Ever since 1971 (with some pauses), Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy have published am annual “Moments Out of Time” list, capturing “the ephemeral moments of cinema magic throughout the previous year.” I discovered the lists in the 1980s and have been fascinated by them ever since. I totally get it — who amongst us doesn’t remember small instances from movies? As a matter of fact, my earliest cinematic memory was of a single scene in a film — Tommy Sands and Annette Funicello surrounded by the living trees in Babes in Toyland, an image so terrifying to my young self that I crawled into my mother’s lap and hid my face (yes, that movie’s old – but then, so am I). Every year there are lines, gestures, shots and more that stand out from my year in the dark. Here are but a few. . .
1. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m running things now!” —Julia Roberts to Meryl Streep at the end of a disastrous family dinner in August: Osage County. Two actresses at full throttle…
2. Llewyn Davis, with a cat tucked under his arm, trolling the city in Inside Llewyn Davis. So he does care about something else besides his music…
3. The placid, almost blank, creepiness of Jake Gyllenhaal’s face in Enemy and (especially) Nightcrawler. One of the most underrated actors working in film today…
4. Ralph Fiennes and Tony Reolori running across the snowy landscape as the camera stands by and watches like a passive observer in The Grand Budapest Hotel. How very old-school, to let the action happen without editing the crap out of it…
5. Scarlett Johansson’s skin tears in an assault, and we get to see what she really is underneath in Under the Skin…
6. The absolutely hysterical end of 22 Jump Street with the suggestion of future, fictional (maybe?) sequels to the franchise (including one where Seth Rogen replaced Jonah Hill). One of the few times I actually wanted to watch all of the closing credits…
7. Alison Pill as the grade school teacher (I believe she might have even been pregnant) going all Rambo on the asses of the rebellion in Snowpiercer (and this won out over Tilda Swinton’s teeth in the same movie, so you can only imagine)…
8. “And Quill… Your ship’s filthy.” “She has no idea. If I had a blacklight, this place would look like a Jackson Pollock painting.” Surprisingly sophisticated adult humor, and the best line of the year, in Guardians of the Galaxy…
9. Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris in Gone Girl. I mean, I knew it was coming, but still… OMG!!!…
10. The dimension behind the bookcase in the daughter’s bedroom in Interstellar…
11. Michael Keaton’s meltdown on the street in Birdman. A sneak peek into what the Birdman franchise must have looked like, and where movies have gone in the 21st century…
12. The sheer physicality of Eddie Redmayne’s performance in The Theory of Everything. An actor going for broke, in a role where anything less would have been a copout…
We all have them. What are yours?
This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2014.