Kelly Wand
3. The Godfather
2. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Die hard
Tom Chick
3. Punch-Drunk Love
2. Interstellar
The Ninth Configuration
Dingus
3. Mission: Impossible
2. Blade Runner
Constantine
What are your favorite uses of broken glass in movies? Listen to the show to hear us hold forth on our picks, and to hear Dingus read a bunch of listener picks.
Honorable mention - Foul Play: Maybe doesn’t count because the bottle doesn’t break till it hits the floor, but that’s exactly what makes it so amusing. BONK!
Shattered with Tom Berenger and Bob Hoskins, where the shattered glass is all about his (new) life shattering as he remembers what he forgot due to amnesia.
While its not a movie I submit for honorable mention the Twilight Zone episode, Time Enough at Last, starring Burgess Meredith.
Oh and for movies, The Matrix, in the opening chase scene where Trinity escapes from the Agents by making an impossible jump and diving through a closed window, finishing with the shattered phone booth scene.
Darkman - Larry Drake wants to know something from Liam Neeson, but I can’t remember what it was. What I do remember is one of his thugs grabbing Liam and smashing his face through a series of glass paned cabinets. In signature Sam Raimi style, the shot is from the interior of the cabinet and pans to the right (inside the cabinet) as we see Liam himself getting his head put through each one in sequence. Sam originally wanted Bruce Campbell to star, and I imagine he laughed gleefully when he thought about filming this scene that way. Alas, it was not to be, and Liam got the honour.
A Christmas Story - At the climax of this holiday classic, Ralphie, dogged in his pursuit of a Red Ryder BB gun, rebuffed numerous times with “you’ll shoot your eye out,” finally has his prize in hand a promptly shoots his eye out. Luckily, his glasses deflect the shot into his cheek, but they fall aside when he is knocked to the ground. While blindly searching for the glasses, he steps on them. “Pulverized,” he states. As a kid with glasses, I identified with this kind of disaster and was fearful of parental retribution. In my youth, glasses cost hundreds of dollars and looked terrible. Nowadays, I buy them on the internet for 30 bucks a piece and step on a pair a week.
Runners up: Do The Right Thing (garbage can through the window), The Breakfast Club (Emilio Estevez somehow shatters a window by screaming), Terminator 2 (Miles opens the vault and starts to explain to John how to open the intricate glass case for the Terminator arm, and John just pushes it to the floor, breaking it)
Hmm… I guess Terminator 2 is my third one, now that I’ve typed that out. That actor has a bunch of great moments as Miles, his death scene, in particular.
Dang, I love me some Baseball movies. Probably more than regular Baseball. The soundtrack and sparks and bloody uniform and everything in this is so great.
There’s that bit in Enemy at the Gates where a piece of broken glass falls from the roof of an abandoned factory and the reflection from it lets the enemy sniper see the good guy, does that count?
Also on the subject of glass, in French, the movie Die Hard is called Piège de Crystal (The Crystal Trap), presumably because the literal translation sounds way too much like “die with an erection”.
I’m still listening to the podcast, but I remembered a movie tonight that puts all your other choices to shame. You will weep when you realize this could have been your choice. You are all invalid by comparison.
The greatest example of broken glass in film is the hall of mirrors fight at the climax of Enter the Dragon.
I’m not crazy about including mirrors in this topic, since we already did one on reflections in the Catfish podcast, but I don’t think I took mirrors off the table so my objection won’t stand up in 3x3 court.
That said, your post only makes me think of The Lady from Shanghai. Which I must thank you for, as I really like that movie, and when it comes to that whole “hall of mirrors” thing, is pretty hard to beat. Although I kind of love how Woody Allen honors it with the climactic scene in Manhattan Murder Mystery.
-xtien
“I’m aiming at you lover. Of course killing you is killing myself. It’s the same thing.”
