@beetlejuice I want to see Aguirre now. Isn’t there a documentary on the making of that movie, too?
Nobody expects the Python submissions!
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Laughter is infectious.
I had one best friend who would have a legit laugh at anything comedic, and in turn he could get me laughing at something that would normally only elicit a smirk. He was from a very bad homelife and he found joy in music and movies, especially comedies. One of the best days of my life was going to see The Nutty Professor with him and then him staying over that night and we watched Grumpy Old Men. He was one of the foursome that I saw Something About Mary with. We watched so many old bad comedies together, like Spies Like Us with Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd.
We drifted apart a bit when I got married young due to an unplanned pregnancy. About a year after the fact I got a phone call that he’d killed himself. When my other friend was breaking the news I knew it before he said it. I was processing why my friend would call me out of the blue with a somber tone and I did the math pretty much immediately.
I thought of the Seagal scene as a black sheep entry for this category, but I’ve never laughed harder at a scene in a movie than when him and I watched the knight’s rush. Fittingly, we kept rewinding it over and over, laughing harder each time at the absurdity of it.
I really wanted to submit the Executive Decision scene to have a little fun, but thought it wouldn’t be right by Chris and the memory we had. Thanks a ton for validating my choice that much more.
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You want me to say, “It’s only a flesh wound.” Is that it?
i would have submitted this. I’m sure it would have gotten last place, but I wouldn’t have cared because I can never watch this scene without cry-laughing. Yes, I’m fucked in the head, but it’s so fucking brilliant 
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Oh I see what’s going on in here.
I’m #1 bc I was last last round.
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Great scene, but confirmed, would have come in last. If I ever meet you and you say “wanna see something funny?” I know what my answer will be…check that…I’ll just start running.
Nice.
I would have, in fact, submitted this, and am slightly surprised the film didn’t feature here at all. No shortage of great submissions, though.
“Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it?”
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Is it my turn to reveal?
Just gotta hope I remember to switch the reveals back from comic sans.
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Yep
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It is available to stream on Tubi
I forget what the doc about it was called but I remember enjoying it very much. It was like a real life version of Aguirre The Wrath Of God but with Herzog instead of Aguirre and making a movie instead of conquering the new world. Dragging a huge ass boat up a mountain in the jungle lol Herzog goat
Also the other Kinski/Herzog doc My Best Fiend was great
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read a blurb on wiki that they did 5 films together… besties fo sho
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“Scene that makes you gasp in terror/shock/surprise”
Entries in this category are impossible to score. All entries were excellent. Thanks for your patience. I will give this some thought at the cinema while seeing Underwater.
Category 4: Scene that makes you gasp in terror/shock/surprise
smrk and Rexx tied for first place and 5 points each.
smrk-Training Day-killing Roger scene (5 points)
When I reach out to shake a friend’s hand, what happens if they smile and punch me in the face?
When this came out, Denzel could do no wrong. Not just in the caliber of his roles, but the kind of roles. He starred in movies like Glory. Malcolm X. Philadelphia. Courage Under Fire. The Preacher’s Wife. In the movie Fallen, the guy literally faces off against a fallen angel.
He was the epitome of a good guy. We just didn’t realize his middle name was Chucky.
Writing for The Village Voice, Amy Taubin said:
Training Day, Antoine Fuqua’s propulsive, elegantly written police thriller, offers the unsettling spectacle of Denzel Washington, whose old-fashioned combination of decency and sexiness suggests the African American counterpart to Gregory Peck (in his To Kill a Mockingbird period), as an LAPD cop so evil he makes Harvey Keitel’s bad lieutenant look like even smaller potatoes than he was meant to be.
You have to admire the risk he takes in turning his star image upside down; nevertheless, it’s creepy to think that the hero you believed in for so many movies may be just as much a fiction as the villain.
Denzel followed this role with the anti-heroes and straight-up villains that now show him as a multi-faceted actor, including such films as Man on Fire, The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Inside Man, and American Gangster.
Inspired by the real-life Ramparts scandal that led to multiple terminations and convictions in the LA police department, Training Day remains an important film not just in the history of Denzel Washington’s career, but in exposing the real-world police brutality that haunts our sense of justice to this very day.
Rexx-Lars and the Real Girl-meeting Bianca (5 points)
This truly is a shocking scene, not just because of the plot twist—Bianca is a lifelike doll that Lars has imbued with personhood—but because it evokes the loneliness lurking within all of us.
It would be easy to judge Lars for maintaining a relationship with a doll that can’t really think or feel. At least not outside of an extension of Lars. Her consciousness is his consciousness.
And yet how many of us have real relationships with the people in front of us? We’re waiting for the chance to speak. We’re validating and debating the aspects of others that don’t fit with how we see ourselves. We don’t speak to them as people. We don’t acknowledge and respect the positions they have and the journey that brought them there.
What we develop instead are para-social relationships with internet avatars, television and movie characters, political figures who evoke a sense of relief from loneliness and panic. At least with them, we feel seen and heard and accepted, no matter how fragile and illusory that state turns out to be.
It’s easy to mistake this as narcissism, but I see it instead as a quaking fear of vulnerability. Lars refuses to let anyone touch him, both physically and emotionally. It is only through the early steps of imagined vulnerability with Bianca that he finally explores what it might be like to let a real person in.
Despite her title, the temptation is to dismiss Bianca as anything but a “real” girl, but it turns out what’s most shocking about this scene is that at least at the time, she was more real than anyone else.
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Next is DodgerIrish for 4 points.
DodgerIrish-Braveheart-Murron death scene (4 points)
A stunning scene, in part because of how it was filmed. Murron looks left, looks right, and the audience looks with her. Where is William Wallace? Surely he will appear over the ridge at the last moment to save her, to slaughter the people who would do her harm—
But there is no rescue. It is instead her death that compels Wallace to take on the King of England and win freedom for Scotland.
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Write ups for the remaining two to come.
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Yes!! I was hoping you’d seen it and knew you’d appreciate it if so. Go team sardine!
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Wow have any of you seen a comedy in the last 20 years? Although Monty Python really were the masters at crafting funny, digestible scenes compared to more recent movies that might be hilarious overall but with fewer distinct funny moments. I haven’t seen Holy Grail in years so also appreciate the reminders.
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