Top "He's So In There" Movie Moments

Top Three Movie Moments that made me say..."Oh, he is so in there.....".

#3
Outbreak - Army scientist Sam Daniels (Dustin Hoffman)is racing against time to save the people of Cedar Creek, California from death due to infection by a killer virus. His fellow scientist and ex-wife who he is still in love with, Dr. Keough (Rene Russo), becomes infected and to convince her to hold on while he finds a cure, he removes his enviro suit in her presence, infecting himself with the same deadly virus and committing himself to find a cure or die with her. Oh, he's so in there.

#2
Speed - LA cop Jack Traven (Keana Reeves) hangs on for dear life to a runaway commuter train thats been blown off the rails by a madman with damsel in distress Sandra Bullock handcuffed to a handrail and unable to escape. The intrepid Reeves disdains the opportunity to save himself from what appears to be certain doom and remains with Bullock as the train careens through the subway and explodes from underground to land in the street above. Looking around in stunned amazement that they are even alive, Bullock looks up at Reeves and realizes he's still with her, looking into his eyes and breathlessly exclaiming "you stayed with me...you stayed with me". Oh, he is so in there.

And the #1 movie moment in this category...

Deja Vu - ATF Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington), has traveled back in time to save heroine Claire Kercheval (Paula Patton), and they fall in love. In the final moments of the film, he dies freeing her from a car that has plunged into the icy waters of the Hudson River and then explodes. Claire swims to the surface and is rescued. Sitting on the dock, she's devastated until Doug (still alive in her present and who has not yet met her) walks up, to the utter amazement of a stunned Claire who only moments ago watched the man she loves who saved her life, die. Oh, he is so in there.

Those are my top three. This was actually a difficult exercise, so I challenge you to top my picks in the comments if you can. Contest will be open until August 31st. Winner gets a $5 Starbucks card.

General guidelines:

• Hero must get the girl (no he dies so she can live or he saves her for somebody else entries)
• Dramatic damsel in distress rescue scenarios will generally, though not always, rank higher than more emotional, relationship moment type entries.
• Back up your entry with a video clip if available (use TubeChop to trim Youtube video down to the segment you want). I will generally judge entries with a clip more favorably than one without.
  
• Winners and 1st and 2nd runner ups chosen at my sole discretion.

Think you can top my picks? Go for it.

Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before

This is to date, the best trailer I've seen for the upcoming prequel to the storied Trek franchise.

If the movie has the same vibe as the trailer, they will have gotten it right and it will be epic story telling that expands and advances Trek to a new generation of fans. I won't know until I see it and I'm still given pause by the youthfulness of the cast and what appears to be a suggestion from some of the other trailers that Kirk beds Uhura. Not feeling that.

Star Trek opens May 4th.

Your Favorite Villians

I love movies. I like a good story well told, always have. I love a good villain. In every movie that pits good vs. evil in a straight up contest, you gotta have a villain that is up to the task. There are few things more certain to ruin your enjoyment of a good movie than a villain that is not really intimidating or inspiring of visceral antipathy. Perfect case in point, Blade Trinity, a film that put a stake through the heart of the Blade franchise. The villain was Dracula, and oh my God was he lame.

A few of the movie villains I have enjoyed a lot in my movie watching across the years:

Khan - Star Trek II ~ The Wrath of Khan

"from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee! "

The late Ricardo Montalban was magnificent as the malignant Khan, a genetic superman bent on exacting revenge on Kirk for the death of his wife. Khan was a steely villian with old world charm and a vocabulary to match, plotting galactic domination with the sophistication of an English Duke.

Rico - Judge Dredd

"You want chaos? *I'm* the chaos"

You have to like this one because Armand Assante gave life, intensity and purpose to a character that was otherwise poorly defined in the script. Assante manages to take his few lines in the movie and convey the anguish and rage of Rico, betrayed by his clone brother, Judge Dredd. He reveled in chaos and you felt him, big time.

Clubber Lang - Rocky III

"I will destroy any man who tries to take what I got! "

Mr. T puts on an awesomely impressive display of malevolence. He very effectively conveys brute, unstoppable fury. Whenever he was on screen, you knew pain was not far behind.


Deacon Frost - Blade

"You may wake up one day and find yourself extinct."

One way you know Steven Dorf did a good job in this film was that you genuinely did not like Frost. He wasn't just an evil vampire, he was a real a**hole about it too.




So those are a few of my pics, which I think are pretty good. Have you got a better four villains? Top these.

The Oddness of Parenting

And now, something a little different.....

As a parent, one is of necessity deeply involved (or should be) in the entertainment material which your children consume. This means that I have seen, or in some cases heard (driving the van, kids in back watching movie) many childrens movies again and again. The wacky thing is that you end up having favorite movies and opinions about this media made for kids, which I often end up feeling wacky about, because it just seems perverse. I only take comfort in the fact that other parents probably understand where I'm coming from, whereas those without children largely think you're crazy.

So, a few of what I consider the more memorable picks and pans from the pantheon of children's entertainment I am forced as a father to consume:

The Incredibles:
One of my all time favorites. One of those really good childrens movies that's working marvelously on an adult level and kid level at the same time. They put marital conflict, childrearing challenges, money woes, career and relationship issues along with a dollop of existential debate about mediocrity and achievement into a great looking action flick. A complete winner.

Curious George:
Oh dear God, it was an ordeal to sit through. I owned and read the Curious George books as a child and like most other kids, I was enchanted by them. When the movie came out, I was game to see the big screen adaptation of this wonderful childhood favorite, and I just knew it was going to be special to watch it with my own kids. It was special all right. Especially dull. It was the exact opposite of the Incredibles in effect. It was designed for the kids, period. They enjoyed it, but if you were an adult, sitting through it was deadly boring. The best part about it is the beginning with its opening montage of George and the Jack Johnson soundtrack playing, which perfectly captures George's spirit. After that, it was pure torture. Parents, you are duly warned.


Ratatouille
I took my kids to the drive-in to see this movie, and though I actually enjoyed the movie more or less, I could not help but be creeped out by the film almost throughout the entire movie. I'm sorry, but conceptually, I just got a problem with the idea of rats and food, and this movie is all about a rat that wants to be a chef. The movie intermittently creeped me out everytime they had a scene where the rat star was up in the middle of some food preparation. I was just like, heck no! But I was just really outdone near the end, when the rat has to call on his rat family of hundreds to help him cook the food for the restaurants patrons and they come flooding in their thousands into the kitchen and they are all up in the people's FOOD! I asked my wife about this later. Didn't that bother you? But she thought it was charming. The sweetest, smartest, sexiest clean freak I know. Go figure.


Flushed Away
Charming is a good word for this one. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and there is a little kick in the idea of Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the X-Men) voicing the character of Roddy, the slightly timid but brave rat hero of the film. Kate Winslet was an excellent Rita. What I enjoyed in particular though was the villain, Toad, voiced by Ian McKellan (a villain in the X-Men, Magneto). In his introductory scene, he has a monologue and then a repartee with Roddy that is hilariously madcap. I laughed so hard I nearly cried (I tell this to people without small children and they laugh....nervously). This one is a lot of fun, with singing slugs , adventure and the droll english sense of humour in the monty python tradition, but funny (isn't it interesting how humour is cultural? Monty Python is a comedic dynasty, but most of it gets not a laugh from me, but the brits find it hilarious while I usually don't get it)

Another thing that comes with parenting territory is noticing odd stuff like the fact that in a large number of the Disney films, they kill off the mother or she is dead and simply not present, and this is a consistent theme in Disney movies for years. Think about it: Bambi, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, Beauty and the Beast, etc. I don't know whether to consider it sinister or just lack of creativity. But its odd.

Soooo, those are a few of my picks. So what about the rest of you lot? Am I the only parent out here that develops a real interest and opinion about these childrens films? Have you got your favorites too? Or has being a parent simply made me an oddball?