Movie List Monday: Oh, So That’s Why We Have Movies

I saw a video interview with Zach Cregger where he lists some of the movies that inspired him while making Weapons. I haven’t seen most of them, but they’re going on the to-watch list, some with enthusiasm, some begrudgingly.1I disliked Boogie Nights so much that I swore off Paul Thomas Anderson movies completely, but I suspect that means I’m missing a lot of good stuff, so fine. I’ll finally watch Magnolia I guess.

Cregger doesn’t mention it as a direct influence, but while praising the Coen Brothers he does call out Raising Arizona, specifically the way it starts out with a cold open that doesn’t hit its yodeling main theme and title card until several minutes in. “I was like, ‘they can do that? This is amazing!'”

Which really connected with me, because there have been several times (including during the opening and throughout just about every Coen Brothers movie) where it’s felt like a scene reached into my brain, futzed around with some wiring, and dramatically changed my thinking of how movies work and what they’re capable of.

These aren’t necessarily my favorite scenes or my favorite movies (although there’s considerable overlap, of course), but just the scenes that made me realize, in the moment, “oh yeah, this is what movies are about.”

(And apologies to anybody who felt like my featured image is a bait and switch; I don’t remember anything about Cinema Paradiso apart from that I liked it and it made me cry exactly when it wanted me to).

Weekend (1967)

I don’t even like this movie overall, and I’m aware that Jean-Luc Godard specifically and French New Wave in general did this kind of thing all the time, but this was the scene that stood out to me.

There’s a bit where our protagonists drive to a kind of rest stop on the side of the highway, a minor argument gets heated, things escalate, and then they escalate to an absurd/surreal degree. If I remember correctly, there’s a fist fight and guns fired? In any case, it turns into chaos, and our protagonists jump into their car and flee the scene.

The next scene starts with a title card that reads “Fauxtographie,” and then just consists of the entire cast of the previous scene standing together in a group photo pose, smiling and waving at the camera. It was mind-altering for me to see that kind of goofy fourth wall breaking2By my estimation; I can never tell with art film directors whether they’re being playful or taking themselves seriously in a movie that had been introduced to us as a significant art film.

The Untouchables (1987)

This is one of those movies I don’t want to go back and rewatch, because I’m afraid it won’t live up to my memory of it. But at the time, I adored it.

The scene that had a peculiar impact on me is one in which mobsters are scoping out Sean Connery’s corner apartment. It starts out with the corner seen from a distance, with Connery clearly visible in the window, and the frame is wide enough that you can see the entire apartment. It makes his character feel shockingly exposed and vulnerable to Capone’s goons.

For all I know, it says more about the fact that I was raised in the suburbs and spent little time in cities than it does about the thought that went into that scene, but it was meant to show how the Untouchables weren’t safe anywhere, and it absolutely worked for me. It actually shifted how I think about conceptual spaces vs physical ones; I always thought of my home as being more or less impenetrable, but this one scene — and how it was deliberately set up to be outside looking in — made me realize that the only thing separating my safe space from the open world was a few thin walls and windows.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

The movie spends a lot of time talking about Toontown, but we never get to actually see the place itself until Eddie works up the nerve to drive back in for the first time since his brother’s murder.

The payoff is amazing. Curtains within the tunnel open to a cartoon sound effect, and suddenly he’s driven into a cartoon, where everything is alive and singing “Smile, Darn ya, Smile.” I think I’m a heretic for not really liking Richard Williams’s animation that much; most often, I feel like it’s so meticulous and so full of stuff that it’s distracting. Moments don’t land for me, because I feel like it’s too difficult to focus on what’s important.

But here, that kind of overkill and excess works perfectly, because it makes everything feel overwhelming.

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

The “Good Morning” scene is why people love musicals. Part of it is that it’s got three movie stars who were exceptional even back when movie stars had to be good at everything. But more than that, it’s how the scene just turns into fantasy.

Ostensibly, it’s the capper to a scene that was advancing the plot, but really, the scene exists as a showcase for its stars, and it doesn’t even act like there’s anything wrong with that. The camera silently pulls back farther than it’d be able to in a real space, and then it tracks the leads as they head through an unattached doorway into an impossibly huge living room. This had just recently been a “real” space for the story, and now it’s a stage set for a spectacular dance number.

This is a movie about making movies, and it’s constantly quietly switching between cinema and stage production, using sets that are sometimes supposed to represent real places and sometimes meant to suggest movie sets, all with a quiet assertion that the distinction doesn’t really matter, since it’s all spectacle.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

I was never a fan of the franchise, and I don’t think I ever saw any of them in their entirety, so I had no expectations from what was essentially a sequel to a movie that had come out 30 years earlier. But it bludgeons you over the head with unapologetically over-the-top bad-assery from its title card onwards.

I was enjoying the movie at a level 8 or 9 for a while, and the moment that knocked it up to 20 for me was the introduction of the Doof Warrior. I’m hard-wired to like taiko drums, so they already had my attention, but then the camera panning around to the front of the vehicle was the perfect introduction: a wall of amplifiers, a masked guy on bungie cords wearing a union suit and playing a double-necked electric guitar, and then the guitar shoots a jet of flame.

Oh right, I’d actually forgotten that movies can do whatever the hell they want to do, and that is incredible.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

My sense of humor wasn’t yet fully-formed by 1986, so I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Big Trouble in Little China for most of its beginning. Is it just another cheesy action movie? Is it a sincere attempt to bring martial arts/Hong Kong style action to an American production? Is it a satire on those movies? Is it a flat-out comedy?

It took me a while to realize the answer was “yes.” I’d been wondering if it were trying to be a real movie and not hitting the mark, or if it were trying to be a B movie and overperforming, and I kept going back and forth until the showdown in the alley in Chinatown, and the first appearance of the three storms.

I think it was the first time a movie had so forcefully told me to just shut up and watch. Movies have the potential to show you anything someone can imagine, so why try to force them into doing only the things that you expect?

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Between 1977 and 1980, I (along with the rest of the world) had become obsessed with Star Wars. The only thing I wanted from a sequel was more Star Wars. For all I know, I would’ve been just as happy if the sequel had been that unambitious.

But apart from the obvious swap from desert to ice planet, the one scene that made me truly realize I was watching something different was seeing the AT-ATs on Hoth. Those iconic images of the walkers stop-motion trudging towards the Rebel trenches, and then the snowspeeders flying in to defend.

These are some of the most over-analyzed movies in history, so of course this isn’t an entirely new idea, but the thing I’m only now really appreciating about this scene is how much everyone reacts as if this is just a thing that happens in this universe. In Star Wars, there are frequent comments about how huge and singular the Death Star is, to make it stand out from all of the fantastic things we see elsewhere in the movie. In Empire, these huge, lumbering, armored transports are treated like they’ve all seen this kind of thing before. It’s such a core part of what’s unique about Star Wars world-building that it’s easy to forget how deep it goes.

Rear Window (1954)

Of course, it’s the scene where Lisa gets caught by Thorwald snooping around his apartment. I’m sure entire books have been written about this movie and this scene in particular, but it’s just a masterpiece within a masterpiece.

It incorporates all of the sense of being exposed and vulnerable that’s in the above scene from The Untouchables, with shifts in angles when the same action is viewed through a zoom lens instead of from a distance, and the peaceful music coming from a different apartment that’s dissonant against the tension.

But the climax is when Lisa shows Jeff that she’s managed to take away a ring, and then when Thorwald notices, he looks directly into the camera. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times now, and it still makes me gasp.

Sinners (2025)

It’s the “Magic What We Do” scene. What seems like a cinematic flourish at first — see, this character appears to represent how the blues ties these characters back to a far older tradition of expression through the arts and holy shit is that a Funkadelic guy on an electric guitar?! It just keeps building and expanding its idea until it seems to encompass the entirety of human artistic expression.

I think it’s literally impossible to adequately explain to someone how a piece of music makes you feel, but this scene comes closer than anything I’ve ever seen to capturing exactly how and why music, and the blues music that runs throughout the movie in particular, is so meaningful to the characters and the filmmakers.

Miller’s Crossing (1990)

Kind of like with Raising Arizona, it’s an extended cold open that leads into a title sequence. But here, it’s Jon Polito’s speech about ethics, which is completely engrossing because of the arrogance that’s immediately evident in his performance, the camera and staging putting all the focus onto the apparent significance of what he’s saying, and then the thing that carries through all of Miller’s Crossing: the language.

On top of all the dialect that the Coens supposedly made up for the movie (conslang?), it’s a very specific rhythm and idiom that makes it feel like this movie takes place in a fantasy world. Kind of like Shakespeare, where everyone talks in iambic pentameter, but here, everyone talks in gangster movie banter.

And while you’re still processing all of it, the title sequence, with its beautiful music and the image of a hat blowing away in the wind. Nerds like me have been interpreting the symbolism ever since the movie came out, no matter how hard the Coens tried to shut us down by saying it’s just a hat. I feel like the larger message is another case of “shut up and watch.” The entire opening sequence made me feel like I was about to see something I’d never seen before, and it was correct.

1
I disliked Boogie Nights so much that I swore off Paul Thomas Anderson movies completely, but I suspect that means I’m missing a lot of good stuff, so fine. I’ll finally watch Magnolia I guess.

2
By my estimation; I can never tell with art film directors whether they’re being playful or taking themselves seriously

1 I disliked Boogie Nights so much that I swore off Paul Thomas Anderson movies completely, but I suspect that means I’m missing a lot of good stuff, so fine. I’ll finally watch Magnolia I guess.

2 By my estimation; I can never tell with art film directors whether they’re being playful or taking themselves seriously