Hello Lance's Werthwhile Movie Fans!
I know it's been awhile since I've posted something scintillating, but I've made a resolution for 2018 to share my classic cinema burblings with all off you more often.
Sometimes I'm daunted by the amount of time I want to take talking about movies when the rest of my life is so consuming. There is not enough time in the day for me to be a television executive, a man about town, and write about why Darren Aronofsky's
mother! nails all the classic Female Gothic tropes without bothering to make us care about his tortured heroine.
Today as I was trying to take a nap, my evil brain stayed awake and pestered me with the thought, "What if rather than expounding on films in movie-nut detail, I look for the little things?" Movies should be indulged in full, but often when we think of them, a single image or scene evokes all the feels.
So here is a list (in no particular order) of some of my favorite moments in film:
Dorothy Malone's frenzied dance while her father croaks on the stairs in
Written on the Wind (1956).
Marilyn's
"fuzzy end of the lollipop" speech in
Some Like it Hot (1959).
Gene Tierney
watching Darryl Hickman drown after she gives him a rubdown in
Leave Her To Heaven (1945).
The
end credits of
West Side Story (1961).
The
helium-infused warehouse gun battle in
Broadway Danny Rose (1984).
The scissor scene in
The Furies (1950).
Martin Balsam
going down the stairs in Hitchcock's
Psycho (1960).
Peter O'Toole watching
the approaching lone rider in
Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
Olivia de Havilland hollering at the phone from her "small, private elevator" in
Lady in a Cage (1964).
Gloria Swanson
descending the staircase at the end of
Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Those fucking twins in
The Shining (1980).
Little Edie's
Flag Dance in
Grey Gardens (1985).
Bette Davis
not watching her husband die of a heart attack in
The Little Foxes (1941).
The Star Destroyer swallowing up the screen in the first scene of
Star Wars (1977).
Parker Posey
freaking out about the Busy Bee in
Best in Show (2000).
Marlene Dietrich as a
Mexican madame at the end of
Touch of Evil (1958).
Judith Anderson
fondling her old boss' nightie in
Rebecca (1940).
Toshiro Mifune
getting perforated at the end of
Throne of Blood (1957).
Hattie McDaniels giving Scarlet over-the-shoulder side eye in the wagon when Scarlett prattles on about not being interested in someone she's totally interested in in
Gone with the Wind (1939).
Robot Maria's
sexy dance in
Metropolis (1927).
Joan Crawford getting her cigarette lit by a pack of gents in
Humoresque (1946).
Susan Kohner throwing herself on her mother's coffin in
Imitation of Life (1959).
The kid trapped under the ice in
Damien: Omen II (1978) (with honorable mention going to the reporter who gets attacked by satanic ravens and then a semi.)
Christopher Walken's
watch scene in
Pulp Fiction (1994).
Dustin Hoffman's
live coast-to-coast un-masking in
Tootsie (1982).
Peter Lorre screeching from his cell in
Casablanca (1942).
Spock's death scene in
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
Faye Dunaway orgasming to ratings-points in
Network (1976).
Partygoers parachuting out of a doomed blimp in
Madame Satan (1930).
Tallulah Bankhead trying to seduce John Hodiak while he reads the paper in
Lifeboat (1944).
Glen Close
losing her shit at the end of
Dangerous Liaisons (1988).
Lana Turner
taking a drive after she's been dumped in
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).
Here's hoping 2018 is full of magical movie moments.
