I should have mentioned this earlier, jackal and Jackie, but one of my favorite scenes is the "Alley" Scene in "Harvey". (They SURE don't make 'em like they used to.) If nobody else knows what I'm talking about, at least you do. Also from 1950, almost all of Max's (Erich von Stroheim's) scenes plus the dead chimp scenes in "Sunset Blvd." are great. Oh my, on a 1950 kick, I have to mention every scene with Vincent Price in "Champagne For Caesar". Maybe you know that Price is one of the funniest actors ever, but if you don't, check this out and there's no way you'll doubt it.

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This thread needs more action because it's good and we have many new members. Also, just because you listed A favorite scene doesn't mean you don't have others.

I'm going to add the scenes in The Incredibles with the fashion designer to the superheroes, Edna "E" Mode (voice of Brad Bird). The character seems to be a cross between Edith Head and Linda Hunt, but with a whack sense of humor and wisdom. Plus her costumes are simply mahvelous, dahling!

In the grand scheme of things, this probably isn't one of my favorite scenes, but I've been thinking about the scene in the pool from Garden State a lot lately since I am moving far away from my family and will be able to be financially independent from them for the first time in my life. I really like Zach Braff's monologue about the weird in-between time from your parents home being your home to having your own space that you think of as home.

I have a feeling this movie will be less impressive to me in a few years, but is so perfectly targeted at my age group that it seems like a great scene at the moment.

I liked it when the scooter flew off the cliffs in Quadrophenia. Thats was hardcore efx man.

I love the end of Dead Poet's Society when the boys stand on their desk to salute John Keating/Robin Williams...it always moves me.

It's hard to pick just one favorite scene, from all the movies I've watched. Just trying to classify diffrent elements that make a good scene, such as dialog, meaning, and over all apeal is quite chalanging in its self. My favorite scene for dialog is probably in Good Will Hunting when Will explains the reasons why he wouldn't want to work for the NSA. In Apocolypse now I liked the first secene with Robert Duvall on the beach "I love the smell of naphalm in the morning...to me its the smell of... Victory"

Has to be Goodefellas - Joe Pesci to Ray Liotta. "Like Im a comedian! Im here to make you laugh. What the **** is so funnny about me?"
I think thats it.

But as a second maybe the car accident scene in The Man With Two Brains when Steve Martin has the conversation with the small girl. The girl is cool.

I got 2. A kind of dramatic one and a hilarious one:

I really like the seen in Saving Private Ryan when they storm the beach during operation overlord. That was one kick a*s scene.

In Austin Powers Goldmember my sides ached after the scene where Austin and Mini-Me were strapped together, that was awesome.

to the disbelieving eyes of luke skywalker, yoda cooly lifts his x-wing from the muck of a dagobah swamp.

luke: i dont believe it.
yoda: that is why you fail.

I think one of the best modern action scenes would probably be the building shootout in the Matrix.

There is one scene that stands out as my favourite:

#1 The final scene in Chinatown... The way the slumped body rests on the horn... the look on Jakes's face... the realisation of what's going to happen to the daughter... the fact of where it's taking place... Devastating.

Chinatown is a permanent stayer on my top 10 favourite films list! Always in my top 3 actually.

I second Joe Pesci's scene in Goodfellas - 'Whadya mean I'm funny. Like I'm a clown, I'm here to amuse you? What the f*ck is so funny about me?' Joe Pesci really steals that film.

Jack Nicholson in The Shining when his wife discovers what he's been writing for all that time - 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'. Then she tries to defend herself with the baseball bat while he's laughing at her and the music goes completely over the top. Genius.

Withnail and I's final scene is always very emotional I think, finishing with Withnail's rendition of Hamlet in the rain. Actually, most scenes from that film are great. 'We've come on holiday by mistake, are you the farmer?'

Finally the scene in The Hudsucker Proxy where the kid picks up the hula hoop after the shopkeeper throws them all out on to the street. Very funny.

Sorry, I just realised I was only meant to pick one. But I can't.

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quote:

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Too many to list. Any that totally astonish you (they need to have contextual validity or credibility though, as far as both plot and character), any that grab you deep in the gut AND DON'T LET GO. These scenes will be with you forever once you've witnessed them.

I'll add two of my own: the final scene of Fellini's 9 1/2, when all the characters in the film return and hand-in-hand perform an exquisite, if altogether unlikely, Dance of Life. Unadulterated Surrealistic Bliss!!!
The final scene of Sunset Boulevard(where Norma Desmond descends the stairs): hardly ever surpassed for its classic, unrelenting theatricality.
Also many scenes from Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beast). Sheer visual poetry, especially the scene where Belle "floats" down the hall of the castle. Also in Cocteau's Orpheus, where the actor passes through the mirror, and the subsequent footage. Film and viewer enter another, heightened realm here(and all without major special effects). Cocteau partners somehow with one's OWN imagination and seduces you into believing the impossible.

I'd like to enthusiastically second some earlier choices in this forum: Col. Kurtz's monologue--it totters chillingly between existential terror and a plea to be erased as a consciousness who has experiened and felt what he has (Apocalypse Now); 2001 (final scene); Truman Show (final scene); Dead Poet's Society (final scene); Cinema Paradiso (final scene).
With one exception these are all cinema moments where human consciousness and the human spirit seem to be elevated or released from some societal or cultural, sometimes even self-imposed (through ignorance, lack of experience or negative conditioning) prison. There is that gush of fresh air, of a door bursting open, of the wonder of endless possibilities that were not there a minute before. Always with a spoonful of forgiveness (including self-forgiveness) and reconciliation with and integration into the greater world and fate.

A footnote: Erich von Stroheim's performance in Sunset Boulevard is one of the most amazing and underrated supporting actor performances in film. There are no cheap tricks in this performance, only an everpresent, brooding presence, always on the periphery of the highlighted action. Watch it or watch it again.

There are a ton for sure, but the two that come immediately to mind are...

1. Godfather 2 - When Michael gives Fredo his "kiss of death" followed by "I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart..."

2. Office Space - When Peter, Michael, and Samir take the fax machine to the field and beat it. The best is when Michael starts going at it bare-fisted.

The dinner scene in "Donnie Darko", where they argue about Dukakis and Donnie tells his sister to "go suck a fuck". Every moment of this scene is brilliant and hilarious.

There's some slight duplication here from earlier post. I wasn't sure where or when that had posted.

Many, many scenes to be sure!!!!
For shear theatricality: Sunset Boulevard (final scene)--unsurpassed in film (my opinion);
Several scenes from Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (lA BELLE ET LA BETE)--especially the scene where Belle is "floating" through the halls of the castle. The inner dreamworld made real, surrealism cubed. (All without modern, albeit often astonishing, special-effects tricks);
For a kind of healing, transcendent affirmation of life, being and human existence, with all its frailties, blunders, idiocies and cruelties, Fellini's masterful Nine and 1/2. Inexpressible unless you have seen it!! Fellini's Dolce Vita (final scene)--where the two remaining characters try, unsuccessfully, to communicate with one another across a physical void. There is a profound sadness but also profound honesty in this image. His indictment of the world as a place where we are all locked into the straitjackets of self and alienation is the prevailing flavour;
Rosemary's Baby (final scene)--makes me shiver, even after many years;
Streetcar named Desire (final scene), as well as several others. When you get the perfect cast, the perfect director, and the perfect script there are bound to hit paydirt/the bullseye more than once. Magic, magic, magic!!!
Casablanca (final scene), and several others.

I include several that have already been given by others in this forum:
Col Kurtz's chilling monologue in Apocalypse Now--an existential suicide note to life and the world, painful and wrenching to hear;
The Truman Show (final scene);
2001 (final scene).

I'm curious why so many of these scenes come in the final minutes of the film for me: it's as if an invisible Alchemist has been distilling a
mysterious elixir that has unknown mystical powers behind the scenes--and finally it is finished and perfect, and we must drink it, without knowing exactly how it is going to affect us, or even if we'll survive the encounter.
In every journey there are these crossroads that one comes to--and we must trust our+ inner guidance to make the right and appropriate and critical choice.
Here, though we sometimes forget, it is the Director who is the Alchemist ("conspiring" with the writer/actor/cinematographer/editor, functioning ideally as "one, totally integrated mind") who makes this choice for us: who concocts the potion and asks us to drink it. And if he has succeeded in his work, we will drink it, because he has given us no other viable choice.
Another way of saying this is that in the master director the art of storytelling is combined with the art of "persuasion" in all its multiple costumes (which can and does, in varrying formulas utilize hypnosis, propaganda and conditioning, often invisibly and not always innocently).
Triumph of the Will is great art, for instance, even if its message is totally repulsive.

Without this "shadow" hovering in the background
--the Director, whether in the role of White or Black Magician--the film will lack gravity, substance, discipline and, ultimately, the genus of passion that is not gratuitously pasted into a scene but rises from its depths, takes on a life of its own and lingers afterward.
"The Passion of Joan of Arc" comes immediately to mind. Such riveting passion CANNOT be faked. It cannot be spliced in later in the editing room. It is authentic, impervious to tampering with or fading; it is, in a word, eternal. And THAT is why certain films survive and shall continue to survive, and others fall away and vanish like decaying leaves.
Finally, this "passion" does not have to be tragic. It can and often is comic. The passion I'm speaking of here is really a FORCE OF NATURE
that's inexplicably captured by certain people.
Sometimes it "plays" fortissimo and sometimes pianissimo, but it is always unmistakable and invigorating whenever/wherever one finds it.
And the Arts, film and theater in particular, are especially poised to embrace and incapsulate it. Those who love either, all of us here, are uncontestably blessed!!!

Yep when Adrian says "win" to Rocky that wins imo this is not corny at all this all time great, cause it was so unexpected.
Also the moment when Rocky cuts the seemingly indestructible Drago with a single punch, after being hammered round after round, emotions run high as Paulie then says, "you see he`s not a machine, he`s a man", I love the way Paulie was a drunk and a total arse but he was central to everything and always rose to the challenge when he needed to, always had the answer when no-one else did.

2, in Pulp Fiction when travolta shoots up in his car, and the amazing scene in resevoir dogs when tim roth rehearses and enacts his fake job story.

This one is difficult for I am trying to articulate in words a potent image from an outstanding film. In "Ghandi", the Indian people line up about ten across and hundreds deep. They walk one line at a time, unarmed, into the clubs wielded by the British Army. Each line falls when struck, and are pulled out of the way as the next line does the same. It was a powerful vision of non-violent protest. Ghandi believed that no soldier could continue to beat an unarmed person standing up for a belief without eventually having their conscience pricked. The scene's crowning moment is when the reporter runs to call in his story, and as he describes the event we are allowed to hear the emotion in his voice. He could not do his job as an objective reporter; for one cannot remain objective in the face of truth and genuine faith. It is a scene that introduced me to the power of non-violent protest, and allowed me to believe in hope: hope that in spite of our calloused attitudes we can still be morally reached, and conquered by compassion.

In 1986, Pierce Brosnan in one of his best performances acting as a French anthropologist, nine years before Goldeneye along with Lesley-Ann Down as a doctor who came together in a serious, dramatic, supernatural thriller that ranks as one of the most powerful and compelling movies. Directed by John McTiernan who would go on to direct Mr. Brosnan again in The Thomas Crown Affair 1999 remake as well as direct blockbuster movies over the next several years created a scene at the very end of the movie between these two stars that will burn a lasting emotional into one's memory for its terrible, digging, and twisting agony of emotional pull it will inflict on one's soul.