100 Greatest Movie Moments - Part I

Recently I stumbled upon a list compiled by Roger Ebert of the 100 greatest moments in movie history. While his list was pretty good, it still had some glaring omissions and some erroneous inclusions. So I was inspired to create my own list, and here it is. Some moments are iconic while others are funny, emotional, or make the audience do a collective jaw drop due to pure cinematic bravura. For your added enjoyment, I've included an image from each moment (to the best of my abilities). I've tried to be spoiler-free as much as possible, but unfortunately some have still snuck in. Ye be warned. In the interest of keeping posts from getting too long and unwieldy, I'm breaking the list up into four parts. Expect the remaining installments to come over the next couple weeks.

(In chronological order)

Intolerance (1916)
The parade into Babylon.

Safety Last! (1923)
Harold Lloyd hang perilously from a clock face.

Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
Buster finds himself inside a movie, and much to his bewilderment the world keeps cutting to somewhere completely different while he remains still.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)
A baby carriage rolls down the Odessa steps unattended.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Christine rips off the Phantom’s mask to reveal Lon Chaney’s skull-like visage.

The Jazz Singer (1927)
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

Metropolis (1927)
The robot is brought to life.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
A house falls on Buster. He remains unscathed since he is standing precisely where the open window is.

King Kong (1933)
Kong swats at airplanes atop the Empire State Building.

It Happened One Night (1934)
Clark Gable attempts to hitch a ride. Claudette Colbert succeeds.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The wicked queen drinks a potion and turns herself into an ugly old hag.

Gone With the Wind (1939)
Scarlett searches the streets of Atlanta that are filled with wounded and dying Confederate solders.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Dorothy steps out of her black and white house into the glorious Technicolor Oz.

Pinocchio (1940)
Lampwick turns into a donkey.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
The djinn towers over Sabu after being released from his prison.

Citizen Kane (1941)

“Rosebud.”

Love Crazy (1941)
William Powell goes crazy and wreaks barefooted havoc at a dinner party.

Casablanca (1942)
Rick and Ilsa say goodbye.

Cat People (1942)
A woman taking a nighttime swim is terrorized by what may or may not be a giant cat.

Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Gene Kelley dances with Jerry Mouse.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
George Bailey runs through the streets wishing everyone and everything a “Merry Christmas” after getting his life back.

On the Town (1949)
Three navy sailors tour “New York, New York.”

The Third Man (1949)
Joseph Cotten chases shadows through the streets of Vienna until he finds, almost by accident, the cherubic, mischievous face of Orson Welles.

White Heat (1949)
“Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

Sunset Blvd. (1950)
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup.”

My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part III

Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Guy Ritchie takes the Sherlock Holmes mythology and turns it into an action movie. Does this mean it is a good Sherlock Holmes movie? I’m not sure, but it is a highly entertaining thrill ride from start to finish. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law work well together as Holmes and Watson (though I always imagined Watson looking more like Terry Jones than an alpha male with a funny mustache). Also, while I’m not always a fan of his work, the unorthodox score from Hans Zimmer is a lot of fun.

The Book of Eli (2010)
Denzel Washington stars as Eli, a man on a mission (from God?) to protect a book in a post-apocalyptic America that is reminiscent of the wild west. Of course there are men who are trying to get the book from Eli, and he is forced to defend himself and the book through a series of gritty, brutal fight scenes. But there are also a couple scenes where Eli recites Scripture. Even though the words he speaks are ones I have heard hundreds of times before, hearing them in that context gave them a whole new resonance and it was almost like hearing them for the first time. For this and other reasons that I choose not to divulge in the interests of keeping this relatively spoiler-free, I highly recommend this movie to Christians who are able to take the very R-rated violence.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)
There are some cool visuals (as is standard for most anime) but the story turned really weird in the end using a logic that my western mind couldn’t process.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)
I really wanted this to be a good movie, and thankfully I was not let down. It features slick animation, several snazzy tunes, and a cast of strong voice actors instead of the celebrity panel that populates far too many animated movies these days. I also appreciated that voodoo is presented as truly dangerous with real consequences. And the little twist of an ending is the type that I like to end my stories with.

Bride & Prejudice (2004)
I was interested in expanding my film viewing horizons with some Bollywood films, and this bit of Bollywood-lite seemed like a good stepping stone. It is a fun production with several high energy musical numbers, taking the classic tale of Pride and Prejudice and giving it a Bollywood spin. It is a joyous film that makes me want to delve deeper into the true world of Bollywood.

Coming up next: more catching up on the movies of 2009.

My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part II

Ultraviolet (2006)
This movie is an absolute mess. It strings one violent action scene after another, held loosely together by something masquerading as a plot involving vampires, a golden child that may save the world, evil government, and a cure or something of some sort. I’m not really sure, since most of the plot made absolutely no sense to go along with zero character development. This is a very disappointing followup for director Kurt Wimmer after the underrated Equilibrium.

Wife vs. Secretary (1936)
This is a fun screwball comedy featuring the always wonderful Myrna Loy as a woman who reasonably (though ultimately falsely) suspects her husband (Clark Gable) of having an affair with his secretary (Jean Harlow).

Paint Your Wagon (1969)
This is an odd film. It’s a western starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, so there is plenty testosterone to spare. But it is also a musical. There are a couple good musical numbers (specifically Lee Marvin’s rendition of “I Was Born Under a Wandrin’ Star”) but it just does not seem right most of the time seeing Eastwood and Marvin singing their thoughts to the audience.

Wonder Man (1945)
Danny Kaye gets to play two roles: a slick nightclub entertainer and his bumbling bookworm twin brother. Both are very funny and they each get a couple fun musical numbers, giving Kaye the opportunity to play both suave and neurotic to the hilt (both of which he does excellently). Wonder Man stands proudly beside The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and The Court Jester as one of Kaye’s most entertaining roles.

2012 (2009)
I went into this movie ready to nurture some deep hate towards this movie (after all, my opinions of Roland Emmerich’s other “masterpieces,” The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 B.C. are well documented here) and right off the bat the movie delivered. I was treated to a series of disjointed scenes that are supposed to give the audience a sense of dread, but instead left me silently screaming at the screen, “Just get on with it!” The worst scenes involve respected scientists telling high ranking officials that something really bad is about to happen, but the screenwriters goes out of their way to make sure they don’t tell the audience what the really bad thing is, making some extra awkward and klunky dialog. Then, fifteen minutes into the movie, we are finally introduced to our main character played by John Cusack, who just happens to be a limo driver. After it is firmly established (and then some) that he is a bad father and estranged from his kids, he learns that the world is going to end, but that there is a secret government conspiracy that is planning to keep humanity alive. Then we get far too many contrived scenes of driving really fast while being chased by a crack opening up in the earth. Then, once Emmerich decides that driving away from a crack in the ground isn’t good enough, they graduate to a plane, and they have daring escapes flying through toppling buildings while the earth disintegrates. (Though, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t airplanes fly high in the sky? So shouldn’t they have been able to just fly over the tops of the crumbling buildings without a care in the world?) Then it just happens that John Cusack is a chauffeur for a rich guy who has a “get out of the end of the world free” card, so Cusack & Co. join up with him and they get in an even bigger plane and fly this one through an even bigger crack in the ground. Interspersed throughout all this thrilling stuff are scenes of characters around the world who pop in and out of the movie at random, and I think we are supposed to care about them, especially the ones who die horribly at the hands of Mother Nature. But since Emmerich decided not to invest anything in these characters, neither does the audience, and these scenes are far more likely to induce yawns than tears. After dozens more scenes of improbable coincidences and contrived tension (due mostly to the scientists saying, “Oops, we miscalculated, and the world will end tomorrow instead of a week from now; actually, cancel that, the end of the world is six hours away; no, wait, it’s more like thirty minutes”), Cusack & Co. finally make it aboard a giant ark that is designed to weather the storm and save humanity (after all the expendable characters are killed off in various gruesome ways, of course). But then something horrible happened. I thought about the ark, and it actually seemed like a good idea (after all, it worked for Noah) and the production designers and art department put some serious work into making the ark believable. I couldn’t believe it, there was something cool to end the movie with. I don’t know which is harder to forgive Emmerich for: the travesty against humanity that is The Day After Tomorrow, or making a movie that is almost as bad as The Day After Tomorrow but giving it an ending that I kind of liked. Ultimately, 2012 wishes it was Deep Impact with a heavy dose of The Day After Tomorrow, sprinkled with a spoonful of Titanic, but The Day After Tomorrow is the only movie it managed to not be vastly inferior to.

Coming up next: getting caught up on some of the movies from last year.

My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part I

It's been far too long since my last post. My only excuse is that I've been more busy than usual the past couple months and I've been working on other projects. But now that 2010 is more than half over, I should really get going on releasing my Movie Odyssey.

Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
This is my first foray into the works of Tyler Perry, and I must say that overall it was a positive experience. The character of Madea is wonderfully quirky and there are many laughs in the movie, though the main plot smacks of the Hallmark Movie of the Week variety.

Twilight (2008)
Fortunately I watched this with protection,* otherwise I probably would have done irreparable damage to either my eyes or the TV, or both. Bella is a completely uninteresting character, and why she shuns all the high school boys, who generally come across as a fun and interesting group, to instead fawn over the creepy-looking Edward who has no social skills and who apparently has never seen a comb in 200 years of existence, is never adequately explained. She should be calling the cops, not foisting her presence on him at every possible moment. AND WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO HAVE VAMPIRES SPARKLE IN THE SUNLIGHT!? The inane story, flat performances, and erratic camera work combine to form one of the most inexplicable phenomena of the last couple years.
*Commentary track from Rifftrax featuring Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett.

Heavy Metal (1981)
This film features a series of animated science fiction short stories, loosely connected with a green glowing ball of evil. The worlds each story creates are interesting and visually stunning. The more adult-oriented themes are a nice alternative to the largely squeaky clean Disney collection, adding narrative weight to each of the stories. Unfortunately, the adult content also includes large breasted women taking off their clothes for no apparent reason other than the animators’ desire to draw nipples.

Avatar (2009)
It’s Dances With Wolves, IN SPACE! Sure the visuals are lush and the floating mountains look really cool, but it still looked like a cartoon - a very good cartoon, but a cartoon nonetheless. And the visuals are about all it has going for it. The story is pedestrian and the screenplay is full of wooden dialog and spends the first fifteen minutes of the film bludgeoning the audience over the head with exposition. And what is up with Hollywood’s obsession with animism? Overall it’s not a bad movie, there are a few fun action scenes, but mostly it elicits a resounding “meh” from me.

Flightplan (2005)
The intriguing premise of a woman losing her daughter on the world’s largest plane and having everyone around her convinced that the girl was never on the plane to begin with is mostly resolved satisfactorily, but really the film is all about the journey with the audience always wondering, “Is she crazy, or is there some big conspiracy going on?”

Coming up next: my longest Movie Odyssey blurb of all time.

Top and Bottom of the Aughts - #1

Looking over my top and bottom 10 of the decade, I noticed an interesting trend. The films in my top ten create new, interesting, and believable worlds and successfully immerse the audience in them. As a result, science fiction and fantasy are heavily represented on the list, but even Master and Commander, a realistic historical drama, may be the most immersive film on the list. On the flip-side, the common thread for all the movies on my bottom 10 is they try to create new and immersive worlds, but fail horribly at it. The top and bottom movies on this list turn out to both be perfect examples of this phenomenon.

Best
The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003)
There was really no contest for the top spot. These three films succeed on every level and were easily the most anticipated movies of the decade. I love the book and Peter Jackson did a superb job translating it to the screen. He brought Middle Earth to life so believably that it feels like a real place, seamlessly blending sets, models, matte paintings, CGI, and natural location so that it is impossible to tell where one leaves off and another begins. There are both huge battles and wonderful little character moments, all set against my favorite score of all time. It is a story of heroism and sacrifice with great deeds being done by even the most insignificant of people. As an added bonus, the Extended Edition DVDs are the best DVD set ever made. For starters, they look great on a DVD shelf, but inside they are crammed with hours and hours of documentaries that cover all aspects of making the films without endlessly repeating themselves, managing to be both informative and entertaining.

Worst
Battlefield Earth (2000)
I had read the book and enjoyed it, so I was eager to see the movie, as were several of my friends (who had also read and enjoyed the book). We all got together to see what was going to be the next science fiction epic on opening weekend. Boy were we disappointed. Instead of an epic, we were treated to a poorly constructed story that constantly forces the characters to do unbelievably stupid things for no apparent reason. The aliens come across looking like bad Star Trek alien-of-the-week rejects and while they are supposed to be evil and domineering, they come across as just silly. And to make matters worse, half the time the camera was tilted at such a drastic angle that I felt like I was going to fall off my chair at any second. And then there is John Travolta’s performance of Terl, the leader of the aliens. He is so over the top that he can never be taken seriously and becomes painful to watch by the story’s end. The human characters don’t come off any better. None of them are interesting in any way and the audience never has any reason to develop an emotional connection with any of them. And then they find centuries old 20th century technology that amazingly still works, and start flying around in jet fighters with no training. This is a movie that manages to fail on every level, making it well worthy of the “honor” of the worst movie of the decade.

Top and Bottom of the Aughts - #2

Best
The Incredibles (2004)
Bob Parr was forced to give up his career in law enforcement. Now he is working at a dead end desk job, trying to support his wife and three children. Helen, his wife, has fully embraced the domestic lifestyle but Bob cannot help but feel restless in his mundane life. And then Bob loses his job. Will this event start Bob on a downward spiral that will end with his family falling apart, or will this be the jumping off point for a new and more exciting life? And did I mention, this is an animated movie and Bob and all his family have super powers? All the characters are wonderfully crafted and the screenplay sings as it creates an emotional roller coaster. There is a villain straight out of a James Bond movie, a wonderfully eccentric costume designer, and a surprising moment of pure joy smack dab in the middle of a deadly pursuit. Sure the action is thrilling, the animation is superb (what else could be expected from Pixar?) but the real strength of the film is the very human family trying to make their way in a mediocre world.

Worst
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
This film is completely unbelievable on so many levels. Why does dad getting to his son make everything alright, even though they will still be trapped in ice-bound New York City? Why are the merry band of survivors trapped inside a library insisting on only burning books when there are plenty of wooden desks and other pieces of furniture just lying around that will burn longer and better than books? What is added to the film by adding a pointless sub-plot with a pack of bad CG wolves? Why is it that while it is so cold that people turn into instant popsicles when they open the door, they are not visibly cold before opening said door? Why does global WARMING result in an ICE age? Why should we even care about any of these characters when they’re all going to die horribly anyway? And of course there is my favorite exchange: [people on Earth talking to astronauts in space] “We have reports that the storm in North America is breaking up. Can you confirm this?” “Yes. We’re over Europe right now.” So not only does director Roland Emmerich fail story construction, character development, fire 101, and simple scientific principles, he also manages to fail geography as well.

Coming up next: the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Any predictions as to which ones?

Top and Bottom of the Aughts - #3

Best
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
The year is 1805. The HMS Surprise under Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) is ordered to track down the French ship Acheron and capture or sink her. What follows is a thrilling cat and mouse game bookended by two electrifying sea battles. But it is more than just a story of high adventure as we are immersed in the day-to-day life aboard a British war ship, from the captain all the way down to the lowliest cabin boy. We see how deadly the ocean can be, both during a terrible storm as well as a dead calm. It is also very much a character drama as Aubrey gets both support and blunt criticism from his old friend the ship’s doctor (Paul Bettany). The film even spends a few moments as a nature documentary. When I first watched the film, I spent most of my time concentrating on the interactions between Captain Aubrey and the doctor, with most of the other characters fading into the exquisite background. But on subsequent viewings I started picking up on more characters and the story arcs they have throughout the film, resulting in almost a dozen characters, each with his own little story inside the big one, waiting to be discovered by the attentive viewer.

Worst
Happy Feet (2006)
How on earth could a film this lame and implausible win the Oscar for best animated feature? I felt like I was watching a 100 minute Coke commercial, without the morbid potential of the polar bears actually eating the penguins. The comedy fell flat, the musical numbers were dull, and watching an animated creature with no legs tap dancing just does not have the same appeal (nor is as impressive) as a real person doing all the moves. Robin Williams was way over the top in his dual roles, doing broad racial voice stereotypes. There was very little to distinguish the penguins from each other and of course the villains in the film were the religious conservatives, doing their part to keep our hero from being his unique self. And then there is the completely implausible joke of an ending, where humanity decides to stop fishing because they saw a bunch of penguins tap dancing. Do they actually think humanity would be that benevolently minded towards this subspecies? (Or that stupid?) I think what would really happen is Ringling Bros. would snap up as many of the penguins as possible and put their tap dancing in the center ring. Of course, what should you expect from a film with a moronic title like Happy Feet?

Coming up next: an incredible movie and an uncredible one.