The Invisible Man (1933)

The Iron Giant (1999)

The friendship between young, isolated preteen Hogarth Hughes (voice of Eli Marienthal) and a 100-foot robot (voice of Vin Diesel) with a steam-shovel mouth from outer space brought about in 1957 when Hogarth saves the metal-eating giant's life in the woods from electrocution by a power plant, the life lessons taught by Hogarth to the Iron Giant after hunters shoot a deer ("I know you feel bad about the deer, but it's not your fault. Things die. That's part of life. It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die...You're made of metal, but you have feelings, and you think about things, and that means you have a soul. And souls don't die") and a lesson about choice ("Guns kill. And you don't have to be a gun. You are what you choose to be. You choose. Choose"), the educational animated "Duck and Cover" spoof, the sequence of Hogarth attempting to hide the Giant's disembodied hand in his house, the Giant's cannonball dive into a lake; the odious and villainous federal government agent Kent Mansley's (voice of Christopher McDonald) efforts to capture and destroy the Giant, the crowd-pleasing moment when the Giant flies for the first time (Hogarth: "You can fly?! YOU CAN FLY!"), and the climactic sacrifice by the Iron Giant to save the small Maine town of Rockwell from a nuclear missile -- just before the explosion in outer space, the Giant realizes his heroism: "I'm Superman!", and the final shot of a smiling Iron Giant self-repairing in an Icelandic glacier, in Brad Bird's enchanting animated Cold War parable

The Italian Job (2003)

It Happened One Night (1934)

It's A Gift (1934)

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

The simple opening scene of stars blinking and angels talking about George's fate, the scene of George's rescue of his younger brother from a fall through the ice, young Mary Hatch's (Jean Gale) whispered secret ("George Bailey - I'll love you till the day I die"), George's saving of the drunk druggist Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner) from prescribing poisonous cyanide, the comedic scene of the high school dance with the dance floor opening over a swimming pool as George Bailey (James Stewart) and Mary (Donna Reed) obliviously dance the Charleston into the pool, George Bailey's walk home with sweetheart Mary while singing Buffalo Gals, their throwing of stones at the deserted old Granville house, her loss of her bathrobe and his talking to the shrubbery; the marvelous scene of an extended angry and intimate shared phone conversation with George and Mary on the same end of the phone; Mary's question to George: "Why must you torture the children?"; small-town father and husband George's rescue by guardian angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers) on a bridge when he considers suicide on Christmas Eve, the nightmarish sequence of Bedford Falls (now Pottersville) without George as he staggers through the town - with the visit to his brother Harry's (Todd Karns) gravesite who would have died in the childhood sledding accident ("at the age of nine" according to Clarence) because George wasn't there to save him - and Harry would have never grown up to be a war hero, saving all the lives of the men on the naval transport: "Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to save them because you weren't there to save Harry"; George's plea to Clarence to live again ("Get me back!...I want to live again") - his life-affirming and joyful discovery that he's alive (because his mouth is bleeding, he has a deaf ear, and he feels Zuzu's petals in his pocket) and his resounding ecstasy as he runs down the wintry Bedford Falls street yelling "Merry Christmas" at everything in sight (the movie house, the Building and Loan, etc.), and the heartwarming reunion in his home with friends who have paid his rent, the toast by his war-hero brother Harry: ("A toast...to my big brother, George. The richest man in town"), the singing of Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Auld Lang Syne - and the ornament bell ringing on the Christmas tree (signifying Clarence's promotion to an angel with wings), in Frank Capra's dark and ultimately uplifting Christmas classic

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

Jailhouse Rock (1957)

Jane Eyre (1944)

The Gothic scene of darkly moody and tempestuous Edward Rochester (Orson Welles) demanding that prim and intimidated governess Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine) express her love and marry him -- followed by lightning striking a nearby tree and cracking off a large branch, in this faithful adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic romantic story set in Victorian times by director Robert Stevenson

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Jaws (1975)

The ominous, driving, menacing John William's 'da-dum...da-dum' score (of cellos) that brings on shark attacks, especially in the shocking opening scene in which carefree blonde Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) leaves a beach party to go skinny-dipping and is devoured by being jerked underwater - prefaced by the shark's-eye view of the legs of the nude swimmer; the closeup of police chief Martin Brody's (Roy Scheider) face (a simultaneous dolly-in and zoom-out shot) as he watches warily on a crowded beach jammed with vacationers and witnesses the first shark attack, shark-hating, salty and grizzled fisherman-hunter Quint's (Robert Shaw) way of catching a tumultuous room's attention - noisily screeching his fingernails against a blackboard, marine biologist and shark expert Matt Hooper's (Richard Dreyfuss) examination of the remains of Chrissie and his angry pronouncement: "This was no boating accident!"; Mrs. Kintner dressed in funereal clothes and her silent, angry slap of Brody's face; Brody's son Sean copying his father's worried gestures at the table and kissing Brody at his request (Brody: "Give us a kiss," Son: "Why?", Brody: "Because I need it"); the Brody dinner scene with Hooper explaining his obsession with sharks ("I love sharks!"); the shocking sight of the head of fisherman Ben Gardner (Craig Kingsbury) (missing one eye) suddenly appearing in a gaping hole in his sunken boat; Hooper's single-handed crushing of his styrofoam cup after Quint crushes his beer can; the jolting first full view of the shark one hour and twenty minutes into the film as Brody is throwing chum into the ocean ("Slow ahead! I can go slow ahead. Come on down and chum some of this s--t!") -- followed by Brody's dead-panned quip to Quint after jumping back: "You're gonna need a bigger boat"; the memorable drunken evening of story-swapping (about scars) on the boat when WWII veteran Quint descriptively recalls the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the subsequent shark attacks ("the thing about a shark - he's got lifeless eyes"), the monumental battle with the shark from The Orca in the finale with Quint's memorable death scene as he slides into the mouth of the Giant Great White while being bitten in half and stabbing at its eyes; and Brody's killing of the shark by firing at a compressed oxygen tank in its jaws ("Smile, ya son-of-a-bitch"), and the last shot of Brody and Hooper hand-paddling back to shore and their last-lines quip ("I used to hate the water," with the reply "I can't imagine why"), in Steven Spielberg's summer blockbuster

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Jerry Maguire (1996)

Jezebel (1938)

JFK (1991)

The scene of the secret rendezvous of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) with "Mr. X" (Donald Sutherland) and his spellbinding, 15-minute long monologue to encourage Garrison to continue to pursue his investigation of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963; the jigsaw-like assembly and merging of various sources of material (newsreels, photos, black and white, color, 8 mm, 16 mm, etc., minature models, and re-enactments) into one film; and the final third of the film in the courtroom, in which the obsessed and dogged Garrison first debunks the single or "Magic Bullet Theory" with a detailed examination of the Zapruder film, to disprove the idea that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) acted alone, and to disprove the Warren Commission's open and shut case of "three bullets, one assassin" - "the time frame of 5.6 seconds established by the Zapruder film left no possibility of a fourth shot"; he calls the Magic Bullet Theory unlikely or impossible - and junior counselor Arlen Spector's theoretical assertion of the 'Magic Bullet Theory' as "one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people"; also Garrison's walk-through, display of a diagram of the bullet's zig-zag path, and use of a scale model of the Plaza area to continue his arguments, and in an impassioned closing-statement monologue scene - his delivery of a final summation of the case with his damnation of the entire US military-industrial complex, in Oliver Stone's masterpiece about the possibility of a massive conspiracy and coverup (allegedly led by Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones)) surrounding JFK's assassination

Johnny Belinda (1948)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

The reversal of a western's traditional iconography and gender roles - usually black for the color of intolerant 'good guy' vigilantes (led by Mercedes McCambridge as the blood-lusting, mean-spirited, sexually-repressed, bull-dyke rancher Emma Small) who displayed hostility and animosity toward a new casino on the outskirts of town, and white (or vivid and bright reds and blues) for the color of the outcasts (symbolized by Joan Crawford as a mannish, strong-willed, drag-queen-looking, deserted Arizona saloon-owner named Vienna, who often wore masculine clothes: a black shirt, a string tie around her collar, pants, and boots), in Nicholas Ray's off-beat Western and bizarre psychological film, often called a 'lesbian western'

Juarez (1939)

Jurassic Park (1993)

The revolutionary use of special effects (live-action models, miniatures, CGI-generated images) to recreate realistic-looking prehistoric dinosaurs; the scene of the first view of the real-life creatures - a Brachiosaurus eating from a tall treetop - in the island's theme park; the view of a herd of animals racing past the human beings when attacked by the Rex; the rear-view mirror image in which objects are closer than they appear; also the scary build-up to the appearance of the T-REX, with the glasses of water vibrating on the car's dashboard from the dinosaur's ominous footsteps signaling the coming disaster, followed by the sudden dropping of a bloody goat's leg onto the windshield after teenage Lex (Ariana Richards) wonders: "Where's the goat"? - and the first sight of the giant monster chomping on the animal; also the suspenseful stalking of T-Rex around the vehicle with the kids trapped inside, including the monster's giant eyeballing of Lex and then crashing through the vehicle's viewing roof with its giant jaws; and the tense, hide-and-go-seek scene in the restaurant kitchen with a pair of velociraptors stalking the young children while Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) quips that they're probably safe ("Unless they figured out how to open doors...") - with a cut to a close-up of the kitchen door handle turning and the creature pushing the door open; and the exciting finale when the group is 'saved' from becoming dinner for the velociraptors by a voracious T-Rex (roaring as a banner reading "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" flutters down), in Steven Spielberg's big-budget version of Michael Crichton's 1990 best-seller

Key Largo (1948)

The Kid (1921)

The frustrating efforts of the Little Tramp (Charles Chaplin) to place an abandoned child in another mother's carriage, and the fathering scenes of the young orphan Kid (Jackie Coogan) including his ingenious devising of a cradle and feeding-bottle apparatus, and later the breaking/fixing windows scam-business that the boy and 'father' use to make a living; also the devastating scene of their emotional separation when the boy is taken away by the authorities of the County Orphan Asylum and he outstretches his arms from the back of the truck toward the Tramp, and the Tramp's run across the rooftops and jump into the vehicle to hug, kiss and rescue the Kid; the scene of their stay in a boarding house among other outcasts; the charming fantasy sequence when the Tramp sits on a doorway stoop and dreams of a blissful, happier life in Heaven with the slum transformed into Paradise and the poor transformed into white winged angels (one of whom was Chaplin's future wife Lita Grey); and finally, the reunion scene of the Kid with the Tramp and his real mother (Edna Purviance), in director/actor Charlie Chaplin's first self-produced and directed feature film

The Killers (1946)

The Killing (1956)

The Killing Fields (1984)

The staged scene of the airlift in Saigon, and Cambodian translator Dith Pran's (Haing S. Ngor) experiences in a "re-education camp" and his escape from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge through apocalyptic scenes of 'killing fields' massacres and atrocities, most memorably wading through water-filled shallow graves with thousands of skulls and decomposing corpses, ending with a tearful reunion with NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) in the film's finale ("Nothing to forgive, Sidney. Nothing"), in director Roland Joffe's war-drama

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, UK)

The remarkable casting of Alec Guinness as all eight aristocratic D'Ascoyne family relatives, all pictured in the title screen (young and old, and male and female -- a General, a snob, a young photographer, a suffragette, an Admiral, a Reverend, a banker and the Duke) who stand in the way of cold-blooded serial killer and impoverished, embittered commoner Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) - the ninth in line to inherit the Dukedom of Chalfont who must murder all the other rival successors; and vengeful Mazzini's flashback to his earlier days ("In those days, I never had any trouble with the sixth commandment") and his recounting of how his father died in childbirth, while his disinherited mother was killed by a train (and refused a burial at Chalfont), in this morbid and black Ealing comedy by director Robert Hamer