Kathleen Murphy and Richard T. Jameson present their much-anticipated annual list of indelible memories-at-24-fps, Moments Out of Time, at MSN Movies. They've been sifting through the fragments of movie-time for these shining moments for many years, beginning in Movietone News and continuing through the 1990s in Film Comment.
Beginning when I was in high school, I would read through them religiously, looking for moments I'd treasured, too -- or maybe even ones I hadn't spotted or properly appreciated. Then I'd re-read, again and again, as if I were holding gems to the light and examining them through a magnifying glass, for the sheer pleasure of how they caught the rays. I'd pore over every turn of phrase, teasing out the meanings, even for the movies I hadn't seen with my own eyes (yet).
Here are a few of my favorites for 2007:
In "Ratatouille," the remembrance of things past courtesy of the eponymous dish: the critic's flashback to childhoodHungry for more? Devour all of 'em here.When Bourne (Matt Damon) wonders why the CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who once set him up is helping him now, she answers with what passes for a declaration of love in the killing environs of "The Bourne Ultimatum": "You were ... hard for me." ...
In "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," the pebbles sliding away from the vibrating rail as Jesse's boot rests there, waiting to stop his last train
Leaving her friend to wait out her abortion, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) attends an obligatory birthday party in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." The camera holds and holds as she sits frozen, claustrophobically hemmed by babbling guests, until she and we nearly explode with tension
The first getting-to-know-you-and-your-music duet in "Once," one of the purest distillations of rapport ever
In "Starting Out in the Evening," confronted by a redheaded beauty (Lauren Ambrose), the elderly gentleman (Frank Langella) involuntarily covers his face with his hand -- to hide his age or to shield his eyes from her bright heat
Night birds: Chigurh, the raven, and the gunshot reverberating off the otherwise deserted bridge, after which the two bend their separate ways in "No Country for Old Men" ...
"There Will Be Blood": Killing God in a two-lane bowling alley: "I'm finished."...
Some of these choices will help determine the screeners I dig through next. That final scene in the bowling alley, though, is one of the most out-of-left-field endings I've ever experienced in a film, and felt it was the perfect exclamation point on this tightly wound horror film (seriously, milkshakes will never be the same again).
Now I'm going to have to start my own one of these lists. Screencaps!
SPOILER WARNING
Once again, I have to be all up in your s!*&, but are you sure you want to give away [that moment in] TWBB?
JE: John, I fear you may have given away more than the MOoT does. It gives no story context and a metaphorical sense of what's going on in the moment mentioned. When someone sees the movie, I don't think they'll recognize it until it has occurred.