Now that I have Gerard Butler as Leonides as my computer wallpaper...
I got to thinking (okay, daydreaming) about movie moments that I'll pause, rewind and watch again during the course of a movie. Not whole scenes, but little bits I really like. Oddly enough, they tend to center on the menfolk. Herewith is a small sample:
Richard Armitage in the BBC production of North and South, saying, as the woman he loves drives away and he thinks he'll never see her again, "Look back. Look back at me." Oh, my heart breaks! Every. Single. Time.
Errol Flynn as Robin Hood walking into the sheriff's hall with a stag over his shoulders and tossing it on the table. What an entrance!
The late Alexander Gudonov walking across the roof in Die Hard. What a walk! I also love the bit of him walking down the road at the end of Witness.
Jason Isaacs with those long locks a-flyin' in The Patriot. Not my favorite historical movie by a long shot, but I'll watch the whole thing just for that moment.
Not a movie, but Jamie Bamber nearly losing the towel in Battlestar Galactica. He might have been saying something at the time, but let's just say, I wasn't listening. The guy is buff.
Other memorable moments that fill me with emotion:
In To Kill A Mockingbird, when the pastor says to Scout, "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your daddy's passin'."
In Spartacus, when the Roman general offers life to those who'll identify Spartacus, and all the former slaves stand up and yell, "I am Spartacus!" I tell ya, I cry every time.
I'm sure I could come up with many more examples, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.
Now thus inspired, it's off to revise, rewrite and otherwise mess around with the work-in-progress.
2 comments:
Daniel Day-Lewis saying, "I'm looking at you, miss," and "I will find you," in LOTM (Last of the Mohicans), gets the heart thumping big time. My hair stands up on end when Aragorn gives his speech before the Black Gates in LOTR: Return of the King. In the old BBC Persuasion ('71) when Captain Wentworth is writing his letter and listening to Anne talk, and then when his voiceover of the letter is read . . . be still my heart (lot of chemistry between those leads).
In Wives & Daughters, when Michael Gambon is carrying his dead son, I am a hopeless cryer. In Steel Magnolias, when Sally Field is rampaging at Shelby's funeral, tears!
The opening shots of Saving Private Ryan (lost two great-uncles on Omaha Beach) I cannot watch at all, and the shame I feel for the naked men and women paraded before Nazi soldiers during Schindler's List is so accute, I can barely stay in the room.
The looks: the look on Richard's face saying "look back at me" in North & South (I still yell, "turn back"); the look on Gerard Butler's face in Phantom of the Opera as he realizes he's lost Christine (I still hope, though I've seen it dozens of times); the look on Colin Firth's face as he tries to kiss Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones' Diary (don't go put on genuinely tiny knickers!); Hugh Jackman as he kisses Kate Beckinsale (in Van Helsing); and the entire train station scenes of North & South.
To name a few. . .
LW
Oh, the part in BJ's Diary where he's nuzzling her neck in the doorway, too! That's a nice one. I hear ya on the D. Day-Lewis scenes in LOTM.
I had to wait to rent Life is Beautiful in case I had to leave the room. I find the opening of the first X-Men movie gut-wrenching, although it also provides one of the best motivational set-ups for a villain ever.
Speaking of X-Men -- the first time we see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine -- that back! Sigh....
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