Yeah, I went back and watched that scene after we finished recording. Damn that’s a tight scene. And the open eyes as they carry him to the bathroom…great god brown that’s a chilling image. I can’t believe it didn’t come to me either.
Good on you. You win this one.
-xtien
“I am Shiva. The god of death.”
TBH I typically treat podcasts like serial TV shows and listen to several of them in a row once every month or so. Sometimes certain obvious first choices that don’t make the 3x3s are brought up and/or excluded in the first post, sometimes they’re not. My question was less a statement about whether or not the podcasts are a bother, and more a question about whether or not I should bump this one up and listen to it out of order; since I probably won’t queue the latest ones up for a couple weeks.
It’s also partly the look frozen on Tom Wilkinson’s face. He’s got this bewildered “Who are you and why are you tasering me?” expression the whole time.
By the way, it’s technically: “Ready…and lift. Ready…and go. Wipe. You better hit it. We’re good.” I love, too, how the guy giving the injection gingerly puts down Tom Wilkinson’s foot. And that pause while they wait:
-Tom
We’re just giving you guff. :) Chigurh is a good point, but how much do we really know about what he is? He’s almost metaphysical, like the Rider of the Apocalypse in Raising Arizona or William Fichtner in Drive Angry. He feels more like one of the crazy cowboy apocalypse vampires in Outer Dark, one of Cormac McCarthy’s first novels.
-Tom
Miller’s Crossing: the tommygunners vs Leo.
Sonny getting gunned down at the causeway in “The Godfather”. That contemptuous kick at the end just for spite’s sake. Great shock value.
Michael blasting away in the restaurant as the train screeches to a halt. I liked this one from the flip side - all the internalization while it built up to a moment we knew was coming (unlike Sonny, where we get it from the victim’s side) and then the release.
Pesci’s moment of realization that he is not about to become a made man, but whacked. Just time for a thin slice of absolute despair and then [I]whack!
[/I]For moments already listed, yup, that puff of smoke as the Jackal misses De Gaulle, forgetting the French fondness for kissing anything.
It’s been a long while since I’ve seen it, but it always stuck with me, because it undermines one of the most common film gunplay tropes: that taking cover behind a solid object means your’re safe, regardless of what the material is made of (couches, wooden tables, etc).
Goodfellas pre-dates Sopranos considerably. & they’re both awesome.
I’d forgotten all about it till you described it in detail. Not quite as iconic as John Ritter emerging from a van but up there. Tom, my brain’s forgotten many awesome things to accommodate errata about Star Wars prequels.
The Professional - Leon describing to Mathilda why he loves his plant so much.
Yeah, I left out the ‘ready and go’ for brevity’s sake. But if you’re gonna grief me with a “technically”…you better hit it.
-xtien
We’re good.
-TomYou forgot to wipe.
SPOILERS:
I never understood how these guys can’t come up with a better way to conduct their trade later in the film. A big loud car bomb is the best they could come up with?
Otherwise great movie.
I liked assassins Julia Roberts and Sam Rockwell trying to, uh, break off their relationship in the end of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Those jerky hitmen at the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller show that most guys who are paid to kill other guys probably don’t have hearts of gold.
And even though this movie is sooo obvious it was poo-poohed in the podcast, but who doesn’t like Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta killing time before killing men in Pulp Fiction?
This thread was a useful resource.
I’m a huge aficionado of the sub-genre of film that is the hitman movie, I tend to gravitate toward them. No idea why, I guess it is romantic as you guys say, in some strange way. The French movie ‘Le Samourai’ is one of my favorites but it’s a hard one to recommend – telling someone it’s a film about a hitman puts certain expectations in mind, and this movie really isn’t about action or climactic fights. So, uh, I don’t have a pick for this 3x3, but if you like hitman movies and haven’t seen it, you really should.
Oh wait! I’m going to fall back on ‘The Killer’, the first John Woo movie I saw way the hell back when, which introduced me to Chow Yun Fat. Though it’s a tired old cliche in action movies, I loved the moment when Chow’s character is face to face with his police nemesis, each holding a gun to the head of the other. A classic stand off, and I was wondering how the hell the situation would be resolved. Of course it doesn’t help that Woo ripped himself off, using almost the exact scene in his subsequent movies, but it’s cool the first time you see it!
No one’s mentioned the scene where Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill finds out she’s pregnant?
The podcast hit on all the scenes that came to mind: both the hit and the negotiation in Michael Clayton – Tilda Swinton is so damn good in that, the hallway scene in Grosse Point Blank, Leon’s introduction.
But speaking of John Woo, I love the look on Tony Leung’s face in Bullet in the Head when he sees Simon Yam and realizes what he’s about to do.
Aw, I wrote my post just as Quarter to Three went down this morning. Blast. Take two:
The assassination sequence in Michael Clayton is one of the most disturbing kills I’ve seen. It’s horrible, but a very very good choice.
I’ve always liked The Professor in The Bourne Identity, who, once Bourne shoots him turns from a cold, dangerous killer to a scared, sad, cold man. He dies with the line "“Look at us. Look at what they make you give.”
What I like about that scene is that he doesn’t swear for almost the first time in the movie. As I recall, he just says, ‘oh no!’ in such a sad, lost way.