Fifty Movie Scenes of the Decade: 2010-19, pt.2

A continuation of the list I started last month, here are some more of the standout scenes of the decade's films... Bear scene: Annihilation (2018)Bear scene: The Revenant (2015)Bear scene: Midsommar (2019)Bear scene: Paddington (2014) (a.k.a. all of it)Somehow this ended up being the decade of the bear. From the harrowing (and seemingly endless) attack...

Fifty Movie Scenes of the Decade: 2010-19

As the 2010s draw to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the small moments, or full scenes, that have stood out to me over the decade now ending. These are in no particular ranking order, and I'm sure there will be more that will occur to me, but I hope this list will...

‘Chronic’ by Catherine Bensley

What do we do with our pain? What do we let it do to us, what does it take from us, and what might we in turn take from it? These questions are at the heart of Catherine Bensley’s remarkable one-woman musical Chronic. Unfolding over the course of an hour, on a single set representing...

The glass of water from Jurassic Park (1993)

Let's talk about that glass of water at the top of the screen. You know the one. The scary one. With his 1993 epic Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg achieved a scale of spectacle that topped anything he, or anyone, had managed before. He and his creative team made astonishing use of CGI technology -- which was...

Dash discovers he can run across water in The Incredibles (2004)

  This one is all about ijirashii. In her excellent volume The Book of Human Emotions, Tiffany Watt-Smith deals with many of the main emotions we all know and love (fear, anger, guilt…etc.) as well as identifying all kinds of lesser-known emotions that have been named in other cultures but not in our own. (e.g....

“She’s got something in her throat” from The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The body is a weird object. Or rather, a weird collection of objects. Our skull is a thin, flexible helmet worn under the skin, protecting a wrinkled three pounds of grey jelly that contains every thought we’ve ever had. Our heart is a thick meaty pump, driving our blood out into all the tightest spaces...

“It’s a new piano. You probably shouldn’t…” from The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

This month marks the two-year anniversary of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, unquestionably one of the great actors of the past 20 years or so. In fact, he passed away on February 2nd, Groundhog Day -- entirely the wrong day for an actor who pretty much never repeated himself on film. To mark his...

“Larry, what do you think?” from Groundhog Day (1993)

With the big day (February 2nd) nearly upon us, I thought I would use the opportunity to examine the Small Moment that really stood out to me on a recent revisit of Groundhog Day. It is the moment that, for me, answers the question of what the film is about: what its protagonist really learns,...

“We’re all…fine…here now…” from Star Wars (1977)

With a new Star Wars film opening this week, I thought I would take a moment to celebrate a Small Moment from the original film -- Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977). It’s not a lightsabre duel. It’s not a deep-space dogfight or exploding planet. It’s just a little moment of levity in...