My favourite movie scenes

"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."  Ingmar Bergman

Here for my own enjoyment are some of my favourite movie moments. No matter how much I watch these scenes, I will never tire of them.

      

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Movie scenes I love: Ending of Hamnet (2025)

I watched Hamnet today and was hugely moved by it, especially the final scene. Hamnet is about how private grief (the loss of Shakespeare's son) is transformed into enduring art (the tragedy, Hamlet), showing how loss, love, and memory are woven into creativity as a way of making meaning from unbearable absence.

I love what Richard Lawson  had to say about the final scene in his review in The Guardian.

The music from the scene is also absolutely sublime. It's the same music that played in the opening and final scene of Arrival (2016) that also moved me so much, also a meditation on grief.

Movie scenes I love: "I had you" scene from Sentimental Value (2025)

I saw this movie with Elna in Newtown. One of the best movies I have seen this year and the most moving.  It had the most beautiful interaction between two siblings I have ever seen. The movie stars the incredible Renate Reinsve and is directed by Joachim Trier, the director of another of my favourite movies; "The Worst Person in the World" which also starred Renate.

Movie scenes I love: Final scene of Arrival (2016)

The final scene of Arrival reveals its quiet, devastating beauty in a single act of acceptance: Louise steps fully into a life she knows will end in loss. Armed with foreknowledge, she does not attempt to avoid pain but chooses love anyway, embracing joy and grief as inseparable threads of the same tapestry. The moment reframes time not as something to control or escape, but as something to inhabit completely—suggesting that a finite love, precisely because it ends, is not diminished but made immeasurably precious.

Movie scenes I love: The Notebook "Lake scene"

The lake scene is the destruction of the "polite lie." It begins in a silent, breathtaking fantasy among the swans and ends in a loud, wet, messy reality on the dock. It captures the terrifying and exhilarating moment when two people stop pretending they have moved on and surrender to the fact that, as Noah says, "It still isn't over."

Movie scene I love: Blade Runner "Tears in the rain"

The “Time to die” scene in Blade Runner captures the aching beauty of a being who, at the very moment of death, recognises the miracle of having lived at all. Roy Batty’s words transform violence into grace as he mourns not himself, but the loss of unrepeatable experiences—moments of wonder that existed only because he was conscious to witness them. In sparing his pursuer and accepting his end, he reveals a profound truth: mortality is not what robs life of meaning, but what gives every moment its incandescent value.

Movie scenes I love: "Magic cloak" from Crash (2004)

 A father invents a fairy tale about an impenetrable cloak to soothe his daughter’s anxiety, never expecting his protective lie to be tested by reality. However, the beauty emerges when the daughter accepts this fiction as absolute truth, summoning the courage to leap in front of a gun because she genuinely believes she cannot be harmed.

In that terrifying moment, her innocence collides with a stranger's rage. Although their survival is technically due to blank rounds, emotionally it validates her faith. The "magic" saves them all—keeping the father alive, the child safe, and preventing the shooter from carrying the burden of killing a child.

Setting up the scene

The scene

Movie Scenes I love: American Beauty "Plastic bag"

The plastic bag scene serves as the philosophical heart of American Beauty, challenging the viewer to find the profound within the mundane. As Ricky Fitts shows Jane a grainy video of an ordinary white trash bag dancing in the wind with dead leaves, the scene reframes a piece of literal garbage into a mesmerizing symbol of hidden life and energy. It illustrates Ricky’s belief that an invisible, benevolent force exists behind the surface of things, creating a moment of spiritual connection that sharply contrasts with the film’s otherwise cynical view of suburban materialism. Ultimately, the scene argues that there is "so much beauty in the world" that it can be overwhelming, but only if one stops to look at what is usually ignored.

Movie scenes I love: Schindlers List

I could have got more out

 

Ending: Stones on the grave

 

Movie scenes I love: Awakenings "Dance scene"

The dance scene in Awakenings serves as a heartbreaking testament to the power of human connection over biological frailty. As Leonard Lowe fights the violent return of his debilitating tremors, his final dance with Paula becomes a momentary miracle; the rhythm of the music and the stability of her embrace allow him to "borrow her will," causing his shaking to vanish instantly into fluid grace. It is a sequence defined by tragic beauty, offering Leonard one last fleeting interlude of dignity—a suspended sunset where love quiets the storm of his disease before the darkness inevitably returns.

Movie scenes I loved: Ending of Cinema Paradiso

The final scene serves as a transcendent emotional release, where the adult Salvatore watches a reel left by his late mentor, Alfredo, revealing a montage of every kiss censored from the films of his childhood. As the screen fills with decades of forbidden passion set to Ennio Morricone’s soaring score, the reel acts as a posthumous embrace, restoring the intimacy and warmth Salvatore sacrificed to achieve his professional success. It is a profound reconciliation of his divided self, asserting that while time moves forward, the love we leave behind remains preserved in art, waiting to be unspooled.