Hello again FlixChatter friends and visitors!! I had a fabulous birthday yesterday, started the day with lunch with a dear friend + got a free slice of carrot cake that’s beautifully decorated! I finished the day with a press screening of Captain America: Brave New World.

So this is PART 2 of my big 5-0 birthday celebration! 🎈 🎂 🥳 Guess what does SNL and me have in common? Well, we both hit a milestone this year.

So to celebrate, I’m shining a light on some of my favorite movie quotes, music scores, songs, etc. that made me smile. Since Valentine’s Day is around the corner, I’m including a ton of romantic bits here.

So here we go…

1 ) Now, I’m focusing my post on mostly things from movies, but I’m making an exception with this first one. To be honest, there aren’t very many SNL skits that make me LMAO these days, but this Russian Bride skit is an oldie but goodie that never fails to make me laugh. The secret sauce here is Fred Armisen, he is a comedic genius!!

2 ) I gotta include a movie from the year I was born, 1975. This iconic line from JAWS is spoken by Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) right after the infamous shark shows up behind the Orca, and it’s listed as the 35th-best movie quote by AFI. Schneider apparently came up with that line on the spot because producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown were so tight with their budget that everyone kept saying, ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat.’ It turned into a go-to phrase whenever things went sideways.

“You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat”

3 ) Ahh Moulin Rouge… I haven’t seen this period romance in ages but I often watched clips of the musical numbers as I adore Ewan McGregor’s voice! I made a list over a decade ago of actors who are surprisingly good singers, McGregor and Nicole Kidman sure made the list!

4 ) I dedicated a post to Brief Encounter last Valentine’s Day, I love that movie and I think it’s an underrated romantic drama. The moment with Laura (Celia Johnson) and her loyal, though maybe a tad dull, husband Fred in their living room really hits home. It kind of gives me bittersweet vibes similar to the ending of Past Lives.

5 ) The Age of Innocence is my favorite Martin Scorsese movie. This might not be a physically violent film like many of Scorsese’s films, but it’s an emotionally violent movie. It’s one of the most beautifully painful depictions of unrequited love you’ll ever see. Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis‘s chemistry is off the charts!

Newland: You gave me my first glimpse of real life. Then you asked me to go on with the false one. No one can endure that.

Ellen: I’m enduring it.

6 ) Since the new Captain America: Brave New World is being released this week, I thought I’d highlight this scene when Steve Rogers first met Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in The Winter Soldier. Let’s just say it’s still my favorite of the Captain America movies. Steve keeping a notebook with stuff he’s missed since being frozen for 70 years is just so darn adorable!

7 ) I started watching The Equalizer franchise and it’s a lot of fun! Denzel Washington is truly a bad-ass and this line is pretty memorable:

“”When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too.”

8 ) I have a scene of Alan Rickman in the first post but I simply have to include one from my all-time favorite movie, Sense & Sensibility. Colonel Brandon is my favorite Austen heroine, yep he even beats Mr. Darcy in my book.

9 ) Since it’s John Williams‘ 93rd birthday recently, I have to include one of his amazing music scores. Somehow this one did not make my Top 10 list, but after rewatching Home Alone, I was struck by just how gorgeous this score is.

10 ) What makes a line memorable is often because of the way it’s delivered. And that’s why I love Timothy Dalton as Bond. It’s part of a longer sentence (one of my top 5 favorites from the Bond series) in The Living Daylights, an underrated Bond movie starring a criminally underrated actor.

Whoever she was, I must have scared the living daylights out of her

11 ) The Greatest Showman is one of my favorite modern musicals of the past decade. I love pretty much every single song by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The one I keep going back to is Tightrope, sung by Michelle Williams. It’s a beautiful and bittersweet song that made me despise Hugh Jackman’s Barnum so much. Ironically, it seems like Jackman’s affair with the lead actress of The Music Man seems to echo his character here 😦

12 ) I miss Oscar Isaac!! He’s going to be in Netflix’s Frankenstein movie coming later this Fall, which is such a loooong time from now. But hey, his dance scene in Ex Machina is one I can never get tired of.

“I’m gonna tear up the f***ing dancefloor, check it out.”

13 ) “Stu is Great!” Indeed he is! Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows is highly quotable and an absolute laugh riot. The lone human friend of the goofy vampires Stu (Stu Rutherford) ends up being the scene-stealer just by being himself.

14 ) Mo-cap acting IS acting, I will always stand by that. For that reason, Andy Serkis ought to win an Oscar one day. Given monkeys (or things in their likeness) are strangely popular lately, I’m including this great line from the rebooted Planet of the Apes movies. It’s one of the best action franchises in the past decade and Serkis is phenomenal as the ape leader Caesar:

“Apes together strong!”

15 ) Nora Ephron + Jane Austen is such a delightful combination so naturally I’m in love with this scene from You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan‘s Kathleen and Tom Hanks‘ Joe are basically modern-day Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy.

16 ) The most famous lines from Notting Hill are naturally romantic ones. Hugh Grant has said in interviews that writer/director Richard Curtis is a hopeless romantic. I’m a huge fan of Curtis’ work because he can write some of the funniest lines even for the supporting characters. Grant’s character’s roommate Spike (Rhys Ifans) sure says the darnest things!

I knew a girl at school called Pandora. Never got to see her box, though.

17 ) I never peg Ryan Gosling as a comedic actor but his performance in The Nice Guys proves me wrong. I love the chemistry between him and Russell Crowe who can do drama and comedy seamlessly in his sleep. This is one of the funniest buddy cop comedy duos and an instant classic as it’s so rewatchable! I hope they’ll somehow make a sequel despite the not-so-great box office receipt.

18 ) Heath Ledger was gone way too soon. He’s such an amazingly versatile actor. I actually saw 10 Things I Hate About You after I saw The Dark Knight. I don’t remember much about the movie except for THIS scene where Patrick, the coolest kid in high school, sings to Kat (Julia Stiles). Swoon 😍

19 ) One of the movies I quote often is Gladiator, which is why it’s a real bummer that I could barely remember even a single line from its sequel. So many of Maximus’ quotes are memorable, but I won’t bore you with them as you likely already know many of them by heart. I’m highlighting the one spoken by a tertiary character, Senator Gracchus. It’s indelible thanks to Derek Jacobi‘s theatrical delivery and the line describes Rome perfectly.

The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it’s the sand of the colosseum.

20 ) If Nora Ephron’s movies are my rom-com comfort movies, Monsters, Inc. is my Pixar comfort movie. I have such a soft spot for the one-eyed little green monster Mike Wazowski, that’s why he’s my favorite Pixar character! In terms of voice acting, Billy Crystal (who also worked with Ephron in When Harry Met Sally) is truly one of the best!

21 ) When I first watched this Stanley Kubrick war satire, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in college, I gotta admit I did not quite get it.  It’s on subsequent watch years later that I realized its brilliance, featuring Peter Sellers in not one but three memorable roles. It’s a prime example of how humor can be used to deliver a deep critique of the nuclear arms race and the potential that it could wipe out humanity.

Gentlemen you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

22 ) I’m feeling nostalgic as I’m making these b’day lists, and The Sound of Music is a musical classic I will always remember fondly as I used to watch it with my late mom. Over the year, I’d consider it one of my ‘comfort movies’ and this musical has everything you want in a movie! It’s a heartwarming tale of ‘found family’ where Maria steps in as the Von Trapp kids’ new mom, blending elements of romance and war drama seamlessly in an engaging way. I particularly love this scene when Captain Von Trapp finally acknowledges his attraction to Maria. Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews have such a breathless chemistry it makes me blush!

23 ) I know I’ve been saying that I’m feeling superhero fatigue. That is true, but it’s also true that I miss Marvel’s glory days. Avengers: Endgame is the kind of movie you ought to see with a big crowd on as big a screen as possible. I remember the audience began cheering as one portal after another opened, especially when Capt said ‘Avengers, assemble!’

24 ) Say what you will about Christopher Nolan’s TENET, which I actually enjoyed more in my second and third rewatch. It’s a mind puzzle of a movie, but it’s got some cool action scenes and a fantastic score by Ludwig Göransson. My favorite track is Posterity, which is actually a great score to put on while you work out.

25) I ended the first part of my birthday list with a musical number from the first Mamma Mia. Well, I’m an even bigger fan of the sequel and Cher made one of the most amusing cameos ever! I love how the two movies feature seasoned women who can still have a lot of fun and live life to the fullest. Well, Cher was 71 years old when she filmed Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, so talk about a woman very much in her prime! Her ABBA’s Fernando duet with Andy Garcia is such a hoot!

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Hope you enjoy the second part of my birthday post, which of these cinematic moments would you include on your own list?

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