The Greatest Motion Picture Sequences -- Part 5
one of his bodyguards checks the supposed coke. Dirk and his friends sit on the couch, but the drug lord dances to his booming music. So besides the tension of expecting them to be found out at any minute, the continual sound of firecrackers going off in the next room, where a young Chinese guy is setting off firecrackers, is very off-setting and strange, contributing to the growing tension. It's a brilliantly directed and performed segment from this very unique film.
Walking into the nightclub all shot in one take from GOODFELLAS (1990) --- In another example of great filmmaking, Martin Scorsese filmed this three minute or so sequence all in one take, following Ray Liotta's Henry Hill and Lorraine Bracco from the street in through the back door of a nightclub, through the kitchen, and to their table, all in one shot without any cuts. Again, these sequences just may be directors showing off, but the more action going on, and the more people involved in a scene and the more it moves around a scene the more you realize the difficulty of making sequences like this, and this just has to make you admire a filmmaker who tries it.
The beginning 12 minutes of the babysitter receiving threatening calls from WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) --- Of all of the horror films ever made, this sequence is my top choice for the best horror sequence of all time, and number 40 for all time movie sequences. The film itself is not the greatest of horror films, mostly because it cannot live up to its promising first 12 minutes or so, which could have stood on their own as a great and horrifying short film. It plays on the theme I keep saying about horror films -- what we don't see is more frightening than seeing some hockey-masked madman slashing people to shreds. In this sequence that starts this film, a babysitter is alone with the two kids she's sitting for, who are already tucked away in their beds, so we never see the kids. Not long after the parents leave for the night, the babysitter, played by Carol Kane, begins receiving threatening phone calls by a very disturbed man. He begins to ask her "Have you checked the children?" and "Why haven't you checked the children?" His voice is very threatening on its own, and when she asks the man
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