June 22, 2024

I was on a flight home from Frankfurt last week playing with one of the things Air Canada got right: its storehouse of movies you can watch for 8 solid hours. But rather than try to find a new first-run film I’d never seen, which all looked like lighter-than-air objects, fluffy and predictable, I did the opposite.

I went on the hunt for my favourite old movies, like Bonnie & Clyde and Catch Me If You Can and Dog Day Afternoon and Field of Dreams, Gladiator, and A Few Good Men. I didn’t want to see these faves in their entirety; I just wanted to see my favourite parts, the scenes whose action and dialogue will forever be imprinted in my brain.

Like when Bonnie and Clyde die in a hail of bullets.

When FBI agent Tom Hanks catches up to fake-pilot Leonardo di Caprio and says: “Nobody’s chasing you.”

When bank robber Al Pacino says: “Kiss me….When I’m being fucked, I like to get kissed.” 

When dreamer Kevin Costner hears: “If you build it, they will come.”

When gladiator Russell Crowe says: “My name is Maximus.”

And of course when Marine Colonel Jack Nicholson says to Tom Cruise: “You can’t handle the truth.”

I enjoyed my tour of great scenes from memorable movies enormously.

Rummaging around in these old scenes, and who I was when I first watched them, was new for me. It was much much more fun than trying to focus on the thin gruel of bot-like dialogue and stick-man actions in so many new films.