• In "Volver," Raimunda cooks up a storm for a film crew, then sits down to charm them -- in close-up -- with a song. Penélope Cruz brought back to passionate life in Almodóvarland...
  
• "Who is that sad little person?" -- Nigel the haute couture designer (Stanley Tucci) registering the style schlub that is Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), in "The Devil Wears Prada"...
  
• "Man Push Cart": Perpetually bereft Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) pockets a days-old, abandoned kitten in a New York alley...
  
• "The Good German": Bellied up to a bar, George Clooney's driver (Tobey Maguire) kisses off his boss because it's after working hours ... and Clooney's lost love (Cate Blanchett), now a whore, turns to drawl with Dietrichian despair, "I'm off the clock, too."...
  
• Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) explaining in "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby" that he is "Frawnch" (hell, "Reeky Bubby" -- Will Ferrell -- knew that!)...
  
• "Taxidermia": Leaning far back in his chair, a masturbating man (Csaba Czene) shoots gouts of fire
  
• In "Wordplay," mild-mannered Al Sanders, perennial also-ran in the annual American Crossworld Puzzle Tournament, finishes first in the 2005 edition, then realizes he has forgotten to fill in two now-obvious words at the very beginning -- and hurls his earphones to the floor...
  
• In "Little Miss Sunshine," soulmates seated side-by-side at dinner -- alienated teen (Paul Dano) and Proustian prof manqué (Steve Carell) -- sink into numb horror as Dad (Greg Kinnear) spouts bromides about "winners and losers."...
  
• "Beowulf & Grendel": Having murdered Grendel's father, King Hrothgar (Stellan Skarsgard) stares into the inhuman eyes of the hairy troll-child (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson) and is moved to unaccustomed mercy -- dooming himself and his tribe...
  
• "Heavy lies the crown ... sorta thing...": Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) gets Shakespearean, "The Departed"...
  
• Stranded on a Scottish moor, Elizabeth "The Queen" (Helen Mirren) meets and matches the gaze of a regal stag...
  
• Well-met on a black beach: General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), Baron Nishii (Tsuyoshi Ihara) and a beloved horse; civilized men and an emblem of old-fashioned warfare, casualties all in "Letters from Iwo Jima"...
  
• "United 93": Hardly heard, and the more heroic for that: "Let's roll."...
  
• In "Apocalypto," Flint Sky's (Morris Birdyellowhead) slow dying, on his knees, but not bowed; "Travel well."...
  
• "A Prairie Home Companion": The Johnson Sisters, Yolanda (Meryl Streep) and Rhonda (Lily Tomlin) in the dressing room, flowing from conversation to a shared chorus of "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling" as -- it being a Robert Altman movie, after all -- the camera driftily zooms into the makeup mirror to watch them embrace, then eases out again for Rhonda's "Singing is the only thing that puts me right."...
  
• "Pan's Labyrinth": At the head of a banquet table sits nightmare, an eyeless, corpse-skinned demon, devourer of babies; in a corner, a heap of discarded shoes, chilling evocation of Holocaust...
  
• "The Descent": A group snapshot of six women who can't go home again...
  
• In "Babel," Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) flashing her privates like a lost child's frantic Morse code...
  
• "The Notorious Bettie Page": Bettie's (Gretchen Mol) Florida shoot, photographed in the saturated primary colors of Hollywood fan magazines; hot Photoplay hues that defined the unambiguous '50s...
  
• In "Heading South," post-coitum, Wellesley prof Charlotte Rampling oils her Haitian boytoy's (Menothy Cesar) beautiful body...
  

Next: More Moments in Time