Some favorites
* The Thing. At first you think "aww, that poor doggie." But then for the rest of the movie you're cursing those Finns for not blowing its brains out.
* Pulp Fiction. Great dialogue.
* Star Wars. I like Red Letter Media's take. That one opening scene of the giant Star Destroyer chasing the small ugly looking ship instantly sets the scene for the entire trilogy in just one shot.
The Godfather
The Fugitive
Inglourious Basterds
Ignore that link. Wrong scene.
Saving Private Ryan's beach scene is pretty darn intense.
Not a Coach wrote:
Once Upon a Time in the West.
Outstanding (in my opinion).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA3rlIHLFco
Corrected
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuwBW9lNa8&list=PL361AE95DD52C5BBFlive and let live wrote:
Saving Private Ryan's beach scene is pretty darn intense.
Yeah, that's right up there. Definitely my favourite intro scene. Almost 20 minutes, too.
I absolutely love the entire opening scene (The Dawn Of Man) of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The first couple minutes of Wild At Heart is pretty good. So is the intro scene of Blue Velvet. David Lynch is great.
A memorable mention would be Jaws. It really impacted me when I first saw it as a young teenager.
Lord of War, where the camera follows a bullet from assembly line, to packaging, to shipping, to unloading, then through the gun barrel, ending with the killing of a victim in some small war in Africa. The soundtrack through this 5 min sequence is Buffalo Springfield.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
My Dinner with Andre
The Big Chill was pretty clever.
Touch of Evilfrom wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_of_Evil
The film opens with a three-minute, twenty-second tracking shot widely considered by critics[3] as one of the greatest long takes in cinematic history.
I'll add Boogie Nights too.
Cinematically, the opening scene to Bonfire of the Vanities was a very complex and continuous camera shot:
Children of Men
Adult or Mainstream?
Reservoir Dogs
I can't remember if it was the opening scene or not, but I think it was. Either way, in The Matrix, the scene where Trinity beats up about 10 police officers and escapes, and then almost gets macked by the garbage truck in the phone booth, I was thinking, "WTF, this is awesome!" I think at that point, you actually think she was killed by the truck.