Do you go to the video store and never know what to rent? Well here are two lists that might help you out a little bit in that reguard. Enjoy!!

—Best Random Movie Moments of 2003—

A little while ago I started to jot down ideas for a list of the best (or more accurately, my favorite) movie moments of 2003 and I quickly began to discover that my favorite moments fit into two very different categories. The first category was for those moments when you are watching a film and you are like, “Wow, that’s just great film making”. The other category, however, was filled with moments that weren’t particularly spectacular, but instead were just so absurd or crazy that I just couldn’t get them out of my head. They were those moments where you talk to a friend and are like, “Holy shit, you’ve got to see this!” Not necessarily great film making, but memorable nonetheless. So the following list is made up of those completely random moments from films that I can’t stop talking about.

1. Dreamcatcher

Oh my God, where to begin. I could make a top ten random moment list just out of this movie alone. Whether it is the shit weasels, Morgan Freeman going nuts, or British accented aliens, this movie has it all. This movie is the KING of the random movie moment.

That said, the moment that probably most stuck with me was the scene where Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore go on a bombing mission with their helicopters, firing missiles at herds of aliens as they try to get back to their mothership. The aliens sort of morph between being quite cute and innocent to being ferocious man killers, and the scene is shot like the Nazis mowing down the Jews in Schindler’s List, making this sequence one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen put on film. My jaw just dropped upon watching it. Utterly fantastic!

2. The Isle

Warning: I’m about to discuss the stuff that I wouldn’t when I originally reviewed this Korean film. Read on at your own risk.

This movie about people living on little houseboats was runner up for most random moments this year. The moment of no return, that moment when I looked at Harry and we both wondered what the hell it was that we were seeing, was when the main character, who has been running away from the law for committing a murder, sees the police come to search the various houseboats. Instead of getting caught, as he assumes he will be, he swallows a cluster of fishhooks in the most disturbing act of suicide I’ve ever seen. You’ve really got to want to kill yourself in order to do something like that.

Anyway, he lodges the hooks in his throats and starts to cough up blood when the girl who has fallen in love with him finds him and decides to hide him from the police. She dumps him in the water through the trap door in the floor of the little houseboat and then acts like she is the one who lives there when the police paddle up. When they leave she then pulls him out of the water, BY PULLING HIM UP BY THE FISHING LINE. Oh my God, it was the most disturbing thing ever. She then pulls the fishhooks out of his throat and the movie goes on from there.

That’s not where the disturbing ends though, oh no. Just in keeping with the fishhook theme, at the very end of the film the woman is jilted by her lover. In revenge or desperation, I’m not sure which (maybe a little of both), she takes a bunch of fishing hooks and shoves them up…OK, here’s where you start using your imagination. Imagine the most outlandish place you could stick fishing hooks. Give up? That’s right, she shoved them into her vagina. Man, oh man. Thus there is a repeat of the scene where now he takes out her fishing hooks.

This is a rather beautiful love story too, did I happen to mention that?

3. Blade of Fury

The Award for the most random moment in a movie that made me go “Oh shit, did I just see what I thought I saw?” goes to Blade of Fury for the completely random moment where they actually got a horse to run through a brick wall. How or why they did this, I don’t know, but it sure is fun to watch.

4. Strangers on a Train

This is another movie filled with weird random moments. My absolute favorite has to be at the very end where the climatic scene takes place on an out of control carousel. How did it get out of control? Well, a police officer decided to shoot wildly at the bad guy into a crowd of civilians, not to mention all of the children on the carousel, and he nails the guy operating the speed causing it to spin out of control. What the hell was that guy thinking? They really need to take away his badge. Then, while the two main characters fight onto of the carousel, and old man bravely crawls under it in order to shut off the power. It’s all some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. Must See!

5. Pieces

The original random moment that got me to thinking about this list came from this silly slasher movie. The main woman character walks alone down a dark alley. Things get really creepy as the director uses the stereotypical cliches to make you think someone (the killer) is following her. Then suddenly an Asian man jumps out of the shadows and starts doing several kung fu moves before falling down. The main male character hears the woman’s screaming and comes to investigate. He recognizes the man lying on the ground and says something like “Chan, what are you doing here?” To which he replies, confused, “I don’t know. Must be bad Moo Shu Pork,” and walks away. Hilarious.

6. The Night of the Hunter

Lots of great random moments in this movie. My favorite is when the little boy is fishing in the boat with his uncle, and his uncle gets a bite. In one motion he jerks the line, causing a gigantic trout to arc out of the water and into the boat, and then he starts beating it with his oar. The whole thing happens rather fast and is completely unexpected, making for a fantastic show.

7. Battle Royale

My favorite moment on this movie filled with them, is when the crazy teacher pops in the videotape that explains how you play Battle Royale. As this overly cheerful young Japanese girl talks about children killing each other like one would hot teen celebrities, the teacher responds to what she’s saying by shouting out Hello! or Thank you! at appropriate times, like a teacher would introducing a guest speaker. Even after the soldiers and the teacher kill a few of the students he and the video remain overly cheerful.

8. My Neighbor Totoro

I’m sorry, but you haven’t really lived until you see the cute and yet extremely disturbing cat bus. How anyone ever came up with this idea is beyond me.

9. Talk to Her

Anyone who’s seen this movie knows what I’m talking about when I mention the bizarre silent film made up for this film where a man shrinks down in size until he is small enough to climb inside a woman’s vagina. It’s just weird beyond what normal words can express.

10. A Nightmare on Elm Street

There’s a moment in the first nightmare where Freddy is running down the street after the girl, which is extremely hilarious. Instead of being scary, Freddy is waving his arms around in the air like a spaz, and the whole time in my head all I hear is “Freddy’s gonna getcha! Freddy’s gonna getcha!” It’s so utterly ridiculous that I love it.

A side note: In Spike Jonze’s documentary What’s Up Fatlip? Fatlip at one point starts talking about how they used to make up dances when they went clubbing, one of them being the Freddy. Three guesses as to what that dance looks like. Next time you go to the party, at least once pull out the Freddy.

—Best Movie Moments of the Year—

Looking at some of my choices for best movie moments of the year, I realize that some of these choices on the list would almost look more welcome in the Best Random Movie Moments list, but ah well, that seems to be how I watch movies. I seem to react best to those moments that smack you right in the face and ask you to pay attention, to look at how cool all of this is. I hope that helps make a little more sense out of this list, which I consider to be of those moments that most made me stand up and take notice of them.

1. Kill Bill: Volume 1

There are so many great moments in this movie that it was hard coming up with one to single out above the rest. Probably the most obvious choice would be the House of Blue Leaves fight, but upon further reflection I realized that that wasn’t the sequence that had the biggest effect on me. My favorite sequence was what I will now name the “Waking Up” sequence.

It starts brilliantly with Daryl Hannah entering the hospital and changing into a white nurses outfit (with matching eye-patch!) while we look at a motionless Uma Thruman via De Palma split screen. Meanwhile on the soundtrack Daryl Hannah’s innocent whistling turns into a creepy Bernard Herrman track, one of my favorite songs on the soundtrack. Finally Hannah enters Uma’s room and starts to inject her with something when Bill calls. Hannah’s acting here is pitch perfect, from her obvious unhappiness with hearing that she’s not actually going to kill the Bride, to her gentle cooing when saying goodbye to Bill, to her threatening the incapacitated Bride to never wake up again. That’s some of my favorite acting of the year.

Flash forward to the Bride waking up. When she jumps upright she scares the hell out of the audience, making them almost as afraid as when Bill pulled the trigger on her. Realizing how much time has gone by she lifts up her gown only to see the cesarean scar on her stomach. She then starts to scream/sob in a scene with no music or alternate camera angles that’s all Uma, and as the scene goes on twice as long as you think it should the power of the scene really hits you in the gut.

Then there is Buck, who likes to Fuck. If the scene where he describes the procedure for fucking a woman in a coma isn’t disturbing enough for you, then what Uma does to the two perverts sure will be. After tearing off the one guy’s lip in a shocking cut, the soundtrack kicks in (great original music by the RZA) and she goes after Buck. I love the slow motion pan from the reaction shot on Buck’s face down to Uma lying on the floor underneath him. Then SHKITT there goes his Achilles tendon and on more disturbing scene where Uma bashes his head in with the door, shouting, “WHERE’S BILL?” Again, great acting on Uma’s part. I love this sequence.

2. Once Upon a Time in the West

This movie has one of the greatest opening sequences to a movie ever, and if you though Leone couldn’t do any better with anticipation in the final standoff scene in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, then you’ve got something else coming to you when you watch this film. Three hoods commandeer a train station and are obviously waiting for someone (not unlike in High Noon), but you don’t know who. The camera floats around cutting between each of the three men, watching them wait. What could be extremely boring is actually extremely interesting, and the tension of anticipation just grows and grows.

Leone builds the tension interestingly by using annoyance. The one bad guy has a fly buzzing around his face, and yet he doesn’t brush it off. After a while you just want to reach into the scene and kill it for him. Another man stands under some dripping water, and you aren’t really sure why until he tips his hat to drink the collected water. Sound becomes extremely important (there’s no musical score) as the buzz of the fly, the drip of the water and the squeaking of the windmill build the mood for when the train finally arrives.

The train stops, no one gets out. The men look at each other confused, and start to walk away until they hear the sound of a harmonica and find Charles Bronsen standing on the other side of the train platform. Leone’s use of close up and long shot achieves new levels of brilliance. The untreated wood of the platform, the men standing in perfect composition with their full-length dusters on, the close ups on some unforgettable faces are all amazing looking.

The men make a comment about them being one horse short and laugh. Bronsen retorts by saying they brought two horses too many. Awesome. Suddenly BAM! an explosion of violence. Three men go down. One is still standing. I’ll give you one guess who.

3. The Matrix Reloaded

If you start with the beautiful Monica Belluci and go on until you find Neo saving Morpheus and the Keymaker from an explosion caused from two Mack trucks hitting each other you get one of my favorite sequences put to film this year. Neo takes on a couple punks with swords and runs on the walls. Morpheus’ samurai sword just passes right through the awesome Twins. An Agent jumps from one car, crushes another (causing a gigantic traffic accident) and lands on Trinity’s car, only to rip the roof off. Morpheus takes out a car with a samurai sword. Trinity drives against traffic on a motorcycle. Combine that with the banging Juno Reactor soundtrack and you have yourself the making of some damn fine white knuckle cinema.

4. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

There were a lot of amazing moments in the movie, but none hit me like the first appearance of the Oliphants. Holy shit did that look cool. Nothing quite puts things into perspective until you see one of those giants crush a horse underfoot like it was a mouse. Damn. Watching one take out a row of horses with its tusks. Fuck. Watching one take another out after taking a spear to the neck. Good Lord. The CGI animation was perfect, the direction tense and top notch, and the weight and mass of the animals perfectly palpable. Amazing. Bravo Jackson, bravo.

5. 28 Days Later

That scene at the end where he jumps down and gouges out the eyes of the soldier after setting a zombie loose in the mansion and one by one taking out each of the soldiers is just raw, brutal and shocking. It just fits the mood of the film at that point perfectly, and I commend Danny Boyle for doing it. I love the fact that nothing the zombies do is more horrible or surprising as what the humans would do to each other. Perfect.

6. Man with a Movie Camera

This is a weird favorite movie moment to write about, since it isn’t actually a moment, nor was it actually part of the original film. But I just had to give props to the excellent soundtrack created by the Cinematic Orchestra for this 1929 Soviet Silent film for so perfectly melding with its subject matter. It only took about 70 years, but finally this film has the soundtrack it has been waiting for. It also gets bonus points for uniting the segments of the film under common themes and drawing out even more the power of the editing. Watch the film silent and you’ll see a great film. Watch the film with the soundtrack by the Cinematic Orchestra and you’ll realize how great that film actually is.

7. Branded to Kill

Towards the beginning of our film our hero, Killer No. 3, gets aroused by the smell of cooking rice and proceeds to make wild love with his wife all over his flat, everywhere but actually in the bed. Seijun Suzuki puts this sequence together with such flair that it manages to be both erotic and hilarious at the same time, as when the two lovers talk about being wild animals to each other and make wild love all over the place, the camera keeps cutting back to the bed still made and unruffled and somehow manages to make this inanimate object look dejected and lonely. This whole sequence is a whole lot of fun to watch.

8. Femme Fatale

The opening jewel heist in this most recent Brian De Palma movie has it all: cool, intriguing direction, an amazing soundtrack and hot lesbian lovemaking! As Rebecca Romijn-Stamos infiltrates Cannes to steal a set of priceless jewels on a barely there dress on a hot French model, and her method of getting them off turns out to be by making love to her in the woman’s bathroom, your mouth just drops open with how cool it all is. Add that to how great the direction is and how wonderful the soundtrack is and you’ve got a triple whammy. The best part though is how they actually get the jewels out of the building. I’m not going to spoil it for those who haven’t seen the movie, but it’s definitely not what you expected.

9. Open Range

If it weren’t for the final shoot-out in this film there wouldn’t be much of a reason to watch it, but boy what a doozy of a shoot-out it is. Never have I seen such a realistic depiction of what a real shoot-out between two men against a dozen would actually look like, and it’s extremely well directed to boot. Bullets fly, people take wounds, and shotgun blasts blow people across rooms. It’s everything a good Western shoot-out should be.

10. TIE: Executioners from Shaolin and Fists of the White Lotus

What would this list be without Pai/Pak Mei? What’s not to love in a white hair-ed, bearded kung fu master who can suck his balls into his body and float away from blows like paper in the wind? I submit to you some of the greatest kung fu fights of all time to be the final fights of both of these films. As the heroes have to perfect their kung fu in order to beat him, you know there is going to be some amazing fight sequences coming your way.