I did this feature last year and received enough response to encourage me to bring it back this year. This is my rundown of the most memorable moments from the year in cinema. As you can tell by the titles, some of these movies are mediocre or downright bad, but even terrible films can have an odd moment that raises a laugh or rings true or just sticks in the mind. I’ve limited myself to one moment per film, but if you think I’ve picked the wrong moment (like Ralph Fiennes’ “fuck it” from The Grand Budapest Hotel or the witches’ pre-human-sacrifice chant from Witching and Bitching) or if you’ve got some of your own you’d like to add, the comments section is yours. I’ve linked to the footage where I can find it. Warning: mild spoilers ahead.
• The opening of Calvary. An unseen parishioner says, “I first tasted semen when I was 7 years old.” A shocked priest recovers, “Certainly a startling opening line.”
• The opening credits of Cabin Fever: Patient Zero, an uncommonly quiet sequence for a horror movie.
• The opening disclaimer of Stage Fright: “The following is based on a true story. While the names have been changed to respect the victims and their families, the musical numbers will be performed exactly as they occurred.”
• Dom Hemingway’s opening monologue as he’s receiving fellatio in prison: “Is my cock exquisite? … Wars should be fought over it. My cock should win a Nobel fuckin’ Peace Prize!”
• The opening sequence of Witching and Bitching, with robbers dressed as Jesus Christ and SpongeBob SquarePants opening fire on a gold pawn shop. If you ever wanted to see SpongeBob riddled with bullets by the cops, here’s your movie.
• Eminem comes out of the closet in The Interview.
• Godzilla’s entrance. Positively Spielbergian.
• An avalanche barrels toward a French ski resort, and a Swedish dad panics, Force Majeure.
• A homeless guy methodically takes his revenge on his father’s killer at the beginning of Blue Ruin, which turns out to be only the start of his troubles.
• The fish, Snowpiercer.
• The grilled cheese sandwich, Chef.
• The white peacock, I Origins.
• Thrown in a tantrum, Bad Cop’s chair lands on the robot in the far distance, The Lego Movie.
• Rafe Spall goes out the window, What If.
• Kevin Hart fires the shotgun, Ride Along.
• Two guys jump from a tower to try to catapult a water demon onto shore in Journey to the West. Then three guys. Then eight guys.
• Leslie Mann melts down when she meets The Other Woman. “Is this window open? I need some air.” She’s in a skyscraper, by the way.
• Tom Cruise takes a life off in Edge of Tomorrow and goes to have a beer.
• An enraged Nicolas Cage goes to have two minutes’ worth of sex with a prostitute in Joe, while downstairs, his vicious dog tears the throat out of the prostitutes’ vicious dog.
• A wrestling coach strolls around the gym holding a loaded gun in Foxcatcher.
• Olivia Cooke bugs out in her padded cell in The Quiet Ones.
• In Zero Motivation, the Russian soldier gets spooned by a dead comrade’s ghost.
• A Muslim vampire skateboards down a deserted nighttime street with her chador billowing behind her, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
• In The Babadook, a kid’s violent tantrums prompt his mother to snap and shout, “Why can’t you be normal?” In response, the boy starts screaming at a monster that isn’t there, then falls on the floor in convulsions.
• Brian “Astro” Bradley translates a murder victim’s name for Liam Neeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones. “Gotteskind. It’s German. Means ‘child of God.’ Looks like God wasn’t lookin’ out for her, though.”
• Reece Shearsmith emerges from the tent in A Field in England, with a rope around his neck and his face contorted into a demonic grin. What the hell happened to him?
• A prisoner at Guantánamo complains to an American soldier about not knowing the end of the Harry Potter saga in Camp X-Ray. “At first I think Snape is a bad guy, but then I think he is not so bad.”
• Woody Allen mistakes the word “acidic” for “Hasidic” in Fading Gigolo.
• Amy Adams mistakes espresso for marijuana in Big Eyes.
• The song lyrics displayed on a large screen behind a pretentious Christian singer in Believe Me: “Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus Jesus.”
• The pornographic drawing replaces “Boy With Apple” in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
• An Orthodox rabbi rides a Segway scooter, Wish I Was Here.
• Quicksilver takes down a roomful of agents while listening to “Time in a Bottle” in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
• The assassination attempt on Nick Fury in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Scarlett Johansson drops a corridor full of armed assassins by waving her hand, Lucy.
• The Korean civilians come to the aid of their navy’s flagship in The Admiral: Roaring Currents.
• The car chase, The Raid 2.
• A desperate rich guy chases down a gas truck thief in his car and then on foot in A Most Violent Year.
• Keanu Reeves takes down a death squad of about 12 at his house, John Wick.
• A single take in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, as Koba mounts a tank, kills the people inside, then turns the guns on the other humans.
• The wedding reception from hell, Wild Tales.
• Jake Gyllenhaal kisses off a rival who offers him a job and won’t take no for an answer in Nightcrawler: “I feel like grabbing you by your ears right now and screaming in your face, ‘I’m not fucking interested!’ Instead, I’m just going to drive home and do some accounting.”
• The look on John Lloyd Young’s face as he sings “Sunday Kind of Love” and hears his own voice in a cathedral in Jersey Boys.
• The look of disbelief on Chadwick Boseman’s face when he learns where he’s been drafted in Draft Day.
• Chadwick Boseman moving his feet to the title song in Get On Up.
• The mad-scientist dance number in Step Up All In.
• Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader dance to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in The Skeleton Twins.
• Keira Knightley dancing on a street corner with a sign pointing traffic to her dad’s business in Laggies.
• Helen Mirren discharges a cook who sets fire to a rival restaurant in The Hundred-Foot Journey: “You are a chef. I do not pay you to burn things.”
• A militant African-American college student deconstructs Gremlins as a parable about anti-black paranoia in Dear White People: “The gremlins are loud, talk in slang, are addicted to fried chicken, and freak out when you get their hair wet.”
• In The Gambler, Mark Wahlberg offers to pay his gambling debts with the proceeds from his next novel. He made $17,000 from his last one. Michael Kenneth Williams’ gangsta: “For one of the best-reviewed debut novels of 2007? I think I’ll make other arrangements. Apparently, the culture already did.”
• The Boxtrolls: “Did the boxtrolls drag you down to their hideous caves? Were there mountains of baby bones and rivers of blood? Did they eat your parents? Did they let you watch? I mean, make you watch.”
• A sobering thought in Top Five: “Tupac might be one of our political leaders if he were alive today, but he also might be acting in Tyler Perry movies. He’d be playing the evil dark-skinned boyfriend.”
• Nick Cave in 20,000 Days on Earth: “Do you want to know about songwriting? It’s all about counterpoint. Counterpoint is the key. It’s juxtaposing two disparate images and seeing which way the sparks fly. Like putting a small child in the same room with a Mongolian psychopath.”
• Seth Rogen sees a shirtless Zac Efron in Neighbors: “He’s like something a gay guy invented in a lab.”
• Leonardo da Vinci tries to counsel Mr. Peabody on child-rearing in Mr. Peabody & Sherman: “But Peabody, a child is not a machine! I should know. I tried to build one once. Oh boy, it was-a creepy!”
• Veronica Mars’ encounter with a sleazy private eye selling pictures to the tabloids. “Because of me, the whole world now knows that Anne Hathaway has a vagina!”
• A woman in labor and her husband have a debate over whether to trust the Nazi in hiding with delivering their baby in The German Doctor. She says, “I don’t care who he is!” He looks horrorstruck and says, “I do.”
• Robert Pattinson sings along to Keri Hilson in The Rover.
• In Two Days, One Night, the depression finally lifts from Marion Cotillard as she rocks out in the car to Van Morrison’s “Gloria.”
• In Gloria, a 60-year-old divorcée finds her sense of joy again on a dance floor.
• Bradley Cooper stares at a blank TV screen and tries to keep the screams of war out of his head in American Sniper.
• Josh Brolin eats a whole tray full of marijuana in Inherent Vice.
• The One I Love: Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss finally meet the other couple who’ve been sharing the retreat with them.
• A loaded argument between Sarah Gadon and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Belle. The white girl: “You’re, you’re, you’re illegitimate!” Not wrong, but leaving out so much.
• In Ida, a Polish nun and her aunt make a Holocaust collaborator dig up the corpse of the baby that he killed.
• A mother takes revenge on her cheating husband by castrating their son in Moebius.
• The Cool Girl rant, Gone Girl.
• A very drunk standup comic crashes and burns onstage in Obvious Child: “Hello, my name is Donna Stern, and I was recently dumped up with. [sic] You see, my best friend, my very good friend who is a very nice person, has decided to fuck my boyfriend. I would really like to murder-suicide them.”
• Patricia Arquette’s funny, touching breakdown near the end of Boyhood. “I thought there would be more!”
• Juno Temple tries to keep a male friend from raping her by saying “It’s me! It’s me!” — Horns.
• After his father’s death, Mr. Turner visits a brothel to draw a prostitute, then breaks down and bawls in front of her. Then he suddenly pulls himself together and gruffly says, “Expose your breasts.”
• Mila Kunis admits to hurting her child in Third Person.
• Peter Higgs bursts into tears of joy when the Higgs boson’s existence is proven in Particle Fever.
• Faced with boys throwing garbage and cursing at them, three Swedish girls in a punk rock band do the awesomest, most punk-rock thing imaginable in We Are the Best!
• The revelation at the end of Odd Thomas.
• Michael Keaton takes off, Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
• The defeated striking coal miners repay their debt to the lesbians and gays who supported them at the end of Pride.
• Adam Levine’s version of “Lost Stars” at the end of Begin Again, with Keira Knightley standing in the wings, seeing the young women waving their arms to the song, and realizing that they’re who he should be with.
• Michael Fassbender sings “I Love You All” with his band at the end of Frank, an apology, a coming-out, and a statement of solidarity all at once.
• Gugu Mbatha-Raw breaks free of her mother with a song of her own writing in Beyond the Lights.
• Miles Teller breaks free of his teacher with a thunderous drum solo in Whiplash.
• Walrus fight! — Tusk.
• Giant spider! — Enemy.
• Cantinflas dances to Ravel’s “Bolero.”
• The closing credit montage of sequels to 22 Jump Street.
• The alien sheds its outer covering and regards it with something like wonder at the end of Under the Skin.
• Dancing Groot, Guardians of the Galaxy.
