Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's
films
By Richard T. Jameson and Kat Murphy Special to MSN Movies
-- Asleep in a balcony seat at the top of some golden-age movie palace,
Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is brought a telephone: "The Master" (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd) is
calling from England ...
-- In "Lincoln," the magnetic clasp of hands at the
moment Stanton (Bruce McGill) and Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) finally receive news about a
crucial battle ...
-- Fireflies: the compound at Abbottabad aswarm with night-vision dots, "Zero Dark Thirty" ...
-- Gothic night woods, the rattle of wagon wheels on rough ground, the
contrapuntal swinging of a lantern and a giant tooth: enter Dr. King Schulz (Christoph Waltz), "Django Unchained" ...
-- Cat sitting atop abandoned iron lung in a dark room, "The Sessions" ...
-- Coffin with memory drawer optional, "Bernie" ...
-- In the sepia palette of memory, the soft, volcanic flare when (Rachel Weisz) lights, draws on a cigarette, one
measure of appetite and passion in "The Deep Blue Sea" ...
-- "Easy Money": JW (Joel Kinnaman) stares at the back of a golden
girl's neck, turned on by the erotics of privilege ...
-- Young Heathcliff (Solomon Glave), pressed against Cathy's (Shannon Beer)
back as they ride on the moor, breathes in her hair while his hand grazes the
horse's flank -- "Wuthering Heights" ...
-- Orgiastic swell of sacred harp hymn as Bertha (Mia Wasikowska) kneels and washes
Jack Bondurant's (Shia LaBoeuf) filthy feet, in "Lawless" ...
-- "Anna Karenina": The crackling sound of Anna's (Keira Knightley) agitated paper fan, like the
wings of a moth beating against light, as she watches her lover ride in a
horserace ...
-- Late-night diner schmooze between two battered hockey "enforcers," one
rising (Seann William Scott), one in decline (Liev Schreiber) -- "Goon" ...
-- "Amour": a slap that, in small, shatters civilization ...
-- Shadows of passing soldiers flickering over the faces of Lincoln and Grant
(Jared Harris) as they keep each other company on a
roadside porch, post--Civil War carnage -- "Lincoln" ...
-- Tarantino's uncanny instinct for setup and suspension: in "Django
Unchained," the hilltop vantage on a man plowing a field, as two men (Christoph
Waltz, Jamie Foxx) argue the merits of his extermination
...
-- Surveyed from a distance, on high, the track that connects "Prometheus" and the alien ship takes on a strange
immanence: an umbilical link between "gods" and men ...
-- Barely glimpsed in "Life of Pi": the shape of the eat-and-be-eaten
island softens into the form of dreaming Vishnu ...
-- "Tabu": In silent black-and-white, Portuguese colonials do the twist on a
lawn in the middle of darkest Africa ...
-- Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) coping with horse dander, "The
Hobbit" ...
-- "The Intouchables": Driss's (Omar Sy) amoral delight when his paralyzed
employer (Francois Cluzet) doesn't react to the hot coffee Driss has just poured
over his leg ...
-- Debbie (Leslie Mann) touching Desi's (Megan Fox) breasts in "This Is 40": "They're like memory mattresses --
Tempur-Pedic!" ...
-- In "Argo," the always Moment-ous Philip Baker Hall:
"The United States Government has just sanctioned your science fiction movie."
...
-- Kneeling aurochs, paying homage to Hushpuppy -- "Beasts of the Southern
Wild" ...
-- Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) summoning her orca, the great
black perfect circle of its head, front on, materializing out of the blue of a
screen-filling tank -- "Rust and Bone" ...
-- In "Luck," a man falling in love: Chester Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), seated outside his ailing horse's
stall in the night, registers a noble head swinging toward him ...
-- A gigantic jellyfish swimming in a night-blue sky, backdrop for
silhouettes practicing lethal martial arts -- "Skyfall" ...
-- The erotic squeak of rubber against rubber as two figures in scarlet
motion-capture suits mimic sex, replicated by writhing alien avatars on the
screen behind them -- "Holy Motors" ...
-- "One of your vertebrae is protruding -- it must be put back." The awful
craaackk! that follows marks an end to the orgy of breakage in "The Dark Knight Rises" ...
-- "Bernie": Preparing to address the jury, pompous DA
Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey) carefully wipes his mouth
with his tie ...
-- "Magic Mike": Leather-vested cowboy Dallas's
(Matthew McConaughey) deliciously dirty drawl as he explains the rules to the
ladies packing his strip club: "The laaaaw says you can't touch ..."
