Our Mission

If life is just a series of moments, then movies are really just a collection of scenes. It is a very rare thing to have a truly great movie scene. Every writer, director and actor aspires to a legendary, timeless movie scene. We know all the classics: Bogie and Claude Rains beginning a beautiful friendship, Brando chastizing his brother in the back of a car, DeNiro asking if we are talking to him.

But somewhere between the pantheon of legendary movie scenes, and the pedestrian, garden variety scenes that take place in most movies, lie the scenes you will find here. They may not be the most oft-quoted, and may not be the most uplifting. But they are ones that somehow jostled us out of our complacent, passive moviegoing experience.

Yet for all the chair-shifting they cause, these scenes also deepen our immersion into films, further intensifying the altered state to which a great film can bring us.

These can hit us on a number of levels: they can be surprising, touching, dramatic, hilarious, or "other." We are going to start slowly, with some of our favorites, and then explore the outer reaches of film.

Any of these great scenes should be seen in context. It's one thing to see the clip of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," but when seen within the framework the film intended, the scene packs so much more power.

So our format (for the time being anyway) will consist of:

The Scene in question

The Setup that puts the scene in its proper context

Incisive Commentary, which tells why each scene is so fucking great.

And the Cheese Factor, which acknowledges that our ironic detachment often gets the best of us when we get drawn into an entertaining film.

You may know some of these, and you may not. Hopefully we will encourage you to see each of these films if you haven't already. And we hopefully won't ruin them for you.

We're gonna try this out and see how it works. Hope you'll stick around and leave a note.