CLIFFHANGER (1993)
Let’s be clear...Cliffhanger is not a good film. Sylvester Stallone is...well, he’s Sylvester Stallone, and John Lithgow only works as a villain when he’s playing a snotty elitist or Dr. Lizardo and not somebody who’s actually meant to scare me. But the primal suspense of the opening sequence above haunts me far more than any number of scenes from much, much better films. Here’s the set-up: Stallone plays Gabe, some kind of extreme mountain ranger who (along with helicopter ace Janine Turner) attempt what should be the routine rescue of their colleague Hal (Michael Rooker) and his cute-as-a-bug girlfriend, Sarah (Michelle Joyner), who’ve managed to get trapped while hiking in the Rocky Mountains -- but then things go horribly awry, and suddenly Gabe and Sarah are stuck hanging from a thin line between two peaks over a vertigo-inducing abyss...and then the line starts to give way...and then Sarah slips and winds up dangling from Gabe’s meaty fingers...and it’s all very suspenseful and routinely pulse-pounding until -- holy shit! -- sweet, innocent Sarah actually falls to her death, screaming all the way...the kind of unexpected gut-punch one rarely encounters in the typical theme-park safety net of most summer thrill rides. The incident is so demoralizing, in fact, that it hangs like a pall over the characters and audience for the rest of the film's running time, adding untenable weight to a ludicrous Die Hard knock-off that can’t support it -- but director Renny Harlin deserves at least some credit for creating such a terrifying, memorable stand-alone reminder of the visceral power of cinema. (AO)
WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000)
It’s fairly common in the films of Bela Tarr to find scenes that take place in barrooms. But there’s no scene in Tarr’s filmography -- or anyone else’s, for that matter -- that’s quite like the opening of his 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies. At the end of another long night, the barkeep kicks out all of his customers, but not before Valuska (Lars Rudolph) demonstrates to the others the way a solar eclipse works by using three of the drunks to portray the sun, the Earth, and the moon. At first, it’s a hilarious bit of imagery, with the sun waving his arms, the Earth lurching around the sun, and the moon circling the Earth at a dizzying pace. However, before long Valuska has a surprise in store for the others, as he stops the moon between the sun and the Earth and proceeds to describe in haunting language what happens when the sun’s rays have been blocked out -- the strange behavior of the animals, the moment of dread felt by the people who witness it, and so on. Of course, Valuska explains, the moment is over as soon as it began, but it’s this moment, and the thoughts of apocalypse it inspires, that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Soon enough, a real brush with the reckoning arrives in town (in the form of a traveling circus and its mysterious whale), causing all hope to disappear, however briefly, from the townspeople. And so, what begins as a strange and hypnotic opening comes to encapsulate the entire film -- practically the definition of a great and important opening scene. (PC)
DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)
Zack Snyder’s loose remake of George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic gets progressively less interesting as it goes along, though there’s almost no way his film could have maintained the level of blistering, manic terror delivered by its opening sequence. After finishing her shift at the local hospital, Sarah Polley’s nurse returns to her suburban home and loving husband. Their peaceful domesticity is shattered the following morning, however, when the neighbor’s little girl appears at their bedroom door looking decidedly fleet and hungry. A ferocious attack ensues, followed by Polly’s husband transforming into a crazed cannibal, sparking further mayhem that propels her outside and – as a gorgeously wrought panoramic shot reveals – into mass chaos, her street overrun by zombies and their fleeing, panicking would-be victims. Hopping into her car, she zigzags through the madness, Snyder’s camera situated directly behind her car (or attached to its hood) to heighten the crazed immediacy of the action, which culminates in a thudding car crash that proves an ideal segue into Snyder’s Johnny Cash-scored credit sequence and subsequent mall-set zombiepocalypse saga. (NS)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)
It's the nature of the world that everything you think you understand should be challenged. That no matter how long you live and what sort of times you have seen, the world will always seem stranger and more frightening as you age. You expect wisdom with your years, but time tends to make you complacent instead. No Country For Old Men is a little too insubstantial to qualify for Cormac McCarthy's top shelf, but that doesn't mean that it's devoid of his signature insight into darkness and weakness. The movie hews tightly to the book, but movies are more immersive than books, and it's harder to take a step back from a seemingly wise narrator to ask whether one is actually hearing wisdom or whether it is complacency. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells us from the beginning that he can't understand the way that crime has changed, that he can't be a part of the world because it would put his soul at hazard, the sweep of the movie leads some or even most of the audience to believe that they are supposed to agree with him. And given a choice between Sheriff Bell and the amoral killing machine Anton Chigurh, well, Bell would be the safer choice for your sympathy. Bell is wrong, though, which will be brought to his attention late in the movie. But now we're at the beginning, just Sheriff Bell talking about how time has passed him while the camera lingers over those gorgeous shots of West Texas, so serene they look like still images until the wind blows. And then we're in the police station watching a man calmly murder another, leaving scuff marks on the floor as random and beautiful as the desert grass we just saw. And we're reminded that the desert, like the world around it, is always as full of danger as it is of beauty. That's nothing new. (HC)
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Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs