Amadeus (1984)

Amelie (2001)

The film's dizzying, hilarious, fast-paced, quick-cut introduction surveying the title character's life from actual conception to adulthood, the scene of Amelie's (Audrey Tautou) cherubic-faced discovery of an old tin box, hidden in her apartment wall, that is filled with a schoolboy's long-forgotten toys, treasures, and mementos, and then her epiphany while lying in bed that she will do good deeds, help others find true happiness and straighten out their lives; and the moment that an embarrassed Amelie literally melts off the screen onto the floor, and the scene of Amelie's tender and reciprocal kissing of quirky Nino Quincampoix (Matthieu Kassovitz) in her apartment - after they stared awkwardly at each other for a few moments, in the whimsical charming film from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet

American Beauty (1999)

Lester Burnham's (Oscar-winning Kevin Spacey) opening voice-over as he masturbates in the shower: "My name is Lester Burnham. I'm 42 years-old. In less than a year, I'll be dead. Of course I don't know that yet, and in a way, I am dead already...Look at me, jerking off in the shower...This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here"; the stark dinner table scene in which Lester non-chalantly tells his family he quit his job: ("...and then I told my boss to go f--k himself, and then I blackmailed him for almost $60,000. Pass the asparagus"); the digitally-created fresh rose petals - fantasies in the mind of Lester - that often cover the seductive image of high school teen blonde vamp Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari); the videotaped image (made by next-door drug pusher Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley)) of an empty plastic bag swirling around and around in the wind in an empty parking lot and his revelation: ("And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever"); the scene at the fast-food burger joint ("Smile! You're at Mr. Smiley's") when Lester serves his adulterous wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) with her trysting partner Buddy 'The King' Kane (Peter Gallagher); and Angela's words to Lester before an aborted seduction: "This is my first time"; and the shocking ending in which Lester is shot in the back of the head by homosexual neighbor - retired Marine Col. Fitts (Chris Cooper), in Sam Mendes' Academy Award-winning Best Picture

American Graffiti (1973)

An American In Paris (1951)

American Pie (1999)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

The warning by the locals in a British pub to two American student backpackers David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) to "stay off the moors!"; the werewolf attack leaving Jack dead and David infected with lycanthropy; the disorienting 'dream within a dream' sequence in which wounded and hospitalized backpacker David has dreams of an attack by machine-gun-toting Nazi werewolves who kill his family and burn his house - and a second dream within the hospital in which a knife-wielding Nazi werewolf stabs a nurse in the heart - and then David wakes up again; the horrific transformation scene (an Academy Award-winner for Best Makeup) of David turning into a werewolf; the darkly comic haunting of David by the decomposing apparition of his friend Jack (at one point complaining about how his girlfriend reacted to his death: "Debbie Klein cried a lot. So, so, you know what she does? She's soooo grief-stricken, she runs to find solace in Mark Levine's bed...an asshole! Life mocks me even in death!"); the chilling stalking scene of one victim in the British Underground (with the werewolf's POV); the steamy shower and love scene between David and his nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter); the scene in which all of David's victims' similarly-decomposing ghosts confront him in a porno theater; and the finale - a car-wreck climax in Piccadilly Circus with David's nude corpse, in writer/director John Landis' hip horror/black comedy film

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

...And God Created Woman (1956, Fr.) (aka Et Dieu Créa la Femme)

...And Justice for All (1979)

Angel Heart (1987)

The opening sequence in which a dog finds a bloody corpse in an alley; also Brooklyn private detective Harry Angel's (Mickey Rourke) encounters with mysterious satanic client Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) in a masterfully-acted devilish role, including the diner scene in which Cyphre remarks: "Some religions believe the egg is a symbol for the soul" -- before meaningfully biting into a hard-boiled egg; the many brutal murders that Harry discovers, including Dr. Fowler (Michael Higgins) - who was shot through the eye (with brain splatter) and Margaret Krusemark (Charlotte Rampling) who had her heart cut out; also the scene of illegitimate, half-Creole, teenaged voodoo practitioner Epiphany Proudfoot (Lisa Bonet in her film debut, who child-starred as Denise Huxtable in the family TV show The Cosby Show) - witnessed participating in a voodoo ritual in which she was scantily-clad as she slit a chicken's throat and let the blood drip down her face, neck and breasts; and the notorious, originally NC-17 rated sex scene (trimmed for an R-rating) between Harry and Epiphany as rain leaked through the hotel roof and was transformed into dripping chicken blood during a rainstorm, while they listened to the radio playing the sultry tune "Soul on Fire" by Laverne Baker; and the twist ending in which missing piano player/singer Johnny Favorite's (aka Johnny Liebling) identity is revealed (Angel is Johnny Favorite himself after kidnapping and taking the place/identity of the original Harry Angel through a satanic ritual), and the post-credits exchange on a black screen ("Harry?" "Johnny?") - and an elevator descending into Hell, in Alan Parker's supernatural film noir

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Anna Christie (1930)

Annie Hall (1977)

The Apartment (1960)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apollo 13 (1995)

Applause (1929)

This film provided a more realistic and cynical look at seamy backstage life - the chorus line of burlesque dancers in the Zenith Opera House in the film was composed of unattractive, pudgy and washed-up chorines rather than conventional cute blondes; the film featured real-life torch singer Helen Morgan as fading, and "washed-up" burlesque star Kitty Darling, the ailing, self-sacrificing mother of convent-bred 17 year-old daughter April Darling (Joan Peers); in one early scene, Kitty sang the plaintive What Wouldn't I Do For That Man to a photograph of her unscrupulous, predatory, unfaithful and brutish "Bad Boy" lover and burlesque comic Hitch Nelson (Fuller Mellish, Jr.) - as he kissed another chorine down the hall - in a triangulated split-screen view; also the scene of an embarrassed April's sight of her mother onstage during the burlesque show and hearing leering male audience spectators calling her 'washed-up' and April pleading: "Let's go away from here," and the scene of an all-night date with sailor suitor Tony (Henry Wadsworth) in which they sat on a steel girder - ending with their 'first love' kiss - and then their next date high atop a skyscraper while overlooking the New York buildings and sights below; there was also the disturbing end scene in which April (after saying goodbye to Tony at the subway) forced herself to dance sordid burlesque (and vowed to give the crowd their 'money's worth': "I'll show them") in place of her mother (whom she told: "Nothing matters now but you, Mommy. We'll always have each other. Nothing is ever going to separate us again") -- she performed in front of leering, middle-aged men as her mother died of suicidal poisoning in the dressing room, in this early landmark musical drama with innovative sound techniques and a constantly-moving camera, from director Rouben Mamoulian (his first sound film)

Army of Darkness (1993)

The witty wisecracks by stranded-in-time, unbalanced hardware store S-Mart clerk Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), Ash's cutting off of his own possessed left hand with his chainsaw, followed by his time-warp transport to medieval 14th century England where he is thrown in a deadite pit (and saves himself with his retrieved chainsaw), followed by his intimidating speech about his "boomstick" ("This is my boomstick!...S-Mart's top of the line") and defeat of another old-hag "she-bitch" deadite with an over-the-shoulder shot; his struggle against tiny, mischievous versions of himself in a funny Gulliver's Travels-like segment set in a windmill, his fall onto a hotstove when he had to lever his face off with a spatula, and his struggle against his own doppelganger evil self (that sprouts from his own shoulder after he swallows one of the shard pieces), ending with his dissection of the double with his chainsaw and its burial; also the scene of his recitation of the wrong magical words (forgetting the words: "Klaatu, Barada, Nikto" from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)) - and his battle with Ray Harryhausen-style "army of the dead" skeletons that emerge from the ground and are led by Ash's resurrected, zombie-doppelganger self; also, after vanquishing the deadites and returning to the present time, the scene of Ash defeating one more She-Demon (Patricia Tallman) in the Housewares Department of S-Mart - afterwards, an impressed co-worker (Angela Featherstone) embraces him, as Ash muses in voiceover: "Sure, I could have stayed in the past. I could have even been king. But in my own way, I am king." He then tells the girl before he passionately kisses her: "Hail to the king, baby!", in director Sam Raimi's third Evil Dead trilogy - an offbeat horror spoof

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Arthur (1981)