene

Raging Bull - Jake LaMotta vs. Sugar Ray Robinson

Chinatown - Ending

The French Connection - Car/train chase

Jackie Brown - Multi-angle shopping mall scene

Training Day - Diner scene

 

[CJ]

Spider-Man 2 - Aunt May's "I believe there's a hero in all of us" speech

Nice choice.

I was going to put that on my list too.

 

[childeroland]

1. Days of Heaven - Linda Manz reading the dinosaur book
2. Millennium Mambo - Qi Shu running through the tunnel at the beginning of the film
3. Millennium Mambo - Qi Shu and the two brothers walking through Film Alley in Haidako during the winter
4. The Godfather - baptism scene
5. The Wizard of Oz - "It really was no miracle"
6. Days of Heaven - Linda Manz escaping the foster home and running off to freedom with her friend mourning her lost soldier beau
7. Spirited Away - the train scene
8. Exotica - the "Everybody Knows" scene
9. Raiders of the Lost Ark - the Map Room
10. The NeverEnding Story - Bastian meeting the empress
11. Mary Poppins - "Feed the Birds"
12. La Dolce Vita - the fountain scene
13. Rebel Without a Cause - the trio playing house right before the gang finds them
14. Rebels of the Neon God - the opening scene
15. Rebels of the Neon God - Ah Kuei's relief when her boyfriend tells her he didn't rape her
16. Yellow Earth - the soldier/folklorist first arriving at the village
17. The 400 Blows - the final shot at the beach
18. Fantasia - Night on Bald Mountain
19. The Seventh Seal - the Danse Macabre
20. The Usual Suspects - the reveal scene
21. The Secret Garden (1993) - Mary first arrives on the moors
22. The Secret Garden - the robin shows Mary into the garden
23. Three Colors: Red - Irene Jacob meets the judge
24. The Secret of Roan Inish - the family discovers the two kids have repaired the island cottages
25. A Brighter Summer Day - the first Elvis number

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

Jaws-While the whole movie is one of my favorite movie moments, I'd like to single out, specifically, the scene in which we see the shark for the second time. The first time is when the shark eats the guy in the rowboat on the 4th of July. The second time we see the shark, is when Brody is chumming. In the first scene--the one with the guy in the rowboat--the shark is doing what he's been doing the entire movie: eating people. In the scene where Brody is chumming the water, the shark leaps out of the water unexpectedly. It's a great movie monster moment in my opinion, because instead of simply eating people (something sharks very rarely do in the wild; but there have been a few cases of actual human consumption) he starts to put up a fight. He wasn't reacting to the blood in the water. He didn't want to eat Brody, Hooper and Quint because he was hungry. He was starting to fight back. This shark was more than just a fish; he's a force of nature. That's what the film is about. And this is the moment that thematic element manifests this self. Plus, the timing is just great, coming right after a laugh ("Slow ahead...I'll go slow ahead. Why don't you come down here and chum some of this ****!").

Jackie Brown-Much like Jaws, I could say this entire movie is one of my favorite moments. In fact, after Jaws, it is my all time favorite movie. I loved those old Pam Grier blaxploitation films from back in the day, so I understood what Tarantino was trying to do with the film. You could tell he respected the genre he was paying homage to. But for my money, the best scene in the movie is the last scene: Jackie and Max say goodbye after Jackie asks Max to tag along with her on her trip to Europe. After everything they've been through, after the feelings for each other we've seen them share, Max declines and a heartbroken Jackie drives off by herself, the camera holding on her face the whole time as she mumbles the words to Bobby Womack's "Across 110th Street." If Max goes with her, it gives the movie a traditional happy Hollywood ending, and cheapens the ride we've been on for the previous two plus hours. It's one of those scenes which, no matter how many times I've seen the film, causes me to yell at my TV, begging Max to go with her. But he won't, or he can't and it's left to the audience to figure out why.

Sex and Fury-Sex and Fury is an old, Japanese exploitation film that was probably one of the inspirations for Kill Bill. Unfortunately and, rather comically, the only copy of the film I have is in Japanese with NO subtitles, so I don't exactly know the true plot (I kind of just make up in my head what I think is going on). Despite that, there are some grand visuals in the movie that centers on a nude woman with a samurai sword, cutting down a group of male assassins. A beautiful, delicate female body, spattered with blood as she wields an instrument of death is quite the juxtaposition of imagery. It's also kind of sexy.

Death Proof-This is a film that gets bashed for its slow build up and drawn out dialogue scenes. Some see it as a kind of "girl power" movie whose impact is lessened by too many scenes of '"girl talk." I disagree. Sometimes, it's all about building up to the reveal, and in this case, the reveal is the ending car chase. The last half hour of the movie, in my opinion, with Zoe Bell hanging on the hood of the charger for dear life before she, Kim and Abby decide to remind Stuntman Mike that, this time, he picked the wrong girls to **** with, is the movie. The ladies weather Mike's first onslaught just so they can fight back. They were never really the victims. Misogynistic arguments against slasher movies aside, director Quentin Tarantino wanted Death Proof to play out like a slasher movie with a car as the main weapon of death. Kim, Abby and Zoe turn the tables on traditional slasher movie fodder by going on the offensive. Instead of a final girl, it's a car full of ass-kicking final girls, plural.

All Quiet on the Western Front-When Saving Private Ryan debuted in 1998, people praised it for showcasing an unflinching and brutally honest portrayal of war. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were awarded honorary decorations from the US Army. They were on TV plugging the WWII memorial. Saving Private Ryan changed the way the average person looked at war. It made old soldiers relevant again and pretty much made WWII pop culture. It was an important statement from the movie industry. But, the same film was made 68 years earlier. While the plots differ, the themes are identical. So are the brutally honest portrayals of combat. In All Quiet on the Western Front, idealistic youths join the German army during WWI. Along the way, after years of mud, rats, shelling, dead friends, and close calls with the death, the constantly dwindling group of soldiers become totally disillusioned with war and the idiotic idealistic notions that often lead to it. And despite being made in 1930, the battle scenes of trench warfare are mind blowingly amazing.

Halloween-Much like Death Proof, Halloween builds at a snails pace, but, also similar to Death Proof, that's what makes the ending of the film work. Carpenter uses slow pans and zooms to milk each scene for maximum suspense. In the beginning of the film, everything is shot very wide, with plenty of open space around the action. In the middle of the film, that open space becomes populated by The Shape, Michael Myers. The ending of the film however, is devoid of long tracking shots, slow pans and wide open space. It's full of quick cuts and closer shots that puts Michael Myers right in the viewers face. In a sense, as Michael lurks here and there in the background, begging the audience to try and find him, he is stalking us too. So, likewise, in the end, he is assaulting us as well. Halloween is a great study on how to use suspense to justify action.

A Bronx Tale-If you've seen the film, then let me just say, "Now youse can't leave." If you haven't seen the film, let me elaborate without too many spoilers. In the movie, a local gangster has a stake in a little neighborhood bar in the Bronx NY. It's the hangout for the local mob guys with their suits, pinky rings and refined culture of wine and good food. In one scene, it is frequented by a group of bikers who claim to just want a few beers. The bartender attempts to throw them out as he doesn't approve of their dress--leather jackets, ripped denim, bandanas, long hair and unkempt scraggly beards. The slick-haired mobsters in their suits approach the bikers as the mob boss tries to give the bikers the benefit of the doubt and allow them to have a few beers. Then, the bikers disrespect the mob boss, Sonny. Sonny politely tells the bikers that now they have to leave. They refuse. So Sonny locks the door to the bar and says, "Now youse can't leave." The scene is amazingly done. The only issue is Lillo Brancatto's narration that over explains what we're seeing. We don't need him to tell the audience that the bikers suddenly realized they came into the wrong bar and were not getting out. The expressions on their faces tell us that already.

Goodfellas-Scorsese has always been a master of combining images with the right music. And, in my opinion, Goodfellas is his magnum opus. Most people point to the use of Clapton's "Layla" accompanying scenes of people finding murdered gangsters all over the city. But for me, the best scene in the movie is what is often referred to the "Last Day as a Wiseguy" scene in which a paranoid Ray Liotta, coked out of his mind, races around town dropping off guns, picking up dope, picking up his brother, cooking gravy, cutting the dope, and getting it ready to travel via his babysitter on an airplane. This is all set to musical montage that runs the gauntlet from blues to punk to classic rock. Scorsese doesn't use one song in this scene, he uses multiple, almost to give the soundtrack a varied mix to duplicate the paranoia we seen in Ray Liotta's eyes. It's the sound of everything spiraling out of control.

The Godfather-The entire movie beginning to end is beyond fantastic, but it's the line "leave the gun; take the cannoli" that sums up the mob mentality so easily. It's the casualness of violence, the notion that murder is just an everyday thing that shouldn't interfere with something like a pastry. Eating cannoli and shooting someone are viewed with the same nonchalant indifference. Shooting someone's no big deal in their world. Now, let's go eat. That line, really takes the cake--or the cannoli, rather--for me.

Slap Shot-It's a hockey movie, though you don't have to be a fan of the sport to love it. Unlike movies like Miracle or Mystery, Alaska, Slap Shot avoids the sappy sports cliches that pepper most sports movies. Training montages, inspirational speeches from coaches, players giving their all--all of this is dropped and replaced with some of the funniest and raunchiest humor around. Instead, the coach, played by Paul Newman, convinces his team to win by using violence. The movie isn't important and doesn't have anything to say, but is one of the funniest films of all time.

Animal House-Another film that for me is one of the funniest of all time, Animal House showcases the out of control antics of a college fraternity in the 1960s. One of the members, Bluto Blutarski, played by the late John Belushi, steals every scene he is in despite being a side character. He doesn't drive the plot in any way, shape or form. But still, without him, the movie falls apart. As the actual story moves forward, Belushi pops up here and there to remind the audience that, hey! this is fun! The revealing of his grade point average (a 0.0) and his speech that begins with him reminding his friends that WWII wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor is my favorite moment in the movie. Absolutely hilarious. That and the frat being put on double secret probation...

1941-This often-regarded travesty is another film that causes me to laugh uncontrollably. I mention 1941 after Animal House, because 1941 is almost the sequel. Belushi is basically playing the same numbskull in this movie, except that now he is protecting the California coast during the paranoia following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor (something else that connects back to Animal House). So there's Belushi, flying combat missions while scratching his balls, while below, on the ground, we're treated to Dan Aykroid pretending to be a bug while wearing pantyhose, John Candy driving a tank through downtown LA, RObert Stack's General Stillwell taking in a screening of Dumbo, and Murray Hamilton riding a ferris wheel that has come loose from its anchors and is rolling along the Santa Monica pier before crashing into the Pacific Ocean. Not a great movie, but some of the gags are side-splittingly funny.

Band of Brothers-It's not technically a movie, but it's not a TV show either, so I'm going to mention it. Earlier I mentioned the films Saving Private Ryan and All Quiet on the Western Front. Particularly, I'd like to go back to Private Ryan. That was the film that showed us what D-Day was really like. On the beaches anyway...While paratroopers pop up all over the place in Private Ryan, we never get to see what their invasion was like. The D-Day invasion scenes in Band of Brothers showed us. And man, was it intense. As a former paratrooper myself, it was nice to see the spotlight shine on the exploits of, in this case, a company of men from the 101st Airborne Division. The miniseries meanders on for 10 episodes, but it's the second episode that shows the paratrooper's version of D-Day: jumping into the night sky, tracers and flak all around, planes going down, men in parachutes drifting--much like jelly fish--to the ground where they landed alone, in the dark, confused and without their equipment, miles from where they were supposed to be.

 

[Blind_Lawyer]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-This movie hit theaters when I was 9 years old. I was one of those kids back then: I had all the TMNT toys, could quote the cartoons verbatim, had the t-shirt, the backpack, the cereal--basically, if there was a product out there with a Turtle on it, I wanted it. But one of my greatest childhood memories was seeing the Turtles leap out onto the big screen for the first time. Initially, we only see their shadows, but once Leonardo jumps around the corner, what was previously just animation and drawings in Archie Comics (back then I had no clue of the real TMNT comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) became real to me. I mean, I knew they weren't real, but I also had no idea how the filmmakers managed to bring them to life on the big screen. And I didn't care either. That, my friends, is movie magic.

The Last Samurai-A typical Tom Cruise vehicle to show off Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise, The Last Samurai is a guilty pleasure of mine. For me though, it isn't Cruise that makes the movie; it's Ken Watanabe. His reactions to stories about Custer and his delight at being able to converse in English, paints a nice portrait of the samurai mentality, albeit as processed through the sensibilities of Western filmmakers. Most of Watanabe's lines are both funny and thought provoking. His calm answers to screamed challenges puts the action hero Cruise in his place. Which is always satisfying...

Psycho-In my humble opinion, Psycho is a very overrated movie. Compared to Hitchcock's overall body of work, it appears to be pretty average. Of course, it has its moments and I don't dislike it by any means, I just can list many other Hitchcock films I enjoy more. While the shower scene is fantastic and impactful, praising it is overdone. So, I'm not going to highlight that. No, for me, the best scene in Psycho is the beginning. Much like "leave the gun; take the cannoli" it's one line that makes the scene special for me. "I'll lick the stamps." Taken out of context, the line is gibberish. But within the scene, it's a great line. A man and woman--Sam Loomis and Marion Crane--are embracing in their underwear, in a hotel somewhere in Phoenix. It's the middle of the day, and they both have to get back to work. But Marion wants more in this relationship--a relationship Sam reminds her would go nowhere. He's poor and in debt. He suggests to Marion that, in their hypothetical relationship, she could lick the stamps for the envelope which he uses to send his ex-wife her alimony money. Marion breathily replies, "I'll lick the stamps." It establishes that Marion is carefree and immature and that she is reckless and charges headfirst into situations that are no good for her. It makes the scene where she steals the money completely believable. That one line makes her whole character work.

The Usual Suspects-The reveal. Need I say more? I don't want to delve too deep into this in case someone who hasn't seen the movie happens by, but for those who have seen it, you know what I'm talking about. The entire movie is nothing but exposition to show how awful, disgusting, brutal, terrible, violent, and utterly evil a criminal Keyser Soze is. And then, near the end, we find out something very intriguing about Soze. By the time Chazz Palminteri realizes what's happening, it's too late and the world's nastiest crime boss gets away in the end.

Superman-Much like TMNT, when I first saw Superman on the screen, it was like he was real. For me, the best moment is the first time Superman appears in Metropolis, flying up the Daily Planet to save Lois Lane from a helicopter accident. It was the standard Superman and Lois-in-distress tripe from the comics--brought to LIFE! Christopher Reeve embodied Superman in a way that no other actor as accomplished in a comic book film. Chris Evans looks like Chris Evans as Captain America; Robert Downey Jr. is clearly playing Tony Stark. But Christopher Reeve was Superman. Period. And the first time we see him in action, the movie's slogan and hype come to fruition: We believe a man can fly.

Big Trouble in Little China-What do you get when you reverse the hero and sidekick dynamic, give the hero some John Wayne swagger despite zero skills in dealing with the situation he currently finds himself in--a situation dripping with Chinese mysticism and Wuxia style martial arts, all set to the pace of a western? Big Trouble in Little China. Jack Burton has the heart of hero and brains of a dolt. He always wants to lead, but he doesn't know where he's going. He craves action, but possess no skill. He wants to be the one to save the day (not really; he just wants his truck back), but is constantly overshadowed by his sidekick Wang Chi. He's a hero who accomplishes absolutely nothing (though, in what had to have been a stroke of extraordinary good luck, he does save the day at the end), highlighted so brilliantly in a scene where he enters a fight a few seconds too late, only to find his buddy Wang has already cleared the area of the bad guys. "Ha!" Jack jumps out, knife in hand, ready to deal death, but, too bad...the sidekick already won.

Sunset Blvd.-The early scenes of this classic are my favorite--especially when you see how they prop up some later scenes. The stuff with Gloria Swanson going out of her mind in her mansion are great, but my favorite scenes are the ones that deal with the actual film industry. In the beginning, a screenwriter played by William Holden tries to pitch a pretty standard baseball movie about a player caught up in some debts to some bookies who is forced to throw the World Series. The studio exec he's pitching it to loves the idea--if it can be a musical about a girl's baseball team. In another scene he mentions another film script he wrote that was transformed into some submarine movie. Everything he's done gets changed and reworked by other people. It makes the movie industry look horrible. It's the kind of scene that makes you wonder just how much like the original script any of your favorite movies are. Including Sunset Blvd. But, later in the movie, while writing with Betty Schaefer, the script writing process looks a lot more fun. This is all interrupted by Gloria Swanson not being able to tell real life from that of a movie. That's the whole film in a nutshell. What's real? What's fabricated? What's integrity? What's work? Is anything we're seeing, from the original idea of a screenplay to the very fabric of the world, real? Or has it been altered?

It Happened One Night-Another classic, this movie pits the ever-lovable Claudette Colbert against Clark Gable. The blueprint for the screwball comedy, It Happened One Night is really a buddy movie. Two people, who start out hating each other, learn, over the course of an adventure with each other, to be something more than enemies. They start off as enemies and end up lovers. The turning point? The scene in the motel (motor camp it was called in the film) where Clark and Claudette pretend to be a married couple in order to get the cops off their tail. Earlier in the film, Claudette Colbert's Ellie Andrews mentions some personal things, which Gable's Peter Warne uses to solidify the scene and give it enough authenticity to fool the cops. She's the daughter of a millionaire but mentions that she doesn't care for that life and everything that comes with it (despite being very attached to her money) and that she'd rather be a plumber's daughter. When the cops arrive and the pair must pretend to be a married couple, Peter feigns a fight with her, saying she has no class because, "once a plumber's daughter, always a plumber's daughter." What this scene does is show that Peter is actually listening to Ellie and taking what she says into consideration. This is what friends, lovers, couples, do for each other. It makes the ending work.

Battleship Potemkin-The only silent film on my list, Battleship Potemkin's content is very foreign to us. It's a Russian film that deals with the Russian Revolution of 1917. I have little to no knowledge about that, but I don't need to. Nothing needs to be explained. As Battleship Potemkin is a silent film, everything comes across in the visuals. And there is no visual more intense the Odessa Staircase Scene, a scene that Brian DePalma virtually recreated for the train station scene in The Untouchables. In Battleship Potemkin, amidst a massacre of civilians by Cossack troops, an untended baby carriage tumbles down a set of stairs as bullets whiz by the carriage without prejudice, and bayonets pierce the flesh of the adults nearby.

Hero-The cinematography, staging, set design and Wuxia martial arts action in this movie are flat out beautiful. I know it's not really a movie moment exactly, but when I first saw this in theaters I was blown away. The movie is basically a few different versions of the same story, but each version of the story has a different color pallete. While the plot and performances were good, it's really the look of the film that makes it special. When most people think of a martial arts movie, they typically think action and very rarely think beauty. The art direction, really shines during the duel between Flying Snow and Moon. It takes place in autumn, in a wooded area, rife with falling leaves--think New England in October--with the actors dressed a bright fall red. This site shows off some of the art direction I'm raving about: http://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/Hero/index.htm

Frankenstein-When I was a kid, it was the age of slashers. Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were slicing their way across movie screens everywhere and Freddy Kruger was elevated to pop culture icon status. Despite being a kid during the slasher craze, I wasn't into those movies back then. I had always been told by the adults in my life that these movies were trash, and, besides, just the covers of those old VHS boxes were enough to scare me back then. No, my gateway drug into the horror genre were the Universal Monsters, and the first one I encountered was James Wale's Frankenstein. Like any little boy, I was excited at the prospect of seeing a monster on TV. And when Frankenstein's monster is first revealed, he didn't disappoint. The scene unfolds in an odd way, with the monster entering the scene by walking toward the camera--backwards. I've heard some criticisms about this scene because the monster coming in backwards milks the suspense. You know you're about to see him, but not yet...no...it's only his back..when do we see his face?! Some people considered it to be a gimmick. I didn't. People forget that the monster was just created, born if you will. And like any toddler learning to toddle, the monster doesn't initially know how to do it. We all have to learn to walk. Why shouldn't the monster? So him walking in backwards, to me, isn't a gimmick to hide the monster a little longer, it's a representation of the confusion of a creature just born learning about his body and how it works. And when he does finally turn around and face the camera, the shot is amazing. Jack Pierce's make up and Boris Karloff's performance make the monster both gouhlish and childish--which IS the characterization of the monster. By the time the monster is reaching up to try and grab the sun out of the sky, you're weary--he is a monster after all--but you sense this is a tragic figure, an innocent caught up in something bigger than himself. Unlike Dracula who is absolutely a villain, Frankenstein's monster is harder to catalogue.

 

[Sundancer]

Personally, I don't think a "favorites" list should ever be longer than 10 at most...


When Superman's shield appears in the opening credits of the first Reeve movie

William Wallace riding into town after his wife was...

When David Dunn climbs out of the pool in Unbreakable

Training Day - Diner scene

That whole movie is gold. The bathtub scene stands out for me.