Scenes With Power

It's that special moment when you forget that you are watching a screen. You are trapped in the scene. You are there with the actors and you are bound to their tale. Their choices ignite a fire within you.

Bladerunner: The Director's Cut (Ridley Scott, 1982, DC 1992), is my favourite movie of all time.

It would take ten blogs to discuss the themes and ideas discussed through both this film and the novel from which it was adapted- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick- so I will spare the blurb beforehand, other than to introduce this scene as that which confirms Rachel's realisation that she is not in fact human, but an android:

Bladerunner, Ridley Scott (1982)

The sexual tension, the haunting score, the slow, beautiful pacing and the brooding, intimate cinematography create, for me, one of the most powerful 'love' scenes in cinema.

It is pure loneliness.

Next:

Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990), is another of my favourite movies. I could watch it time and time again. But every time I do set aside the three hours it takes to appreciate this masterpiece, I peak somewhere half-way in.

You're probably thinking I'm going to bang you a link straight to "Do you think I'm funny?".

Don't get me wrong- that's a great sequence- but it isn't a patch on this one.

Here's the set up:

Henry and Karen have only been dating a short while. So far we haven't got the impression that he cares for her that much. He's with Jimmy beating seven shades out of slimy wig-wearing Maurice for an unpaid debt when the phone rings for Henry. It's Karen. He meets her in a phone box a few streets from her house and she isn't holding up too great; crying and shaking. A neighbour had offered her a ride home but started touching her up on the passenger seat. She hit him, jumped out and ran to the phone booth. Henry's car speeds away.

We join the scene as Henry pulls up outside Karen's house:

Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese (1990)

It's the look in Ray Liotta's eyes as he walks away from the drive that get me every time. Also important about this scene is Karen's significant character change. She accepts the gun, so symbolically she accepts Henry's crooked lifestyle.

Anyway.

There's two fantastic scenes to check out on this cold saturday afternoon.

Message me up with some of your favourites, with or without links. I'd love to see them.

PS: For the sake of good times, here's an old song I've been hitting up recently. I used to work in a bar  and every week I'd put this tune on the juke both to please the punters and aggravate my girlfriend. Let's say I fell in love with it.



PPS. I wasn't working in this bar in the 80s. I was born in the 80's, grandad.