Best of 2014: Scenes

No end-of-year coverage is complete without celebrating some of the best scenes of the year. This list offers films that may not have made our Best Films of the Year a chance to grab the spotlight. We polled over a dozen of our contributing writers and editors to produce this aggregated list that represents the sharp opinions of everyone here at The Focus Pull.

GROUP THERAPY GOES AWRY

from Starred Up

One particular anger management therapy session in this accomplished prison drama goes especially awry, showcasing a furious breakdown from Ben Mendelsohn’s Neville Love, a growing camaraderie between Jack O’Connell’s Eric Love and his fellow prisoners, and the injustice and bureaucracy of the prison system which employs counselor Oliver Baumer (played by a passionate Rupert Friend). The events of this group session ultimately culminate in several revelatory character moments between all involved parties, setting the eventual final moments of the film into motion. Starred Up is a film brimming with raw emotion, but this particular scene pulses with fury, shame, and frustration like an exposed nerve. —Jakob Johnson

THIS IS WAR, DO YOU FEEL IT?
from Fury

It came as no surprise to me that Brad Pitt was great in his turn as Wardaddy in his Oscar-bait war drama Fury. The shock came in this scene where his supporting cast genuinely brings the emotion. After an air raid demolishes a city, our young protagonist Norman (Logan Lerman) is introduced to the horrors of war. He sees the body of a young girl he recently met, someone he may have come to know better, someone he may have even loved. In a moment that will tear at your heartstrings, his comrade approaches him and asks the all-important question: “This is war, do you feel it?” —Thomas McCallum

THE POLICE ARE HERE…
from The Grand Budapest Hotel

The humor in Wes Anderson’s films is particularly rare because it seems every time I come back to them for an umpteenth viewing, there are somehow a plethora of new jokes I had either missed or just failed to fully grasp in the past. Just like his meticulously decorated sets and costumes, Anderson’s scripts and direction are always stuffed to the brim with little touches and moments of brilliance that add up to monumental achievements, and The Grand Budapest Hotel is his most accomplished work yet. In one brief scene in particular, the sense of rhythm in the dialogue lends itself perfectly to the comedy of the situation. As Gustav and Zero are told, “the police are here,” just as they’ve finished putting away the cherished yet arguably stolen painting, “Boy with Apple,” Fiennes’ timing is perfect. Every pause and its corresponding shot is held for just a touch longer than a normal version of such an interaction would be, and Gustav’s run into the distance of the hotel lobby’s vast open space is the icing on the cake. Holding the shot and keeping it wide as the key players run off clumsily for longer than a conventional edit would allow, Anderson proves Chaplin was right when he claimed that comedy lives in the wide shot. —Maximilien Luc Proctor

LOUIS BLOOM DIRECTS A POLICE CHASE
from Nightcrawler

With all its tension-filled moments, Nightcrawler gave audiences very few chances to exhale. So naturally, no scene kept viewers holding their breath longer than the climax of the film. Whether it was the roaring engine of Louis Bloom’s Dodge Challenger, the erratic and dangerous driving of the criminal being pursued, or Louis’s partner’s helpless demeanor, watching Bloom’s plan unfold as he paced this high-speed police chase was a true adrenaline rush. Couple this action with Dan Gilroy’s stunningly sharp cinematography of Los Angeles, and it’s clear why this was one of the greatest cinematic moments of 2014. —Chris Porazzo

ANDRE ALLEN’S SUPERMARKET BREAKDOWN
from Top Five

The secret to Top Five’s success is that it is every bit about addiction as it is stardom and creative frustration. In Top Five, Chris Rock’s Andre Allen is four years sober, and is going through a tough time: he and his reality-star wife are about to have a high-profile marriage on television, his Dutty Boukman biopic is flopping both critically and commercially, and he feels a constant guilt towards his decadent lifestyle due to his poor upbringing. At a particularly low point, Andre breaks his sobriety and trashes a supermarket. With the opening of a beer bottle, Chris Rock releases the tension of his film—Andre Allen has finally cracked. It’s a moment of extreme vulnerability and pain, and the fact that it’s the centerpiece of a comedy makes it all the more moving. —Marcus Michelen

THE GANG BLOWS UP A DAM
from Night Moves

Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves is a simmering eco-thriller that finds three friends planning the destruction of a local dam in order to bring awareness to the degradation of the natural world at the hands of a resource-greedy populace. The heart-pounding moment in which the band of eco-terrorist’s meticulous plan is put into action is decidedly unexpected. After building incredible tension leading up to the detonation of the bombs they’ve mounted on the dam, Reichardt slaps our hand away. We’re watching the three now-criminals’ faces, driving away in their pick-up truck, when the explosion sounds in the distance. The focus on the reaction of the characters over the explosive event itself makes Night Moves a different, excitingly human film. —Taylor Sinople

ONLY LOVERS ARE LEFT DANCING
from Only Lovers Left Alive

Everything about this scene is perfect: the setting, the performances, the script, the music, and the overall feeling. Tilda Swinton’s Eve gives the most beautiful and honest speech to her lover, Tom Hiddleston’s Adam, about eternal life. “How can you have lived for so long?” she asks him. “And still not get it?” She preaches everyone should focus on the beauty of life and love, instead of darkness and hatred. “You have been pretty lucky in love,” Eve tells Adam. “If I may say so,” As they dance to funky music in their robes and forget about the world around them. The scene breathes authenticity and makes you want to get up from your couch, grab the person next to you, and dance to whatever music colors your day. —Eden van der Moere

ROBIN WRIGHT IN THE CAPTURE DOME
from The Congress

The unique premise of Ari Folman’s The Congress involves a futuristic entertainment industry in which actors are digitally scanned and placed into any number of films by studios that have “purchased” their likeness. Robin Wright, playing herself, undergoes one such session to be digitized. Standing inside a massive dome of lights, Wright is guided through the different emotions that the camera must capture. Her responses are initially phony, until her manager, Harvey Keitel, intervenes to talk to her about their long and emotional history together. Throughout his monologue, lights dizzyingly flash and dance around Wright while her face morphs through joy, sadness, and everything between. It’s a breathtaking moment of truth and humanity in a film that is ambitious to the highest degree. — Zack Miller

A STRANGE DREAM
from The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears

It’s hard to pin down a year’s worth of film into one scene. Hours and hours of stories whizzing past your eyes at an incomprehensible rate, and here I am trying to find a singular moment that will stand head and shoulders above the rest. After racking my brain for the answer I’ve decided that my scene of the year is a particular sequence in The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, a Giallo-throwback that is scary, sexy, stylish, and astounding. One scene in the film stands out from the rest, and it’s the extended dream sequence that takes place in the protagonist’s apartment. Running almost nine minutes, the scene consists only of three major things: color, repetition, and an intercom. If you’ve ever had the feeling that you’re still in a dream after you wake up, this scene will undoubtedly chill you to your core as it did mine. —Josef Rodriguez

THE FIRE ALARM SOUNDS
from Citizenfour

In the midst of a private, very dangerous disclosure of information to Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, whistle blower Edward Snowden stops in mid-sentence as the fire alarm sounds outside his hotel room. No advance warning of the alarm was provided by hotel staff; not knowing whether it’s a drill, a real fire, or a deliberate ruse to flush them out of the room, Snowden’s face is overtaken with terrified paralysis. The documentary’s disclosures to this point (and our own public knowledge after the fact) earn the suspense, which is on par with some of the best American political-paranoia thrillers of the 1970s. —Adam Smith

COCKROACH
from Free Fall

After surviving a fall from the roof of her apartment complex, a woman crawls back up to her room, passing a different, absurd scenario on each floor. Notorious Hungarian form-manipulator György Pálfi (Hukkle, Taxidermia) directs this collection of short films that take place within rooms of the same building. A highlight of the seven vignettes is the story of a couple with a peculiar obsession with cleanliness. A purification room prohibits entry to the apartment without becoming completely sanitary and redressed in a white one-piece suit. The furniture, the walls, the floor – everything in the room is spotless and white. The couple engages in sex, but not any sex that we’ve seen before. They’re wrapped entirely in plastic to ensure no germs of any kind are exchanged. It’s an impossibly sterilized haven from the filth of the outside world. But then a cockroach turns up. From here, no one will expect where Pálfi takes this short scene. Operating at this level of visual delight, he deserves to be a revelation to American audiences as Jean-Pierre Jenuet was with Delicatessen. —Taylor Sinople

 BONUS SCENES

Of course, there’s a ton of great moments that we weren’t able to include here because there’s simply no way to discuss them without spoiling the movie they appear in. For those that have seen them, we’d like to give quick nods to “Family Pile-Up” in Force Majeure, the final shot of The Immigrant, “An Open Window” from Ida, and the dinner party speech in Le Week-End.

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