As usual, there was no shortage of worthy contenders for The A.V. Club’s list of the best movie scenes of the year. Even flawed films can contain flashes of brilliance, the parts that shine more brightly than the whole. And of course, plenty of the year’s best movies worked on a micro and macro level, though not all of them contained one strong passage that could be cited and isolated—which is to say, as we do every year, that not all great movies contain great scenes, just as not all great scenes come from great movies. If you stitched together every standout cinematic moment from 2018, the resulting supercut would be longer than two Avengers sequels put together. So we’ve narrowed it down to just 25 choices, with no more than a single scene per film (a restriction that resulted in even more agonizing, because how does one decide between Tom Cruise jumping out an airplane and Tom Cruise destroying a bathroom?). And there’s no particular order to the list, beyond the selection of a consensus favorite—the year’s purest blast of movie magic—and an attempt to stick the climaxes and big plot twists near the bottom. Because, yes, we’re off the deep end, and there are spoilers there.
Scene of the year
“Shallow,” A Star Is Born
However much it soaks in dive-bar naturalism, however far it strays into tragedy, Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born remains, at its most satisfying, a twinkly Hollywood fairy-tale about trading rags for riches. Never is that more stirringly clear than in the film’s centerpiece crescendo, when aspiring singer Ally (Lady Gaga) conquers her jitters to take the stage for the first time, bursting out of the chrysalis of her ordinary life and into the spotlight. You can poke holes in the scene, questioning whether Cooper’s Jackson Maine would really be able to memorize (while stinking drunk!) a song he heard once, then arrange a full-band rendition of it the next day. But such nitpicks recede like whispers in a crowded amphitheater, drowned out by not just the irresistible swell of “Shallow” but also the full spectrum of feeling Gaga applies to it, her stage fright and self-consciousness shading into resolve and rapture over the course of one earworm ballad. Perfectly syncing the audience’s shivery joy to the performer’s, it was the most indelible movie moment of the year: a dreams-come-true showstopper that reverberated through the rest of the Hollywood fable containing it and out into the real world, where “Shallow” now dominates our airwaves, too. [A.A. Dowd]
Just an ordinary day, The Commuter
For something unexpected to happen, a movie first needs to establish a baseline of normalcy—the protagonist’s routine, upon which the inciting incident screenwriting books discuss can intrude. Hence the cliché of the seemingly ordinary day, which looks utterly humdrum until suddenly it doesn’t. Keeping viewers from falling asleep while they wait for the plot to kick in always presents a challenge, and few films have risen to it as elaborately as The Commuter, which goes to the trouble of creating a lengthy montage devoted to Liam Neeson’s ex-cop getting out of bed at precisely 6 a.m., checking on his son’s homework over breakfast, getting into a marital spat just before exiting the car to catch his train, etc. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, editor Nicolas de Toth (son of noted director Andre de Toth), and costume designer Jill Taylor create enough visual variety and abrupt disjunctions over the course of umpteen banal mornings to make “nothing happens, over and over” surprisingly compelling. [Mike D’Angelo]
Surly Joe, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs
Two elements make “Little Joe The Wrangler (Surly Joe),” the deliriously messed-up centerpiece of the titular opening chapter of The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, more than just a song and dance number for the San Saba Songbird. The first is a man, weeping over the place where his dead brother’s face used to be, as the people around him join the chorus. It’s a classic moment of cognitive dissonance from filmmakers who’ve spent decades asking their audiences to hold two contradictory tones or themes in their heads simultaneously. On the bar, a musical! On the floor, a wake. The other element is Tim Blake Nelson, who embodies that tension in a daft, deranged performance that you could call either “charmingly disturbing” or “upsettingly delightful,” depending on your mood. He warbles, he meanders, he’s surprisingly light on his feet, but he also never lets you forget that those pristine duds are white by sheer good fortune—he’s absolutely steeped in blood. [Allison Shoemaker]
Magical mystery tour, First Reformed
For a man who spends his every waking hour in strict and unwavering devotion to God, it takes a moment of extraordinary consequence to qualify as a “religious experience.” But the good reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke, god-level in both senses of the term) knows enough to recognize the divine when it’s laying right on top of him, nose-to-nose. The conspicuously named Mary (Amanda Seyfried) wants to feel close to her late husband, and asks Toller if he won’t join her in recreating the unusual gesture of intimacy they used to share. Their spontaneous levitation and hallucinatory flight across the planet’s face—first vernal and lush, then replaced by the cacophony of traffic and a mass grave of burning tires—strikes Toller with the force of the Almighty’s own voice. The clean, steady breath he and Mary share begins to choke as they hover above an unending vista of pollution-belching industry. Somebody has to do something, and he’s been chosen as the one. [Charles Bramesco]
“Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” The Strangers: Prey At Night
Ironic pop needle drops and neon-lit appropriations of late ’70s and early-to mid-’80s aesthetics are at this point so overplayed in horror that it almost makes one wish the genre would slip back into 2000s grime. But maybe the problem is that they’re not going hard enough, suggests Johannes Roberts’ The Strangers: Prey At Night—a sadistic and illogical pastiche of such abstract intentions that it almost qualifies as a stealth art movie. The combination of Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 hit “Total Eclipse Of The Heart,” canny sound design, a swimming pool, and a perfectly timed zoom turns one of the climactic points of the film into slasher-cheese opera—the transcendent guilty-pleasure sequence of the year. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
Bathroom brawl, Mission: Impossible—Fallout
Six movies in, the Mission: Impossible series has produced so many stunning action sequences of such impressive variety that it’s getting difficult to stage new chases, break-ins, or cliffside helicopter duels. But these movies were relatively light on good old-fashioned fistfights until Fallout issued a bruising corrective. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and August Walker (Henry Cavill) tag in and out when their target (Liang Yang) refuses to be subdued in a restroom. Director Christopher McQuarrie cleanly assembles all of the bathroom-fight hallmarks—broken sinks, smashed mirrors, pulled-out pipes—but what really sells the scene is the actors. Cruise’s willingness to get knocked around serves him well as always, Yang makes a gracefully formidable opponent, and Cavill brings his own nutty grace notes, like his pause to doff his jacket and “reload” his punching arms even as a colleague is moments away from getting his throat slit. This is a series that, big as it’s gotten, still knows how to think on its feet. [Jesse Hassenger]
Sex in the car, The Other Side Of The Wind
The fetish-y themes of voyeurism, exhibitionism, and cuckoldry evident in The Immortal Story, The Lady From Shanghai, and F For Fake may have been a clue, but not enough to prepare anyone for the deliriously kinky meta-narrative of Orson Welles’ long-unfinished 1970s tragedy-slash-satire, which filters the psychological desperation and repression of a fictional Hollywood has-been named Jake Hannaford (John Huston) through its real creator’s horny genius. In Hannaford’s film-within-the-film (also called The Other Side Of The Wind), a nameless young man (Robert Random) follows a mystery woman (Oja Kodar, Welles’ partner and muse) across Los Angeles. The high point is their sex scene, which unfolds during a rainstorm in the front seat of a moving Ford Mustang: a mesmerizing experimental montage (actually shot over several years in different locations) of close-ups, raw colors, sweat, wet auto glass, thrusts, danger, and traffic that stands as one of the greatest formal achievements of the later part of Welles’ career and a milestone of getting one’s rocks off on film. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
Dance at sundown, Burning
By the mid-point of Lee Chang-dong’s captivating thriller, we’ve been introduced to our three principal players: unemployed, perpetually slack-jawed Jongsu (Ah-in Yoo); his former flame, Haemi (Jong-seo Jun); and Ben (Steven Yeun), a wealthy, Gatsby-ish figure whom Haemi has recently taken up with. In an impromptu gathering at Jongsu’s family farm, the trio laze languidly about, sharing a joint as they watch the sunset. As if impelled by the sheer beauty before her, Haemi removes her shirt and begins to dance to Miles Davis’ jazz improvisations, emanating from Ben’s Porsche. The sequence is Burning’s tantalizing, troubling centerpiece. Watching Haemi’s woozy, stoned-out movements framed against the dusky light, one might recall Laura Palmer’s dance in “The Pink Room” from David Lynch’s booed-at-the-time Twin Peaks prequel, since both scenes whip up a similarly heady brew of anguish, seduction, and distinct foreboding. In these moments, Haemi’s dazed dance seems almost like an invitation: fire, walk with me. [Lawrence Garcia]
Security cam massacre, You Were Never Really Here
When we first meet Joaquin Phoenix’s shattered, bruising hitman Joe, he’s washing blood off a hammer, and we spend much of the first third of You Were Never Really Here wondering who he is, what he does, and how awful it might be. “I want you to hurt them,” a state senator tells Joe before sending him to rescue his daughter from a brothel. But when Joe finally enters the nondescript brownstone, there is no swoon of violent music or cathartic bloodshed. Instead, we view the massacre via a cycle of night-vision security cameras, cutting between shots of empty stairwells and hallways as Joe stalks, hammer in hand, through the building. Throughout, a lightly glitching rendition of Rosie And The Originals’ ’ “Angel Baby” plays, and the camera keeps cutting dispassionately away from moments of carnage to other, quieter corners. As cinematographer Tom Townend notes, the infrared cameras also “had the fun by-product of changing Joaquin’s black clothing to white, which audiences can read into what they will.” [Clayton Purdom]
Truth Or Dare, Eighth Grade
Every moment of Eighth Grade where Kayla (Elsie Fisher) interacts with another human being is awkward. But that awkwardness intensifies into paralyzing terror for one scene toward the end of the film, where an older boy named Riley (Daniel Zolghadri) manipulates Kayla into a sexually charged “game” of “Truth Or Dare” in the backseat of his car. Many filmmakers might have escalated the scene, where an incredibly uncomfortable Kayla second-guesses her every move with lowered eyes, nervous giggles, and whispered apologies, into sexual assault. But director Bo Burnham keeps Kayla trapped between her instinctive urge to flee and her desperate need for acceptance, for a breathless tension that so dominates the scene that when Kayla refuses a dare and ends the game, there is no triumph in the moment, just confusion and shame. It’s a subtle but powerful depiction of the societal conditioning to always put men’s pleasure and comfort first that leads girls like Kayla to apologize to their attackers—“You’re no fun,” Riley tells Kayla; “Sorry,” she replies—and blame themselves for their own victimization. [Katie Rife]
Killmonger’s vision, Black Panther
As Erik Killmonger, a.k.a. N’Jadaka, Michael B. Jordan gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe its most magnetic yet polarizing villain to date, and threatened to steal Black Panther right from under Chadwick Boseman’s noble visage. Credit is also due screenwriter Joe Robert Cole and director Ryan Coogler, who wring sympathy for this would-be conqueror even as they underscore his wrongheaded thinking. Erik’s vision following his defeat of T’Challa (Boseman) is essentially a three-act play in under three minutes, tracing his tragic origins from the scene of his father N’Jobu’s death to the formation of his warped philosophy—make Wakanda an imperialist power—and his zealous commitment to it. Sterling K. Brown, who plays N’Jobu, makes the most of his limited role; his performance here is absolutely wrenching, from the dismay at seeing what his own militant thinking has wrought to his reading of the line “They will say you are lost”—an absolute gut punch to anyone in the diaspora. [Danette Chavez]
Southside with me, Widows
In Widows, director Steve McQueen frequently communicates character and thematic information in interesting ways. The film’s best scene finds Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), the scion of a corrupt political dynasty, and his campaign manager (Molly Kunz) driving from a campaign event celebrating “Women At Work” to the family mansion. In the car, Mulligan spews racist rhetoric while bemoaning his chosen profession, but McQueen has little interest in focusing on Farrell during this particular moment. Instead, he mounts the camera on the dashboard and captures the scale and scope of a Chicago landscape divided between haves and have-nots, relegating Mulligan to voice-over. McQueen neatly divides the viewer’s attention, directing the eye to the context of Mulligan’s rant while immersing the ear in a privileged voice. It’s an undeniably didactic moment, but McQueen’s message is powerful: Poverty and royalty exist side by side, too close for comfort. [Vikram Murthi]
Extracting the bullet, Game Night
Ordinary people inadvertently confronting danger fuels many a thriller, but it doesn’t take much to push that scenario into high comedy. Married couple Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) finally discover that they’re not actually playing an elaborate murder-mystery party game when Annie shoots Max in the arm with what she’d assumed was a fake gun. That’s trouble enough, but it’s compounded when neither one can suppress a streak of hyper-competitive testiness as Annie subsequently attempts to remove the bullet, using supplies purchased from the drugstore (standard thriller stuff) and instructions she finds on an alt-right website (not so much). Repeatedly derailed by everything from contagious heaves to a heated, detailed argument about smartphone settings, this bit of amateur surgery gives both actors an opportunity to find humor in an amalgam of the dramatic and the mundane, and concludes with one of the year’s most inspired line readings, courtesy of McAdams: “Ohhhhh, it came ouuuuuuut.” [Mike D’Angelo]
“Think about those who have helped you become who you are,” Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Director Morgan Neville’s smash hit Mister Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is a ruthlessly efficient tearjerking machine, leveling audiences with its reminiscences of one uncommonly decent man. But Neville saves his knockout punch for the end, with a look back at Fred Rogers’ 2002 Dartmouth graduation speech, where he urged the crowd to take a minute to think about someone in their lives who believed in them. The director repeats the exercise with all the people he interviewed, so for a long, hushed stretch of the film, while the audience reflects on its own “helpers,” we see all these people who knew Fred, welling up with emotion as they recall the people they love the most. It’s an overpoweringly beautiful illustration of one of the many things this gentle children’s TV host gave the world: the gift of gratitude. [Noel Murray]
Mahjong game, Crazy Rich Asians
Most action movies culminate in a battle, be it sword fight, dogfight, or light saber standoff. The feud at the heart of the year’s most successful rom-com, Crazy Rich Asians, comes to a head at the mahjong table. Rachel has invited Eleanor, her boyfriend Nick’s mother, to the mahjong parlor after being rejected from their family. Nick has subsequently proposed. The game, like so many of Crazy Rich Asians’ scenes, offers a wonderful, fascinating window into Chinese culture, as the tiles fly and the women play fiercely. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a mahjong expert to surmise what is happening as Rachel grips the winning tile, then tosses it on the table, knowing that Eleanor will then win the game. It mirrors their situation perfectly: Rachel says she will not accept Nick’s proposal, giving Eleanor the win, but she in fact holds the real power. After seeing Rachel receive shabby treatment from this snobby family throughout the movie, it’s a shining, immensely satisfying moment. [Gwen Ihnat]
Crosscutting climax, BlackKklansman
Late in Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman, a master polemicist takes on one of cinema’s most notorious polemics. As activist Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) meets with a black student union and discusses the horrifying real-life case of Jesse Washington, a black kid who was lynched in 1916, Lee cross-cuts his story with a sequence of new Ku Klux Klan members celebrating their initiation and taking in a screening of D.W. Griffith’s Klan-lionizing film The Birth Of A Nation. Nation was released the year before Washington’s murder, and cross-cutting is, of course, a technique that Griffith and his films helped popularize, a technical milestone to sit alongside the movie’s legacy of vile racism. Lee’s sequence is both an angry evocation of cinema’s power and an attempt to turn that power around, using it to spotlight a chapter of American history that, contrary to whatever progress we seem to make, refuses to close. Fitting, then, that this sequence forms the emotional climax of the film, later echoed by a happy ending followed by a devastating coda. [Jesse Hassenger]
“Come play with us,” Ready Player One
Ernest Cline’s dystopian adventure Ready Player One gets sweaty in its quest to prove that it cares about the same things its readers care about—especially if they spent their adolescence haunting arcades, the science fiction shelves of their local Blockbuster, or graph-paper dungeons. There’s a similar perspiration on display in Cline and Zak Penn’s Ready Player One screenplay, but some key choices of adaptation and the guiding hand of director Steven Spielberg prevent the trek Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) takes through the virtual-reality paradise of the OASIS from getting too bogged down in games of recognition. In fact, its best sequence is grounded in the POV of a character who isn’t familiar with their surroundings: a mid-film romp through The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. The tension between knowing and not knowing comes to the fore as the hulking, fright-averse Aech (Lena Waithe) attempts to crack James Halliday’s latest riddle by guilelessly asking for assistance from a pair of innocent-looking twins and the guest taking a bath in room 237. The winks and the nods to a different cinematic master’s pop-lit translation are still there, but the sequence transcends them, transforming—through some impressive digital recreation—an iconic setting and some of The Shining’s most storied set pieces into the hallucinatory backdrop of the greatest survival-horror game never made. When Aech naively ambles in the direction of the Overlook’s elevators, it’s the moment when Spielberg finds something fresh in Ready Player One’s carton of Easter eggs. [Erik Adams]
The attack, The 15:17 To Paris
Clint Eastwood’s film about the thwarted terrorist attack on a train to Paris is a failed experiment in verisimilitude, derailed by its bold but misguided decision to cast three American dudes with no acting experience as themselves. But as clumsy as most of the movie is, letting these real heroes recreate the ordinary events of their lives, the climax packs a wallop. It’s here that the nonprofessional stars’ limited acting abilities are eclipsed by the undeniable power of seeing them credibly simulate their own incredible moment of instinctive bravery—a dramatization, staged with Eastwood’s usual command of space and violence, that achieves a moving hyper-realism through context. One might even argue that the awkwardness of any scene where these non-performers are trying to perform only throws into sharper relief the authenticity of the ending, when the three barely seem to be acting at all, possibly guided instead by memories (and muscle memory) of how the fateful day went down. [A.A. Dowd]
One small step, First Man
The Neil Armstrong biopic First Man is a bold exercise in limited perspective, putting viewers inside the spacesuit of a stoic, detail-oriented astronaut, who copes with any personal pain by focusing on what he needs to do next. Throughout, director Damien Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer keep the audience keenly aware of the improbability of NASA’s mission, showing us all the rickety technology, and pausing every now and then so that Ryan Gosling’s Armstrong can stare into the night at the distant glowing circle he’s trying to reach. That’s what makes the Apollo 11 landing itself so cathartic. In IMAX especially, the screen suddenly fills with a vast, awesome, silent emptiness, not at all like the noise and cramped capsules that have dominated the movie up to then. And there’s Armstrong too, finally living in a serene, present moment… which lasts just a few minutes, before he starts looking back up at the Earth. [Noel Murray]
The accident, Hereditary
Hereditary is a film of terrifying sounds. Not slams or shocks but breaths, as in the sound of young Charlie Graham (Milly Shapiro) desperately trying to drag air into her lungs as her brother, Peter (Alex Wolff), races through the night to save her from a carelessness-induced case of anaphylactic shock. There’s the sound of the car’s engine, tuned into the drones and drumbeats of Colin Stetson’s inescapable score, as a panicked Peter recklessly accelerates. And then the sickening, inevitable crunch as the car suddenly swerves to avoid something dead in the road, and Charlie’s head—extended out the window as she struggles to draw a breath—collides with a telephone pole, a sound too brutal to mark anything but an instant, family-shattering death. There’s a moment of shocked silence—mirroring the audience’s realization that, yes, director Ari Aster really just killed his spooky kid 20 minutes into his spooky kid movie—before tortured breathing begins again. This time, though, it’s Peter, as Aster’s camera locks onto his face, relentlessly watching him struggle to process the hellish enormity of what he’s done. [William Hughes]
The garage, Blindspotting
“You said make it pretty, right?” Collin (Daveed Diggs) says to Miles (Rafael Casal). “The bounce of it, they like the bounce of it.” Collin stops, thinks, cocks his head, bites his lip. His eyes stay locked onto the face of a trembling cop (Ethan Embry) who gunned a black man down in the street. And then he opens his mouth, and makes it pretty. What follows is one of the most astonishing pieces of writing for film this year, a moment so bold that to compare it to anything else only underlines its originality. Collin’s verses make for a perfect marriage of actor and performance, a chance for Diggs (also one of the film’s screenwriters) to use his strengths to tell this story in a way that few others could. It’s not Blindspotting’s first use of heightened language, but it’s the moment to which all others build, the poetic roar of a man whose only option is to try, somehow, to get the man in front of him to see both pictures. [Allison Shoemaker]
The ritual, Suspiria
So much of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria hinges on inverting the original: What was garish becomes muted, what was inferred becomes explicit, and what was titillating is now grotesque. Guadagnino frees himself from that first mandate, at least, in the film’s climactic occult ritual, staging a Bacchanalian death orgy partially shot behind red filters that tint it the color of fresh blood—or maybe cherry Kool-Aid. Even the parts of the scene that aren’t bathed in bright primary colors retain that same sense of hysterical blood frenzy, as Guadagnino fills the gloomy ritual chamber with Tanz Academy students, their limbs set askew into bizarre human sculptures, flanked by the school’s faculty in shapeless, Satanic red robes. Add on top of that three different Tilda Swintons, two of which are outfitted in layers of unsettling prosthetic makeup; fistfuls of viscera; a death goddess soaked in black bile; Dakota Johnson ripping through her own musculature to create a vaginal chest opening; and more exploding heads than your average Scanners sequel, and you’ve got the scene viewers are referring to when they shake their heads and call the new Suspiria “fucking crazy, man.” [Katie Rife]
The vanishing, Avengers: Infinity War
This isn’t how superhero movies are supposed to end. After a bitter battle—and sure, potentially some painful losses—the good guys carry the day. But in the final minutes of Infinity War, Thanos snaps his Infinity Gauntlet-clad fingers, and just like that, half of all existence is snuffed out, our heroes turning to ash and disappearing in front of our eyes, one after the other. Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, T’Challa, Wanda Maximoff, Groot: They’re all exterminated in the mad Titan’s plan. With minimal score and a focus on the horrified eyes of those left behind to bear witness to the tragedy, the Russo brothers wring maximum emotional pain from 10 years’ worth of audience affection for these characters. It reaches its apex with the brutally effective decision to draw out Peter Parker’s disintegration, the teen pleading not to go as he dissipates in Tony Stark’s arms. (At least we got some memes out of it.) Pity the theater-going parents of young kids watching their heroes die, faced with their tear-stricken disbelief. To quote Steve Rogers’ unnerved final words, “Oh, God.” [Alex McLevy]
Phoenix Buchanan becomes a star, Paddington 2
Paddington 2 was already a perfect movie before director Paul King decided to casually play its best scene over the end credits. Sentenced to 10 years in prison and advised to use his time there wisely, egotistical actor Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant) winds up finding the ideal stage—and a captive audience—in the pastel pink prison Paddington had previously transformed during his wrongful imprisonment. (Yes, Paddington 2 is a kid’s movie about prison reform.) Grant throws himself into an elaborate musical production number of “Rain On The Roof” from Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, complete with tap dancing prisoners, Busby Berkeley homages, and even a little wirework. It’s the perfect example of how King goes above and beyond with every visual detail of the Paddington world. It’s also an impeccable capper to a career-revitalizing, awards-worthy performance from a delightfully self-mocking Grant. [Caroline Siede]
Closing credits, Let The Sunshine In
It’s rare for a film’s closing credits scroll to actually enrich its thematic material. But that’s precisely what happens at the end of Claire Denis’ uncharacteristically talky French drama. After following the romantic travails of Parisian artist Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) for about 80 minutes, we watch her solicit the advice of a medium (Gérard Depardieu). Though he’s first glimpsed in the scene just prior, where he looks to be at the aching end of his own messy relationship, we see none of his lovelorn anguish here. In fact, his foretellings to Isabelle sound suspiciously like attempts to become her next suitor. That possibility, though, doesn’t even register to her, and it’s the scene’s perfectly calibrated mix of obvious/oblivious banter that makes it such a hilarious capper. That Denis then rolls the credits over the duo’s ongoing exchange—as if to resist an actual ending—only furthers the films pervading sense of optimistic openness: We believe in love, even when we shouldn’t. [Lawrence Garcia]
272 Comments
The end of Annihilation.
Loved the intensity of that scene.
At least David Ehrlich let it shine in his end-of-year compilation.
My girlfriend actually shrieked when the simulacrum (is that what to call it?) suddenly started walking towards her. It’s the most terrifying interpretive dance scene ever filmed.
or the bear scene!!
I missed that scene thank god
This is what I came screaming to say when I saw NOTHING from Annihilation made this list. The bear scene was completely enrapturing.
Or, as I refer to it, “THAT F**KING BEAR.”
And yes, it’s a *very* memorable scene.
That made the movie worth the admission for me; was a bit too slow and meandering til that point.
… ruined the entire movie.
Not true Wolf!
I’m preemptively mad about how little recognition Annihilation will get as awards/accolades are being handed out. It wasn’t perfect but, goddamn, it was it was probably the most unique cinematic experience I can recall from the last few years. The Bear scene is the one to pick, IMO, though I loved the ending too.
I thought it was brilliant. It was the best movie I saw this year. You don’t see thought provoking sci-fi of this flavor much anymore. Damn shame.
I thought it was brilliant. It was the best movie I saw this year. You don’t see thought provoking sci-fi of this flavor much anymore. Damn shame.
Really? There was absolutely some incredibly unique imagery and really well done scenes (obv Bear scene) but the underlying stuff felt completely rote to me, it’s what really stopped it from feeling like a great film (as opposed to a really good film).Narrative isn’t everything and you can still do something really unusual with traditional narrative but I felt like I knew half of what that film was going to do way before it happened. They sometimes did it in a novel way – the ending was abundantly clear the moment they established the mirroring of the husband but yeah the scene with her and not her was still really well done. There were some fantastic thoughts and images but it also didn’t feel like it said anything new.
This is one of the best films of the year. I personally would nominate the bear scene. Hearing her voice coming out of its mouth was one of the most chilling things I’ve ever seen. The book, by the way, was awful. I wonder how Jeff Vandermeer felt watching the movie, thinking, “Oh, so that’s what it’s about.”
I really enjoyed the book but thought the movie was better.
The Live Aid performance in Bohemian Rhapsody.The way that the movie provided context, (even if that context might have been ginned up for the film), to the little things and mannerisms that Mercury displayed during the show make it a subtle, little masterpiece within a pretty good rock biopic.
One thing that puzzles me is why they decided to finish the movie with “Who Wants to Live Forever?”. Because all that did was make me want to watch Highlander.
Agreed. I had problems with the movie throughout (why not just give Freddie’s transparently eeeevil manipulative manager a mustache for twirling purposes, ffs), but the LiveAid scene almost redeemed it. I was grinning through tears, loving the music and the performances and wishing like anything that Freddie was still with us, and that we would all have a chance to see them live together again.
I pretty much hated Bohemian Rhapsody, but the Live Aid concert was a highlight, no doubt.Except the non-CGI crowd shots, which seemed to feature the same dozen extras and made the whole look pretty small and chintzy.
Really? The Live Aid scene – while done well enough – is what made me realize how thin the story was. Instead of using visuals during the concert to wrap up plot threads under the music, it was just Band on stageCUT TO THE AUDIENCE: They’re loving it. Band on stageCUT TO THE AUDIENCE: They’re loving it. Band on stageCUT TO PEOPLE IN A BAR WATCHING ON TV: They’re loving it. Band on stageCUT TO THE AUDIENCE AGAIN: Still loving it. On and on and one for like 15 minutes. They basically just re-enact Live Aid with next to no commentary. You could watch it on YouTube for that.
Also, they cut to Mary Austin’s proud face at least three times. After doing a re-enactment down to the tiniest movement, you can only have so may establishing shots for 20 minutes. You’re right, you get the magnitude of the performance from the YouTube video; the one thing I think the re-enactment added was the reaction shots of the band member’s faces; Freddie Mercury gets all the attention and close-ups in the broadcast, but some of the other members of Queen have said that was the greatest moment of their lives, and they often get overshadowed by Mercury’s stage presence.
Well sure because the most was as much the band’s (as producers) love letter to themselves, as it was to Freddy Mercury. They’re in almost every scene and the only point of the movie seemed to be ‘He couldn’t have done it without us.’There’s also that lone ‘womp-womp’ reaction shot from Micheal “Wayne’s World, Get it?” Myers kicking himself that he expressed concern over the viability of getting a 6 minute song radio airplay and not running back to them after they threw a goddamn rock through his window like psychos.
ctrl + f “Lakeith Stanfield rapping from Sorry To Bother You” ctrl +f “Mandy”ctrl + f “he didn’t even have a hair on his prick scene from Gotti da best movie of da fucking year”smdh AV Club, do better, it’s a yikes from me, fam
If you’re gonna pick a Gotti scene it’s the opening tbh fam
It’s a tie between those two for me, I just went with the one that made my face contort a little more. The opening is absolutely wonderful as well.
Mandy is wack and Daveed Diggs rapping > Lakeith Stanfield rapping. Sorry blud.
The car accident in Hereditary is legitimately one of the most upsetting and stressful scenes I’ve ever watched.
I bolted upright out of my seat in the theater.
I’ve talked to my friends about my difficulty watching movies with endangered/hurt/killed children since having a family and when I told them I was eager to see Hereditary, one friend wouldn’t let me until he could text me the details of the scene first. It was very sweet. Even so, watching it, it was harrowing, but no part of it broke my heart more than the brother carrying his distressed sister out of the party.
Alex Wolff’s FACE. Chilling, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking.
and grodie.
At first I actually laughed, because I didn’t think it was real. I thought they were going for some sort of dark humor where she bonks her head and gets knocked out or something. But the scene kept going, and my mind kept going “No… no… they didn’t really do that. She still has her head”. Needless to say… yeah. That’s imagery that will stay with you for a long time.
SAME.
I’m glad they didn’t, because it definitely made it more upsetting to not see it, and that of course led to the most holy shit of jump-cuts I’ve experienced in a long time.
Your eyes were still open at that point? Sucker…not mine. Even behind my open hands which were pressed over them, my eyes said “Oh, nope” and actually turned around completely, so they were facing the front part of my brain.
That’s a great scene, and a pretty good movie. I just can’t get over how dumb and unrealistic it is that she didn’t have an epipen with her. They mention it in the second scene. Look, it’s an extremely effective movie, but the parents are ludicrously bad. Toni Collette’s character was amazing and that movie was better without the supernatural stuff.
Really? I couldn’t stop giggling. (Her head sounds like someone just bit into a crisp carrot stick!) And then it turned into a one-man staring contest with the camera that lasted entirely too long.Also – what the fuck kid? You just beheaded your sister and you drive home with the body?? It is the Year of Our Lord 2018: I know you have a phone. Call 911!!
It is the Year of Our Lord 2018: I know you have a phone. Call 911!!Uh… he was clearly suffering a traumatic episode when it registered on top of the anxiety/pot-fueled panic to get his sister to the hospital beforehand.This was not a boy thinking logically.
Spoken like someone who’s never killed their sister in a moment of supreme but unintentional carelessness.
Yeah, because a stoned teenager whose little sister just got decapitated partly because of him is going to think rationally about what to do next. It’s also important that he knows what happened but didn’t actually see it, therefore it’s easier for him to be in denial – it’s a major trait of his character that he’d rather not deal with things than behave responsibly.
I don’t think you have ever been “stoned”.
Right, because 911 could actually do something about fixing a headless body if the person who caused the accident could start functioning normally through the severe shock.
You should reevaluate your life. You’re not a good person.
You should reevaluate your life. If you think comments on articles about movie can convey that much information about a person, you’re not a good person.
wow, you’re such a badass. cuz of course rationality comes into play when we are dealing with ***rubs eyes*** demons, decapitation, and drugs. great.
I think a real world situation similar to this happened about a year ago. A drunk girl was live streaming her singing some song in the car and wrecked, killing her younger cousin. She kept up with the live stream before calling the cops. Art imitates life.
The real world gets a lot more similar to Hereditary than that: https://www.iol.co.za/news/world/man-drives-home-with-headless-friend-in-tow-220730
Yep, I believe it was a Russian girl vacationing in Latin/South America. It’s disturbing to say the least.
The only thing scary to me are people who defend Hereditary as some great modern classic, as folks (critics) were making it out to be something it wasn’t from the onset. Don’t believe the hype.
Oh, I see you have an opinion about a movie. Obviously your opinion is fact and anyone that disagrees is pretentious.
Because god help anyone who really liked something you didn’t, eh.
I think “I’m scared of something I don’t understand” is a fair description of this reaction – it’s not usually made so openly, in those words, and I respect that.I found the reaction to “Hereditary” to be really interesting. For a lot of people, it worked really well as a “metaphor” for family dysfunction until the climax, when the supernatural elements became explicit. It seems that the viewers for whom it ALL worked as a piece, such as myself, grew up in households where mental illness, abuse, and religious fundamentalism were all present. For us, it was a pretty accurate depiction of the experience of being a child and living under an atmosphere of constant threat and trauma. As such, I personally don’t begrudge anyone’s reaction of not “getting it” in the same way that I did.
You ever hear of shock?
He clearly disassociated. A phone call was never going to happen. Shit, he left her body in the car overnight and just went to bed (not sure he ever actually even went to sleep). Dude was basically a vegetable from the moment she lost her head to the moment Toni Collette wailed at discovering the body.
Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.To put it another way: as I tell my students when I teach horror, don’t waste time on “I would have done this” or “they should have done that”; you have no idea what you would do in a similar situation, so stop trying to second guess the characters.
I’ve been in severe shock before. It doesn’t turn you into a zombie – that’s just Hollywood bullshit. Barring a complete mental break that would take years of recovery, you’re still in your right mind, just slower/odd reactions.Him just sitting there at the side of the road until morning would’ve been a more realistic (and honestly saddening) scenario. The one he was given was just…bizarre. Almost to the point of being comical.Hereditary is full of those, which is why it’s kind of a shit horror movie. It’s absurd how hard people have latched onto it.
Same. I was so stunned that I sat there with my mouth agape for the next 10 minutes unable to relax after that moment. It was so legitimately surprising and upsetting
I found Hereditary to be the scariest movie I’ve ever seen and it does not have a single jump-scare in it. Human tragedy is the real horror.
That, and arthouse pretensions the size of the Grand Canyon.
Clearly, you’ve never seen ‘Ernest Goes To Jail’.
Clearly you have never seen “Ernest Goes to Africa”
That shit was fucking hilarious.
To me, the most upsetting scene in Hereditary is when everything boils over at dinner. Toni Collete absolutely losing it is one of the hardest to watch things in the entire film, and the performances of the other actors convey a lot of nuance and emotion…to me, watching that scene feels like being a fly on the wall for an all too intense and intimate fight between a family that isn’t your own.
Agreed, actually. The car accident is horrifying but not a particularly universal moment. A really nasty, sloppy fight at a dinner table is significantly more relatable and awful.
I remember reading a review on this site that called Hereditary emotionally devastating (or something close to those words), and wondering “how scary does a movie have to be to be ‘emotionally devastating’????”. Then I saw it.
It’s the shower scene of our time.
I remember the theatre laughing somewhat throughout the film. That happens with these artsy horror films that the trailers portray as not that. When the unknowing audience gets in, when they’re confronted with something they weren’t expecting, they start to laugh at its weirdness. During the Witch, the audience was laughing their asses of during the whole thing.
I think the Witch is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, partially because the score and the unknown were so unsettling.
I’ve never felt ill during a movie but the realism of that moment and the all too true reaction of the brother made me dizzy. It was like a bad nightmare you’re trapped in but without the benefit of knowing you’ll wake up.
HEARTILY agreed on the First Man moon landing scene. I’ll toss the second hunting scene between Stone and Weisz from The Favourite in the mix, too, just because it’s 1000% stuck with me as a perfect distillation of why that movie worked as well as it did from the second I saw it for the first time.Alt cut would be the car fight scene in Ash is Purest White. Genuinely can’t remember the last time I’ve been that unexpectedly on the edge of my seat.
Fun fact, Birth of a Nation was not the first feature length movie. That distinction goes the the film The Story of the Kelly Gang at 60 minutes and premiered 10 years prior (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Kelly_Gang). And unlike Birth of a Nation, The Story of the Kelly Gang isn’t racist propaganda for white supremacists. It’s the true about an outlaw who donned bulletproof battle armor in a gun battle with cops.
I intentionally avoided referring to Birth of a Nation as the first feature-length movie!
I intentionally avoided referring to Birth of a Nation as the first feature-length movie!
I’m aware, I just thought it’d be fun to mention The Story of the Kelly Gang because the claim of Birth of a Nation being the first is a popular misconception. I’m sorry for the confusion and for being a bit of a smartass.
Ha, similarly, I only didn’t say “thanks for the info!” because I was afraid it would sound terribly sarcastic (especially if I also noted that I didn’t refer to BOAN that way), but it IS a legit fun fact!
Cheers, mate.Later, Ned Kelly would go on to be played by Mick Jagger, for some reason, and Heath Ledger, for a much better reason.
It’s the true
Cool. I was aware of the story of the Kelly Gang, but not “The Story of the Kelly Gang” despite my film schoolin’s. And yes, big points for non-racist landmark achievements!
Well, Poor Ned was Irish, which at the time…yeah.
*Australian
I’m referring to his ethnicity, and the fact we didn’t exist as a country at the time.
Ok, I misunderstood you.
Well I wouldn’t necessarily say the ‘true’ story, though there was probably more truth then any subsequent versions.Interestingly the actor playing Ned Kelly actually wore the original armour in the movie.
Unfortunately only about 12 minutes have survived. On the plus side, that includes the climactic shoot out.
Is this a common misconception? Off the top of my head, Traffic in Souls clocks in at 75 min (okay, I looked up the runtime) and came out in 1913. I’ve never heard the claim that BotN was the first before — is that based on anything at all, or just the earliest one most people have heard of?
I guess BOAN has more name recognition then either film because it’s white supremacist propaganda that got the KKK popular in the early 20th Century.There’s also the fact that The Story of the Kelly Gang has only 12 minutes worth of footage that survived and most Americans aren’t interested in learning about 20% of an Australian movie.
The sex scene in Border was mind-blowing. It was completely primal and has a twist that you never see coming.Oh and I agree with the scene from Eighth Grade as well. When she yells out “NO!” I wanted to stand up in the theater, clap and yell, “Fuck Yeah!”
Border should win every digital effect award for that one amazing moment!
What was the twist??
Troll penis.
SUPRISE PENIS!
I just read the plot summary on Wikipedia. I don’t say this lightly: what the fuck.
The runaway train scene in Incredibles 2. Maybe my favorite action scene in a superhero movie ever, using the freedom of animation to not only ramp up the intensity but to showcase both Elastigirl’s powers and her intelligence. I think it’s fair to say there’s a tip of the hat to the Spider-Man 2 train scene but I think it does it even better.
Green Book when they wouldn’t let Dr. Shirley eat at the last place, so they go to the other restaurant and have a grand old time-d
There are a number of scenes from Sorry to Bother You that come to mind, particularly the ending– but I think Tessa Thompson’s art gallery performance sticks with me the most.
I enjoyed The Ballad of Buster Scruggs a lot. The old west seems to be the best place to stage the Coen Brothers full-on late-career commitment to nihilism. But none of the stories topped Buster’s. The surprisingly shocking violence both working with and against the unbelievable black humor was as fantastic a feat of editing and tension-building I’ve seen in a long time.
No ‘big equestrian reveal in the basement’ from Sorry to Bother You makes this list 100% invalid. That was one of the best and most startling scenes I’ve seen in any movie period. I’m gonna be writhing this award season as that film gets routinely snubbed.
I was let down. It was only kind of fucked up!
That’s an excellent point. That whole movie was incredible, but the equisapien reveal was nuts.
Yeah, STBU and Riley have been getting the cold shoulder left and right (or maybe center and right?) I’ve noticed it conspicuously missing from many “Best of 2018″ lists, and of course the Golden Globes. I honestly can’t say that it’s all that surprising that such a challenging film is getting overlooked. On the bright side, I’m fairly confident that it will be much better remembered and studied in the years to come than most of the “prestige” films of this year, or even this decade.
I was just talking about that scene with a friend like 5 minutes ago! That was a great movie.
That was the moment when the film went from ‘brilliant social commentary’ to ‘bad South Park episode’. Talk about dropping the ball.
The Snapening in Infinity War doesn’t work for me. Not because of anything the movie did mind you, but more because nobody in the Marvel Universe has stayed dead except for Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy, and Mar-Vell. Hell in the comics, Spider-Man has died three times. The first time was when he was turned into a giant spider, died, and then gave birth to himself by hatching out of his giant spider corpse.
See, even knowing that people don’t stay dead in comics, and knowing exactly what was going to happen from the source story, AND knowing that the dusted characters would probably be coming back for their future movies, my reaction to that whole sequence was STILL “oh shit, oh shit, oh shit”.
I guess I’m desensitized to it. It’s why I read Exiles. On that series death is treated as a big deal thanks to the fact that the team is made up of heroes from across the multiverse and are therefore a lot more expendable from a meta perspective.
Exactly. Watching Peter plead with Tony not to go is legitimately gut wrenching, cuz for Tony it’s like watching your son evaporate in front of you.
You always like to post this scene. You have several times. Is this your favorite?
I guess I have overused it. It’s just a good example of how little death means as a consequence to popular superheroes. Guess it’s time to retire it. Thank you for bringing this to my attention
With you on this, though. That scene felt like an emo wank to me. (And I fully wept during the Black Panther scene profiled here so I’m certainly capable of emotional investment in this stuff.)
I’m a little disappointed we don’t get to see Peter’s spider nuggets in that last panel.
My biggest complaint with it is that Marvel isn’t even trying to pretend that everyone’s dead. Were they going to kill off half of their entire MCU in one fell swoop? Of course not, but they could at least make people sweat a little. But no, there’s already tons of press (and allegedly a trailer tomorrow) for Spider-Man: Far From Home and it just makes me shake my head. At least wait until Endgame releases.
Problem is: Far From Home comes out less than 3 months after Avengers. Hype machine has to start now.
I think Disney could afford to push it back though. They’ve got Captain marvel in March, Avengers in April, and Far From Home in July.
It’s distributed by Sony though. If they want a summer hit, they’re getting one.
Sony controls the publicity for Homecoming so they really, really don’t care about stepping on A:4
I wish Venom had tanked and I wish Sony would just give the rights up, they vary between being passive-aggressive and actively douchey towards Marvel and I just don’t give a shit about any of their attempts anymore. Marvel is the strong leader and Sony is the annoying pipsqueak follower, it would be out of character for the leader to bitchslap the follower but you know everyone wants that to happen anyway.
Plus Sony has one major spider related hit without Marvels help this year(and possibly a second one next week). They may be rethinking this Marvel deal
I also think Marvel is kicking themselves for not going after more of the characters. Venom would not have been as successful if Spidey wasn’t successful. It’s weird knowing that Spider-man may never meet up with Venom or Black Cat.
I said the same think the day after Thanksgiving when my mom asked me when we were going to put up the Christmas tree. I was like “mom, Thanksgiving was just yesterday; let it breathe a little.” The corpse wasn’t even cold yet. Truly, this country as lost its way…
But the horror doesn’t come from “They’re all definitely, forever dead”, the horror comes from the moment – from their own horror of dying, from the horror of their friends and loved ones seeing them dying. From seeing the scale of it. Even if Spider-Man and Groot are coming back, seeing them die in that moment still works.And the tension doesn’t come from “Will they/won’t they bring them back?” because we know, thanks to how media works, that at least some will come back (if not all – but probably). The tension comes from how they come back. Or if they all come back. If it’s going to be completely undone and time is rewound or if the fix leaves the world knowing what happened and the victims remembering their own deaths. And also what it’s going to cost the survivors to fix it.This isn’t aimed at you specifically but a lot of the “Yeah, so, there’s gonna be a Black Panther 2 so what’s the fucking point of the cliffhanger?” posts come across as trying to be smarter than the film/fans or be shown not to buy into the hype rather than actually saying anything clever themselves. If people can’t get on board with the scene or have the empathy for the characters experiencing it to have it resonate for them, it’s a shame and ultimately their loss. Sometimes it’s because the film or moment just doesn’t work for them – which is no-one’s fault, that’s just how art works. But those who just want to appear the clever ones and show they’re above it all because of franchise logic (even though there are thousands of people commenting the same thing) just come across as wilfully ignorant.
Except, the problem is that nothing in the MCU has any lasting consequences. Infinity War downplayed the events of Civil War so hard that it was as if it never happened. Most egregious was Rhodes basically saying “Who gives a shit about the accords?” after being paralyzed in a fight over them. Though, you would never know that watching Infinity War.
you post the hell out of this page. we get it. this isn’t anything new.
That is some well placed spider-juice.
Even that saying has changed. It use to be “No one stays dead in comics except Uncle Ben, Bucky and Jason Todd”. Then in the same year we got Red Hood, Wintet Soldier and House of M resurrecting Uncle Ben. Gwen Stacy has come back a couple times at this point.
To be fair, House of M is considered a parallel universe and aside from alternate universes and cloning, Gwen Stacy of Earth-616 has stayed dead.
That isn’t even close to the first time Spider-Man died. That issue came out in 2003. The first time I know of that Spidey died was in the 80s, and I doubt that was actually the first time. And it’s happened WAY more than three times.
And don’t even start talking about “What If?” issues. The original series was not to bad but the vol 2 in the 80s, could have been titled “What if Spider-man totally died?” for nearly half of them.
The “Snap” doesn’t work for me at all in Infinity War. It’s not just
that I know the characters are coming back, but because, being
unfamiliar with that comic, I was unsure what I was even seeing. The
silence, and the dusty dissolves are too pretty, too…soft. It gives
this big moment of the film a dream-like quality that I wasn’t sure if
it was real or not. It didn’t even register with me that these people were dying. At least not until Tom Holland decided to be the only actor smart enough to sell the moment.
Considering the movie did half a billion dollars in it’s first weekend, with countless vanishing memes to follow (also linked in this article) you are less than a minority of the people who didn’t buy it.
We knew 20 years ago that Thanos killed everyone, the trick was getting something this epic unto the silver screen.
Seriously, did you honestly imagine something that amazing would ever get a Disney budget to be put into the theaters all those times Lou Ferrigno was tearing off his shirt?
Here;’s the thing: As a comics fan we know that, but this is also a separate universe where no one (except maybe Bucky if you want to call it that) has come back from the dead. We can know the likelihood of at like 80% of those dusted are coming back, but we don’t know that 100% for certain, nor which ones. That is especially true as actors don’t tend to play the same character for this long either and its hard to keep a cast this big all together so its more in the air.
Also, a majority of the viewerbase of these films also aren’t comics fans, and they don’t know this same rule of comics that no one is permanently dead in comics.
I get overly immersed into movies, so the Snappening was a gut punch for me, but that wasn’t the scene that I remember the most. Let’s be honest, there is one scene that is the best:When Thor arrives in Wakanda.Michael Bay probably had tears watching it because he wishes he could make an entrance as epic as that. That was, for me, the most memorable scene in the movie, or when the Hulk gets wrecked at the beginning demonstrating just how strong Thanos is.
It doesn’t matter if they stay dead. We all know that nobody stays dead in these things. Nobody thinks that Black Panther or Spider-man are dead when they have new movies on the horizon.But the scene was effective because the scene was incredibly well written, acted, and was genuinely shocking after 10 years of superhero movies with happy endings. Knowing that the deaths won’t stick doesn’t mean that we can’t empathize with Tony Stark watching his young apprentice disappear in his arms, or Okoye watching her King vanish, or Rocket losing his best friend for a second time, or Steve watching Bucky die for a second time.
I don’t need permanence to be affected.
I’m very happy to see that Prey at Night sequence here. I’d say it actually starts a little bit before that when Dollface runs out of the shadows to get clocked with the golf club. It was a thrilling 4 second burst.
How the fuck is Mandy left off? Cheddar Goblin! Chainsaw fight! House fight! The fuckin bathroom scene!
Yes. The whole film was the best film scene of 2018.
One must assume there were too many to choose from, thus the pro-Mandy vote was divided.
I haven’t seen most of the others, but… it was Hereditary.
“it’s a neutral view of the accident!”
There’s a strong case to be made for the dinner scene between Annie and Peter. And also the final scene in the treehouse.
The ending of Let the Sunshine In certainly was bizarre, though I don’t know if it left an impression on me beyond the fact that it was odd.I failed to pick up on Depardieu’s character hinting at his own romantic interest in her, though. I’ll have to rewatch it, thanks for the tip.
Pretty sure every single person at the screening of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I saw was openly weeping during the “think of the people who’ve helped you” part. It had been a particularly rough week (Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had just died by suicide), and Mister Roger’s message was exactly what I needed to hear.
Something the Russo brothers probably didn’t consider that wiping out half of Earth’s human population wouldn’t do much good, as Earth has over three times the people it can support/sustain at this point in time. Also, that is not the best scene in the movie. The best scenes are the ones Carrie Coon are in.
I think the best scenes of any film with Carrie Coon in are the scenes with Carrie Coon in. That seems axiomatic. On the Earth population thing, the sudden disappearance of half of everyone will the lead to the inevitable death of loads more, both immediately (when pilots, drivers, Nuclear Power Plant Safety Officers etc vanish) and in the longer term (shortages of skilled doctors and nurses, military matters)
Not to mention what happens to half those Cheerleaders when the other half of the pyramid fades away!! (I stole this from another post on this subject)Also it’s half of all life, if you suddenly lost half of your gut bacteria you’d better hit the probiotics hard and fast or you may end up shitting yourself to death
I don’t know about that – you’ve got trillions and trillions of bacteria in there – you may have a rough couple of days, but you’ll be fine.
You’re right, the Russo brothers didn’t think of that. It’s not a lack of logic from a villain whose moniker literally includes the word “Mad” in it, the directors made a goof. Unwatchable film.
Killmonger’s vision was heartbreaking. Almost everyone who has lost a loving parent longs to see them again; but seeing them again, only to find them weeping in despair and disappointment over what you’ve become? Talk about an adult fear.
Man, the truth or dare scene for Eighth Grade was so unsettling and uncomfortable to watch. Masterfully done.
Thank you for including that incredible Blindspotting scene. I feel like this movie has been unjustly overlooked this year, and I want Daveed Diggs to win alllll the awards for it.
Hear, hear
I think the scorpion bowl scene was just as good.
That scene really encapsulates the whole film, the way it plays with tone and style whilst never shying away from what it’s actually showing you, the way the actions depicted can be seen in different ways and the underlying human effect of what happens (the final look between Val and Collin in the past is killer)
I think it suffered from having come out similar times to Sorry To Bother You perhaps?
I saw a friend who pretty into film (they’d booked in to see STBY weeks in advance) and he’d not even heard of Blindspotting when I suggested if he liked one he’d likely like the other. STBY has been selling out the local art house cinema in advance, Blindspotting we just walked up and grabbed a ticket minutes in advance.It’s a shame, both films a really good but I preferred Blindspotting. It actually felt more vibrant, playful and stylish than it’s showier contemporary.
I keep telling everyone: There’s a scene in STBY that’s ten times funnier if you’ve seen BLINDSPOTTING first.
YES! Agreed. I really loved the film, even though I felt like it wasn’t quite as great as it could have been. Maybe needed a different director. But that last scene was unreal. Daveed is beyond, but honestly was really brought it home for me is Rafael’s last line. The delivery was perfect. That film was such a calling card for both of them, it’s a shame it’s being somewhat overlooked.
I think I like the quiet final scene back in the truck better.
Almost all those films are pretentious Oscar-bait, and so are the justifications for including them.Only really good movie scene I’ve seen all year was the chase sequence in The Incredibles 2. Requires some suspended belief on the physics, but otherwise beautifully directed and choreographed. I paid to see it in theaters twice just for that.But otherwise this was a shit year for good films. (Quickly, enjoy it before Disney strikes it down!)
The Commuter? Hereditary? The 15:17 to Paris? Game Night? Ready Player One? The Strangers? That’d be a memorable Oscars night.
Not for nothing, I know it’s a longshot for the Academy, but if Toni Collette gets a Best Actress nom for Hereditary, I will be TOTALLY fine with that.
Ah yes, anything that’s not a Transformers movie or about superheroes is inherently pretentious. Brilliant.
I haven’t enjoyed a Transformers movie since the first one. And I hope the superhero genre dies a painful death – they’re all ass boring, shoddily written, and overhyped for easy “geek cred”.One also can’t deny that the reviews above are all overly-flowery, and attempt to make their respective choice sound like the most brilliant cinematic triumph since Eraserhead. Just say you fucking liked it.
Yeah, nothing’s more fun to read than 25 one-sentence entries that say “I liked it!”
Isn’t The Incredibles 2, in fact, a super hero movie. A disappointing one at that.
Says the person who said literally two posts above that the best scene in 2018 comes from a superhero film.
There was a superhero movie on this list Two actually. Not sure what the OP was smoking
Hugh Grant should definitely get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for it, but Paddington 2 is not Oscar bait.
* If their was an Oscar for a single movie scene, “Southside with us” from Widows would be the award winner.* The fact that a scene from The Night Come For Us is not on this list is a serious omission. Admittedly, there are so many amazing scenes its hard to pick (Julie Estelle vs. two female assassins is a favorite) but it certainly was one of this year’s most memorable film.
I’d would also put in a vote for any scene with Bobby in it. But yeah, Julie Estelle kills it.
Crazy Rich Asians would have been a much better movie if that was the final scene instead of the schlocky, sentimental ending that it had.
I have no qualm with that brutal scene from Eighth Grade making the list (I was murderous with anger toward that punk), though I will point out that, when I first opened the article, I was already thinking about a different scene from that film. The fireside chat between Kayla and her dad late in the film is just wonderful and touching and human and simple. Not overwritten into melodrama, and perfectly played by both actors.
I’d give that scene the gold star over the “truth or dare” scene, too. And not just because it elicited tears instead of rage.
Why isn’t Mandy on here?! There are handful of extremely solid options from that film….like actually, pretty much the whole movie from the torture/killing to the ending should qualify. It was just so fucking good.
A while back (couple years) I went on a rave about the Highway Chase in Captain America Winter Soldier (Cap, Falcon, Widow vs Bucky). It was, at least, the best action sequence of the year and still, for me, ranks as perhaps the best sustained action sequence in all of the MCU. This year’s next best MCU action scene is again directed by the Russo Brothers. It’s the Thanos vs GotG and Iron Man et al on Titan. Spoiler if you haven’t seen it. The last line is poignant now.Thanos steps through portal.Strange: Oh yeah, you’re more of a “Thanos.”Thanos: Blah Blah is dead, still he accomplished his mission. He brought you to me.Strange: You may regret that…Quill hidingSpidey hidingThanos’ spiel about his homeworld… “it was beautiful”… uses the red Reality Stone to reveal Titan in its glory.Strange: Genocide?Thanos: But random, dispassionate etc. Thanos explains his plan to snap his fingers – first time it’s coming from his lips.“… I alone have the will to do it.”Strange: (gearing up) I think you’ll find our will equal to yours.Thanos: Our? (Looks up)Iron Man smashes a large chunk of Space-Building down on him.Tony: Piece of cake, QuillQuill: Yeah if your goal was to piss him off.Purple stone blows building apart.Red stone turns debris into Space-Bats(?)Bats attack Iron ManSpidey webs Thanos’ face.Drax slashes Thanos’ leg.Strange attacks with energy sword.Strange and Drax chop at Thanos.Thanos kicks Drax in the gut.Quill hops in.Thanos hits Strange, pulls web from his face.Strange provides energy circles for Quill to hop on.Quill attaches a bomb to Thanos’ back, drops back into a (Strange provided) portal, and flips Thanos the bird.Quill: Boom! It explodes with stun-energy zaps.Strange to Cape: Don’t let him close his fist.Cape wraps Thanos’ hand.Strange provides portals for Spidey to bounce in and out, kicking and punching Thanos. Thanos catches Spidey and slams him to the ground – “Insect.” He throws Spidey into Strange then tears the cape from his hand.Iron Man swoops in firing missiles, circles.Thanos absorbs missile blasts into Gauntlet and redirects flame back at Iron Man, blasting him through a distant structure.Spidey swings back in and webs the Gauntlet.Thanos pulls at webbing.Surprise! Nebula crashes her ship on Thanos in the year’s best sucker punch. He rolls.Nebula springs out and slashes him with her sabre.Thanos: Well, well.Nebula: You should have killed me when you had the chance. (Classic line btw)Thanos: It would have been a waste of parts!Nebula: Where’s Gamora?!He hits her, she tumbles.Strange shoots red tentacles that wrap the Gauntlet – pulling it open.Drax slides in and hits a leg.Quill drops an energy restrictor that captures Thanos’ opposite arm.Spidey swings in and webs Thanos’ chest, circles, pulls.Iron Man lands – pulls on Gauntlet.Spidey extends spider legs to hold his ground.Strange opens portal above Thanos.Mantis drops on Thanos’ shoulders and grabs his head.Everyone PULLSMantis’ antennae glow, Thanos yells, and goes unconscious.Tony: Is he under? Don’t let up.Mantis: Be quick. He is very strong!Tony: Parker? Help. Get over here quick, she can’t hold him much longer.They pull at the Gauntlet.Quill flies in.Quill: (And) I thought you’d be hard to catch. For the record this was my plan! Not so strong now, huh? Where’s Gamora?Thanos (hypnotized): My Gamora-ah.Quill: Oh bull-shit.Mantis: He is in anguish.Quill: Good!Mantis: He mourns!Drax: (off screen) What does this monster have to mourn?Nebula: Gamora…Quill: (turning) What?Nebula: He took her to Vormir. He came back with the Soul Stone. But she didn’t.Tony: (pulls back mask) Okay, Quill, you’ve got to cool it now. Do you understand?Quill turns back to Thanos.Tony: Don’t. Don’t. Don’t engage. We almost got this off!Quill: Tell me she’s lying! Asshole! Tell me you didn’t do it!Thanos: I-I had too.Quill: No you didn’t. No you didn’t!Quill hits Thanos in the face repeatedly with the butt of his blaster.Tony grabs Quill – “Stop stop!”Spidey: Almost got it!Thanos wakes, head bashes Mantis, pulls Gauntlet back from Spidey, reaches back, and throws Mantis. Spidey jumps to her rescue.He kicks Drax, throwing him into Quill and Nebula.He throws Strange.He deflects blasts from Iron Man.He knocks out Quill, Nebula and Drax with a Gauntlet blast.Tony attacks with a nanobot created blade from his suit. Thanos head butts him.Thanos reaches toward a moon in orbit with the Gauntlet. With its power he strips the moon’s surface and hails mountains of rock down on their position on Titan.Iron Man dodges debris but gets caught under a crashing meteor.Quill, Drax, and Nebula’s prone bodies fly into the air.From here the scene switches back to Wakanda. When we come back to Titan,Spidey swings about saving Mantis, Drax, Nebula, and Quill as the meteor bombardment tosses everyone into the air (and pockets of zero gravity).Strange and Thanos open up on each other in an excellent magic battle that includes crystal shields, butterflies, and multiple dozens of Stranges.Thanos: All your tricks and you never used your greatest power.He smashes Strange’s amulet. Nothing.Thanos: A decoy.Tony reingages.Tony fights with Thanos and seemingly, through this confrontation, facing his greatest enemy, and by displaying a willingness to lay down his life, ends his New York inspired post traumatic stress disorder. Plus he gives it his all and throws in some Hulk-busting clamp-down shit.After one Iron Man boot to the face:Thanos: All that for a little drop of blood.The nanobot created blade comes out, but this time Thanos breaks it off and stabs Tony through the left kidney in what could be a mortal wound. Tony spits blood. Off screen though, the nano-blade dissolves itself.Strange gives Thanos the green Time Stone to spare Tony’s life.He plugs the stone into the Gauntlet’s thumb knuckle and has his “Highlander Orgasm.”I like the whole fight put together, but if I had to choose, I say the first half is the best. Best of the movie.Thanos backs through a portal saying “One to go.”Quill (now awake) chases after, blasting, but Thanos disappears.Quill: Did we just lose?Tony to Strange: Why’d you have to go and do that?Strange: We’re in the endgame now.
next time, post a youtube clip
I imagined this recap delivered by Andy Dwyer. He’d say nicer things about quill though.
Its amazing how much you can learn from one little drop of blood…
RIP mobile users and their thumbs.Good recap though.
Casting one vote for any fight scene from Upgrade. Discount-bin Tom Hardy genuinely sold the look of surprise/confusion about what he was doing, even though he was the one doing it.
I’m actually planning to double feature Upgrade and Venom this week with the wife.
If that’s the kind of marriage you have, I hope you’re together forever. 🙂
WHYYYYYYYYYYYY
The last line in Teen Titans Go to the Movies (not counting the stuff in/after the credits)
The time travel scene had me laughing so hard that my three year old told me off for it. But the brutality of the way they stopped Aquaman becoming Aquaman – and then the brutality (with Robin’s cheery grin) of the way they “fixed” undoing Batman’s origin.Also the hit and run. “I think his dad is a cop!” “Run!”
For a show that reportedly didn’t want to use the name “Deathstroke” because it had “death” in it, that sequence was brilliantly, hilariously dark.
Also great – Stan Lee’s cameo(s).
“I don’t care that it’s for DC, I just love doing cameos!”
–I sincerely love that this was one of the last appearances of his to make theaters while he was still alive. I know there’s more coming, but it’s such a genuinely entertaining and slightly self-ribbing take from a man who, from everything have heard, genuinely didn’t buy into the Marvel-DC feud and just loved the whole business.
Robin’s final entreaty to the children in the audience might have been my favorite five seconds of any movie this year.
I think it’s the all round funniest film I’ve seen this year. The two time travel montages are amazing.
That was brilliant. I just saw this movie the other day and was endlessly delighted by it.
Thank you for including AVENGERS (which I still find deeply affecting) and GAME NIGHT (which I giggle through every goddam time).I re-watched YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE again recently, and that film absolutely wrings me out. So many powerful moments…nice choice here.I would also include: the delicately charming first diner chat between Redford and Spacek in THE OLD MAN & THE GUN; Meinhard Neumann’s first language-challenged (but friendly) interactions with villagers in WESTERN; when Mandy humiliates her captor or when Red meets The Chemist, in MANDY; the pitch-black comedic beats after giving STEM full control the first time in UPGRADE. I mean, for starters…
Ready Player One? C’mon now. The Overlook re-creation is neat but it’s basically a parlor trick, and the scene that plays out in that setting is as blah as the rest of the movie.
The genre fan in me would like to suggest the scene with the doppelganger in Annihilation (which someone else already did) as well as the first fight in Upgrade, which did everything Venom tried to do but way better and for way less money.
This was a fun list. I forgot how funny that bullet scene from Date Night is. His reaction to her cutting too wide still gets me. Also I’m glad you saved me the trouble of ever having to watch The 15:17 to Paris. I have no interest in seeing the rest of the movie but yes that scene was expertly blocked and filmed. I knew what would happen and but watching the scene still made me feel uneasy. Speaking of feeling uneasy, that scene from The Strangers: Prey At Night was more unsettling that I expected. Love the visuals and the ironic music choice. The whole sequence feels like something out of a nightmare.
The late-movie callback to the bullet wound in Game Night is also gut-busting.
I often post silly sarcastic things here but I have to say that I’m really impressed by the choices. You nailed so many of them, even great scenes from flawed or bad movies. Really well done, crew.
I’m pleasantly surprised to see the Infinity War ending here. Most professional critics rushed to greet it with proud cynicism. Yes, we all understand the dusted heroes are coming back. We all get that. But that doesn’t change the emotional impact of the moment, the way in which the sheer magnitude of our heroes’ failure is presented so viscerally, of seeing characters who, for a decade, represented unstoppable will and indomitable virtue, lose so comprehensively and so catastrophically. And the crowning moment is the movie’s very last scene, which is a cruel mirror image of the Closing Hero Shot we’ve seen so many times before: the conquering hero, content with his victory, but mourning the sacrifices necessary to achieve it. It’s extraordinary.
You said it far better than I did above. “Proud cynicism” perfectly sums up the type of response I was trying to describe.
Sure, but Marvel wasn’t exactly doing anything bold or innovative in portraying things the way they did. It was necessary from a storytelling standpoint, n’est ce pas?
It’s a great scene but the moment right before that really bothered me, because I spent the whole Thanos fight thinking “where is Thor?”. He shows up late for no reason. At least stick in a scene of him being held up fighting one of Thanos’ lieutenants to explain why the only guy who can beat Thanos is MIA when everyone else is fighting Thanos.
I won’t lie, I’m hoping for a Thor-Thanos fight like he and Hulk had, it probably won’t happen but it would is awesome if only because Thor can actually fight, seeing Thanos get a haymaker would be as satisfying as Loki’s “puny god” moment.
Thor was my MVP for the movie. Amazing how he went from kind of useless in the first Avengers to the one I was rooting for most in Infinity War.
I think it helps that Hemsworth seems to have grown with the character, you literally watch Thor go from a drunk frat-god to a leader to the next proper ruler of Asgard, in retrospect the donky acting in the first Thor seems brilliant since it sets up the arc so well. It also helps that he’s becoming an overpowered lighting storm of badassery, he restarted a fucking star forge.
Thor can be seen chasing Thanos’ air support into space shortly before the ground melee with Thanos begins. So they did explain where he was already.
I love the reading of the line “Did we lose?”
The car chase scene from Ant-Man and the Wasp that fully utilized the shrinking/growing mechanisms of the lead heroes was one of the best concepts I’ve seen in a sci-fi film in a while; it definitely deserves a place among the best of the year.
That security camera scene from You Were Never Really Here is very cool, but my pick would be the scene where he finds his mother, shoots the guy who killed her, and then lies next to him on the kitchen floor while he dies lightly singing to “I’ve Never Been To Me” on the radio. That scene really stuck with me. What a great movie.
It’s ‘The Air That I Breathe’ isn’t it? Anyway, yes that’s a wonderful scene. It really puts the film over the top for me (my favourite film of the year as it stands).
I had to sit two seats away from someone who wouldn’t stop talking during Widows. After the car ride scene, he says to the person next to him something to the effect of, “They didn’t show their faces while they were talking. That was weird.” I wanted so hard to yell “That’s the point, dumbass!”
Some brilliant choices there. I think Rachel McAdams has an even better line reading that the one cited though – ‘Oh no, he died!’. I couldn’t stop laughing.
That scene from The Strangers 2 is not just the outlier in this list, but has also got to have the best use of a zoom I can remember. I kinda want to see the whole movie now, but I’m afraid it won’t measure up to what IV picked. Damn, that was good.
I find your lack of Cheddar Goblin disturbing.
Wow, that’s a fantastic description of the transitional scene of First Reformed, my favorite movie (so far) of 2018. I understood the scene intuitively when I saw it, but didn’t connect it all nearly that exquisitely. Thanks for that, Charles Bramesco!
I get the feeling that Hereditary got the wide release Suspiria should have gotten.
It would be criminal if the Coens never do a Buster Scruggs full-length movie.Too good of a character not to keep his adventures going (regardless of his fate in his titular film).
Is there a best tv scenes coming up and who do I remind about the sign language sequence in the magicians? It was among the best 10 minute sequences in tv history.This is part of it, but there are two more at different stages of Harriet’s life, and the non-deaf actress playing against the deaf actresses (I don’t know if the little girl is but I think she must be, the teenaged and adult ones are) is acting her face off without words and it’s just glorious.
I nominate the bathtub scene in A Quiet Place. Most anxious I’ve ever been in a movie.
I’m reading this a few days late, but this is the exact thing I was going to nominate too. In a movie full of nigh-unbearable tension this was the absolute peak.
The single best scene of the year is surely the mimic scene from Annihilation. Mesmerizing, hallucinatory, unsettling, and disorienting, perfectly crystallizing the film’s preoccupation with the porous nature of self.Others:The final conversation between Lucas Hedges and Russell Crowe in Boy Erased. Such a beautiful acting showcase for both.The ending of The Favourite. A hauntingly brilliant anti-climax, pulling together the film’s grim picture of people hopelessly trapped by their own impulses.The Gemini 8 mission from First Man, experienced entirely from within the shuttle. Breathless, claustrophobic, and thrilling all at once.I’ll also co-sign the Ready Player One pick. That’s an extraordinary scene on levels both purely technical (bespeaking the film’s mind-boggling simulations, erasing lines between live action and digitality) and phenomenological (operating on audience knowledge and anticipation, bringing our past moviegoing experiences into play in an additive way rather than a pandering one).
Not only is the best scene of the year not here, you have listed one of the worst, most egregious scenes ever made. Best is the Blue Room scene in “Unsane”. The desecration of Kubrick by his former acolyte is the worst scene in years.
Good list, though I also would have included a scene from A Quiet Place. You know which one. It involves a nail.
Hendrix played a couple songs from Sgt. Pepper the day after it came out. Pretty sure he was drunk+ and had only heard the songs for the first time so I give Cooper a pass.
Selling an apartment: Loro
100% agree with everything on the moon in First Man, truly moving and unique. And of course the Widows car scene. For Burning my scene would be the first dinner scene with Ben’s friends, that’s when your skin starts tingling as to what is really going on. Additions: Alex getting through that one spot on El Cap and actually looking at the camera in celebration in Free SoloMimic scene in AnnihilationFinal photo scene in WildlifePlaying in the snow in Shoplifters
Confronting the alien source in Annihilation??? Come on, guys
Have to say, overall pretty strong list.
About the only thing I’d argue (and even that only somewhat, since you still made a good choice) would be Suspiria. The ritual’s a solid choice, but personally, I’d have gone with the first rehearsal.
It doesn’t have quite the over-the-top flourish of the finale, but there is still something so effectively horrifying in how that scene first draws the parallel of dance and magic, cutting between Susie’s rehearsal and Olga being hexed, hitting the sharp beats in each. Then you factor in the body horror of what’s being done to Olga, first in being seemingly thrown around the room and then the downright skin-crawling contortions that she is still not released from even in death.
It’s a genuinely creepy sequence all around and among those from this year I can tell is going to be sticking with me for a long time after.
I had heard about how shocking the ending of Infinity War was. Then I saw it and was insulted. We fucking KNOW these characters aren’t dead. If they had killed off Iron Man or Captain America, that would have been a gut punch.
I’m surprised there’s nothing from “Sorry to Bother You”. Be it the way that Cassius is just nonchalantly dropped into peoples lives mid call, or the twist. That Twist!
Neither of those things are PRECISELY scenes, though.
“like his pause to doff his jacket and “reload” his punching arms”This moment makes me… feel… things…
If your best of 2018 list doesn’t include MANDY, your list is SHIT.What scene from Mandy? Definitely Cage bathroom freak-out, but also “I call that the Cherry on top”; Cheddar Goblin; “You like the Carpenters, this is even better”; Black Skulls arrival; even the scene where the Jeremiah first sees Mandy is better than anything on this list.IDIOTS.
That “Truth or Dare” scene was what doomed Eighth Grade for me. Kayla has only one dimension throughout the entire film, and then they shoehorn a #MeToo moment into the film in a desperate attempt to give her a second. I know I’m not the target audience for the film, so I couldn’t enjoy it on the same level as others. I concede that. But this scene just made me angry because it had absolutely no purpose, didn’t advance the story one iota, and was just a superfluous bit of shock value that moved me from merely not caring to downright hating the movie.
I imagine a lot of teenage girls also feel that guys being predatory creeps to them was “shoehorned” into their lives without doing much to advance the story, so seems pretty effective to me…
So your argument is that if societal wrongs exist it should be put into a movie despite no forewarning or logical sense to it, then? In that case how come we don’t get a superfluous scene of Kayla’s minority preppy classmate being racially profiled? Why not have her dad beat her? Why not have Kayle herself check her white privilege? Having this one, isolated extreme is just so offputting and it serves no purpose for a piece of entertainment, whether or not it happens in real life.There was nothing to indicate the kid was predatory, no character beats, no hint of dialogue, nothing. I’m not saying predators always give off signs, but it does reinforce the idea that the scene was played more for shock value than any kind of earned pathos. Kayla has several moments that are relatable to a wide swath of the audience (even if the majority of them didn’t hit me; again I concede this movie wasn’t made for people like me), but she exhibits no growth or development through them. And then, out of nowhere, it’s “Oh by the way, someone’s gonna try to assault her?” It’s completely out of left field and brings everything to a grinding halt. One of the few things I liked about the film was the almost Murphy’s Law-esque way all her efforts seem to blow back in her face, because for a lot of people, that actually happens. But to close the act with, “Finally, I’m making older, cooler friends, and then oh no, one of them wants to rape me?” That stretches plausibility beyond recovery for me, and it certainly shouldn’t be lauded as one of the best scenes of the year.
It stretches beyond plausibility for you that a teenage boy hit on a teenage girl “without warning”?OK. Have a good one.
Your pithy dismissal of a counterargument notwithstanding, no, that’s not what I’m saying. To me, it stretches plausibility that THIS specific 18-year-old would hit on THIS specific 13-year-old, and then attempt to assault her when nothing comes of it. More importantly, it stretches plausibility when we the audience have been given no indication that anything would go that way, or that he could hide his predatory tendencies from his other friends, or any number of other red flags that a more competent film/scene would have put across. It also stretches plausibility that all this would happen to this one teenage girl right at the moment that she seems to be gaining just a tiny bit of happiness and self-confidence. It’s all far too convenient in the worst way possible. It makes for a memorable scene, certainly, but far from the best.I look at that scene like any major scene in any other film, and I ask three questions. One, does it advance the story? Two, does it help develop the character(s)? Three, does it make narrative sense? When it comes to this scene, the answers are: No, it halts the story; No, it just turns Kayla into a literal victim to reinforce the perceived shallow victimhood she already had by no one watching her YouTube videos; and FUCK NO! There is no narrative sense to any of it.
I don’t know why, but you’ve seemingly decided to make sweeping statements based on one illogical scene in a movie and try to turn it around on me as if I’m some willfully blissful ignoramus who doesn’t think sexual assault exists, which is beyond facile and reductive. But whatever, to each their own. I’ve said my piece. Have a good one, yourself, Mr. Hassenger.
Does it advance the story?Well, you say in this same post that this scene comes right when it seems like Kayla is going to have an easier time of it now that she’s found some cool older friends. Unless the point of the movie is “she gets some cool older friends and everything is OK,” it does not halt the story. If you’re watching a heist movie, and the plan finally seems to be coming together, and then there’s a huge setback, does that strike you as stopping the narrative, or an intentional part of the narrative?Does it help develop the characters?Seeing how Kayla is both extremely ill-prepared for a new friend to turn on her but also willing to assert herself enough to try to put a stop to something she doesn’t like, while still remaining scared and hesitant enough to be apologetic about it is a fuck-ton of character development in the space of just a few minutes.Does it make narrative sense?
This question sounds redundant to me so I’ll offer some redundancy of my own: If you think it makes ZERO narrative sense that a character we don’t know, but is a teenage boy, would behave in a manipulative way towards a younger girl he just met, then I’m not sure what to tell you! Not every event in a movie should be foreshadowed.
I understand your points, but I respectfully disagree. When it comes to advancing the story, this came at a point when it seemed things were finally starting to turn around for her, and instead we were jerked back below Square One in a way that felt more perfunctory than organic. The point isn’t for her to get new friends and be hunky-dory, but rather for her to grow more confident as she leaves one social construct for the next, and leaving it with having a couple of cool older friends serves that structure just fine. I like your heist movie analogy, but in many cases those sudden setbacks are easily foreseen variables that were ignored and/or not considered because the screenplay said it should happen that way, and it sometimes does grind the proceedings while we wait to sort out the new complication. I’ll grant that at least here we didn’t just devolve into cliche like so many other films (particularly genre) would do, but it still felt like an unnatural halt. It reminded me of a few movies (some good, some bad) where we have 90+ minutes of story but the true villain isn’t revealed until the last 15. It can work, but most of the time I’m left doing a double take because I’ve been (in most cases) unnecessarily blindsided.What you describe as a lot of development in a short space of time is to me just a reactionary moment. It affects her, certainly, but it doesn’t really inform her actions going forward. Take her friend with the “Rick and Morty” fandom (name escapes me) for example. For me the sign of development would be her being just that much more cautious around him (or any guy for that matter) given the horrible thing that happened to her. But if anything, she’s even more enthusiastic and willing to trust than before. Maybe that means she’s grown and put the horridness behind her. It certainly makes for a more hopeful resolution, and it may have been there staring me in the face, but I just didn’t see it.For what it’s worth, I differentiate advancing/narrative sense as one being a self-explanatory step forward, whereas narrative sense to me is more like, “Is this moment the next logical step given what we know so far?” And on that point, I still contend that the scene doesn’t work. It doesn’t have to be completely foreshadowed, but the A-to-B-to-C moments leading up to it gave no indication that this was the direction it was going, and as such, took me right out of the film. It only makes narrative sense from where I sit if we either a) get some clue as to what’s coming, or b) in this particular case we go in assuming that any random teenage boy is a preternatural predator (or at least the possibility of said), which I don’t buy because that implies a level of cynicism that the film for the most part didn’t have, though it does track with Bo Burnham’s style of comedy, so I’ll admit it’s definitely possible.
But isn’t she cautious around the boy at the dinner scene? They sit on opposite sides of a long dining table, she struggles to make eye contact and she spends the meal fidgeting with the sauce packets. You could chalk this up to teenage awkwardness, sure, but she keeps a physical distance from him that she did not at the pool party scene. Let’s not forget that a narrative thread of Eighth Grade is about reckoning with sex and sexuality at a young age. Kayla experiments with the banana, she offers oral sex to popular boys as a means of fitting in— to act like the Truth or Dare scene diverges from the story is to misunderstand one of Kayla’s main struggles as an adolescent.
I see your point, but I didn’t notice Kayla being any more cautious than usual. During the pool scene, she already had her crisis when putting on her swimsuit (the scene I’d argue was the film’s best, because it not only was a universally relatable anxiety, but it was compounded by the fact that she was the only girl in a one-piece and the only one that didn’t look like an Instagram model, which magnified the insecurity and emotional resonance to the point that I just wanted to hug her and try to reassure her that everything would be okay), and she was approached by the other kid at the pool’s edge, hanging out with him because he was a non-threatening relief from her panic. I’m guessing the framing of the end scene was more her normal anxiety (she rarely makes eye contact with her dad either, for example) because it’s a one-on-one situation now, rather than using him as a behavioral lodestar in a crowd. But it’s certainly possible that this is residual guarding from the previous incident, and that her initial comfort with him reasserted itself. Szechuan Sauce can break down any barrier, yo!And I guess that’s where I differ from you all. I do chalk the other stuff up to awkwardness and reckoning with developing sexuality, whereas the car scene to me doesn’t reckon with anything. Kayla’s other incidents are ones that she initiates due to curiosity/awkwardness/hormones/etc, and you’ll never see me argue that she initiates this. Not only is it victim-shaming – which is not only horrible but antithetical to Burnham’s established tone – it just objectively doesn’t happen; Kayla initiated nothing here. This is just a left-field attempted assault, and I don’t think that’s a natural progression. Trying to figure out how oral sex works in private doesn’t naturally lead to sexual assault. If it was meant to be a progression, I think we’re missing about 5-6 scenes of escalation and outside party initiative to make it feel more organic. And if it was meant to be a shocking leap, then for me it was a lapse of narrative logic and it jarred me out of the movie.
It WAS foreshadowed. Let’s not forget the other kid in her class that she had been talking to about her nude photos.
Interesting point but that may be a bit of a stretch, as it’s not the same kid, and in that case, Kayla initiated based on rumor because she was interested in that guy. Was he connected to the creeper in some way? I think that was more adolescent sexual awkwardness that we all experience in one form or another than a foreshadowing of attempted sexual assault.
I know it’s not the same kid, but it was also foreshadowed at the mall when that guy kept checking out Kayla as she was sitting with the group of friends. I just meant in a general sense there was a foreshadowing of some sexual improprieties earlier in the film.
Fair enough. I forgot about the guy at the mall. I was too focused on her dad being overprotective.
Everything in your comment is terrible and wrong.
I’m really glad to know that it’s unrealistic to experience sexual assault without plenty of foreshadowing. It means it’s really easy to avoid right? Probs the fault of the people who didn’t pick up on all the foreshadowing…
I’ll put forward a scene from a movie that almost no one saw: “The Endless.” MAJOR SPOILER FOLLOWS.
The brothers discover that various characters are trapped in bubbles of time, experiencing the same events repeatedly. For some it’s a period of weeks or even years, but they discover a panicked man in a tent reliving five seconds (ending in his bloody death) over and over and over AND OVER…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHeTvKNvATM
THE ENDLESS was brilliant. It deserves to be on everyone’s 10-best list.
“Director Christopher McQuarrie cleanly assembles all of the
bathroom-fight hallmarks—broken sinks, smashed mirrors, pulled-out
pipes—.”The stunt co-ord said to say thanks for the props.
I liked the long take in Widows, the the actual heist gave me anxiety.
I liked that you included Let the Sunshine In’s rolling credits scene. It was both puzzling and mesmerizing, and although I can see why you’d see it as optimistic, so heart-breaking at the same time. I did not appreciate the movie that much when I saw it, before I learned that it was a very bold attempt at adapting one of the most beautiful books written on love.
The long take sequence in the new Halloween where we just follow Michael as he starts killing around Haddonfield. I *loved* that. The bit outside the one woman’s window is brilliant, and I’d argue that it’s as good as any of the best scenes from the original. I know the movie as a whole is divisive, but I’d honestly say it’s the second best of the franchise (not that it’s perfect, mind… I have some qualms about it for sure).
Being American-born with parents from another country that I have lost a connection to, I can personally relate to the Kilmonger scene on a different level than my friends, which is why it was so damn emotional for me to watch. I harbor anger about it, but more importantly, fear that I might be rejected if I were to ever go back, and I never thought I’d see ideas like that articulated in a mainstream Hollywood film. There are a lot of potent themes in this movie that make more than just an average blockbuster, imo, and I wouldn’t mind at all if it got some love come Awards season.It’s great to see M:I Fallout and Hereditary on here. Would have liked some love for A Quiet Place also. But I’m surprised there’s no mention of the plane jump sequence from Deadpool 2. Peter was so excited…
Oscar bait movies were a mistake.
I’m very happy that Buster Scruggs made the cut. But I’d have gone with the final scene of that story, which I won’t post here because it’s new enough to still be in the spoiler zone. But it’s hilarious and haunting and ridiculous and heartbreaking and beautiful all at once.
Yeah, I too liked that final song better than the one they went with.
Good list, but would’ve loved the delivery sequence from Roma to be on here! One of the most surprising emotional rollercoasters I’ve seen in the movies in a long time, right up their with Shallow for me
As a woman watching the 15:17 to Paris clip, I don’t understand why in movie fights, men don’t just kick the guy in the balls. It is some unwritten law among men that that’s a no-go zone? Maybe it’s not so dramatic?
CREED 2!
The AV Club enjoys watching people getting stabbed.
Keep talking up Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger all you want his dialogue is clunky his delivery is similar and he’s every bit a standard movie-verse mcu villian who’s just the evil version of the hero. The rubber puppet cgi fight in the end between the two is NOT exciting.
I wish more movies ended with the villain winning, like in Infinity War (ignoring how it will all be fixed in the sequel).
This is a great list. But, honestly I’m still not sure what’s my favorite scene from MI:Fallout
– The Bathroom fight scene blew me away. Top marks for sure, if only topped by the Paris car chase. – I REALLY liked Ready Player One. – Tom Holland is *the man*. He gave The Snappening/Vanishing/Decimation/Snapattack a real emotional impact, right there with Wanda grieving over Vision.
I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll say, when Cash goes to the bathroom in Sorry to Bother and the scene with Armie Hammer that follows is the hardest I’ve laughed this year.
My #1 is another music moment: “Rock Around the Clock” from COLD WAR. The movie’s elliptical approach to a 15-year relationship in 90 minutes didn’t always work, but this scene bears its woozily romantic soul in full force, and it’s glorious.
“Catch your breath and get off my property.” SUPPORT THE GIRLS.
AHHHHAHAHA YES, amazing moment, I only didn’t suggest it because I wondered if it really counted as a full scene. GREAT though.
I see the scene starting with the cutoff and tailgating, and running through Hall’s decision to stay behind. The film does a good job making the action funny for the audience while still communicating how freaked out she is.
The ritual, SuspiriaI would go with the first Dance of Death scene over the Ritual scene any day of the week. I have been a hard core horror fan since I could first sneak into an R rated movie. Over those many, many years, I have (to steal a line from Ghostbusters )seen shit that would turn you white.I have never seen anything more disturbing, more fucked up, more “Oh my god” as I cringed in my seat watching that poor girl get pretzeled to death.
This.https://youtu.be/J_v4POTywPQ
Favorite scene of the year for me: