Great subtle moments in movies

[RichGangi]

[ QUOTE ]
Sideways has a ton of these. Some of Giamatti's facial expressions are priceless in this movie. The first few that come to mind are when they are sitting at bar, and his buddy lies about his book being published. The other is the pep talk outside the restaraunt.

[/ QUOTE ]
"If anybody orders merlot, Im leaving. Im not drinking [censored] merlot!!!" Great movie.

[youtalkfunny]

I love "About Schmidt", precisely for all the subtleties.

One off the top of my head: Jack drives to Colorado for his daughter's wedding (after being unable to convince his daughter not to marry this loser). He's going to stay at the groom's mother's house. In fact, he'll be sleeping in the groom's old bedroom, which his mom has kept to look like it did the day he left it (the Aerosmith and Van Halen posters, etc).

Jack looks at all the awards and trophies on display in the room, and almost all of them are branded "Participant" or "Fifth Runner-Up". A real achiever, this kid.

Honorable mention to "Easy Money", where Rodney has a joint hidden in the bathroom, in the Roach Motel.

[youtalkfunny]

This one was so subtle, nobody I know caught the irony:

Tony Soprano's last words to Dr Melfi, when he calls her "immoral".

[Jay Riall]

Not a movie but just about every single scene in the English Office has some great subtle humour. David's facial expressions especially are great.

[NajdorfDefense]

Yeah, asking OOT for subtlety ...well, anyway.

Stanley Kubrick had the most masterful, yet subtle, camera shot or cutaway I've ever seen in his horror classic, The Shining.

Prior to this camera shot, Wendy interrupts Jack:

Jack: Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me you’re breaking my concentration. (He takes out the sheet from the typewriter and begins tearing it up.) And it will then take me time to get back to where I was! Do you understand?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Fine. Now we’re gonna make a new rule. Whenever I’m in here and you hear me typing . . . (tap tap taptaptap) or whether you don’t hear me typing or whatever the [censored] you hear me doing in here, when I am in here that means that I am working, that means don’t come in. Now do you think you can handle that?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Fine. Why don’t you start right now and get the [censored] outta here?

Wendy: Okay.

Shelley Duvall, Wendy the wife, later goes back into Jack's workroom to see what he's been working on. She walks up to the desk and see what's in the typewriter ---

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
repeated hundreds of times.

She realizes this is very very bad, and carries a baseball bat for protection as Jack discovers her final invasion of his workspace.

Of course, Jack was watching her during this scene.

Now, any other director or movie hack would have cut to Jack standing right behind her, reaching out for her shoulder, making the audience jump and scream. After all, it is a horror film.

But not Kubrick.

He slowly pans the camera 180 degrees, and we see Jack, standing a safe distance away, staring at Wendy head-on, as she discovers Jack has gone completely batshi-insane, but is completely calm as he observes her transgression.

Not only a terrifically subtle moment, but even more scary given what we now know about Jack's character.



Not subtle: Here's Johnny!

[Toro]

[ QUOTE ]
This one was so subtle, nobody I know caught the irony:

Tony Soprano's last words to Dr Melfi, when he calls her "immoral".

[/ QUOTE ]

I loved that line and posted about it in the Soprano's thread.

This one comes to mind from the first Rocky movie. It's the end of the fight and there is total mayhem in the ring and Adrian fights her way into the ring but someone knocks her hat off. The dialogue went like this:

Rocky: Adrian?
Adrian: Rocky!
Rocky: Adrian! Hey, where's your hat?

Subtle reminder of how simple this guy was.

[12ressiMorP]

In Dazed and Confused when the pothead kid, Slater, yells over to the football coach in his truck "Hey, Coach Conrad...Remember me? Second period? Gym class?" And then the coach looks at him and rolls eyes in disgust.

[Blarg]

Peter Weir used to be the king of this, and it was great when he was stylistically still fun. He used to have characters wordlessly have their eyes meet and have a whole lot exchanged when that happened, often some kinda magical love-ish thing or maybe something deeper than that. Worked well in Witness, but then didn't make any notably gripping appearances in his future movies. People may recall the scene in Witness where Harrison Ford meets the eyes of the chick at the long table out amongst the Amish, and it's clear something powerful has happened between them that is different than before, yet it's quick enough that there's still room for both of them to doubt or deny.

[KurtSF]

[ QUOTE ]
I love "About Schmidt", precisely for all the subtleties.

One off the top of my head: Jack drives to Colorado for his daughter's wedding (after being unable to convince his daughter not to marry this loser). He's going to stay at the groom's mother's house. In fact, he'll be sleeping in the groom's old bedroom, which his mom has kept to look like it did the day he left it (the Aerosmith and Van Halen posters, etc).

Jack looks at all the awards and trophies on display in the room, and almost all of them are branded "Participant" or "Fifth Runner-Up". A real achiever, this kid.

Honorable mention to "Easy Money", where Rodney has a joint hidden in the bathroom, in the Roach Motel.

[/ QUOTE ]

"Dear Ndugu..."

About Schmidt is a movie rife with, and in fact all about, subtlety. Taken on the usual measures of a film, plot, characters, etc., its not a very good movie. But the entire movie takes place on a level not shown on screen and we only get subtle hints though Jack Nocholson's performance about the internal life of a shallow and pathetic man. I liked it very much.

Also, I thought there was much more subtlety in the book American Psycho than the movie, and many of the simple moments were made overt in the film, but enough was carried over that the movie has dozens of sublime subtle moments. One that was added to the film (that was not in the book) was when Bateman was shooting at the police officers and their cars blow up, he give a quick glance at his gun before running off. Its not followed up on, but the expression is priceless, a sort of "did this do that moment.

Fight Club is another brilliant movie that works on many levels. Unlike About Schmidt the plot, characters, and action are enough to make a good film in their own right. But if I were to sit down and watch it again I could probably pull out a dozen moments that should go on a list of the greatest 100 subtle moments in movies.

Sorry I'm talking about movies packed with subtlety and not subtle moments, but that's all I can pick out off the top of my head.

[Taso]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure if this is actually subtle, but in The Godfather when Michael realizes his hand does not shake.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. That is one of my favorite scenes - not sure if its subtle or not, but I think a lot of people may not notice that the first time they watch it.