What's your favorite movie moments?

So, I thought about making this thread because I'm currently watching one of my favorite movies that has probaly my favorite movie scenes in history, Jaws.

The scene is probaly the one that most fans of this movie are thinking of. The USS Indianapolis speech. Where Quinn, the fishermen hired to catch the shark, tells the others the story about how practically the whole crew of the ship died when Japanese subs attacked the ship during the time he served during WW II. For those who've never seen it, here's the video:

http://youtu.be/u9S41Kplsbs

What's your favorite film moment?

Oh boy, time for a list.

• I've always thought this bit from The Bourne Identity was an excellently crafted action sequence. In spite of the opening explosion, it is delightfully understated and stark.
• The ending musical set piece from All That Jazz is absolutely sublime. Perfect culmination of the movie's bittersweet bombast.
• Even though it's not from a movie, that scene from True Detective completely took my breath away.
• A bit cliche, but the room trashing/hall of mirrors scene in Citizen Kane is absolutely fabulous.
• I can't find a precise YouTube clip, but there's a bit in The Truman Show where Truman is becoming cognizant of the world revolving around him and starts walking through traffic. There's this particular shot where he raises his hands and spins around in a circle, stopping all the cars around him. Inexplicably beautiful.
• Finally, the iconic Network speech. 'Nuff said.

If I had to think of one….god that is really hard, I'll give two though one is a "scene" and the other is a character and every scene he is in is my favorite.

• ALL of Hans Landa scenes, he is the greatest character ever created. I have never loved and hated someone so much as I watch a movie, brilliant writing and acting. Favorite out of the bunch? That opening scene is hard to beat, perfect in my opinion.
• The last 15 minutes of Hot Fuzz. I just smile like an idiot every time I watch the ending, so great, so funny, so awesome, great parody and homage in its entirety.

This is a great thread and a really interesting question! I find it especially resonant, actually, because as I get older and more familiar with film, I find that I'm less concerned with the whole package of a film, how polished and coherent it is (I find poking at plot holes the most tedious type of conversation you can have about films), and more attracted to films that can offer just one really impressive moment, something that sticks with me for a long time after watching it. Obviously a film that is polished and solidly made and plotted AND has moments of great beauty is the ideal situation, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

As such I'd say there are two types of movie moment that really make a lasting impression: There are the moments that really bring together the narrative and thematic concerns of a film, where everything in the film comes together in such a way that it becomes apparent that the entire film has been revolving around that scene. Then there are moments that I think of as more "aesthetic" moments, where some element of what's on screen is just powerfully arresting or moving. There's more space in this category for very short moments, and I think this is the sort of thing that is more easily comparable to other media - the moment in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner when the sailor grips the wedding guest's arm has always had this sort of effect on me - but at the same time is usually the sort of moment that owes most to the unique language of cinema; it's a moment that feels like it could only exist on film.

Here are some examples that come to mind of the first type, although if I thought more about it there would probably be many more:

• The assassination scene in The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford. I think this is maybe a kind of obvious example of what I was talking about, how sometimes a scene is so pivotal to the plot that it bends the fabric of the film, like the way black holes are described. What's great about this scene is just how dense it is. The time we've spent with Robert Ford before this scene makes his sweaty discomfort just really visceral. Brad Pitt also gives a nice sort of precis of all the possible explanations for his strange actions - is he daring Robert Ford to do it, is he just tired of running? And the violence of the final shot just really caps it off nicel.
• The Funeral Scene in 12 Years a Slave. Again, maybe this is obvious. For starters, it's just a really well directed and acted scene, and the pain and anger on Solomon's face as he begins to sing along with his fellow slaves is powerfully moving. But I also loved this scene for the way the themes of the film seem to be turned spinning by it. A lot of the film, particularly early on, focuses on his attempts to escape, and the way hope appears and is dangled in front of him and snatched away. Early in the film, when Solomon is discovered to be a talented violinist, the fact that he is allowed a violin seems like a token of that hope, a reminder that he is more than just a slave. Then in this scene suddenly music becomes something else, it's not a remnant of his old life, it's his complete submission to his new one; it's the expression of how his entire self is taken over with rage and sadness and hopelessness. It's also interesting because so often the folk traditions of the dispossessed, such as slave songs, are used in cinema as a signifier of human strength and the ability to create beauty in adverse circumstances, and sometimes that feels like a trite consolation for things that are awful, and I like (or, at least, appreciate) how uncompromising this scene is in tracing those traditions back to pain and anger.
• Forget it Jake, It's Chinatown. It's been a while since I saw this so I don't know whether I can really go in to too much detail about the way this scene interacts with the film. But in a really general way, I'd say that a lot of Noir feels very unhinged; The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are both great examples, where things keep happening and the rhyme and reason behind them are just completely obscure until the end of the film - but in these films the main character always seems to be in control to some extent, and they are, and at the end it is all unravelled for the viewer and it is like they spend the film winding up a clockwork toy, and at the climax they let it run uninterrupted. Chinatown follows a really similar tone, with events overtaking us, but Nicholson plays Gettes so cockily that we trust he is doing a Bogarte and has it under control. Except that in the end he doesn't, and instead of setting the toy down to run, the spring breaks and we're just left with a broken mess, and you can see that on Nicholson's face.

I think I'll make a separate post with moments of the second type, because this is long....

Part 2:

So here are some moments from movies that really stick out in my mind as just being really arresting almost on their own. I think they probably require the context of the film, because you probably need to be made receptive to them, but anyway:

• This link won't really show you the moment, but if you've seen Upstream Color you might recognise the scene it comes from. Basically a main character is in a swimming pool, and there is an orchid floating in front of her, and as she tries to grab it the visuals and the sound design contrive to give the impression of a human heart beating. It was a moment that stuck in my head for weeks
• I can't find a good video of it, but in The Third Man there is a scene often called the "balloon man" scene, where a policeman type character (Calloway) is hiding in the shadows waiting for the villain of the piece. His face looms out of the blackness in a really arresting way. There's a lot of stuff about the way he looms and the way the scene is constructed to emphasise the tenseness of a stakeout, but to me it stands out as just a really arresting visual.
• Again, I just can't find a good clip of it, but in the original Ladykillers, there's a running "gag" where the members of the gang get killed in a variety of improbably double crosses, and the remaining people dispose of the bodies by throwing them onto trains passing below the house. The scenes follow a format where they wait for the train (dangling the body) and then the smoke from the train envelopes the screen, and then it dissipates and the body is gone. Then when the last body is disposed of, Alec Guinness (a sinister but up to now quite comical) starts to become unhinged, and his one remaining accomplice tells him he is going crazy. The transformation in Guiness' voice is practically gollumesque. He turns, and smiles, and hisses "I told you not to make me angry" as the steam covers the screen, and when it dissipates, he is gone. It is just such an incredibly setup moment that looks amazing and is just totally chilling.

I feel like there are more but I don't want to bore anyone (more). Thanks for listening to my self-important rambling

Going to assume that spoiler tags aren't needed here.

"I am killing you"; Elevator scene in The Departed, I don't know, just the delivery of that particular line and in the context its placed in makes it one of the best moments of the film for me.

"Hey Jake, I gotta pull over"; Almost every scene in Blues Brothers is pure gold for me, was honestly one of my favourite films as even a primary school kid. Ended up being in the Stage Band at high-school playing sax, go figure.

Probably more, may add as a I remember.

Vietnam in The Deer hunter

Riot in Do the Right Thing

Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite: 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Blimp in Kiki's Delivery Service

The Ending to A Clockwork Orange

The Lighthouse in Battle Royale

Chigurh's last coinflip/ending in No Country for Old Men

Helicopter in Goodfellas

Tears in the Rain: Blade Runner

The Pawn Shop in Pulp Fiction

The first Bell Tower scene and The End from Vertigo.

Good thread.

• The mountain bike scene in A Scanner Darkly.
• The scene in Ghost World where Thora Birch listens to that record for the first time.
• The opening scene in Office Space.
• The opening scene in The Big Lebowski and the beach party scene.
• The party scene in Grandma's Boy.
• The club scene in Black Swan. Love that transition.
• Every long take in Children of Men.
• The scene in The Tree of Life where it goes into fucking space.
• Pretty much every scene in Mulholland Drive, especially the one where Naomi Watts auditions for the role with that creepy old dude. Last time I watched it I was on acid and I nearly cried. She was robbed at the Oscars that year.
• The River Spirit scene in Spirited Away.

Return of the King. The Riders of Rohan smash the orc army.

That bit where that thing happens.

Renton crawling out of the toilet.

There's like a billion scenes in movies I could talk about for hours, but this scene from Armageddon is probably the greatest moment in anything in the world ever. Followed by the exchange of words between Ed Harris and Michael Biehn in The Rock.

That's sooooo hard (that's what she said), one line that always gets a kick out of me is

"GTA Motherf*cker" - Resident Evil (the second one)

"Warriors, come out to playeeeyay" - Warriors

Joker stumbling out of the crashed truck and the Interrogation - The Dark Knight. The first made me laugh real hard in the cinema, I was thinking "that's soo Joker"

I'm Black Y'all - CB4

News Caster Rumble - Anchorman

Cuban Pete Dance scene - The Mask

Big Daddy video fight - Kick-Ass

There might be more but that's all I can think of right now.

@thomasnash: The Third Man is an absolute goldmine of amazing moments. I think my favorite is the shot of Harry Lime's fingers poking up through the sewer grating. That one shot stood out to me more than the entire Ferris Wheel sequence, oddly enough.

This entire fight scene from The Man From Nowhere is pretty great, but I can't think of any 'favourite' moments that aren't just fight scenes.

The lighthouse scene from Battle Royale is pretty great too.

Good call on Jaws! One of my best friends said Deep Blue Sea is a way better shark movie than Jaws and I almost ended our friendship at that moment.

I was a kid when it came out (about 8 years I believe?) But the first time I saw that massive lobby shootout in Matrix I did not think it could be beat in any action sequence.

The scene from The Thing (1980 Carpenter version) the blood test sample.

Oh and I also really love the scene from Gangs of New York where Bill is sitting across from the bed all beaten up with the American flag draped around him. That image always sticks in my head when I watch that movie.

YAY movies!!

I have a lot. I'll write what I can think of right now.

The scene when Sonny dies in the Godfather is fantastically shot and executed (no pun intended there).

The scene in Once Upon a time in Mexico, when Johnny Depp's character- after being blinded- has a stand off with the corrupt DEA agent or whatever she is there is a fantastic panoramic shot of the whole scene after he "wins" that is one of the best things ever put on film.

The gun fight scene at the end of Way of the Gun.

There's a lot of great scenes in There will be blood but my favorite is near the end when he has it out with the psychopathic kid/preacher/douchebag.

The whole portion of the movie when Jim Carey's character is trying to keep some amount of memory of his girl in his head when it's all beginning to go away in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. From beginning to end a really great piece of film and camera work.

There's more but that's all I can think of right now and some others have been said already.

Ships arriving over the cities in Independence Day. Or pretty much just the first whole hour of that movie until the ship is closing back up with the Statue of Liberty lying in the foreground. I love the movie, but every time I rewatch it I quickly lose interest after that point.

@adequatelyprepared: Blues Brothers is still one of my favorite movies, with Airplane! and Animal House.

For me, this fight in Raging Bull and the following comments from De Niro is incredible, left me speechless. This scene shows how good Scorsese is!

Man, amazing scene for sure-- the absurdness of his character totally undercuts the tension in a really interesting way.

Speaking of the Third Man, the ferris wheel scene is probably my favourite. The chemistry and dialogue is so tight between Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, it's kind of insane. The scene encapsulates pretty much everything I love about the movie-- it's funny, tense and subversive. You get a glimpse inside the mind of the supposed villain of the film, but you pretty quickly see that things aren't all that they appear to be and it's not a matter of good and evil, like so many other film noirs.

Here's a link to it, on Facebook of all places: https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1152223695740

I also just watched Jackie Brown again, and this scene literally gave me chills and put a huge smile on my face:

The high school dance at the end of the first Back to the Future. I don't care if it's cheesy or not, that moment when Marty finally realizes that his existence is assured, and Marty gives this kinda casual salute to his dad because Marty is amazed that he hasn't winked out of existence, it's just great. That scene always puts a big goofy grin on my face.

Let's call this scenes I loved from movies I hated:

• Charles S. Dutton's speech from Alien 3
• The warp speed battle between the Enterprise and the Vengeance from Star Trek Into Darkness

I'd actually forgotten about that shot, but it is brilliant!

Off the top of my head, the scene in which H.W. Plainview loses his hearing in There Will Be Blood. That was on of the most enthralling action sequences I have ever seen. The first scene in A Separation was excellent as well.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3. "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" Freddy has never had a better one-liner than that. It was just perfect. Unfortunately, 3 also had some of the worst lines in the series ("I'm beautiful... and bad!", "I am the wizard master!", etc.).

The Crow, when The Cure plays. That was such a great montage.

Super has one of my favorite scenes of all time, mostly for how unexpected it is. Without spoiling it, the main character has this extremely impassioned line that really clashes with the dark comedy of the rest of the film (while still being funny, amazingly), and is all the more powerful for it. Seriously, that whole movie is amazing. If you don't mind really graphic violence, see it. Sad that it slipped under the radar due to Kick-Ass.

The baptism scene in the first godfather movie.

That time where Leon from the Professional fought everyone to save his plant and Queen Amidala.

I hate to argue cause most of you picked great scenes, but some of you made some bad choices. First, this is the best part of independence day. After that speech there isn't much else to watch in movie. As a side note I always wished someone would make a sequel that focused on what happens next, no more aliens. Every major city is destroyed around the world and many world leaders are probably dead it would be an odd fight for power and land.

I love it when one manages to create a dark/sinister tone over a scene, that is otherwise comedical/absurd. Most recent one to come to mind is probably "For The Greater Good" scene from Hot Fuzz.

You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

The little differences.

First thing that came to mind was them walking down to the Monolith on the Moon in 2001. I like that scene