Great subtle moments in movies

[RustedCorpse]

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Someone already mentioned Adaptation but I think it has by far the most awesomeness in regards to this thread. Maybe this was obvious to everyone, but in the movie the normal brother was writing the script and couldn't come up with more plot, so he asks his crazy brother for help. And remember, they're writing the script to the movie they're playing in. And as soon as he asks the crazy brother for help, suddenly the movie goes nuts -- people are dying, kidnaps are happening, alligators are attacking ... whereas before it was a nice talky movie, as soon as he asks the brother who says "let's get more action in here!" it suddenly turns to an action movie ... because they're writing their own script.

It astounded me the amount of levels you had to think of to really watch that movie ...

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This movie really hurts your head if you watch it too much. For instance the good brother pretty much tells the entire film in the beggining when he states "I'm not going to have a cheap film where...." and goes through almost in order, everything that's going to happen.

[MicroBob]

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There's a ton of awesome (not really at that subtle) understated visual scenes in Pi. One that I remember years after seeing the movie is this closeup of milk being poured into coffee, and seeing a pattern emerge when the milk hits the black liquid, and then just as quickly vanish and become part of a new dilated coffee. Sick awesome metaphor for the protaganists' search for an equation to the stock market.

Then he went and did mothaf'ing stuff like Requiem which is subtle like a sledgehammer, and The Fountain WTF, so amazingly disappointing

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The coffee thing doesn't seem any more subtle than showing the pattern of the pieces in their game of Go or some of the other stuff they threw in there to try to show how all this life stuff is weirdly connected.
I liked the movie a lot and appreciate the addition of those shots though.

[MicroBob]

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The scene in Werckmeister Harmonies where the protagonist (Jonas?) is making his soup is sublimely beautiful, mostly because of the photography. That movie is full of great subtle moments, but probably too slow for most people.


Here's a scene from the film that is not so subtle, but incredibly profound. It's all filmed in one shot, like most of the scenes in the movie. Unfortunately, the beginning of the scene is cut off where you see the rioters walking in lockstep toward the hospital, but the heart of the scene and the film is when they pull back the curtain and leave in shame. This is an art film, so if that's not your thing don't bother, but if you do make sure you have the sound up. The music makes the scene.

Scene

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Not sure if this one has been mentioned or even if I had mentioned it but I don't feel like going back through the whole thread to check.

When you mention 'all filmed in one shot' I'm reminded of the beginning of the movie The Player which is generally considered to be pretty awesome but probably a majority of the audience missed what is happening even though I consider it to be pretty unsubtle.
But considering the standards of subtle in this thread I guess it's worth mentioning.

In the opening they go 8 full minutes without a cut as the camera swoops around all over the place in a very difficult to shoot scene. I still have no idea how they did some of those camera moves without cutting at all.
All the while the characters in the movie are chatting about how nobody makes any films anymore with creativity. All the movies are "cut cut cut" like a music video, etc etc. Why can't they just film creative scenes without having to cut all the time?

As I said, it's pretty unsubtle if you're paying attention. But I imagine that most people watching it are just daydreaming through the conversation and don't even realize they just watched 8 amazing minutes of camera movement and perfect timing without a single cut in direct allusion to the conversation taking place in the film and the great directors of the past they are chatting about like Orson Wells and Alfred Hitchcock.

It's a weird combination of "we can't make this any more obvious than we already have" but still going over the heads of a lot of their audience.

There are a lot of insider-hollywood type jokes littered throughout the film as well but it's been a long time since I've seen it and I'm sure I only caught a fraction of them.