1. The Matrix (1999)
Screenwriter(s): Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
Human Beings Are A Virus - "You Are a Plague and We Are the Cure". Sinister and sentient Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), having imprisoned Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), and with his captive audience declared that human beings were a virus:
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. And the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are the cure.
2. The Big Lebowski (1998)
Screenwriter(s): Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Eulogy For a Fellow Bowler
As one of the "bereaved," Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) presented a eulogy for fellow bowler Donny (Steve Buscemi), before his ashes in a red Folger's coffee can (a cheap substitute for the mortuary's "most modestly-priced receptacle") were scattered on the Pacific Ocean from a cliff promontory, although the ashes blew back in their faces:
Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors - and bowling, and as a surfer, he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and up to Pismo. He died, he died as so many young men of his generation before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny. Donny, who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well. Good night, sweet prince.
3. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Screenwriter(s): Quentin Tarantino
According to the Jew Hunter, Jews Share the Attributes of a Rat
In 1941, SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), with the unofficial title "The Jew Hunter," spoke to pipe-smoking French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) about his goal of searching for Jews, suspecting that the farmer was sheltering enemies of the state by hiding the Jewish Dreyfus family somewhere on his property:
Now if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk. But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat. If a rat were to walk in here right now as I'm talking, would you treat it with a saucer of your delicious milk? I didn't think so. You don't like them. You don't really know why you don't like them. All you know is you find them repulsive.
Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look? He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide, but there's so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide. However, the reason the Führer's brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me. Because I'm aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.
4. Ratatouille (2007)
Screenwriter(s): Brad Bird
Food Critic Anton Ego's Glowing Review
Snobbish, hard-to-please and harsh food critic Anton Ego (voice of Peter O'Toole) gave a glowing, self-actualizing review, published the following day, about restaurant Gusteau's cuisine (serving the traditional dish of ratatouille), after learning it had been prepared by blue French chef country rat Remy (voice of Patton Oswalt):
(fragment)
Last night, I experienced something new, an extra-ordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: 'Anyone can cook.' But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.
5. The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Screenwriter(s): Aline Brosh McKenna
About Fashion "Stuff"
While deciding between two belts for an outfit, recent college grad and co-assistant Andrea "Andy" Sachs (Anne Hathaway) mentioned that they both looked exactly the same and that she was still learning about "this stuff." Ruthless, powerful, demanding and cynical fashion magazine Runway editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) responded to directly humiliate her:
'This... stuff'? Oh, ok. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.
However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.
6. GoodFellas (1990)
Screenwriter(s): Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese
"I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster"
Gangster Henry Hill's (Ray Liotta) monologue in the film's opening, as a teenaged boy in East New York (Brooklyn) 1955 - he intensely watched his idols - the 'gangsters' who used the nearby taxi stand as their front, across the street from his family's tenement apartment. Fascinated, he longed to "be a part of them" and the glamour:
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States. Even before I first wandered into the cabstand for an after-school job, I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there that I knew that I belonged. To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.
7. (500) Days of Summer (2009)
Screenwriter(s): Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber
"This Is Not A Love Story"
In this non-linear romantic comedy, a Narrator (Richard McGonagle) explained - in voice-over - in the film's pre-credits opening, the background to the film's plot. It concerned a 500 day relationship between aspiring architect and greeting card writer Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his boss' beautiful new secretary, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) that began on January 8th - with brief flashbacks to their past as youngsters:
This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met 'the one'. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie 'The Graduate'. The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parents' marriage, she'd only loved two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and feel nothing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she's who he's been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story.
8. The Hangover (2009)
Screenwriter(s): Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
"The Wolf-Pack" Toast
Once they had arrived in Las Vegas and acquired a villa at Caesar's Palace Casino/Hotel, groom-to-be Doug (Justin Bartha) and his three groomsmen went to the rooftop to drunkenly make toasts. Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis) offered these words, claiming they were 'blood' brothers:
I’d like to, I’d like to say something that I’ve prepared tonight. Hello. How 'bout that ride in? I guess that's why they call it Sin City. You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack, it grew by one. So - there were two of us in the wolf pack. I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, 'Wait a second, could it be?' And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast! (He pulled out a knife and cut his palm) Blood brothers!
9. Watchmen (2009)
Screenwriter(s): David Hayter, Alex Tse
A Vain Plea to "Save Us!"
After an extensive five-minute backstory credits sequence (to the tune of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'") and a fight scene, in voice-over, masked, trench-coated vigilante Rorschach/Walter Kovacs (Jackie Earle Haley) read from his journal, in the gritty alternate year of 1985:
Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city's afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout: 'Save us!' - and I'll whisper 'no.'
Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody hell. All those liberals and intellectuals and smooth talkers - and all of a sudden, nobody can think of anything to say. Beneath me, this awful city. It screams like an abattoir full of retarded children, and the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences.
10. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Screenwriter(s): Quentin Tarantino
The Introduction of Aldo Raine to the Basterds - Each Man Owes Me 100 Nazi Scalps!
In 1944 during the war, First Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) spoke to his special team of 'take-no-prisoners' Basterds - eight Jewish-American soldiers on a mission as a "bushwhackin' guerrilla army" to go behind Nazi enemy lines:
My name is Lt. Aldo Raine and I'm puttin' together a special team, and I need me eight soldiers. Eight Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might've heard rumors about the armada happenin' soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only - killin' Nazis. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the god-damn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a f--kin' air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed. That's why any and every son of a bitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die.
11. The Dark Knight (2008)
Screenwriter(s): Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan
"You Wanna Know How I Got 'Em [Scars]?" - "Now I'm Always Smiling"
The grotesque Joker (Heath Ledger) gave an intimidating rant about the origin of his hideous facial scars to beautiful Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall) - "Harvey's squeeze" - while brandishing a knife at her (one of the many times in the film that he recited similar but conflicting origin stories) as the camera circled around them disorientingly:
Well, you look nervous. Is it the scars? You wanna know how I got 'em? Come here. Hey! Look at me. So I had a wife, beautiful, like you, who tells me I worry too much. Who tells me I oughta smile more. Who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks... Look at me! One day, they carve her face. And we have no money for surgeries. She can't take it. I just want to see her smile again, hmm? I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars. So, I stick a razor in my mouth and do this to myself. And you know what? She can't stand the sight of me! She leaves. Now I see the funny side. Now I'm always smiling!
The Wrestler (2008)
Screenwriter(s): Robert D. Siegel
"I Deserve To Be All Alone - I Just Don't Want You To Hate Me"
Aging pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) spoke to his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), admitting his failure as a father when he abandoned her as a child - but he kept on failing by missing their dinner appointment:
I just want to tell you, I'm the one who was supposed to take care of everything. I'm the one who was supposed to make everything okay for everybody. It just didn't work out like that. And I left. I left you. You never did anything wrong, you know. I used to try to forget about you. Ha, ha. I used to try to pretend that you didn't exist - but I can't. You're my girl. You're my little, you're my little girl. And now, I'm an old broken down piece of meat and I'm alone. And I deserve to be all alone. I just don't want you to hate me. OK?
12. The Wrestler (2008)
Screenwriter(s): Robert D. Siegel
"I'm Still Standing Here and I'm The Ram"
Aged, washed-up pro wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) had retired from wrestling due to a heart attack (and bypass surgery). But he returned to the ring and just moments before his 20th anniversary (and fatal) rematch with the Ayatollah (Ernest Miller), he gave an emotional, uplifting speech to his devoted wrestling fans:
I just wanna say to you all tonight, I'm very grateful to be here. A lot of people told me that I'd never wrestle again. And that's all I do. You know, if you live hard and you play hard, and you burn the candle at both ends, you pay the price for it. You know, in this life you can lose everything that you love, everything that loves you. Now, I don't hear as good as I used to, and I forget stuff, and I ain't as pretty as I used to be. But god-damn it, I'm still standing here and I'm The Ram. (Applause)
13. The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Screenwriter(s): James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and more
Videotaped Good-bye to Homie
Disappointed, gravel-voiced Marge Simpson (voice of Julie Kavner) video-taped an anguished message to oafish, self-centered husband Homer (voice of Dan Castellaneta) about leaving with the kids and never returning to him:
Homer, I always stood up for you. When people point out your flaws, I always say: 'Well, sometimes you have to stand back to appreciate a work of art.' Lately, what's keeping us together is my ability to overlook everything you do. And I overlook these things because... Well, that's the thing. I just don't know how to finish that sentence anymore. So I'm leaving with the kids to help Springfield, and we're never coming back. And to prove to myself that this is the end, I taped this over our wedding video. Good-bye, Homie!
14. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
Screenwriter(s): Iris Yamashita
Pre-Battle Speech to Soldiers
Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) delivered a grim pre-battle speech to his doomed soldiers: