High Five Vol. 11

Hello again. So, what I’ve done here is elaborately, with very few commas, break down (and link to, for the lazy illiterates) the five scenes in the visual realm that blew me away in 2010. And by “visual realm,” I mean I had to include a TV scene so then this couldn’t just be named My Top 5 Movie Scenes. Making shit difficult for myself. (Kinda Exactly like having a kid.) So with an obligatory SPOILER ALERT and without further adieu, here are My Top Five Scenes Of 2010 in Either A Movie Or HBO Series About War.

5. Piranha 3-D
Why It’s Totally Cool To Have Short Hair

We saw a slew of super fun and schlocky films right before the kid was born, and I kept every movie stub thinking THIS will be the last movie we ever saw without needing a babysitter. (The last one ended up being The Town. Completely respectable.) Piranha 3-D was the best of the B-bunch for me. (Machete coulda been a contender but I felt it imploded halfway through. Pity.) Piranha 3-D picked a tone/mood/style – cheesy-gory-80’s-amazingness – and rode it hard and gratuitously all the way through to the very last scene. All in 3-D. There are a beautiful plethora of scenes to choose from: a floating detached penis (in 3-D!), old school nudity (aka fake boobs swimming), a Christopher Lloyd cameo, but mostly tons of terrible gore as hundreds of teenagers on a lake on Spring Break, drunk and scantily clad, get ripped to shreds many different ways by CG fish. Remember – all the disintegration of flesh takes place in water. That would have been hard as SHIT to do special-effects wise. And they did it so well. My very favourite scene was particularly inspiring and amazingly-executed: one poor girl gets her hair caught in the propellers of a boat. The dick on the boat doesn’t care and jumpstarts it in order to take off. I thought the camera would pan away from the resulting “JesusChristNO” moment. It did not. As the motor finally roars to life, her hair and ALL THE SKIN ON HER FACE gets yanked off. It’s amazing. To be clear – I normally hate blood ‘n guts in movies. But this, and all the rest of the impaled, cut off, eaten, ragged lumps of flesh and bone, decapitations and devourings through SO many scenes of fish fury, was done in that Sunday afternoon Super Channel way, so it was not only totally tolerable for my weak white stomach, it actually made me smile.

4. The Pacific
A Merciful Moment

Yes, I was pregnant while watching this series and this did colour my opinions and emotions. The episode where John Basilone died made me cry into a big pillow silently so that Nuv and Jay wouldn’t point and Nelson Muntz “HAHA!” at me. (It was bad. Worse than the end of Up In The Air, but not as bad as the beginning of Up.) So, the scene that stands out for me, and still slays me, was in Episode 9, ‘Okinawa.’ It shadows Joseph Mazzello’s character, Sledge, who we all kinda were meh about, because we loved Leckie & the crazy-eyed mushmouth Snafu from New Orleans so very much. Sledge broke through here, for me, and this is why. Basically (History students, grab your pen and paper!) the Americans bombed the shit out of a village because there were supposedly bad guys there. But there were just dead villagers when they got there. And a baby crying. For a good 2-3 minutes. The hard cry. The uncomfortable to listen to cry. Because his family was laying in pieces around him. And his Gramma wanted Sledge to kill her and put her out of her misery, but instead he sat with her tenderly until she died. I might have held my breath for that entire scene. I needed a shot of whiskey and a slap in the face when it was over. Neither of which I got. Bru-tal.

3. Kick Ass
Hit Girl Hits Hard

When this scene ended I emitted some type of FUCK YEAH hoot and clapped in the theatre. Nobody else did. And Nuv moved one seat away from me. (You know what? When my Dad used to take me to early sneak peeks of movies in the 90s, it was totally acceptable and expected that you clapped at the rad parts of movies, and then again at the end when the credits rolled. Let’s bring that back. Fuck too-cool-for-school reactions where you softly “whoo!” to yourself if something takes your breath away. Let’s be appreciative with some hard hand-hurting claps and “YOW’s!” Who’s with me?) Hit Girl, the impeccable Chloe Moretz, violently and rapidly kills a swarm of mobsters with knives and multiple gun-under-the-chin head shots,  while running and flipping down a beautiful book-lined corridor in the bad guy’s lair. Scored with Bad Reputation by Joan Jett (of the Runaways), it is rapid fire and bloody and inappropriate and cool, and made even cooler by the fact that she is a teeny tiny girl who shouldn’t know how to, or be able to, decimate this crew of swarthy bad guys. Old men who review movies would say this scene epitomizes “Girl Power,” but that term was lame the second it was ever uttered out loud.

2. The Social Network
The Henley Royal Regatta

A scene that has nothing to do with anything. Oh, the tight shots of exhaled breaths and flexing muscles of the rowers. The oom-pah-pah band prepping their instruments. The men with striped hats. Filmed so beautifully the scenery looks fake, like they used a miniature model of a body of water and it’s surrounding greenery and all the fancy people watching, who point and schmooze and have money and are alumni of schools that foster and support the “sport” of rowing. With a sped up frantic version of In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg, (courtesy of Golden Globe winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) laid on top, it’s a dialogue-less scene in a movie spilling over with words. Maybe that’s why it stood out so much for me. That along with (Film students, grab your pen and paper!) the effect they use where only what you’re supposed to be looking at is in focus, aka the fuzzy edges focus. (Misfits, Piggy’s reason for living, uses the shit outta this technique.) It’s a stunner of a scene, a snapshot of an event I don’t give a shit about, but I cared deeply about rowing while watching it. I could feel the flecks of water coming up off the paddles and taste the sweat on the good looking one’s forehead. I wanted to be there. I was there. Great fucking scene.

1.The Fighter
The Intro

This whole movie was shot so fucking gorgeously…the cinematography just in and out of places, using different perspectives and angles that I’ve never been before. Little chunks of storytelling, like someone walking up a flight of stairs, or big ones like a bar fight, are shot in unique ways that you notice and appreciate, but you aren’t ripped out of the scene because they’re too “fresh outta film school” precocious. (The uncanny way the fight scenes are shot is worthy of a whole entire column. So good.) My favourite scene of the year is right near the beginning (at the 1:28 mark of the link), right after Christian Bale (who won the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe) has already blown your mind with yet another uncanny performance of a skin and bones, strung out, sweaty motormouth loser. It starts with a terrible noise, revealed to be Mark Wahlberg raking loose pebbles along the cement, then Bale’s fists come into frame. First on the left then the right, throwing hooks and jabs instead of helping his brother work. Wahlberg admonishes his brother, then plays along with a loose spar before being “knocked out” onto the ground by Bale. He’s helped to his feet, the shot goes wide showing the HBO crew filming the two guys, then the camera circles the boys and flies backwards down the street as How You Like Me Now by The Heavy kicks in. I love that shot so goddamn much. Flawlessly executed, scored perfectly and an excellent beginning to what was one of my favourite films of the year. I loved The Social Network, and I’m sure Fincher will take home the Best Director Oscar, but I would give it to David O. Russell.

So, there you be. The scenes that stole my heart, ate me up, made me laugh, clap and cry. Now it’s your turn. What made you love movies and having eyeballs in 2010? Leave ‘em in the Comments.