| F (continued) |
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Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
|
The scene of 'worldly' high-school
sexpot Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates) 'tutoring' sexually-inexperienced but curious friend
Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) in oral sex with a carrot in the school cafeteria, the classroom scenes
involving perpetually-stoned, bleached-blonde California surfer dude Jeff
Spicoli (Sean Penn) and American history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston)
- and the ordering of a pizza to be delivered in school during a class lecture;
the two uncomfortable, awkward and devastating scenes of Stacy's sexual initiation - first, in a night scene in a baseball dugout with older stereo salesman Ron Johnson (D.W. Brown) - as Stacy (from her POV) looked up at the graffiti on the walls above her, and second, her painful and quick impregnation by lecherous Mike
Damone (Robert Romanus) in a poolhouse changing room; and the slow-motion sequence of the emergence
of red-bikinied Linda from an outdoor swimming pool and the slow opening
and shedding of her bathing suit top from the middle (a fantasy mental disrobing
by self-pleasuring Brad (Judge Reinhold)) - often rated the best nudity scene in any film,
in Amy Heckerling's cult teen comedy and her directorial debut feature film
(from a script by Cameron Crowe), the quintessential teen comedy of the 80s |
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Fatal Attraction (1987)
|
The wild passionate sex scenes
(in an elevator and in the kitchen) during a 'one-night stand' between mistress
Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) and philandering lawyer/husband Dan Gallagher
(Michael Douglas); the nightmarish vindictiveness of the pathological, obsessive,
and scorned woman through discussions ("I'm not gonna be ignored")
and a taped message labeled "Play me" that Dan listens to: ("So you're scared
of me, aren't ya?...Why you gutless, heartless, spineless f--king son of
a bitch, I hate you. You deserve everything you get"), wife Beth's (Anne
Archer) discovery of the family's pet bunny boiling in a pot on the stove,
and the final, knife-wielding vengeance scene in the bathroom and Alex'
jolting resurrection from the bathtub, in Adrian Lyne's cautionary thriller
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Father Goose (1964)
|
The character (against-type)
of scruffy, unshaven sailor Walter Eckland (Cary Grant - in the only film
in which he was unshaven throughout the entire story) on an isolated South
Pacific island during WWII, where he was beset by French teacher Catherine
Freneau (Leslie Caron) and seven female schoolgirls, and served as a 'volunteer'
to be a coast watcher and plane spotter (code-named "Father Goose")
for the Royal Navy and Commander Houghton (aka "Big Bad Wolf")
(Trevor Howard), in director Ralph Nelson's romantic adventure comedy (Cary
Grant's second-t0-last film) |
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Father of the Bride (1950)
|
A harrassed father Stanley Banks (Oscar-nominated
Spencer Tracy) facing daughter Kay's (Elizabeth Taylor) marriage and overbearing
caterers, his nightmare of a disastrous wedding ceremony (in which he appeared
late to the wedding in taters, and couldn't make his way down the aisle),
his midnight snack kitchen scene with his daughter, and the tearjerking
scene of Kay's post-wedding phone call to lovingly say 'thank you' to her
father, in director Vincente Minnelli's domestic comedy |
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Fearless (1993)
|
The eerie opening scene in a seemingly-serene
cornfield, and then the vivid recreation of the remnants of an airliner
crash (from the point of view inside the plane) - and the grisly aftermath
with a burned body still strapped to a seat, and rescue crews helping screaming
victims, and its tale of two survivors on a flight from San Francisco to
Houston: serene architect Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) who mystically transcends
and invincibly survives and young guilt-stricken, Roman Catholic mother
Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez) who still believes ("You know you hurt
me. You hurt me forever. But I still believe in Him"), in Peter Weir's
emotionally provocative film |
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The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) (aka Dance of the
Vampires or Pardon Me...But Your Teeth Are in My Neck)
|
The opening in which the MGM lion
roars and then turns into a green vampire/ghoul face with fangs and blood
dripping from its mouth, the humorous scene of a Jewish vampire attacking
a young girl who vainly tries to protect herself with a cross, and the great
ball scene in which the vampirish guests dance a minuet and only three interloping
humans are reflected in a mirror, in director Roman Polanski's vampire horror
spoof |
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Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
|
The scene of malingering rich-kid student Ferris Bueller (Matthew
Broderick) describing (with graphics) how to fool parents and skip a day of school ("The key to faking out the parents
is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom; I'm a big
believer in it..."); and the scene of Dean of Students secretary Grace (Edie McClurg) explaining how popular Ferris is: ("Oh, he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude"); also the scene of Dean
of Students Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) receiving what he believes is a
crank phone call from Ferris but it's from Ferris' girlfriend's 'father' (actually Alan
Ruck) asking for her to be excused - and his sarcastic and insulting tone:
("Tell you what, dipshit, you don't like my policies you can just
come on down and smooch my big ol' white butt! Pucker up, buttercup!")
until another phone call is received and announced by Grace: "Ferris Bueller's on line two..."; also the scene of Economics teacher (Ben Stein) calling roll repeatedly: "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller" with Ferris' empty chair and fellow student Simone's (Kristy Swanson) confused excuse about how he's sick; and Ferris' infatuated sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) saying goodbye to drugged-up Garth (Charlie Sheen) at the police station; and Ferris' day
off from high school in downtown Chicago with his friends Cameron Frye
(Alan Ruck) (driving his father's 1961 red Ferrari 250 GT convertible)
and with cute girlfriend Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara), and Ferris' unexpected
announcement from the top of a Von Steuben parade float ("Ladies
and gentlemen, you're such a wonderful crowd, we'd like to play a little
tune for you. It's one of my personal favorites and I'd like to dedicate
it to a young man who doesn't think he's seen anything good today - Cameron
Frye, this one's for you") - after the lip-synching of Danke Shein,
Ferris segues into the playing and lip-synching of The Beatles' Twist
and Shout; and the scene of Rooney trying to catch Ferris at home and being confronted by the slobbering family Rotweiler; also the curtain-closing post-credits appearance of Ferris from the bathroom telling the audience (fourth wall) to leave: "You're still here? It's over! Go home. Go!", in John Hughes' cult comedy hit |
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A Few Good Men (1992)
|
The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base
scene in which inexperienced Navy lawyers Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi
Moore) and hot-shot Lt. J.G. Daniel Alistair Kaffee (Tom Cruise) encounter
and earnestly demand information about an unofficial disciplinary procedure
(that killed young Marine Private Santiago), termed 'Code Red', from a formidable,
breakfast-eating Col. Nathan R. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) - and his reply:
"What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform
and with your Harvard mouth extend me some f--king courtesy. You gotta ask
me nicely", and the climactic, explosive cross-examination confrontation
in the court-martial trial in which tough-talking Col. Jessup on the witness
stand ("I'm gonna rip the eyes out of your head and piss in your dead
skull! You f--ked with the wrong marine!") is intensely un-nerved and
ferociously snarls: "You can't handle the truth!!", in Rob Reiner's courtroom/military
drama |
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Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
|
The entire opening/titles sequence,
the joyous and lively song/dance "Tradition" about the conflict
between traditional values and modern industrial changes, and its tale of
a poor Jewish-Russian peasant milkman in a small Ukranian village in pre-Revolutionary
Russia - the life-affirming Tevye (Topol): ("Traditions, traditions.
Without our traditions our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on
the roof!"), in Norman Jewison's film adaptation of the beloved Broadway
musical and based upon Sholom Aleichem's stories |
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Field of Dreams (1989)
|
The whispered disembodied voice: "If you build it,
he will come" to astonished Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella
(Kevin Costner) in his corn field - who responds: ("Who are you,
huh? What do you want from me?"); the scene of Ray plowing down some
of his cornfield and building a baseball diamond; the sight of the ghosts
of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and his seven teammates - of the
infamous 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal - stepping out of the cornfield
to play ball and find redemption with a second chance; the poignant scene
of the powerful "they will come" speech by disillusioned and
reclusive 60's author Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) about the enduring
impact of baseball on America: ("The one constant through all the
years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers.
It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball
has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray.
It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people
will come Ray. People will most definitely come"); also the scene
in which young Archie Graham (Frank Whaley) sacrificed his youth as a
ball player by transforming into his older self Doc Archibald "Moonlight"
Graham (Burt Lancaster) - and then was unable to go back - to save corn
farmer Ray's daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffman) from choking to death on a
piece of hot dog, before disappearing back into the cornfield with the
other players - and his magical speech about his wish to finally have
a chance to bat; also Ray's reconciliation-reunion scene (and game of
catch) at sunset with his dead father - New York Yankees catcher John
Kinsella (Dwier Brown) who had also emerged out of the cornfield and been
summoned to the playing field; and Ray's request ("Hey, Dad? Wanna
have a catch?" - and the reply: "I'd like that") - with
the long-shot of them playing catch under the lights - and the final,
overhead shot of a single line of cars with their headlights on streaming
toward the magical baseball field carved out of an Iowa cornfield, in
Phil Alden Robinson's sentimental ode to baseball |
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|
Fight Club (1999)
|
The audacious "Fear Center" opening
titles sequence; the scene in which charismatic, macho soap salesman and
projectionist Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) introduces the concept of the 'Fight
Club' to yuppie "Ikea Boy", insomniac white-collar worker "Jack"/Narrator
(Edward Norton) by fighting in a parking lot ("I want you to hit me
as hard as you can"); the club's rules: "You do not talk about
Fight Club" and the many bare-fisted, brutal fights in dark underground
basements; the scene in which a solo Norton beats himself up in front of
his astonished boss; the many one-frame subliminal cameos of Tyler Durden
in the film (i.e., at the office photo-copier, in the doctor's office, in
the testicular cancer support group meeting, in an alley seeing Marla leaving
(Helena Bonham Carter), and on the hotel TV screen), and the 'twist' ending
divulging the fact that Tyler Durden and the Narrator are one and the same
- a split personality, in David Fincher's epic based upon Chuck Palahniuk's
novel and scripted by Jim Uhls |
|
|
Finding Nemo (2003)
|
The frightening pre-credits barracudas attack
on clownfish parents Marlin (voice of Albert Brooks) and Coral (voice of
Elizabeth Perkins) by a barracuda and the devastating aftermath in which
Marlin is made a widower with just a single surviving egg named Nemo (voice
of Alexander Gould); the plot of little Nemo's kidnap/capture by an Australian
diver and overprotective, obsessively-worried, and neurotic Marlin's desperate
and perilous quest to find him by traveling through Australia's lengthy
Great Barrier Reef; the brilliant, comedic performance by Ellen DeGeneres
as Dory - a scatterbrained but well-intentioned blue tang with enormous
eyes that suffers from severe short-term memory loss; the scene of Marlin
and Dory's encounter with great white shark Bruce (voice of Barry Humphries)
(an in-joke reference to Jaws (1975)), Nemo's
adventures living in a dentist's salt-water aquarium tank in Sydney and
the threat of the braces-wearing dentist's niece Darla (a "fish-killer"
accompanied by the sounds of the shower scene violins from Psycho
(1960)); the wisecracking school of fish (voice of John Ratzenberger),
the "surfer dude" turtle Crush (voice of co-writer/director Andrew
Stanton) and the Moorish Idol fish Gill (voice of Willem Dafoe); the sequence
of Marlin and Dory trapped inside a whale (reminiscent of Pinocchio (194o)),
and during the end credits the surprise appearance of Monster, Inc.'s
(2001) one-eyed Mike Wazowski wearing scuba-diving equipment, in Pixar's-Disney's
(their fifth collaboration) blockbuster CGI animated film and winner of
the 2003 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film |
|
Finding Neverland (2004)
|
The playful scenes in which Scottish playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie (Johnny Depp) finds inspiration by befriending the company of the Llewelyn Davies family, consisting of four high-spirited boys and their lovely recently-widowed mother Sylvia (Kate Winslet) - including the fanciful ways in which his play-world dreams become reality (the boys jumping on beds fly out the window, the family materializes on the deck of a pirate ship with James playing the part of Captain Hook and demanding to know their 'pirate' names, etc.); also the scene of the opening premiere of his new children's fantasy play Peter Pan and his invitation to 25 children from a local orphanage to take seats scattered throughout the audience - and their infectious laughter; also the scene of James' estranged, unhappy conventional wife Mary's (Radha Mitchell) final goodbye when she congratulates him on his successful play: "Without that family, you could never have written anything like this. You need them. Goodbye" - in an earlier scene when the two enter separate bedrooms in their home, James' door opens to an imaginative sunlit field; also the tearjerking scene of Sylvia discussing with James how she is "pretending" not to be sick with her four boys and her reluctance to accept her illness and coming death: "You brought pretending into this family, James. You showed us we can change things by simply believing them to be different...We've pretended for some time now that you're a part of this family, haven't we? You've come to mean so much to us all that now it doesn't matter if it's true. And even if it isn't true, even if that can never be... I need to go on pretending. Until the end. With you"; and the wonderful scene in which the cast of Peter Pan privately performs the play in the parlor for the ailing Sylvia - and she 'enters' into Neverland; and the concluding poignant scene on a park bench in which James encourages young lad Peter (Freddie Highmore) to remember his dead mother with the transformative power of imagination: "...she's on every page of your imagination. You'll always have here there, always...When I think of your mother, I will always remember how happy she looked sitting there in the parlor watching a play about her family. About her boys that never grew up. She went to Neverland. And you can visit her any time you like if you just go there yourself" with Peter's hopeful, whispered response that he believes: "I can see her," in director Marc Forster's semi-fictionalized tale (David Magee's adaptation of Allan Knee's play The Man Who Was Peter Pan) about the creative inspiration for Barrie's "genius" masterpiece Peter Pan |
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|
First Blood (1982)
|
The scenes of ex-Green Beret Vietnam vet John
Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) being arrested as an unshaven vagrant, abused in jail, and his escape - amidst flashbacks as a POW; also Rambo's incredible defense
against an army of pursuers in some Northwest woods outside a small hostile town called Hope, stitching his own wound, and his threat to become a one-man army while holding a large knife to the throat of prejudiced Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy): "Don't push it. Don't push it or I'll give you a war you won't believe"; and Rambo's final impassioned, preachy speech to Green Beret Col. Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna), his former commander, about his hostile, unjust reception as a returning Vietnam War Vet: "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protestin' me, spittin'. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!...For me, civilian life is nothing! In the field, we had a code of honor: You watch my back, I watch yours. Back here, there's nothin'!...Back there, I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment. Back here, I can't even hold a job parking cars!",
in director Ted Kotcheff's action thriller - the first and best of the Rambo series |
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A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
|
Lunatic ex-CIA hitman Otto West's
(Kevin Kline) repeated snarl, "Don't call me stupid!"; stammering,
animal-loving hitman Ken Pile's (Michael Palin) inability to assassinate
an old lady (an eye-witness threat), cruelly killing her three cherished
pet dogs instead (mauling by an attack dog, run-over by a taxi, and crushing
by a falling safe); seductive Wanda Gershwitz's (Jamie Lee Curtis) complete
sexual arousal to hearing foreign languages; the continuing lack of intelligence
displayed by the idiotic Otto and described by Wanda: ("He thought
that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln lived" - "Aristotle
was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not "every man for
himself", and the London Underground is not a political movement");
and conservative and stuffy barrister Archie Leech's
(John Cleese) painful admission of British stoicism to Wanda: ("Do
you have any idea what it's like being English?...") and the scene
when Archie is caught in the buff by a British family in what he thought
was a perfect hideaway for an adulterous tryst with Wanda, forcing him
to use a strategically-placed framed photo to modestly hide himself; and
Otto's torture of Ken by eating his pet fish in front of him, and his
taunting of Ken ("It's K-k-k-ken c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me!")
just before Ken runs over him with a steamroller, in Charles Crichton's
madcap caper farce |
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|
The Fisher King (1991)
|
The symbolic demonic, giant apocalpytic figure of a Red Knight with
a tattered cloak -- the horrid, pursuing nemesis of crazy and homeless, disheveled ex-medieval history professor Parry (Robin Williams), reminding him of the traumatic bloody-red slaughter
of his wife (tragically killed with a shotgun blast to the head as the result of off-handed comments made to a psychotic radio caller named Alan from caustic talk radio DJ Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), who went on a killing rampage in a bar); also Parry's emotionally-tender monologue to Jack in Central Park (while they lie on their backs in the grass) about the story of the Fisher King and the Quest for the Holy Grail (the cup from the Last Supper), ending with: ("...As the King began to drink, he realized that his wound was healed. He looked at his hands, and there was the Holy Grail that which he sought all of his life! And he turned to the Fool and said in amazement: 'How could you find that which what my brightest and bravest could not?' And the fool replied: 'I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty'), and Jack's long soliloquy to catatonic Parry in the hospital ("I don't feel responsible for you or for anybody. Everybody's got bad things that happen to them. I'm not God... I'm not responsible. I don't feel guilty...I don't feel sorry for you. It's easy being nuts. Try being me"); and the magical, beguiling, and surreal fantasy scene in Grand
Central Station that begins with Parry tracking the woman of his dreams
Lydia Sinclair (Amanda Plummer) - and inexplicably, the sight of thousands
of bustling, rush-hour commuters are suddenly transformed into waltzing
couples (oblivious to him), in Terry Gilliam's mystical fantasy fairy tale |
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|
A Fistful of Dollars (1964, It.)
|
The pancho-wearing, cigarillo-smoking
Man With No Name's (Clint Eastwood) subdued anger over treatment of his
mule by a gang of gunslingers and his request to a nearby undertaker/coffin-maker:
"Get three coffins ready" - and shortly after seeking deadly revenge with
his revised mordant order: "My mistake, four coffins," in Sergio Leone's
"spaghetti western" remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961) |
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|
Fitzcarraldo (1982, W. Ger.)
|
The monumental manual hauling of a 320-ton
steamship, christened Molly Aida, over a group of steep-inclined
South American hills to another waterway - without special effects, in director
Werner Herzog's adventure drama |
|
|
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
|
The early morning scene during
a freeway jam when angered ex-classical pianist/S. California oil-rigger
Robert Eroica Dupea (Jack Nicholson) exits his car and gives an impromptu
concert performance playing on an upright piano in the back of a truck stuck
ahead in the traffic, Robert's reunion with his sister Partita (Lois Smith)
in an LA recording studio, his car trip to the Pacific Northwest and the
giving of a lift to an aggressive, complaining lesbian couple Palm Apodaca
(Helena Kallianiotes) and Terry Grouse (Toni Basil) on their way to Alaska
to escape society and because it's "cleaner"; the celebrated roadside
cafe scene of an impatient Dupea's frustrating fight with a strict, rude
and surly waitress (Lorna Thayer) (who allows 'no substitutions') over his
initial side order of wheat toast that quickly becomes a chicken-salad sandwich
order ("You make sandwiches, don't you?") - including his challenge
to "Hold the chicken" between her knees and his clearing of the table ("You
see this sign?"); the moving camera as Robert plays Chopin for his brother's
fiancee Catherine Van Oost (Susan Anspach); his painful, one-sided, but
conciliatory apology to his dying, unresponsive, invalid, wheel-chair bound
father Nicholas (William Challee) at his home on Puget Sound, and the long,
final and bleak scene when he leaves his uneducated and dim-witted girlfriend
Rayette Dipesto (Karen Black) stranded at a Gulf gas station (with his car
and wallet) and catches a ride north into Canada with a logging trucker
(who warns: "Where we're going, it's gonna get colder than hell"),
in Bob Rafelson's intriguing character study |
|
|
Flashdance (1983)
|
The entire film's energetic, glossy music-video style
of dance sequences, the early scene of welder/Mawby's Bar dancer Alex
Owens' (Jennifer Beals) supine on a chair as water splashes down on her,
and the iconic image of her torn grey sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder
(and the scene of the removal of her bra under the sweatshirt), her erotic
scene of eating lobster while wearing only the front of a man's tuxedo,
the scene of Alex' audition before the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance,
and the loving and cliched romantic clinch in the freeze-framed conclusion,
in Adrian Lyne's musical romantic drama |
|
|
The Fly (1958)
|
The opening shocking scene of a night watchman finding
that Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) has just crushed her scientist husband
Andre's (David Hedison) head and arm in a giant metal press; the rest
of the story is told in flashback of how the husband was
anatomically combined with a fly by his matter-transporting device - with
the horrifying revelation when she first saw his monstrous, twitching
fly head with one of the fly's legs replacing one of his arms; the kaleidoscopic
point of view shot of her through the Fly's eyes; also the climactic ending
plea of the entrapped fly (with the human head) in a spider's web crying:
"Help me, please, help me!" to Andre's brother François Delambre
(Vincent Price) - and his merciful killing by being smashed with a rock
by Inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall), in director Kurt Neumann's original
and chilling film |
|
|
The Fly (1986)
|
The gruesome scene when a baboon
is teleported inside out during an experiment gone awry, the displays of
superhuman strength by shy scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) after
a teleport session (although he is unaware that he has been genetically
spliced with a fly) - climbing up and down walls, etc., the scene in which
he begs girlfriend/science reporter Veronica 'Ronnie' Quaife (Geena Davis)
to save him: ("Help me...please, help me"), the scene in
front of his bathroom mirror when slowly-degenerating and mutating Seth
(now "Brundlefly") stores "relics" of his human body in the cabinet
("the Brundle Museum of Natural History"); Seth's vomiting during
preparations for his breakfast; his warning to Veronica in his 'insect politics'
speech to leave and never come back because he might hurt her: "Have you
ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don't have politics.
They're very brutal..."; Veronica's nightmare of aborting a maggot, Seth's
attack on Stathis Borans (John Getz) - using acidic vomit to cut off his
foot; and the final scene of the disfigured Brundlefly wordlessly begging
Veronica to kill his monstrous self with a shotgun - and her dropping to
her knees after the deed was accomplished, in the superior and scary remake
by master of horror David Cronenberg |
|
|
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
|
The star-making dance "The
Carioca" by Fred Ayres and Honey Hale (supporting players Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers), and the memorable scene of chorus girls dancing on airplane
wings to the title song on airborne planes, in director Thornton Freeland's
extravagant RKO musical |
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