150 reasons why I love the movies

There are a million reasons why I love the movies, and here are 150 of them:

1) The star baby turning around to look at me at the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2) Selena hesitates as Jim takes a step forward during the bloody end of 28 Days Later.

3) Louis Armstrong’s version of What A Wonderful World playing over the end credits of Twelve Monkeys.

4) Airplane: “Oh stewardess! I speak jive.”

5) A Fistful of Dynamite: “Duck, you sucker!”

6) The bit where Marty Scorcese shines the spotlight on Griffin Dunne’s increasing frustration in After Hours.

7) The drop down on to Planet LV-426 in Aliens.

8) Pulling Marshall McLuhan out from off-screen in Annie Hall.

9) Amazon Women On the Moon: “Did you know that every seven minutes, a black person is born in this country with no soul?”

10) The distance between the helicopters and the surf in Apocalypse Now.

11) The blank look on the Coward Bob Ford’s face when someone comes to get justice for his Assassination Of Jesse James.

12) John Goodman running down that burning corridor as Barton Fink looks on in horror.

13) The Dude crashes his car in The Big Lebowski.

14) The way the soldiers in The Big Red One can’t get their heads around the horror of the concentration camps.

15) Bill and Ted play 20 Questions as they fall into hell in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.

16) Billy Elliot’s Dad sees what his kid can do in the final shot of the film.

17) Roy Batty snapping out with an outstretched hand and saving Deckard’s life in Blade Runner.

18) The hands beating on the side of the tent in The Blair Witch Project.

19) Jason Bourne reveals why he went to Russia in the Bourne Supremacy, and it’s nothing to do with vengeance.

20) The bit with the lawnmower in Braindead.

21) Robert De Niro disappears into newspapers in Brazil.

22) Harry Morant has seen the world in Breaker Morant.

24) Alec Guinness realises what he has done by building the Bridge on the River Kwai.

25) The moment when the creature knows the Bride of Frankenstein will never, ever love him.

26) Britannia Hospital: "HOW LIKE. A GOD."

27) The stars tell a dying Elvis that all will be well in Bubba Ho-Tep.

28) Carlito sets up a pool trick in Carlito's Way.

29) The man love moment in the closing seconds of Casablanca.

30) The Bond love moment in the closing seconds of Casino Royale.

31) Talking in music when the aliens arrive for their Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

32) Harry Caul finally hears The Conversation properly.

33) Dawn of the Dead – the ghouls are coming for Peter and he’s had enough of this shit, and puts the gun to his head…. And then he’s all like, Nah! Fuck it! I wanna live!

34) Sam Shepard watches the lonely world from his old house in the Days of Heaven.

35) John McClane stands on the edge of a building in Die Hard.

36) Dirty Harry’s lunch is interrupted.

37) Dr Strangelove, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb: “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!”

38) Donnie Darko laughing in his bed.

39) That fucking dwarf in Don't Look Now.

40) The brutal staking of Barbara Shelley in Dracula: Prince of Darkness.

41) The fight in the sauna in Eastern Promises.

42) The Millenium Falcon enters the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back.

43) Snake Plisskan calmly gliding into the ruins of Manhattan in Escape From New York.

44) They just keep going around and around in the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

45) Evil Dead 2: “Who’s laughing now?”

46) eXistenZ: “Hey, tell me the truth... Are we still in the game?

47) The Exorcist: The levels of intensity in that little room at the top of the stairs in the last 20 minutes.

48) Max Klein stands on the edge of a building in Fearless.

49) Milla Jovovich stands on the edge of a building and then just leaps out into the crazy future world of The Fifth Element.

50) The bombs go off at the end of Fight Club, but there is still time for one last dick joke.

51) Queen’s soundtrack for Flash Gordon.

52) The guy who yelled out “What the fuck?” really loudly in the cinema where I was watching From Dusk Till Dawn, at the moment when the vampires showed their faces.

53) Carter watches his car pushed into the water in Get Carter.

54) Ghost Dog on his rooftop, doing his thing in a Wu-Tang world. It’s the Way of the Samurai.

55) The flashback to the dinner at the end of The Godfather Part II, back before it all changed.

56) Goldfinger: Sean Connery leaping for the electrical cable that wins him the fight against Oddjob.

57) Blondie coming back for Tuco and shooting the rope at the end of The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

58) Steve McQueen getting on the bike for the first time in The Great Escape, and just fuckin’ going for it!

59) “Funny how?” - Goodfellas.

60) The wind blowing through wide and empty streets of Haddonfield on late Halloween afternoon, just before the bogey man does his work.

61) Ringo by the canal in A Hard Days Night.

62) The instant the gun battle on the streets of LA starts in Heat.

63) Hudsucker Proxy: “You know, for kids!”

64) Three submarines, one ship and a torpedo in the water in Hunt For Red October.

65) Idiocracy: “Go way! Baitin’!”

66) In the Loop: “Kiss my sweaty balls, you fat fuck!”

67) The minis tearing down the sewer tunnel in The Italian Job, and the way they nearly go right around the pipe.

68) The story of the Indianapolis in Jaws.

69) Sterling Hayden watching all that money blow away in The Killing.

70) The special guest appearance by Buddha Himself in Kung Fu Hustle.

71) Kevin Spacey whispers the name ‘Rolo Tamassi’ to Dudley Smith in LA Confidential.

72) The way Chingachgook and his sons move through the forest in Last of the Mohicans.

73) Leon lets Mathilda into his room.

74) The unseen duel in the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

75) Isaach De Bankolé enters the bunker where his target is hiding without anybody seeing him in The Limits of Control.

76) The dedication in the book in The Lives of Others.

77) The death of Charlie Wade in Lone Star.

78) Little Samwise Gamgee tells Shelob the great and powerful Spider to back the fuck off in Lord of The Rings: Return of the King.

79) The way Bob Hoskins grits his teeth during the long car ride at the end of The Long Good Friday.

80) The bit in Lost Highway where Patricia Arquette tells Balthazar Getty that he’ll never have her.

81) Bill Nighy spends Christmas with the person he loves most in the world in Love, Actually.

82) Those mental stuntmen in Mad Max 2, and the way they would jump between moving vehicles.

83) The bit in The Matrix where Keanu and Agent Smith are wailing on each other, and then Agent Smith blocks a blow by grabbing onto Keanu's wrist, but Keanu still gets him by stabbing out with his rigid fingers and getting Agent Smith in the throat.

84) Miami Blues: Junior says hello to a Hare Krishna

85) The final bus ride in Midnight Cowboy.

86) The long walk out through the trees to Millers Crossing.

87) Monty Python and The Holy Grail: “Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!”

88) Monty Python and The Life Of Brian: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

89) Monty Python and The Meaning Of Life: “So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth! And pray that there intelligent life somewhere up in space, cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!”

90) The thing behind the Winkie's diner in Mulholland Drive.

91) Elvis finally appears in Mystery Train, but he doesn’t have anything to say.

92) Charlton Heston, The Omega Man, watching the Woodstock movie at the end of the world.

93) The meathook in Night of the Living Dead.

94) The saddest story ever at the dawn of a brand new day in Night On Earth.

95) The part in O Lucky Man where the tea lady frees Mick Travis.

96) The point in Outlaw Josey Wales where, at long last, nobody has to shoot each other anymore.

97) Robert De Niro’s jagged grin that closes out Once Upon A Time In America.

98) The long ride out to Sweetwater in Once Upon A Time In The West.

99) The last song in Paths of Glory. Anybody who says Kurbick films are all intellect and no heart has no idea what they are talking about.

100) Performance: “I am a bullet”

101) The train tunnel in Pink Floyd The Wall.

102) Bruce Willis shows up to save Julia Roberts from the gas chamber in The Player.

103) They way Arnie says “We’re a vescue team, not assahssins,” in Predator, and then they go off and slaughter everybody in a military camp.

104) The real Mrs Bates says hello at the end of Psycho.

105) Pulp Fiction: “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”

106) Sending the ultimate mod scooter off a cliff at the end of Quadrophenia.

107) The opening credits to Raging Bull.

108) The bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy gets punched in the face by the big bald Nazi for the first time and he goes down like a sack of shit, and then he gets right back up again.

109) The entire pre-credits sequence to Raising Arizona.

110) Chuck Yeager is a man in The Right Stuff.

111) The three seconds of dead silence after everybody has just shot each other in Reservoir Dogs.

112) Toxic waste turns Emil into a sludge of a man in Robocop.

113) The quiet moments in bed, the only times Lola doesn’t have to Run Lola, Run.

114) After years and years of dust and hate, the Duke tells his niece he is taking her home in The Searchers.

115) The flat in Shallow Grave.

116) The bit in Shaun of the Dead where Shaun’s crew meets Yvonne’s group.

117) Andy Dufresne, heading for the Pacific in Shawshank Redemption.

118) The soundtrack for The Shining.

119) The pool orgy in Shivers.

120) The point in Sleeping Dogs where Sam Neill has had enough of the whole bloody lot of them and gives them the fingers and walks away knowing they will shoot him down.

121) Slither: “Bitch is hardcore.”

122) The way all the slaves instantly follow Spartacus’ lead when he snaps, and an invisible revolt fires into life.

123) The moment Khan shows his hand in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and opens fire on the Enterprise.

124) Han Solo and Chewbacca swooping in out of the sun to save the day in Star Wars.

125) The scene in The Straight Story where Alvin is puttering away down the road in his lawnmower, and then the camera pulls up to a beautiful blue sky, and then pans back down and he’s got about 10 metres.

126) The cries of “witch” in the wind in Suspiria.

127) The colour of blood in Taxi Driver.

128) Kyle Reece explaining to Sarah Conner what The Terminator is and what it does.

129) Arnie doing that thing with the shotgun in Terminator 2.

130) Leatherface swinging his saw about in the dawning sun at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

131) Two men beat the crap out of each other in They Live.

132) Two men, waiting to see what happens as the end of The Thing.

133) The wind blowing through the long grass, just before the big battle in Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line starts.

134) The way Holly Martins is mistaken for a literary fellow in The Third Man.

135) This Is Spinal Tap: “You can’t dust for vomit.”

136) Sick Boy’s shoes in Trainspotting.

137) The way Dennis Hopper knows he is going to die in True Romance, so he insults Christopher Walken on a genetic level.

138) The final bow and chuckle during the last episode of The Truman Show.

139) Ballroom dancing in TwentyfourSeven.

140) Laura Plamer puts on the ring in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

141) William Munny takes his first drink in Unforgiven, when he realises they is killing to be done.

142) Keyser Soze stops walking with that limp in The Usual Suspects.

143) The dream sequences in Vertigo.

144) Air’s soundtrack for The Virgin Suicides.

145) Edward Woodward sees The Wicker Man.

146) The Wild Bunch: “Why not?”

147) Playing the Dane for the wolves in Withnail and I.

148) Videodrome: “Long live the new flesh!”

149) Shark versus zombie in Zombie Flesh Eaters.

150) The final salute from the Zulu nation.