| L (continued) |
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The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
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The visually stunning opening
scene of the pursuit tracking of a deer, the exciting battle scenes of the
hand-to-hand combat during the violent Huron ambush on the British troops
- including scalpings, stabbings, throat slashings (and Cora's shooting
of a charging Indian), and the siege of Ft. William Henry; Nathaniel "Hawkeye"
Poe's (Daniel Day-Lewis) famous romantic instructions and farewell scene
in a cave behind a cascading waterfall with a redcoat colonel's daughter
Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) as they are pursued by a Huron war party: ("...You
stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it
takes, no matter how far, I will find you!..."); the scene of the two
lovers in golden light in the besieged fort; and the chilling, quietly vitriolic
promise of revenge against Cora's father Colonel Edmund Munro (the "Grey
Hair") (Maurice Roëves) by the villainous Huron warrior Magua
(Wes Studi): ("The Grey Hair's children were under Magua's knife. They
escaped...When the Grey Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart. Before he
dies, Magua will put his children under the knife, so the Grey Hair will
know his seed is wiped out forever"); and the dialogueless 15-minute
sequence featuring the climactic battle on a cliff path between Hawkeye
(and his father and brother) and Magua and his band, and Chingachgook's
(Russell Means) final prayer ("Great Spirit, Maker of All Life...")
- in Michael Mann's historical romance epic - based mostly on director George Seitz's 1936 film (starring Randolph Scott) with screenplay by Philip Dunne - of James Fenimore
Cooper's early 19th century novel about the battles between British and
French forces in 1770's America |
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The Last Picture Show (1971)
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Cinematographer Robert Surtees' magnificent black-and-white
cinematography, the sex-capades of co-captains of the football team Duane
Jackson (Jeff Bridges) and Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) as they pondered
their uncertain futures, and the town's ravishingly beautiful, calculating,
fortune-hunting Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), the character of Sonny's
mentally retarded brother Billy (Sam Bottoms, Timothy's real-life brother),
Sonny's affair with the coach's wife Ruth Popper (Oscar-winning Cloris
Leachman), the reading of a Keats poem by an English teacher (John Hillerman)
("Beauty is truth, Truth Beauty"), the scene of the teenaged
skinny-dipping indoor pool party with neophyte Jacy's strip-tease on the
diving board, the fishing scene with ex-cowboy Sam 'The Lion' (Oscar-winning
Ben Johnson) in which he reminisces about a girl he swam nude with one
day ("...she wanted to swim the horses across this tank. Kind of
a crazy thing to do, but we done it anyway. She bet me a silver dollar
she could beat me across. She did. This old horse I was ridin' didn't
want to take the water. But she was always lookin' for somethin' to do
like that. Somethin' wild. I'll bet she's still got that silver dollar"),
the cascade of misfortunes that follow in the wake of Sam's death (the
closing of the local movie house and the pool hall, the molestation of
a little girl), the pre-arranged motel rendezvous and sexual encounter
between Duane and Jacy, the scene of Duane and Sonny attending the 'last
picture show' in town - Howard Hawks' western Red
River (1948), Duane being sent to fight in the Korean War, the
senseless death of Billy -- hit by a truck -- and Sonny's anguished cry,
"He was sweepin', ya sons of bitches. He was sweepin'!", before
covering Billy's body with his letter jacket, and Ruth's tirade at Sonny
for abandoning her when he returns to her after Billy's death ("What
am I doing apologizin' to you? Why am I always apologizin' to you, ya
little bastard?...") before empathically realizing Sonny's pain ("Never
you mind, honey, never you mind..."), in Peter Bogdanovich's best
film about life in a small Texas town in the early 1950s |
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Last Tango in Paris (1972)
|
The scene of middle-aged American expatriate Paul's (Oscar-nominated
Marlon Brando) anguished, out-of-control confessional (mostly ad-libbed)
monologue next to his dead wife in their bedroom after she has committed
suicide ("...For five years, I was more a guest in this f--king flophouse
than a husband..."), the controversial and raw sexual scenes (conducted
anonymously without names, and becoming increasingly more vile, empty
and unromantic) between the widower Paul and 20 year-old Parisian Jeanne
(Maria Schneider) - including her passive acquiescence to various sexual
encounters involving rape and forced sodomy (with an application of butter:
"Get the butter") in an empty apartment; also, the scene of
Paul's revelation of his past and his unhappy childhood to Jeanne; and
the shocking finale when Jeanne semi-accidentally shoots Paul in the stomach
with a gun (and his simple act of removing his chewing gum from his mouth)
- and her glazed, wide-eyed mantra ("He was going to rape me...I
didn't know his name...he was going to rape me...") as Paul dies
in a fetal position on a balcony, in Bernardo Bertolucci's
landmark and controversial erotic film |
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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
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The scene of Jesus Christ's (Willem
Dafoe) throwing the moneylenders out of the temple; also, the controversial
"last temptation" visionary sequence (Christ on the cross is tempted
by Satan with visions of a "normal" earthly life with the prostitute
Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey), including sex, marriage, and children);
and the crucifixion scene - and the moment when the cross is raised into
an upright position (with the camera mounted upon it) - combined with Peter
Gabriel's powerful musical score, in Martin Scorsese's unorthodox and profound
film adapted from the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis |
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The Last Unicorn (1982, US/UK)
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The opening speech by a hunter
to his son: ("...why do the leaves never fall here? Or the snow? Why
is it always spring here? I tell you there is one unicorn left in the world,
and as long as it lives in this forest we'll find no game to hunt here"),
the playful, rhyming butterfly (voice of Robert Klein), the clownish but
heroic character of the aspiring magician Schmendrick (voice of Alan Arkin),
the speech by Mommy Fortuna (voice of Angela Lansbury) to a captive Unicorn
(voice of Mia Farrow) about having captured a dangerous harpy: ("Oh,
she'll kill me one day or another. But she will remember forever that I
caught her, and I held her prisoner. So there's my immortality, eh?"),
middle-aged and sharp-tongued Molly Grue's (voice of Tammy Grimes) powerful
speech castigating the Unicorn: ("...where were you twenty years ago?
Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent
young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me
now, when I am this!") and her anger at turning the Unicorn
into the human girl Amalthea, and Amalthea's reaction to her mortality:
("I can feel this body DYING all around me!"), the dangerously
obsessive character of King Haggard (voice of Christopher Lee) and his adopted
son Prince Lir (voice of Jeff Bridges), who awkwardly courts Amalthea and
then sacrifices his life to save her, the destruction of Haggard's castle
by hundreds of Unicorns freed from the sea, and the Unicorn's bittersweet
thanks to Schmendrick: ("I am a little afraid to go home. I have been
mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am no longer like the others,
for not unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I now I do. I regret...Unicorns
are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me with that joy-save one.
And I thank you for that part, too"), in Rankin-Bass' animated film
based on Peter Beagle's 1968 novel of the same name that was one of the
most emotionally frank, sophisticated and mature G-rated cartoon ever made |
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Laura (1944)
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The haunting and atmospheric theme song by David Raksin;
the opening scene's pan and narration ("I shall never forget the
weekend Laura died..."), and the first view of celebrated, acidic-witted
columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) typing his notes in his bathtub;
the obsessive actions in Laura's Manhattan apartment of homicide police
detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) - who rummages through Laura's
bedroom drawers and lingerie, inhales her perfume, and peers into her
mirrored closets and then stares at the haunting, domineering oil portrait
of Laura and falls in love with the dead woman in the portrait; the memorable
snowstorm scene when Lydecker sees Laura with a noted painter in her bedroom
window, and writes a scathing column assassinating his character out of
spite and jealously; and the scene of Laura's loyal "domestic"
maid Bessie Clary (Dorothy Adams) castigating McPherson for reading Laura's
private letters and diary ("You've been readin' 'em, pawin' over
them. It's a shame in the face of the dead. That's what it is. It's a
shame!") and her statement of adoration for Laura ("She was
a real, fine lady..."); also Lydecker's incisive description of McPherson's
obsession over the murdered woman ("...It's a wonder you don't come
here like a suitor with roses and a box of candy...I don't think I ever
had a patient who ever fell in love with a corpse"); the surprising
scene when Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) suddenly walks into her apartment
- a murdered woman who mysteriously appears over half way into the film
- and the stunned look of McPherson; and Lydecker's stumbling reaction
to seeing Laura alive; and the tough interrogation
scene in which McPherson grills Laura about what she has been holding
back ("Let's have it"); and the final scene of Lydecker's radio broadcast
as he threatens to kill Laura with a shotgun blast - and the climactic
moment shortly after when Lydecker is mortally wounded in an exchange
of gunfire with the police, and his last words to Laura: "Good-bye,
Laura. Good-bye, my love" accompanied by an image of the shotgun-damaged
grandfather clock, in Otto Preminger's haunting and romantic film noir |
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The Lavender Hill Mob (1951, UK)
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The pursuit of English schoolgirls to retrieve
six golden miniature Eiffel Towers, the screen debut of Audrey Hepburn as
a schoolgirl, and the concluding revelation that prim bank clerk Henry Holland
(Alec Guinness) is handcuffed during the telling of the flashbacked story,
in Charles Crichton's Ealing Studios' caper comedy |
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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
|
The visual beauty and cinematography
of the desert vistas, the opening sequence with its flashback, British adventurer
T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) snuffing out a match with his fingertips,
and then shortly afterwards, in profile, blowing out another match that
is burning close to his fingertips - as the scene cuts to a long-shot view
of the burning hot Arabian desert horizon at sunrise, the image of a blue-eyed,
white-robed Lawrence on a camel, the famous entrance scene that begins with
the slow and majestic appearance of Arab chieftain Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif)
from a pinpoint in the desert's distance in the shimmering, mirage-like
heat as he approaches a well and then shoots Tafas for drinking, the difficult
crossing of the Nefud desert and Lawrence's turning back to rescue a fallen
friend Gasim, the exciting defeat of the Turks at Aqaba, the entrance of
Lawrence and his Arab guide into the officers' bar in Cairo, and the bloody
ambush attack on a Turkish train in the Hejaz desert led by the Messianic-like
Lawrence and his exultant victory dance on top of the train, in David Lean's
extravagant Best Picture-winning epic |
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A League of Their Own (1992)
|
The history-based portrayal of
the All-American Girls Baseball League Baseball team with Geena Davis (as
catcher Dottie Hinson), Rosie O'Donnell (as 3rd base player Doris Murphy)
and Madonna (as center-fielder All-The-Way-Mae Mordabito) as some of the
players; and the scene of boozing manager Jimmy Dugan's (Tom Hanks) tirade
at his female right-fielder Evelyn Gardner (Bitty Schram) that reduces her
to tears: ("Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There's
no crying! There's no crying in baseball! Rogers Hornsby was my manager,
and he called me a talking pile of pigs--t, and that was when my parents
drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game! And did I
cry? No! No! And do you know why?... Because there's no crying in baseball!"),
and the end credits sequence showing the real, now-elderly female baseball
players playing at Cooperstown, in female director Penny Marshall's comedy/melodrama |
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Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
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The scenes of the neurotically-possessive,
psycho-insanely-jealous, and darkly alluring femme fatale Ellen Berent/Harland
(Oscar-nominated Gene Tierney) choreographing her own fall down the stairs
(by catching her shoe under the rug) to purposely abort her unwanted child,
and the scary scene of her calmly letting her husband's younger paraplegic
brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) tire and drown in the lake as she watched
from a rowboat, in John Stahl's brilliantly saturated, Technicolored melodramatic
noir |
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Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
|
A critically-acclaimed film, shot on Super 16 film about
a romantically-involved tragic couple: a failed, out-of-control Hollywood
screenwriter and self-destructive, doomed alcoholic named Ben Sanderson
(Oscar-winning Nicolas Cage) with a needy street-walking Las Vegas prostitute
Sera (Oscar-nominated Elisabeth Shue) who was degraded by her profession
with abusive Latvian pimp Yuri (Julian Sands); Ben's plan is to drink
himself to death over a five-week period in Las Vegas while enjoying the
company of the high-class hooker; in their first encounter in a hotel
room during oral sex, Ben suffers impotence (due to his drinking) although
that affords them time to talk and develop a relationship; later in a
scene by a motel pool (to Don Henley's singing of "Come Rain or Come
Shine"), Sera straddles Ben's lap, removes the top of her one-piece
black swimsuit, and enticingly nuzzles a bottle between her breasts and
then pours alcohol over them for him to enjoy; also the scene of a brutal
gang rape by a group of drunken football jocks after which she washed
away the blood and memory in the shower; by film's end in a touching final
scene, Ben was dying in his hotel room, where she asks: "Do you want
my help?" and then coaxes and readies him for a last loving act of
intercourse before he expires, in Mike Figgis' tragic love story |
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The Left Handed Gun (1958)
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The Method-influenced portrayal
by Paul Newman of legendary outlaw Billy the Kid (aka William Bonney) as
an anguished, misfit, unstable, simple-minded, and suicidal juvenile delinquent
- a James Dean-like anti-hero character, and the scene of his affecting
death after being shot by lawman Pat Garrett (John Dehner) - he holds out
his left hand (although in real-life, he was right-handed) to show he was
unarmed, in director Arthur Penn's revisionist autobiographical film (his
debut film) based on the teleplay The Death of Billy the Kid by Gore
Vidal |
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Lethal Weapon (1987)
|
The shootout in the Christmas tree lot, the ingenious
mismatched partnership of psychotic, borderline alcoholic, depressed and
self-destructive Vietnam vet/LA cop Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) with devoted
family man/detective Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) (known for saying repeatedly:
"I'm too old for this sh-t"); the dramatic scenes of Riggs'
unconventional strategy of handcuffing himself to another suicidal man
high atop a building and convincing him to jump - with him, and his playing
of Russian roulette with a gun jammed down his throat and weeping over
a picture of his murdered wife, in Richard Donner's action-comedy, 'buddy
cop' film - the superior first film of many installments (also 1989, 1992,
and 1998) |
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The Letter (1940)
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The shocking opening murder scene
on the porch as Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) pumps bullets into a man's
body, the emotional scene of Leslie's confession to her lawyer Howard Joyce
(James Stephenson) of the motives for the murder, the dramatic re-claiming
of the blackmail letter scene with Mrs. Hammond's (Gale Sondergaard) dramatic
entrance through a jangling bead curtain, the scene of Leslie's confession
to her husband Robert (Herbert Marshall) that she still loves the man she
killed, and the final retribution scene as Leslie walks deliberately into
the dark garden toward her murderer, in director William Wyler's great noirish
melodrama |
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Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
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The unrequited love and sorrow
of Lisa (Joan Fontaine) - an "unknown woman," revealed in a letter; the
scene in which as a shy, fourteen year old girl, Lisa stands in fright behind
a glass door, holding it open for the pianist she has fallen in love with,
Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan); the scene on the staircase in which Lisa looks
down and witnesses Stefan's return home in the early morning hours with
his latest woman-of-the-evening; Lisa's one night of romantic bliss with
Stefan including his purchase of a single white rose for her, the sequence
at the Viennese fairgrounds - their cyclorama ride, dancing in a deserted
dance-hall, her kneeling at the keyboard as he plays, and her return up
the stairs to his apartment; their goodbye at the train station when Stefan
promises to be gone only two weeks; also the sequence in which Lisa leaves
her husband and returns with a bouquet of white roses to offer herself to
her pianist love; and the touching scene years later of Stefan looking back
and remembering the enamoured young girl shyly holding the door open for
him, in director Max Ophuls' fine romantic melodrama |
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A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
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The flashback review of Lora
May Hollingsway's (Linda Darnell) marriage to husband Porter (Paul Douglas),
in Joseph L. Mankiewicz' marriage drama |
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Libeled Lady (1936)
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After the MGM lion and before
the opening credits - the medium shot of the four stars (Harlow, Powell,
Loy, and Tracy) walking arm in arm toward the camera and into a wind; in the film's plot, the New York Evening Star's managing editor Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) - after his paper prints a libelous, false story about sophisticated, wealthy heiress Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) that results in a $5 million libel lawsuit - cooks up a scheme in which he re-hires ex-employee ladies man Bill Chandler (William Powell) to
temporarily marry (in name only without consummation) his own wisecracking, long-suffering bride-to-be divorcee/girlfriend Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow) - promising her a quickie Reno divorce afterwards, so meanwhile Chandler can seduce and then frame or trap Connie in a compromising situation to force her to drop the lawsuit; in the clever and fast-paced script, memorable scenes include the very long
"bride kisses the best man" congratulatory kiss sequence at the city magistrate wedding of Chandler and Gladys (Justice of the Peace: "Well, I hope you'll be very happy and don't forget to invite me to your silver anniversary." Gladys: "It'll have to be within the next six weeks!"), and the fishing scenes: first, inept Chandler receiving fly-fishing lessons in his hotel room, and then the outdoor scene of inept, nearly-drowned Chandler impressing Connie's angler father (Walter Connolly) by catching an elusive walleye trout; also the plot twist when Bill becomes smitten by Connie and then changes his strategy to sweet-talking her to drop the suit and she asks to marry him; and the multiple confusions in the rushed concluding scene in the hotel room: Bill's marriage to Connie believing that his 'wife' Gladys' previous Yucatan divorce was illegal, countered by Gladys claiming she had a second confirming divorce in Reno, and Bill and Warren's brief fisticuffs while the two ladies reveal their real allegiances - and the ending line of Mr. Allenbury after he is filled in on the complications, which he screams exasperatingly: "Quiet, will you please be quiet!", in director Jack Conway's funny screwball comedy |
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Life is Beautiful (1997) (aka La Vita è Bella)
|
The life-saving, imaginative illusion and play-acting
that clowning, child-like hotel waiter Guido (Oscar-winning Roberto Benigni)
gives his young son Giosue (Giorgio Cantarini) to shield him from the
ugly horrors of a Nazi concentration camp where they are interned - with
the fiction that the first prize in the game they're playing is a brand-new
armored tank; and Guido's shocking death scene after he was caught by
a soldier during an escape and deliberately clownishly marched to his
execution by machine-gun fire (offscreen) when he realized his son (hidden
in a box) was watching, and the joyous scene in which Giosue was reunited
with his mother Dora (Nicoletta Braschi, Benigni's real-life wife) after
American troops liberated the camp, thinking he'd won the "game",
in actor/director Roberto Benigni's tragi-comedy - a Best Foreign Language
Film winner |
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Lifeboat (1944)
|
The opening scene of the sinking
of an Allied passenger freighter by a Nazi U-boat's torpedo, the black steward's
moving recitation of the 23rd Psalm, the revelation that one of the lifeboat's
passengers is the Nazi U-boat captain (Walter Slezak), rich fashion journalist
Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) putting her initials in lipstick on Kovac's
(John Hodiak) chest and using her diamond bracelet for fish bait, the bombardment
and sinking of the enemy boat, Connie's worry about her appearance after
seeing on the horizon the ship that will rescue her and her companions,
and the ambiguous ending when they are forced to decide what to do with
the young German sailor/survivor, in director Alfred Hitchcock's tense ensemble
adventure drama |
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Lili (1953)
|
Sixteen year-old carnival waitress Lili (Leslie
Caron) talking and singing to the puppets as if they were real people, and
the famous "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" scene, in Charles Waters' romantic drama |
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Lilies of the Field (1963)
|
The scenes of handyman/carpenter and ex-GI Homer Smith
(Oscar-winning Sidney Poitier) helping German nuns to build a chapel, and his confrontations with
the character of the stern and harsh but good-hearted Mother Superior
(Lilia Skala), and the last scene when Homer
teaches English to the German nuns by way of the spiritual song "Amen" (they sing the refrain as he leads), and then with his work completed and the church built - he leaves (while still singing), packs his station wagon and drives off quietly into the night (with "Amen" as "The End"),
in director Ralph Nelson's drama - adapted by James Poe from a novel by
William E. Barrett |
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The Lion in Winter (1968)
|
The dramatic dialogue between prison-bound, iron-willed
Eleanor of Aquitaine (Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn) and her husband
King Henry II (Oscar-nominated Peter O'Toole) on Christmas Eve in 1183
in his lived-in, drafty castle, over which of their three sons (Richard
- Anthony Hopkins in his film debut, Geoffrey - John Castle, and young
John - Nigel Terry) should inherit the throne; and Eleanor's annoyed,
despairing lecture to her sons about the origins of war -- and peace:
("...It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How clear we make it. Oh, my
piglets, we are the origins of war -- not history's forces, nor the times,
nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas,
nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed
wars"); the powerful confrontational scene between Henry and wily
21 year-old King of France Philip (Timothy Dalton in his screen debut)
that revealed Richard's homosexual attraction to Philip and his sexual
manipulation of the eldest Prince; also the film's best line of dialogue
by Eleanor after Henry flees: "What family doesn't have its ups and
downs?"; and the joyous, crowdpleasing ending in which Henry bids
goodbye to Eleanor when she returns to her prison keep by boat and promises
her return at Easter: (Henry: "You know? I hope we NEVER die!"
Eleanor: "So do I!" Henry: "Do you think there's any chance
of it?"), in director Anthony Harvey's literate Best Picture nominee
and costume/period drama of ruthless politicial and sexual intrigue, treason,
incest, and patricide
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Little Big Man (1970)
|
The character of 121 year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman
with Terry Miles' incredible makeup) - the only white survivor of Custer's
Last Stand in 1876 at Little Big Horn - who in fancifully-told flashback
was raised by the Cheyenne Indians and wise tribal chief Old Lodge Skins
(Oscar-nominated Chief Dan George) and later as a teenager by puritanical
Reverend Silas Pendrake (Thayer David) and his sex-obsessed young wife
(Faye Dunaway), and the recreation of insane Gen. George Armstrong Custer's
(Richard Mulligan) 1868 mid-winter surprise attack and brutal massacre
of Black Kettle's Cheyenne encampment (of mostly women and children) on
Indian lands at Washita River (shot silently through a telephoto lens)
with the additional slaughter of Indian horses, in Arthur Penn's revisionist,
Forrest Gump-like western epic based upon Thomas Berger's best-selling
novel |
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