Top 100 Film Moments (some spoilers)
Submitted by mistercreepy on Fri, 03/03/2006 - 13:44
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- I made this list in January, many things would have changed by now, but since I plan on making a new list in July, I guess we'll just have to wait for that. I fully encourage everyone else to do this. It's monumentally time wasting and fun.
- 100. Babe (Elizabeth Daily) sits in a window and looks out upon the city at night in Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller, 1998)
- 99. Casy (John Carradine) is murdered in The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
- **98. Harmonica (Charles Bronson) remembers his brother in Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
- 97. Rob (John Cusack) lists off his top 5 reasons he misses Laura (Iben Hjejle), and I become obsessed with lists. High Fidelity (Stephen Frears, 2000)
- 96. Monk (Yeong-su Oh) lights himself on fire in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (Ki-duk Kim, 2003)
- **95. Max Fischer: “Oh my God, I wrote a hit play! …and I’m in love with you.” Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)
- 94. While carrying San back to the forest, Ashitaka is accidentally shot but continues to walk forward as if nothing has happened in Mononoke Hime (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
- 93. While a cop is looking for the killer baby, we suddenly see from the baby’s POV, and there is no music cue. I realize at this point that the villain is the world itself and not the killer baby in It’s Alive (Larry Cohen, 1974)
- 92. Rollergirl (Heather Graham) asks Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) if she’s her mom in Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
- 91. Fast Eddie (Paul Newman) is hustled by Amos (Forest Whitaker) in The Color of Money (Martin Scorcese, 1986)
- **90. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) listens to the tape again as he beds a woman in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- 89. Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani) and Maria (Lianella Carell) sell their linens to buy a bicycle. A man takes their linens to the warehouse and places it among thousands upon thousands of linens in Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio de Sica, 1948)
- 88. Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) meets Jeremiah (Wallace Shawn), potentially the only person lamer in the world than Woody Allen, in Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)
- 87. The crew play video games in Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
- 86. Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) and Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) dance together in Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962)
- 85. Writer Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) asks his wife (Brigitte Bardot) to ride with his producer (Jack Palance), and she casts him a look in Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
- **84. We see Lester for the first time in Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
- 83. Exhausted from searching for her son, the mother sits down under a bridge and begins playing a little music on her bicycle wheel only to be joined by the elderly triplets of Belleville in The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
- **82. Dr. Blair (Wilford Brimley) asks to be let out, and a noose hangs behind him in The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
- 81. The reavers appear out of the fog in Serenity (Joss Whedon, 2005)
- **80. Julien Doinel (Albert Rémy) storms into Antoine’s (Jean-Pierre Léaud) class and slaps him in The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
- 79. After quietly eliminating the entire police force in one small town, William Munny (Clint Eastwood) tells every sonofabitch in that town if they don’t do what he says, he’ll kill every mothafuckin’ oneofem as an American flag waves behind him in the third best film speech. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
- 78. “The penitent man shall pass.” in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
- 77. Joel (Jim Carrey) begs, “Mierzwiak! Please let me keep this memory, just this one.” in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
- 76. Woody (Tom Hanks) dreams of being swallowed by a trashcan full of toy limbs in Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999)
- 75. In an attempt to cure a sick Babe (Christine Cavanaugh), Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) sings and dances for the little pig in Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995)
- 74. Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers), desperate to call the President (Peter Sellers) in order to prevent nucleur war begs a soldier (Keenan Wynn) to break open a Coca-Cola machine for a quarter in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- 73. Scar (Jeremy Irons) holds Simba (Matthew Broderick) over a cliff and whispers in his ear, “I. Killed. Mufasa.” in The Lion King (Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, 1994)
- 72. Eugene Martone (Ralph Macchio) plays his first real blues in Crossroads (Walter Hill, 1986)
- 71. Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is trapped in an air duct in Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
- **70. Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) describes how tall a girl is in Baisers Volés (François Truffaut, 1968)
- 69. It rains in Regen (Joris Ivens)
- 68. Balthazar dies among the sheep in Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
- 67. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walks his son (Hunter Carson) home, and they walk on opposite sides of the street in Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
- 66. The Salvation Army band listens to rock music for the first time from a juke box in The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki, 2002)
- 65. Lord Kurogane (Hisashi Igawa) slices Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada) open in Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
- 64. Ross McElwee meets the fake Burt Reynolds in Sherman’s March: A Mediation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (Ross McElwee, 1986)
- **63. Antonio (Enrico Lo Verso), Rosetta (Valentina Scalici), and Luciano (Giuseppe Ieracitano) spend one nice day at the beach in Stolen Children (Gianni Amelio, 1992)
- **62.Yukie (Setsuko Hara) insists Itokawa (Akitake Kôno) bow for her in No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa, 1946)
- 61. Samuel L. Jackson says, “Hold on to your butts” in Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
- **60. The rabbit suit in Cabin Fever (Eli Roth, 2002)
- 59. “Warriorrrrrrs… come out to play-ee-ay! Warriorrrrrs… come out to play-ee-ay!” in The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)
- **58. Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) sits on a bus in a very shaky shot. The camera follows her out of the bus and into a crowd where she pushes through into the street while the camera pulls up and out to reveal tanks rolling down the street in The Cranes Are Flying (Mikheil Kalatozishvili, 1957)
- 57. The orange juice maker explodes in Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)
- 56. Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) on a sailboat in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
- 55. Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) beats a man (Tony Shalhoub) in chess then gives the man his candy in Searching for Bobby Fischer (Steven Zaillian, 1993)
- **54. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) makes spaghetti with a tennis racket in The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
- 53. Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) breaks into the White House in X2: X-Men United (Bryan Singer, 2003)
- 52. Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift) and Cherry Valence (John Ireland) compare guns in Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
- 51. Dewey Finn (Jack Black) and The School of Rock rock out to “School of Rock” in School of Rock (Richard Linklater, 2003)
- 50. Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) sells something to Howard Beale (Peter Finch), delivering the second best film speech: “Because you’re on television dummy” in Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
- **49. The Iron Giant (Vin Diesel) says, “You stay. I go. No following.” when he realizes what he must do in The Iron Giant (Brad Bird, 1999)
- 48. Doolittle (Brian Narelle) surfs a piece of rubble down to a planet in Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
- **47. Officer Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller) is shot over and over again as his partner (Nancy Allen) watches helplessly in RoboCop (Paul VerHoeven, 1987)
- 46. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar) pulls back her white dress to reveal an exposed womb which she proceeds to lick and then bite open in The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
- 45. The black crows sing “When I See an Elephant Fly” in Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941)
- 44. While attempting to prove his faith, a little boy shoots himself with a loaded gun in El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
- 43. The Lumière Brothers film Venice from a moving gondola.
- 42. After swearing to a mission that will either get him killed or sent to jail, Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) takes the money given to him and gets a hooker. While fucking, he bites down hard on her nipple and she cries, “Not so rough,” and he moans in response, “I haven’t time!” in Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Kinji Fukasaku, 1973)
- **41. Harry Lime (Orson Welles) tells Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) that the people look like ants to him in the best film speech of all time. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
- **40. David Dunn (Bruce Willis), clad in green slicker, stands outside a house in the rain and slowly accepts what he must do and enters that house in Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
- 39. The ice cream scene in Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter, 1976)
- **38. “Isn’t It Romantic?” montage in Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)
- 37. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) while teaching a lesson to Jen Yu (Ziyi Zhang) picks up a stick by spinning his sword and then proceeds to beat her with it, in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
- 36. Jane (Olivia d’Abo) dances to The Flatlanders in Kicking & Screaming (Noah Baumbauch, 1995)
- 35. The finale of Crazed Fruit (Ko Nakahira, 1956)
- 34. The Man (George O’Brien) goes to meet The Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston) for the first time in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
- 33. The Black freedom fighters “sambo” up the head of the National Guard, force feed him acid, and send him outside on a bicycle in The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973)
- **32. Trapped on top of a lighthouse, Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) furiously attempts to fight off the fog monster in front of her as one slowly appears out of the darkness behind her in The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980)
- 31. Bob Lujano dreams that he is flying in Murderball (Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, 2005)
- 30. Noah Cross (John Huston) covers the eyes of his grand daughter (Belinda Palmer) in Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
- 29. Quite possibly the lone black student at Northeast High School in Philadelphia questions its economic decisions in High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
- **28. For several minutes, there is nothing but nearly unwatchable flashes of light while archival voice-over describes the moments following the assassination of JFK in Report (Bruce Conner, 1967)
- 27. The mob boss in Drunken Angel returns to the town, steals the guitar from the guitar player, and plays his own musical theme (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)
- 26. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) drops his glasses and clenches his fist as he realizes he will always have to be Spiderman in Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
- 25. Mouse Alexander (Don Cheadle) suddenly shows up to help Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) and uses his gun for pretty much everything in Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995)
- **24. Pedro (Alfonso Mejía) dreams of his mother (Estela Inda) offering him some meat in Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel, 1950)
- 23. Ignorant men attempt to cremate a zombie, and while the fumes pour out the smokestack and turn into acid rain, the hottest film music of all time plays in The Return of the Living Dead (Dan O’Bannon, 1985)
- **22. Dum (Suwinit Panjamawat) and Mahesuan (Supakorn Kitsuwon) face off for the first time in Tears of a Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng, 2000)
- **21. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon) meets his wife (Abbey Lincoln) at a church dinner in Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964)
- **20. In order to avoid the rain, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) pulls his lawnmower into a small farmhouse in The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
- 19. Long shot of evil compound. Cue cheesy bad guy music. The Thin Man (Crispin Glover) smokes a cigarette in the awesomest way possible. Inside, Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell) puts final motions of evil scheme into plan as cheesy bad guy music becomes beat for hot hip hop song. He dances with a coca-cola, drinking from a long straw, and I realize if I were about to enact an evil scheme this is exactly what I would be doing. Charlie’s Angels (McG, 2000)
- 18. Josh (Tom Hanks) and his boss (Robert Loggia) perform Heart & Soul and Chopsticks on the giant keyboard in F.A.O. Schwartz in Big (Penny Marshall, 1988)
- **17. Julia (Rachel Ward) discovers the lost film of her husband, Denis (Robert Grant), and watches it in How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989)
- **16. A little boy looks at the top of a building and catches a glimpse of an angel (Bruno Ganz) in The Sky over Berlin (Wim Wenders, 1987)
- **15. Otoyo (Terumi Niki) and the women of the hospital scream into a well in an attempt to call back a young boy’s soul in Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa, 1965)
- 14. After embarrassing the mafia of a small town, Shinza (Kanemon Nakamura) is taken by the gang to a bridge where he waits for death in Humanity & Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)
- 13. Dragon Eye Morrison (Tadanobu Asano) screams, “GUITAR!!!” in Electric Dragon 80.000v (Sogo Ishii, 2001)
- **12. The main theme of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg plays for the first time (Jacques Demy, 1964)
- **11. Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), overcome with love, sings in the rain in Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952)
- 10. Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) throws coffee in the face of Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame) in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953)
- **9. Sun-hwa (Seung-yeon Lee) speaks for the first time near the end of 3-Iron (Ki-duk Kim, 2004)
- 8. Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton) falls asleep and wakes up in the film that he is projecting in Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
- **7. Ed (Holly Hunter) sings Nathan Jr. a lullaby after he has a nightmare in Raising Arizona (The Coen Brothers, 1987)
- 6. “Lucky” Garnett (Fred Astaire) tells Penelope Carroll (Ginger Rogers) that he will never dance again… in a dance in Swing Time (George Stevens, 1936)
- 5. Maria (Maria-Pia Casilio), the servant in the apartment building that Umberto (Carlo Battisti) lives in, grinds coffee beans one sleepless night and cries in Umberto D (Vittorio de Sica, 1952)
- **4. Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki) looking for someone to test his recently purchased drugs on searches for a victim among the living dead of Dope Alley in High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
- **3. In an attempt to find more evidence of a murder, Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) breaks into Lars Thorwald’s (Raymond Burr) apartment only to be trapped there when he returns home suddenly. Wheelchair-bound L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) watches helplessly as Thorwald turns off his lights in Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
- 2. The narrator says, “The Jews have a highly developed telencephalon and an opposable thumb; therefore, they are human beings” over Holocaust footage in Ilha des Flores (Jorge Furtado, 1989)
- **1. (TIE) A tree outside a window in winter. The picture flashes in and out. It is the only footage Ross McElwee the winter of his father’s death. / Shot of Marylin, nude, pregnant and beautiful in Time Indefinite (Ross McElwee, 1994)
Helluva list. I like that you've given a nod to both Unbreakable (which I think is unfairly panned), and Charlie's Angels , which wasn't great but had the best villians ever. Only Sam Rockwell could pull off such a smooth transition from nerd to ultracool bad guy.
Charlie's Angels is one of my favorite dumb Hollywood movies pretty much specifically for Sam Rockwell's performance.
Though I do enjoy Lucy Liu quite a bit as well. Thanks for the compliments!
I should point out that I don't love every film on the list, just every moment. Although the two films you pointed out, I do love.
Yay, couldn't agree more on Assault on Precinct 13! Excellent scene, excellent film!
With John Carpenter, it's actually really hard to choose my favorite. My favorite American director is either him or Sturges.
I think my favorites are The Thing and The Fog, but I love Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, and Halloween almost as much.