Sunday 17 August 2008

Top 25 Scenes of All Time

#25 - Raining Frogs: Magnolia (1999)



I thought I'd do a rundown of my top 25 scenes of all time and try to explain, or at least give context to, my decisions.

There's not too much to say about this to be honest and to be honester I'm too tired for a long post anyway so that's all good.

To begin with - my criteria: My sole criteria is this. These are the top 25 scenes which I would watch, in order, over and over again. They are the scenes I would happily jump to and watch over and over and over again.

I guess the raining frogs scene is a little bit different from the rest (or most of them) because there are no words and nothing major (in the sense of story defining) happens. It's just one of those sublime moments in film of great originality and brilliance that comes from nowhere and stays in the mind. It is also probably the only one that subverts my criteria as, truly, it cannot really be viewed on its own as it works so well as part of Magnolia's vast, magnificient and total cinematic landscape. There is so much to love about this film and I think this moment, an instant of quirky, subversive, genius, bottles the film perfectly. It's just great and I couldn't not include it in my list.

3 comments:

Adam said...

Love the idea. Myfilmvault can always do with more lists - I should do one myself actually.

Will the "okey-dokey" scene from Hannibal crack the top 10? I can't wait to find out!

Adam said...

BTW, are there any rules for this? One scene per film for instance?

Matt said...

No criteria for me except... these are the top 25 scenes (after much, much, thought, believe me!) I would want to watch over and over again. Don't think there can be a rule for me about only one per film as that would exclude one of my top 3. I think great films can (perhaps even should) contain more than one great, even epoch-defining, scene.
What do you reckon?