It’s THE great scene within a film chock-full of great scenes. The premise is simple. Wallace Shawn must choose between two cups of wine, one of which is said to be poisoned. He picks his cup and his opponent drinks the other. One dies. The battle of the wits has begun. What follows is a gut-busting monologue by Shawn that, well, let’s say over-thinking it is an understatement for his thought process.
The dialogue, tortured logic, the arrogance, the sneaky moves, and that laugh which suddenly falls silent creates one of the most pitch-perfect comedic scenes ever conceived.
Much has been written of Francis Ford Coppola’s inability to find an ending for his Vietnam War update of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Yet, it’s hard to imagine a more fitting conclusion to Coppola’s vision of insanity than Martin Sheen slaughtering Marlon Brando as The Doors’ “The End” boils over the soundtrack, all leading to Brando’s enigmatic last words: “The horror… the horror.”
Sometimes improvisation is the gate key to brilliance. It’s a death scene searing with beautiful, yet frustrating poetic madness.
Oh, what I’d give to have seen the alien bursting from John Hurt’s chest with an audience in 1979. I’m sure the unsuspecting audience members, jumped, shrieked, and occasionally threw up (yep, those are the type of viewing experiences I crave).
Almost anyone who catches Alien for the first time these days already knows of the infamous dinner scene in which an innocent-sounding cough ends with everyone splattered in blood. The scene’s shock value brought it notoriety. Yet, it’s the sickening, grisly idea of a toothy, penis-shaped beast suddenly blowing your chest inside out that gives power to the scene long after the surprise has worn off.
Before Bonnie and Clyde, most movie characters who fell victim to lead poisoning grabbed their chest and fell over. No blood. Not even a tear in their clothes. They might as well have died from a heart attack. Nor did you really ever see a gun fire and the bullet hit the human target within the same frame. Then came Bonnie and Clyde and all of sudden the shit got real. The film smacked audiences with the harsh consequences from pulling a trigger. Movie gunfights were no longer constrained to the same bloodless histrionics of children playing army in the woods. Bonnie and Clyde‘s violence — extraordinarily controversial at the time — changed the Hollywood’s depiction of violence. Without it, there would be no Wild Bunch or Dirty Harry or Die Hard. However, even 40 years later, the film’s climax, in which the law shreds the titular bank robbers in a thunderstorm of bullets, remains as visceral and savage as anything seen in today’s hard-R flicks.
