Cinema Science

Over at MSN Movies they have put up Moments Out of Time 2007, a list of the best moments from the year in movies. Some of my favorites from the list:

Cellophane wrapper, lately crushed in a monster's fingers, uncrimps on the counter as Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) teaches a gas station owner (Gene Jones) to value the remarkable quarter that has entered his life in "No Country for Old Men"

What pubescent Briony (Saoirse Ronan) saw in "Atonement": a beautiful emerald-green butterfly impaled on the library wall ...

In "Breach," the last, long look passed between the CIA spy (Chris Cooper) and the "son" (Ryan Phillippe) who's unmasked him ... "Pray for me."

In "Into the Wild," Alexander Supertramp (Emile Hirsch) looking up from a ravine to see the roof of a bus, where no bus ought to be in Alaska ...

In "No Country for Old Men," Llewellyn's (Josh Brolin) truck on the horizon behind him; him looking back to see another truck pulled up beside it; the boil of backlit dust after he goes over the rim and into the river ...

In "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," the pebbles sliding away from the vibrating rail as Jesse's boot rests there, waiting to stop his last train ...

In "Ratatouille," the remembrance of things past courtesy of the eponymous dish: the critic's flashback to childhood ...

Vince Vaughn's rapt, crazy gaze as Emile Hirsch raves about heading "Into the Wild" to escape "sick society": "Hell of a young guy!" ...

The first getting-to-know-you-and-your-music duet in "Once," one of the purest distillations of rapport ever ...

In "Zodiac," the irrational, absolute terror that overcomes both reporter Jake Gyllenhaal and the viewer as he waits in the theater operator's cellar ...

And on the other all-American hand, the surprisingly actorly presence of James Carville investing the governor of Missouri with civility and gravitas in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" ...

Cate Blanchett's eerie channeling of Bob Dylan, hers the only mask that really counts in "I'm Not There"

Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) giving up a tattered shoe to a ghost in "Rescue Dawn" ...

Briony grown old (Vanessa Redgrave), explaining her final act of "Atonement": "I gave them their happiness." ...

When Bourne (Matt Damon) wonders why the CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who once set him up is helping him now, she answers with what passes for a declaration of love in the killing environs of "The Bourne Ultimatum": "You were ... hard for me." ...

In "No Country for Old Men," Carla Jean Moss' (Kelly Macdonald) refusal to call the coin toss; Chigurh then coming out of the house, pausing on the porch to check the soles of his boots ...