TOP TEN MOVIE SCENES

Here The Editor and The Writer pick their top ten movie scenes of all time, but be warned, there will be some spoilers here, so be careful what you read if you've not seen some of the films...

THE EDITOR

1. The Godfather Part II
My all-time favourite movie scene was quite easy to pick. It's from The Godfather Part II and it's the ending, so if you hadn't already heeded the warning about spoilers and haven't seen the film, STOP READING NOW. The film could easily have been subtitled The Fall Of Michael Corleone, not in a business or mafia sense, but as a human being, having started the first movie as a brave and decent war hero. The key scene is where his weak brother Fredo is going on a fishing trip with Michael's son, but henchman Al Neri stops the boy from joining them. Great acting from John Cazale shows that Fredo realises what is going to happen, and he is executed out on the boat, while Michael watches from inside. We don't see the death, nor do we see more than a silhouette of Michael, but it's perfect, as is the closing shot of Al Pacino sitting out in a chair staring with eyes that show just how emotionless and ruthless he has become. Cinema gold.

2. Edward Scissorhands
A rather less violent one here, perhaps surprising as it's from a Tim Burton movie, given the amount of blood currently on display in Sweeney Todd. Instead it's one of the most beautiful scenes of any movie, and the perfect combination of Burton's eye for visuals and Danny Elfman's ability to make haunting and lovely music to go with the scene. The Ice Dance is Elfman's crowning glory as a score, just as the film is Burton's finest achievement, and when Edward is carving a statue out of ice and creating a a snowfall effect that Kim dances under, it's balletic and beautiful. No wonder the film works so well as a ballet by Matthew Bourne.

3. The Godfather
For one of my favourite movie scenes of all time, it had to be one that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up for one reason or another, and one of the select group of films to have completely blown me away the first time I watched it was The Godfather. I was absolutely loving it from the very start, but the scene that literally left me open-mouthed was where James Caan's volatile Sonny is tricked into going to sort out his abusive brother-in-law and is ambushed and murdered at a toll booth. Having watched the film with no knowledge of the story whatsoever, seeing one of the main characters die in a hail of bullets halfway through was just awesome, and the direction of the scene was incredible.

4. Heat
And back to the violence. Ironically, Heat isn't a violent film particularly, and its strengths mostly lie in the more subtle scenes, with the legendary Pacino/De Niro coffee shop scene definitely a contender for this list for the understated magic of it all (let's face it, nowadays if they were in the same film, it would be in an awful comedy). However, I'm going for a scene that could never be considered understated - the bank heist. It's the big score for De Niro's gang, but Pacino's cops arrive just as they are escaping. Cue the best gunfight you'll ever see (or hear - it's one of the loudest things I've ever heard in film), with Michael Mann showing most action directors how it should be done.

5. American Beauty
Never mind the overheated plastic bag scene or the stuff with the petals. The scene that makes American Beauty special is the very last one, just after Lester has been shot by his neighbour. His voiceover about the beauty of life mingles with visuals of the things that made his life special (his young daughter with the pretty dress and sparkler is the part that usually gets me) and the rest of the people in the house reacting to the gunshot that kills him, with Thomas Newman's lovely piano theme over the top. The film was like a dry-run for Six Feet Under and this scene shows why.

6. Manhattan
Another case of the perfect marriage of music and visuals here in the opening scene of Woody Allen's masterpiece Manhattan. From the opening flourishes of Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue you know it's going to be special, particularly as Allen and Gordon Willis decided to film in black and white, giving the Manhattan scenery a very special tinge. With Allen's faltering introductory narrative over the top. It gets even better when he shuts up and Gershwin's tune explodes into life, and if you can think of a better start to any film I'd like to hear about it...

7. The Big Lebowski
My favourite Coen Brothers film by a mile and one of my favourite films of all time, The Big Lebowski is nothing BUT great movie scenes all the way through, but my personal favourite is where John Turturro's sex-offender bowler Jesus is melodramatically bowling to the sounds of the Gypsy Kings' cover of Hotel California. As well as the music and the dancing from Turturro - and the deadpan reactions of Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi and John Goodman to this bizarre sight - what I think I love best about it is that it has no real purpose to the story at all. Mad geniusness.

8. Hotel Rwanda
By far and away the most affecting scene in my list as well as the most recent, this is also probably the one thing that has ever made me cry at a cinema. Hotel Rwanda tells the true story of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina during the Rwandan genocide and the scene that made the most impact on me was when the UN pull out all of the Western tourists and journalists (including Joaquin Phoenix), leaving the Rwandans behind at the mercy of their enemies. Most heartbreaking of all is when a foreign priest arrives with a group of children, but is prevented by the UN peacekeeping army from taking any of them to safety. Great dignified acting from Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina and haunting music makes it all so powerful, as well as the inevitable sense of guilt and outrage.

9. Swimming With Sharks
"What did I tell you on your first day? Your thoughts are NOTHING. You are NOTHING." "If you were in my toilet bowl I wouldn't bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you. See this? (picks up desk diary) This means more to the company than you, but do you hear it complain when I do this? (throws desk diary at Guy)" In my opinion Kevin Spacey has never been better than as the ultimate boss from hell in this tale of Hollywood movie moguls and their hapless underlings. This scene, where Frank Whaley's Guy plucks up the courage to ask his boss Buddy to not shout at him quite so much is awesome, right down to the satisfied smirk on Buddy's face after Guy's hasty and undignified retreat.

10. Ringu
Ahhh, thank goodness that evil Sadako's curse has been lifted. Now our heroes can relax for the rest of the film and so can we. Look, there's the ex-husband, back at home and happy that his ex-wife and son are safe and of course, so is he. Oh look, the TV's just turned on. Odd. Hmmm, that well looks familiar. So does that freaky looking girl climbing out of it. But the curse was lifted wasn't it? Oh dear. She even walks evilly, in a 'I've been pushed down a well' kind of way. Still, she's on the TV, what could she go in there? AAAARRRGHHH! SHE'S CLIMBED OUT OF THE TV!!!! Look at her freaky, nailless fingers! LOOK AT HER EYE!!!! AAAARRGGHHH!


THE WRITER

1. Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park is not a classic film. Hell, it's not even a classic Steven Spielberg film. It's an effects movie, one created more out of a desire to show off a new toy than artistic necessity. But when those toys are as shiny and fun as the ones Spielberg got to play with on JP that's all you really need. The film is, of course, filled with magnificent scenes - the sick Triceratops, the Raptors in the kitchen, the classically Spielbergian closing shot - but it's our first glimpse of the T-Rex that is the finest. Not only does the beast still look astonishingly realistic, but the built up is beautifully played: the shivering water, the missing goat, the immense electric fence being cut through like a knife through butter. Objectively speaking, it may not be the best scene in cinema history, but it rocked my ten-year-old world and began my life-long love affair with the movies.

2. Punch-Drunk Love
Speaking of love, Paul Thomas Anderson's magnificent romantic comedy Punch Drunk Love is comfortably the finest of its kind in recent years. Not that most people noticed. Despite the fact it stars bankable star Adam Sandler, Anderson's fourth feature left many befuddled. Is it a mainstream film? An arthouse film? An Anderson picture? A Sandler flick? A comedy? A drama? The truth is, it's all these things and more; a delightful evocation of the blinding fear and roaring delight of falling in love at the most unexpected of times. And smack in the middle of it comes the crowning achievement of Anderson’s career. Sandler's character Barry has finally resolved to find the woman of his dreams (Lena, played with otherworldly charm by Emily Watson), who is currently on a business trip in Hawaii. Anderson tracks Barry through the airport, into the sky and then to his final meet-up with Lena all to the sounds of Shelley Duvall's bizarre rendition of He Needs Me from Robert Altman's Popeye. Lush, heartfelt and very, very weird, it the perfect encapsulation of the film's sensibilities and, dare I say, the ultimate cinematic evocation of being in love.

3. A Clockwork Orange
From one extreme to the other now. There's very, very little love in A Clockwork Orange (well, not unless you count Alex's love of violence), only anger, hatred and typically Kubrickian misanthropy. And yet, from these undesirable emotions, Kubrick musters one of the most perfect images in cinema history. Right at the start of the film. Just as you're settling in, preparing for a master class in film-making, the music starts up, sounding like something created by the warped, evil brother of Vangelis, and the camera tracks slowly away from Alex and his droogs sat in some kind of bar, wearing some kind of clothing, staring in the camera, through it even, and straight to the audience. Kubrick was a master of setting mood, and this is a scene so perfect not even Blur could bugger it up in their video for The Universal.

4. Singin' In The Rain
Earlier this week, I watched Tim Burton's version of Sweeney Todd, and was severely disappointed. True to Burton's form, it was a joy to look at and featured a corking turn from Johnny Depp as the titular demon barber, but as a musical it was left severely lacking. What so few cinematic musicals realise is that songs should be used sparingly; to elevate the emotions of a scene, rather than to get the audience to buy the soundtrack once they've left the theatre. Yet there is one that bucks the trend: Singin’ In The Rain. From the Good Mornin' singalong to Donald O'Connor's ballistic rendition of Make 'Em Laugh, Rain grasps that when music and visuals combine they can create otherworldly slices of cinema that can get our pulses racing and mouths smiling like no other, and in the title song, it has the single most joyful scene in cinema history.

5. From Russia With Love
As a fan of the Connery Bond films I was excited to hear Daniel Craig reveal that Quantum of Solace (it's a perfect title, naysayers!) will be a return to the "60s style spy movie". Craig explicitly referenced production designer extraordinaire Ken Adam, so are we to expect some grandiose hollowed out caves in Quantum? After the realism of Casino Royale, perhaps not, but what I do reckon (and hope we'll see) are down and dirty fights, much like the train carriage one between Connery and Robert Shaw at the end of From Russia With Love. Relying only on his attaché case and wits, Bond has to fight off SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in any way he can. Brutal, bloody and nasty, what follows is one of the finest mano-a-mano fight in cinema history. Let's hope Craig has been studying it.

6. Spider-Man 2
An odd entry onto the list, perhaps, but let me explain. The scene I refer to comes at the end of the film. An unmasked Spider-Man has just talked Doctor Octopus out of his villainous ways and as the eight-limbed scientist goes off to stop the imminent apocalypse he has created, Spidey turns around to see long-time love Mary Jane Watson staring at him with bewilderment. Finally, after two films she knows his secret. They can, at long last, confess their love for one another and all will be well in the world! But the wall behind MJ has other ideas, and as it begins to collapse on top of her, Spidey rushes over and catches it. An entire wall! And what does he say after this act of superheroic derring do? "This is really heavy". Romance, action and self-deprecating humour. It epitomises everything that is great about Sam Raimi, his Spider-Man films and the comics that inspired them.

7. The Apartment
It's such a shame that Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine only ever appeared in two films together (Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce being the second), because they have such a unique chemistry they really should be regarded among cinema‘s finest on-screen couples. A world apart from the smouldering passion of, say, Bogart and Bacall, MacLaine and Lemmon are the normal people, Mr and Mrs Everyman, a couple who you aspire to be, until you realise that, in fact, you are them. There are plenty of beautiful moments between them in Irma, but it's the end of The Apartment that takes the honours. After realising she loves him, Fran (MacLaine) runs to Bud Baxter’s (Lemmon) apartment and stops him from leaving town. Having loved her from the start of the film, Baxter finally tells her as much. Fran shuffles some playing cards, looks at Bud and says: "Shut up and deal". Pure cinematic perfection.

8. Alien
A bit of horror now. There have been many scenes throughout cinema history that have perfectly epitomised our fear of what could be out to get us. The ending of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the iconic shower scene in Psycho spring to mind. But for sheer, raw primal power, nothing can compete with Alien's dinner table scene. You all know the drill by now (and if you don't then what have you been doing with your life) and perhaps it's become cliché (when I saw the director's cut a few years ago, the scene inspired a few giggles of derision). But Ridley Scott's masterpiece has lost none of its fear factor and this sequence is the perfect encapsulation of that.

9. Raging Bull
Martin Scorsese is often credited as the master of realism and innovative camerawork. And yet it’s his most expressionistic and relatively still scene that is his best. The opening credits of Raging Bull find boxer Jake La Motta in a boxing ring, shadow fighting in slow-motion to the sounds of Pietro Mascagni‘s Cavalleria Rusticana: Intermezzo. It's so simple, but so perfect, summing up the themes of floundering masculinity that the film so magnificently explores.

10. Marie Antoinette
As this is the most recent film on the list and as it's the final scene that I'm citing here, I won't explain it. Suffice to say, Sofia Coppolla is a master of mood and the last shot of her unfairly maligned biopic of Marie Antoinette is a perfect denouement which brilliantly captures the tragedy and wasted youth of the doomed queen.