| B (continued) |
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Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
|
The emotional home-coming scene
in which father Mr. Kovic (Raymond J. Barry) hugs his newly paralyzed, wheel-chair
bound Vietnam veteran son Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise) - a former star wrestler
with shattered illusions and ideals; the blunt dialogue that Kovic screams
at his mother (Caroline Kava) about his biggest casualty or loss ("Penis!
Big fat fucking erect penis, ma!"); also the scene of the July 4th
parade in which Kovic is both cheered and jeered; and the scene of anti-war
veterans, including political activist and paraplegic Kovic, attempting
to storm and disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention, in Oliver
Stone's anti-war message film |
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Born Yesterday (1950)
|
The famous scene of unrefined "dumb blonde" and ex-chorus
girl mistress Billie Dawn (Judy Holliday) playing a gin rummy game with
corrupt and uncouth millionaire junkyard tycoon Harry Brock (Broderick
Crawford); the sound of Billie's unabashedly vulgar, shrill, stupid-sounding,
Betty Boop-like voice; Billie's ignorance about the difference between
a peninsula and penicillin, but her increased intelligence after being
tutored by Paul Varall (William Holden) - i.e., Harry Brock: "Shut
up! You ain't gonna be tellin' nobody nothin' pretty soon!" Billie
Dawn: "DOUBLE NEGATIVE! Right?" Paul Verrall: "Right!";
and her retort to Harry: "Would you do me a favor, Harry?...Drop
dead!"; and the scene when she finally stands up to Harry ("You're
just not couth...You don't own me!...Big Fascist!"); also the film's final
line spoken by Billie to a police officer about her recent marriage to
Paul: "We'll make it. It's a clear case of predestination."
Officer: "Pre--- what?" Billie: "Look it up", in George
Cukor's great comedy |
|
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Bowling for Columbine (2002)
|
The famed scenes of activist documentarian
Michael Moore interviewing with pro-gun advocates, including a bizarre James
Nichols and members of the Michigan Militia (who counted Terry Nichols and
Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma bombings as members); also, the scene about
a Michigan bank that offers new customers a rifle for opening a specific
type of account, and actor/NRA chairman Charlton Heston at his home, who
expressed his pro-gun position only a few weeks after the Columbine (Littleton,
Colorado) HS shooting in April, 1999 |
|
| A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) |
The evocative opening of the characters
of Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy looking for cloud shapes in the sky, and
Charlie's resigned response to Linus' extravagant visions: "Well, I
was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie... but I changed my mind";
Charlie's repeated failures trying to fly a kite, win a baseball game, and
kick a football teed up by Lucy (and Lucy's demonstration of his faults
afterwards on a slide projector), and Charlie's final victory at his school
spelling bee (after singing the spelling song "I Before E (Except After
C)" with Linus and Snoopy playing a jaw harp; Snoopy's two fantasies
of an ace pilot fighting the Red Baron with his doghouse transformed into
a Sopwith Camel, and as a hard-nosed hockey player; Charlie's embarrassing
failure to win the National Spelling Bee by mis-spelling "beagle"
(Snoopy's breed), and the powerfully poignant ending sequence that follows,
beginning with Linus' exquisite speech to a morose, bedridden, and depressed
Charlie Brown after so many failures: "...I suppose you feel you let
everyone down, and you made a fool out of yourself and everything. (pauses
before leaving) But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?...The world
didn't come to an end"; and the scene of a thoughtful Charlie walking
through town watching life go on as before, and his futile attempt to kick
the football out of Lucy's hands for the umpteenth time while thinking that
she was unaware of his presence, and her warm greeting as he laid on the
ground: "Welcome home, Charlie Brown!" - with Rod McKuen's soulful
"A Boy Named Charlie Brown": ("He's just a kid next door,
perhaps a little more / A boy named Charlie Brown"), in the first film
starring the Peanuts characters |
|
|
The Boy on a Dolphin (1957)
|
The quintessential image of sexy,
dripping wet, well-endowed Greek sponge diver Phaedra (Sophia Loren in her
American film debut) in a diving sequence - emerging from the water, in
director Jean Negulesco's adventure drama |
|
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Boys Don't Cry (1999)
|
With an Oscar-winning performance by Hilary Swank as real-life
20-year old small-town Nebraska girl/boy Teena Brandon (or Brandon Teena),
who masqueraded as a boy when trapped in a girl's body while suffering
an identity crisis/confusion and awaiting a sex-change operation; with
its scene of her confession of her true sexual identity to teenaged, white-trash
factory worker and love interest Lana Tisdel (Chloe Sevigny) and their
heartbreaking covert lesbian relationship and first sexual encounter,
in Kimberly Peirce's shocking debut film |
|
|
Boys Town (1938)
|
The memorable scene in which Father Edward
J. Flanagan (Oscar-winning Spencer Tracy) pulls up rebellious, wise-guy
punk teen Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney) by the collar and introduces himself:
"I'm Father Flanagan...You're coming with me to Boys Town", and further scenes of his discussions with Whitey (i.e., "Are you going to see these boys turned out into the streets, into the alleys, into reformatories, and worse, lose their home?"), in
director Norman Taurog's biographical drama |
|
|
Boyz n The Hood (1991)
|
The scene of divorced, strict and overbearing
father Jason 'Furious' Styles (Laurence Fishburne) lecturing his son Tre
(Cuba Gooding, Jr.) about how any punk kid can have sex: ("Any fool
with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his children"),
and the climactic scene in which Darin 'Doughboy' Baker (rap star Ice Cube)
takes his half-brother Ricky's (Morris Chestnut) dead body home to their
mother (Tyra Ferrell), in Oscar-nominated John Singleton's drama about hoods
growing up in South Central LA |
|
|
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
|
The most memorable image of Count
Dracula's (Gary Oldman) orgasmic expression when he sees London real estate
agent Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) cut himself and draw blood while shaving
- and afterwards the Count's licking of the blood off the sharp razor; the
special-effects scenes of Dracula transforming into a beastly werewolf and
then into a pack of rats that scurry away across the floor, and the scene
of the Count's pursuit of Harker's bride-to-be Mina - believing her to be
his own long-lost reincarnated beloved bride, Elisabeta (Winona Ryder),
at a London exhibition of the new art of movies, in Francis Ford Coppola's
faithful adaptation of the Transylvanian Dracula vampire tale |
|
|
Braveheart (1995)
|
The courtship, marriage, and consummation
of love (in the moonlight) between future Scottish freedom-fighter William
Wallace (Mel Gibson) and Murron (Catherine McCormack), the legendary face-painted
Scottish hero's fight against the English in the awesome battle of Stirling
Bridge after he has rallied his men by riding among them; and his cry of
"Freedom" during a brutal execution scene in which he is partially
hung, racked, disemboweled, and beheaded (offscreen) - while reuniting with
his already-murdered wife seen walking in the crowd, in Mel Gibson's own
Best Picture-winning warrior epic |
|
|
Brazil (1985)
|
The inventive opening scene ("Somewhere
in the 20th Century") envisioning the stylized world of an alternative future
with ductworks, anti-terrorists falsely accusing the Buttle family due to
a dead beetle causing a print-out to read Buttle instead of Tuttle (Robert
De Niro), technological-automation gone wacky and oppressive bureaucratic
muddling in the Ministry of Information, a fantasizing, middle-management
worker in the dull bureaucracy Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) with recurring
dreams of soaring with metal mechanical wings toward a mysterious girl-savior
Jill Layton (Kim Greist) in the clouds and in an alley - battling baby-faced
mutants and a giant Samurai Warrior comprised of bureaucratic paraphernalia;
the grotesque plastic surgery of Sam's narcissistic socialite mother Ida
(Katherine Helmond); the scene of the terrorist bombing of a high-class
restaurant as patrons continue to consume their meals; and Sam's arrest
and his strapped confinement in a torture chair within a domed building
in the downbeat conclusion (with his fantasizing that he was being rescued
by commandos led by Tuttle), in Terry Gilliam's futuristic fantasy |
|
|
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
|
A spirited and radiant New York
call girl Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) wearing a sculpted evening gown
and standing outside the locked Tiffany's jewelry store in the film's opening
scene; the scene of Holly's advice about how to overcome the fearful and
horrible 'mean reds': "Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what
you're afraid of...Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good
is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away";
also memorable for the simple scene of her strumming a guitar and singing
Henry Mancini's Oscar-winning "Moon River" on a fire escape landing, and
the film's final scene in an alleyway during a downpour when Holly finds
her abandoned nameless Cat and kisses neighbor writer and 'kept'
man Paul Varjak (George Peppard) - with the cat squeezed in-between them
and her last line: "Cat! Cat! Oh, Cat... ohh...", in Blake Edwards'
60s comedy |
|
|
The Breakfast Club (1985)
|
The honest, realistic conversations between five teenaged
high-school students from diverse backgrounds: athletic wrestling jock
Andrew 'Andy' Clark (Emilio Estevez), brainy nerd Brian Ralph Johnson (Anthony Michael
Hall), arrogant rebel and James Dean-like loner John Bender (Judd Nelson),
popular red-headed WASP "princess" Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald)
and outcast recluse and insecure neurotic Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy)
- all serving all-day Saturday detention time in the school's library,
placed there by their Shermer (IL) High School principal, Richard Vernon
(Paul Gleason) and each told to write an essay reflecting on who they
think they are and what they did wrong, the escapist dancing to break
the boredom by the teens; the poignant scene of Andy's soliloquy-description
of the reason for his detention (his brutal abuse-humiliation of a nerdy
boy in order to please his father: "I wanted him to think I was cool");
also the
letter written by Brian to Vernon and the scene of Allison using her dandruff to provide snow for a drawing
she makes; the romance that blossoms between Claire and John culminating
in a passionate kiss and her giving him one of her earrings to wear, and John's triumphant fist pump (basking
in the love of Claire) as Simple Minds' anthemic 1980's song "Don't
You (Forget About Me)" plays at the film's end, in John Hughes' quintessential, dialogue-rich
teen comedy |
|
|
Breathless (1960) (aka A Bout de Souffle)
|
The image of young thug and car thief Michel Poiccard/Laszlo
Kovacs (Jean-Paul Belmondo) pausing outside of a movie theatre and looking
dreamily in a mirror, as he gazes at a poster for the film The Harder
They Fall with a picture of star idol Humphrey Bogart - and his simple
reverent whisper of "Bogie" as he mimes his hero, blows out
wispy smoke from his cigarette, and traces his thumb over both closed
lips; Michel's musing: "So I'm a son of a bitch"; the use of
breakthrough jump cuts in the aimless "Why are you unhappy?"
discussion between Michel and flighty American girlfriend Patricia Franchini
(Jean Seberg) while driving a stolen convertible through Paris (with the
camera focusing from behind on her for nearly the entire sequence), and
the scene of Patricia telling journalist Van Doude (Himself) in English:
"I don't know if I'm unhappy because I'm not free, or I'm not free
because I'm unhappy", the over 20-minute scene of Patricia returning
to her apartment to find Michel in her bed where they talk, flirt, smoke,
fight, and make love - often with wailing sirens heard through the open
window and drowning out the character’s dialogue; and the ending
when a surprised Michel is gunned down by the police after Patricia betrays
his whereabouts and he utters these last icy words to her: "Makes me want to puke" (in some versions, he calls her a 'real scumbag') - she asks a policeman: "What did he say?", and is told: "He said you make him want to puke"; she stares directly at the camera and responds by imitating Michel, asking impassively: "What's that mean, puke?", as she runs her thumb across her upper lower lip; she then abruptly turns around, to end French director Jean-Luc
Godard's landmark New Wave film |
|
|
Brian's Song (1971)
|
The scene in which Gale Sayers (Billy Dee
Williams) accepts a courage award and dedicates it to his cancer-stricken
Chicago Bears teammate Brian Piccolo (James Caan): "I love Brian Piccolo.
And I'd like all of you to love him, too. And tonight when you hit your
knees, please ask God to love him", in this made-for-TV movie |
|
|
The Bribe (1949)
|
The voice-over narration of chain-smoking
Federal agent Rigby (Robert Taylor) during flashbacks, some of which appear
on his rain-streaked, hotel room window; the scene of the proposed death
of Rigby during a fishing trip - although young native guide Emilio Gomez
(Tito Renaldo) is killed instead in shark-infested waters; the romantic
scene on a beach after a moonlight swim between Rigby and femme fatale
nightclub torch singer Elizabeth Hintten (Ava Gardner), and the spectacular
finale - a shootout between racketeer-smuggling leader and playboy Carwood
(Vincent Price) and Rigby during a fiesta fireworks celebration in which
Rigby guns Carwood down in self-defense, in Robert Z. Leonard's crime noir
|
|
|
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
|
The scene of the first appearance
of the Monster (Boris Karloff) chest-deep in water when he emerges from
the dark shadows under the burnt-down windmill, the scene of the great mad
scientist Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) coercing Dr. Henry Frankenstein
(Colin Clive) into creating an artificial bride for the Monster, the unveiling
of the bell-jars with six small homunculi (the Queen, the King, the Archbishop,
the Devil, a Ballerina and a Mermaid), the Monster's pursuit by townspeople
through surrealistic woods and settings, the Monster's attraction to the
blind hermit's (O. P. Heggie) refuge when he hears the hermit playing a
violin, the tremendous pathos of Karloff's characterization of the Monster
(with facial expressions, gutteral responses, and words of dialogue), the
Monster's scene with Pretorius in the crypt/mausoleum, the classic scene
of the creation/"birth" of the Bride (Elsa Lanchester) with a wild electrified
hairdo and jerky twitching movements, and the great movie moment of the
Monster meeting his bride when she lets go with a piercing shriek of rejection
-- and the Monster despairs ("She hate me, like others"), in James
Whales' superior sequel to his 1931 classic |
|
|
The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957)
|
The opening scene of the British
soldiers' arrogant march into the sweltering jungle prison camp to the whistling
tune of the "Colonel Bogey March," the battle to a standoff of the two stubborn
wills of indomitable British Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Japanese
Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the late night supper scene in which camp
commandant Saito invites Nicholson into his quarters and offers a compromise,
the triumphant scene of Nicholson's release and his unsteady walk on his
own rubbery legs - winning his freedom from the hot torture oven as a mass
rush of troops congratulates him; and the suspenseful finale including Nicholson's
discovery of dynamite wires, the unbearable tension as the Japanese troop
train is heard approaching the bridge and the commandos prepare to blow
up the bridge, Nicholson's attempt to save his bridge and the utterance
of his moral dilemma ("What have I done?"), his falling on the dynamite
plunger and the climactic destruction of the railroad bridge and train,
in David Lean's Best Picture-winning war epic |
|
|
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
|
The rainy afternoon scene of married Iowa
housewife Francesca Johnson's (Meryl Streep) fateful, cross-roads decision
to remain with her husband (although she partially turns the doorknob) instead
of jumping out of her truck at a stoplight and joining lover-National
Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood) after their
short affair, in actor/director Clint Eastwood's tearjerking romantic drama |
|
|
Brief Encounter (1946)
|
The heartbreaking circumstances
of two doomed, ill-fated lovers: middle-class housewife Laura (Celia Johnson)
and doctor Alec (Trevor Howard) in their weekly meetings, their first encounter
at Milford Junction train station when he removes engine soot from her eye,
the soundtrack of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, the scene
after a boatride when they confess their love to each other but Laura cautions:
"We mustn't behave like this...", Laura's fantasy - viewed in the train
window - of being with Alex in romantic settings, their attempt at a tryst
to consummate their affair, Alec's profession of love ("I love you,
Laura. I shall love you always until the end of my life"), and the
scene of their final day together when they are interrupted by a friend
during their last, painful, repressed goodbye (both at the start and end
of the film) as Alec gently places his hand on her shoulder and disappears
forever (on a medical journey to Africa) and Laura's near suicide attempt,
in one of the greatest tearjerker films of all time by young director David
Lean |
|
|
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
|
The opening scene of the daughter of vicious, vengeful
and wealthy Mexican landowner El Jefe (Emilio Fernandez) being stripped
and having her arm broken to divulge who impregnated her; the tale of
the haunting, violent quest of penniless, hustling American bar-room pianist
Bennie (Warren Oates) to find the 'head' of Alfredo Garcia (already dead
and buried!) for the $1 million bounty; the road trip with prostitute/girlfriend
Elita (Isela Vega) who was Alfredo's girlfriend, including their quiet
and tender picnic scene off the road under a tree as they discuss their
future and possible marriage; the macabre scenes in his dusty car when
Bennie intimately befriends, converses and asks questions of the decapitated
and decomposing head of Alfredo "Al" Garcia in a blood-stained
burlap bag as flies buzz around it; the scene of Bennie placing Alfredo's
head under the shower in a moment that references an earlier scene with
Elita; and Bennie's final bloody confrontation with El Jefe and his hacienda
guards when he returns the head for the prize, in Sam Peckinpah's under-rated
classic western that ends with the image of the smoking barrel of a gun |
|
|
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
|
The comedic antics and "misadventures"
between shy paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) and scatter-brained,
fast-talking eccentric heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) - including
David's opening golf game with Mr. Peabody continuously interrupted by her
playing his golf ball and driving away in his battered car, Susan's olive
game, the scene of David's torn tuxedo and her ripped evening dress including
their rapid exit from a supper club as he walks in unison close behind her,
covers her posterior and saves her reputation; David's confessional scene
to Susan: "I'm strangely drawn toward you..." after which he sprawls face-first
onto the ground; pet leopard Baby's chicken coop meal; fluffy negligee-wearing
David's exclamation in front of Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson) as he jumps
into the air: "Because I just went gay all of a sudden"; the
long search in the woods for Baby with a butterfly net; the major incarceration
scene in the jail cells where Susan pretends to be a gangster moll and the
appearance of a leopard (not Baby but a murderous escaped animal from the
circus), and the finale - the return of the missing dog-buried bone and
the swaying, crumbling destruction of the reconstructed brontosaurus skeleton
as Susan and David dangle from it, in Howard Hawks' classic and definitive
screwball comedy |
|
|
Broadcast News (1987)
|
The ironic prologue illustrating the formative childhoods
of the Oscar-nominated trio of future broadcast news professionals: the good-looking, airhead news anchor Tom Grunick (William
Hurt) ("What can you do with yourself when all you can do is look good"), the insecure, serious, intelligent news reporter Aaron Altman (Albert
Brooks) who graduated high school at 15, and the
fussy, driven, and strident network news producer Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) with a wordy argumentative discussion with her father over the word 'obsessive'; also the classic scene in which wacky news assistant director Blair Litton
(Joan Cusack) painfully rushes to get a finished tape to the
control booth in time for broadcast - running into a garbage can and a file cart, slipping on papers under an opened file drawer, jumping over a toddler and her mother, and slamming into a hallway water fountain; and the scene of quick-thinking Jane cleverly feeding Tom information via his earpiece during
a special live news report on a Libyan attack on US bases in Sicily, and Tom's gleeful reaction of thanks to Jane
afterwards at her desk: ("You're an amazing woman.
What a feeling having you inside my head... It's like indescribable -- you
knew just when to feed me the next line, you knew the second before I needed
it. There was like a rhythm we got into... it was like great
sex!"); and the scene of Jennifer Mack (Lois Chiles) playfully
asking nude Tom about his prominent penis shadow in silhouette after sleeping with him: "Do you
do bunny rabbits?" - after he told her about her open clothes closet: "You can see everything you have"; also the famous scene of uncharismatic, nervous Aaron's debut attempt at anchoring the weekend news when he sweats profusely ("flop sweat") while a producer comments: "This
is more than Nixon ever sweated" - and Aaron's aside as the news went to a commercial after he
reports: "...at least 22 people dead" - "I wish I were
one of them"; also the scene of Tom and Jane's passionate outdoor kiss when he suggests sex to her in obvious terms: "I've been wondering what it'd be like to be inside all that energy"; and the scene of Aaron's desperate attempt to dissuade Jane from a relationship with media-friendly Tom by comparing him to the devil: "Tom, while being a very nice guy, is the devil...I'm semi-serious here...He will be attractive, he'll be nice and helpful...He'll never do an evil thing. He'll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He'll just bit by little bit lower our standards where they're important. Just a tiny little bit. Just coax along. Flash over substance...And he'll get all the great women" - when Jane accuses Aaron of being the devil, he counters that her assertion is impossible: "You know I'm not...Because I think we have the kind of friendship
where if I were the Devil, you'd be the only one I would tell...He personifies everything you've been fighting against - And I'm in love with you. How do ya like that? I buried the lead"; and shortly later as they part, the scene of Aaron's bitter, sour-grapes prediction of Jane's future when she asks what would happen to their relationship as friends: "Anyway, I'll be walking
along with my wife and my two lovely children and we'll bump into you. And my youngest son will say something, and I will tell him it's not nice
to make fun of single, fat ladies"; also, the anguish
and anger Jane feels when she realizes Tom unethically faked tears in a cutaway shot for an interview
- "It made me...ILL...You can get fired for things like that...(Tom's retort: "I've gotten promoted for things like that!") You totally crossed the line" and her confrontation with him at the airport, telling him that they are so mismatched that she will not join him for a vacation during her time-off; and the
poignant epilogue in which Jane, Tom and Aaron -- both men happily married
with others (and Jane in a relationship) -- catch up about things seven years later, and the pull-back shot
of Jane and Aaron in the rain under a gazebo, in James L. Brooks' romantic
comedy/satire of TV news |
|
