We’re already into the second half of the 2024 countdowns, so let’s get serious.
The spoilers usually get fairly perilous around this point, but only three of my ten favourite movie scenes this year could reasonably be called climactic ending sequences – and only one of those actually contains a final shot. I can’t quite draw a common pattern through them otherwise: we’ve got a fair amount of tension, some gritted teeth, a bit of action and some comedy thrown in too. A pretty fun year, I’ve got to say.
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
VR BEST OF 2024 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
10. The Car – Deadpool & Wolverine
For all its strengths as a fourth-wall-shattering comedy, Deadpool & Wolverine does bring quite a few memorable action scenes along for the ride. The opener single-handily brought *NSYNC back into relevance (well, for people who didn’t already have Bye Bye Bye on their workout playlists – hypothetically), and the side-on bus brawl against an army of Deadpool variants both sends up one-take battles and exists as a perfect example of one. My pick would be the set piece that takes place between those two, where the two title characters have it out inside a run-down car. Not only do you get plenty of creative moves due to the cramped space, but the inciting incident is a seething Hugh Jackman monologue that briefly reminds the audience just how good of an actor he is.
9. Vault Escape – Inside Out 2
In an otherwise admirably-balanced film where even the funny scenes are also tugging at the heartstrings a bit while working hard under the surface to set up a ton of necessary exposition as naturally as possible, only one scene pushes the comedy level all the way forward the whole time. And sure, what may have been a hilarious surprise was partially spoiled by trailers – especially the presence of a YongYea-voiced generically edgy videogame hero from the PS1 days locked away in Riley’s conceptual vault of shame – but for me the funniest part was mostly unspoiled: a direct-to-camera children’s television pastiche known only as Pouchy. I was laughing uncontrollably at every frustrating pause bemusing the main cast in the background.
8. The Phonecall – The Fall Guy
It may have been done memorably in plenty of other movies (Down with Love comes to mind), but the split-screen phone call sequence in The Fall Guy puts front and centre the only thing more compelling about the film than its stunt choreography: the irrepressible chemistry between the two leads. Some degree of restraint was shown in the direction here, thankfully, but levels and perspective are still played with in the frame to illustrate and even enhance the dynamic between Ryan Gosling’s Colt and Emily Blunt’s Jody, who at this point in the story still very much have an awkward air between them. You can see progress in their relationship reflected physically in the editing and, much like the rest of the film, the banter is magnetic.
7. Wasteland Word War – Furiosa
I had multiple Furiosa contenders written down for this list ever since credits wrapped on my viewing. All of them were action scenes – and man, can George Miller still shoot action – except this one, which takes place at the very end of the film once all the chasing and the violence has burned itself out. The frame and the audience are left only with the film’s two most important players, and they have a bitter, passionate, oddly philosophical chat about the nature of the world. Both Furiosa and Dementus live up to their characterisation: the former stoic and determined; the latter verbose and adaptable. We get one of the best defeated villain exit speeches in recent memory, which appears to shake even the protagonist – and then it all wraps up with an image I can’t burn out of my mind fast enough.
6. Blazing Duel – The Three Musketeers: Milady
From what I understand it’s a decently large deviation from the Dumas novels, but this literal barn-burner of a climax to The Three Musketeers: Milady fits in perfectly with the tone and stakes of the grandiose, swashbuckling Martin Bourboulon adaptation. I get unmistakable Uncharted 4 finale vibes from the scene, which follows hero and villain, blades in hand, through a collapsing building from a tight distance with a handheld camera. That association gives the scene bonus points in my book, but it hardly needs them: like many of the film’s action set pieces, the scuffle is visually spectacular. This is no prolonged battle, but it handily serves its purpose, paying off the emotional stakes building since the first half of the duology.
5. Dancing Through Life – Wicked Part 1
Hmm, what song to pick as the standout moment from a musical adaptation directed by the famously spectacle-loving Jon M. Chu, when you haven’t experienced the source material? Defying Gravity and Popular are the two I had heard beforehand, so they’re kinda out for lack of surprise factor – plus the former is really chopped up and elongated to maximise the screen time of the movie’s ‘big moment’. That leaves The Wizard and I and One Short Day as standouts, the former for focus and the latter for an avalanche of new information; the school setting, however, is where Wicked Part 1 arguably has the most fun, so the two numbers with the most students interacting and moving around Chu’s sweeping camera are the winners for me. But as great as What is This Feeling? is, only one song features an Inception tunnel shot and introduces Jonathan Bailey doing the hilariously stuck-up act.
4. Giedi Prime Arena – Dune Part II
The sand worm ride, the climactic knife duel, or even the deeply creepy blue-drop hallucination sequence might be your pick for the best scene from Denis Villeneuve’s truly spectacular Dune II, but for me it has to the one on Giedi Prime, home of the Harkonnen dynasty. This is arguably (and there’s a real argument to be had here) the IMAX showcase sequence of the film, as the extra height within the frame sells the unyielding intimidation of those impossibly high colosseum walls as the audience gets a proper introduction to both the sociopathic authoritarian heir-apparent Feyd-Rautha and the mysterious Lady Margot Fenring. The latter, played by a deadpan Lea Seydoux who looks like she’s just slinked in off the set of Death Stranding, gets one of the coolest introductory shots of the year: half in shadow with visible colour in her clothes, and half in the stark black-and-white light of an ultraviolet alien sun.
3. Truckside Standoff – Civil War
When Kirsten Dunst put forward her husband Jesse Plemons’ name as a suggestion to fill a quick side role for a single scene towards the end of road movie Civil War, little did the crew know they had just set up one of the viral moments of the year, not to mention a trailer-maker’s dream. Plemons has had a pretty varied career, but he is particularly famous for his uncaring thousand-yard-stare as he holds the power of life and death over a protagonist or two. It turns out that stare can pierce through even one of the most distracting pair of sunglasses ever put on a character within a non-comedy movie. If anything, the shiny red eyewear makes his unnamed character even more intimidating, as no one else next to that ominous dirt pile knows what he is thinking until it’s too late.
2. Tiebreak – Challengers
The only scene on the 2024 list that actually caps off its film, the climactic tennis match that we’ve checked in on multiple times throughout Challengers comes to a mesmerising end before a near-perfect cut-to-black. I could have specified just the shot-reverse-shot where one tennis rival’s serving style reveals an affair that initially devastates, then motivates, the other – and what a sumptuous 30 seconds that is – but really the entire racquet battle tells a story both on and off the court that truly embodies the word indulgent in a way not even the steamier early parts of the story can claim to exceed, but features its own mini-character-arcs with almost no dialogue to help out. Streaked with close-ups, slow-mo, and just about every camera angle you can imagine, it’s a scene that’s hard to fault – unless you actually play/watch a lot of real-life tennis, of course.
1. The Stand-Up – The Substance
It’s the single sequence that adds the most critical drop of pathos to a grotesque body horror show, but perhaps it only works so well because it’s surrounded by such insane grisly imagery. The Substance offers memorable scene after memorable scene: an incredible opening time lapse of a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, Dennis Quaid’s gruesome prawn gorging, Demi Moore almost literally eating the scenery raving like a mad crone from a cautionary fairy tale at her television set, Margaret Qualley’s Sue literally failing to keep herself together in a high-pressure moment. But as Elisabeth Sparkle, Moore gives a heart-rending depiction of an ego-broken victim of modern beauty standards in a scene without a hint of prosthetics or gore. Edited at first for light humour, then pity, then abject despair, the final shot of an abandoned outfit and a hunched back is one of the most soul-crushing I saw all year. It’s on the nose as far as the central theme of the movie goes, but thanks to the even crazier surrounding scenes, it just pops, and Moore’s wordless acting is Oscar-worthy.
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Honorable Mentions
–Sewer Shootout – Borderlands
Maybe it’s just how poorly the rest of the movie comes together in comparison, or maybe it’s the time-tested unbeatable momentum of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades on the soundtrack, but one of the only action scenes in the Borderlands movie that actually features the whole party fighting enemies at once is kind of fun?
–Opening Montage – The Wild Robot
Picking a single source of visual spectacle from a movie as consistently stunning as The Wild Robot feels pretty pointless; the bar is so high all the time anyway. Picking one of the three major tear-jerker scenes also feels pointless. But it is perhaps worth singling out the introductory sequence, if not for extra visual points then for sheer editing chops. The story moves at a real click early on, moving through what could have been a whole movie’s worth of story in minutes, so this part really needed to work to set up all the tears and triumph later. And it absolutely does.
–Maria Montage – Sonic the Hedgehog 3
In a rapidly-paced, character-juggling movie heavy on slapstick and spectacle, it’s almost jarring how well Shadow the Hedgehog’s traditionally crucial relationship with the innocent Maria Robotnik is built up within the space of a single 2-minute montage. The sequence is well-shot, paced beautifully, features a shrewd needle-drop, and the CGI composition is perhaps more convincing than anywhere else in the movie.
Vagrant Rant 