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These devastating cliffhangers were eventually resolved - one way or another.
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00:00It takes a special kind of actor to be able to take a small, minute role, sometimes one that only
00:05takes up a couple of minutes of screen time, and turn it into something special.
00:09Not to say it's easy being the headlining act of a film either, but for those actors with only a
00:14handful of minutes in front of the camera, it's all about maximising what's on the table, and making the most
00:19of the scene itself.
00:20And these are the best movie characters who only appear in one scene.
00:24Vincent Grey, The Sixth Sense
00:26Donnie Wahlberg's Vincent may have only been on screen for a matter of minutes and just in the one scene,
00:32but he's the guy who sets the tone for what lies ahead in The Sixth Sense.
00:36Having dropped a ludicrous £40 for the role, Wahlberg's character is an angry, scared and desperate ball of emotion who
00:43shoots Bruce Willis' Malcolm Crow and then kills himself during the opening moment of the film.
00:48While audiences spent 95% of The Sixth Sense watching an alive and well Malcolm, it would of course be
00:54revealed that Willis' character was actually dead, courtesy of that opening gunshot.
00:59As such, it could be argued that Vincent is actually the most important and impactful character of the whole story.
01:05Sapper Morton, Blade Runner 2049
01:08As much as we all love Dave Bautista's performance as Drax in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his short but sweet
01:14turn in the opening moments of Blade Runner 2049 was the first major indication of his transfixing dramatic chops.
01:21Bautista appears in a single five-minute scene as Sapper Morton, a Nexus 8 replicant who is now living a
01:27low-key life as a protein farmer, and has been targeted for retirement by replicant Blade Runner Kay.
01:32The brilliantly suspenseful sequence sees Kay arrive on Morton's farm with the intent of bringing him in, one way or
01:39another.
01:39Knowing his number is up, a visibly unsettled Morton eventually initiates a fight with Kay, using his sheer brute strength
01:46to overpower him, until Kay is able to mount a comeback and shoot him dead.
01:50Though a short film Nowhere to Run was released to flesh out Morton's character, even in his few minutes of
01:55screen time in the movie proper, he perfectly conveys the fear felt by all the replicant models being hunted down.
02:01Moreover, he's far more than the blunt object you might expect, a thoughtful, melancholic character clearly wearing a massive weight
02:08on his giant back from a brutal past.
02:11Paige Tico
02:12Star Wars The Last Jedi
02:13Regardless of your thoughts on the eighth entry in the grander Skywalker saga, one thing that all audiences seemed to
02:19agree on was that Paige Tico was one of the very best parts of the film.
02:23Faced with horrendous odds in the intro, Nothan Van's Paige sacrifices herself for the greater good.
02:29As the sole person left alive during a bombing run to destroy one of the First Order's hefty ships, she
02:35embraces the explosion and knows that while she will die, at least she's dealt a huge blow to this next
02:40wannabe empire.
02:41Vincenzo Concotti
02:43True Romance
02:44With a script penned by Quentin Tarantino, it's little surprise that True Romance is jam-packed with savagely hilarious one
02:51-liners.
02:52Yet there's a single scene in the film that just might rank as one of the finest ever written by
02:56the legendary filmmaker.
02:58The scene is, of course, the mid-film arrival of Vincenzo the Sicilian Concotti, a mob consigliere who pays a
03:04visit to Clarence Worley's father, Clifford, in order to learn his whereabouts.
03:09From the first moments of the scene, Walkden's Concotti bleeds menace, introducing himself to Clifford and succinctly explaining that he
03:16won't abide any lies, boasting that Sicilians are the best liars in the world.
03:20Refusing to give his son up and therefore knowing his goose is cooked, Clifford decides to deliver a brutally provocative
03:26riposte to Concotti.
03:27Explaining to the evidently racist Concotti that Sicilians are spawned from black people.
03:32Concotti grows increasingly frustrated over the course of the monologue, even while feigning laughter at Clifford's claim, before being pushed
03:39over the edge when Clifford calls him part eggplant.
03:42Concotti then shoots Clifford dead and says with exasperation, I haven't killed anybody since 1984.
03:47The entire scene is an acting masterclass by both Walkden and Hopper, Walkden delivering a full-bodied character inside of
03:54an incredibly tight 10-minute sequence.
03:56After which he's never seen again.
03:59Thunder Lips. Rocky 3.
04:00In Rocky 3, Hulk Hogan's Thunder Lips turns up to take on Sly Stallone's titular Balboa for a charity contest
04:07of wrestler vs boxer.
04:09The match ends in a draw, but the fun was seeing the overmatched Rocky being slapped around by a pre
04:14-Hulkamania Hulk Hogan.
04:15Rocky eventually turns the tables and throws Thunder Lips over the top rope for the bout's conclusion, but that only
04:21meant that Thunder Lips himself was remembered by Rocky fans forevermore.
04:25Uncle Ellis, No Country for Old Men
04:27Deep into the third act of the Coen brothers' best picture-winning masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, beleaguered sheriff
04:33Ed Tom Bell pays a visit to his Uncle Ellis.
04:36Having just found Llewellyn Moss murdered, Bell feels totally and utterly defeated, that the brutality of the region and the
04:42era is simply too much for him to deal with.
04:45In a mesmerizing scene, Bell explains this to Ellis, who offers up his own poetic perspective on the futility of
04:51revenge, before telling him the tale of their Uncle Mac's death in 1909, suggesting to him that ultraviolence isn't a
04:57new phenomenon for the area.
04:59In his chilling final words to Bell, he tells him,
05:02What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting
05:07on you. That's vanity.
05:08The whole scene is a perfect fusion of first-rate writing, direction, and acting, but few single-scene characters have
05:15ever held the screen as magnetically as Uncle Ellis.
05:18Bob Barker, Happy Gilmore
05:20Playing an amped-up, ass-kicking version of himself in 1996's Happy Gilmore, Bob Barker completely devoured the scenery in
05:28the time he was given.
05:29Out of nowhere, the Price is Right host joins Adam Sandler's Happy in a tournament match, only for Gilmore to
05:34get too annoyed with rival Shooter McGavin's comments, leaving the pair to place last.
05:39After a few snide back-and-forths between Barker and Sandler, Gilmore snaps and lays out Bob, only for Barker
05:46to fire back and the pair to go at it.
05:48Even when the younger, stronger, Happy Gilmore gets the better of Bob, he rises back up like The Undertaker to
05:53land one last beatdown and emerge victorious.
05:56Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
05:58After Wesley is damn near tortured to death in The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya and Fezzik bring him to Miracle
06:05Max, a folk healer.
06:06What follows is an hysterical five-minute sequence where Max, played by Crystal under massive amounts of old man makeup,
06:13cracks jokes as the heroines try to convince him to restore Wesley to good health.
06:17Once they inform Max doing so will ruin Prince Humperdinck's wedding, he's game for the job.
06:22As some icing on the cake, Max is also joined by his wife, Valerie, who helps persuade Max that true
06:27love must prevail through Wesley's resurrection from being mostly dead.
06:31Even with much of Crystal's dialogue allegedly being improvised, this snappy, gut-bustingly funny scene shows and says everything we
06:37need to know about Max.
06:39He's a weird-ass healer of questionable morals who can be brought back down to earth by his equally-armed
06:43wife.
06:43Most movies would kill for a main character this entertaining, and yet here Max takes his leave after just one
06:49single brilliant scene.
06:50Casey Becker, Scream
06:52When it comes to characters setting the tone for an entire movie, and to be honest, the entire franchise, they
06:58don't get much better than Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker.
07:00Killed in the opening moments of Wes Craven's first Scream film, she was only on screen for 15 minutes, yet
07:06Casey set out the terms and conditions of Scream as an IP forevermore.
07:10With the initial marketing materials having Barrymore front and centre, and with her name as the headline act, seeing Becker
07:17killed off after a prolonged opening scene was straight-up unthinkable.
07:20However, that was such a key part of what made Scream stand out from the pack, changing the horror game
07:26in 1996.
07:27Lucifer, Constantine
07:29If you need someone to play a repellent sleazebag in your movie, there are few character actors better than Peter
07:34Stormare, who has basically mastered the art over the last three decades.
07:37It's tough to single out just one great role.
07:40But Stormare's finest moment to shine perhaps came in 2005's comic book movie, Constantine, where he fleetingly shows up as
07:47Lucifer in one solitary scene.
07:49Near the end of the film, Lucifer arrives to collect John Constantine's soul, though Constantine manages to bait Lucifer into
07:55a confrontation with the archangel Gabriel instead.
07:58Stormare plays Lucifer as grossly animalistic, a repugnant and terrifying figure who cannot abide the fact that Constantine has played
08:06a trick on him.
08:06For as many mistakes as the movie makes, its portrayal of Lucifer is one of cinema's all-time most fascinating
08:12and unforgettable.
08:13It took a risk by keeping him off-screen for almost the entire movie.
08:16But thanks to Stormare's masterful performance, the gamble totally pays off.
08:20Rahad Jackson
08:21Boogie Nights
08:22While Alfred Molina may be most famous for his nefarious role as Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2, one of
08:28his grey turns is actually one of his smallest.
08:30See, Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights may have chronicled the rise and fall of Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler,
08:36but the film had a stunning ensemble cast.
08:38One such inclusion is Alfred Molina, though his Rahad Jackson was a fleeting brief part of Boogie Nights' larger picture.
08:45When Wahlberg's Diggler and the gang visit local drug dealer Jackson with the intent of passing off baking soda as
08:51cocaine,
08:51the tension is slowly amped up as Molina's calm and cool Rahad gets to dominate the entire scene.
08:57Blasting Night Ranger's sister Christian, he really is the only one.
09:01Richie Cusack – A History of Violence
09:04David Cronenberg's A History of Violence is a superbly crafted thriller from top to bottom,
09:09but perhaps never better than when William Hurt shows up for one mesmeric 10-minute scene right at the end
09:14of the film.
09:15Hurt, who received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance,
09:19plays crime boss Richie Cusack, who also happens to be the brother of protagonist Joey.
09:24In this lengthy scene, Richie switches from warm and jovial to utterly menacing in a blink,
09:29explaining to Joey the problems his volatile past have caused his own criminal operations,
09:33before ordering his lackeys to kill Joey.
09:36But Joey puts his special skills to good use and fights back,
09:39offing all of Richie's cronies before shooting Richie dead point-blank,
09:43allowing him to return to his family life.
09:45It's not a majorly flashy role, but Hurt does an excellent job introducing a mobster character who skirts cliches,
09:51and has very understandable motivations for wanting his own brother dead.
09:55X. JFK.
09:57One of the biggest flaws of this divisive flick is the inclusion of character X,
10:01someone who was created purely for Oliver Stone's 1991 movie,
10:05despite it otherwise supposedly being factually correct.
10:08Whether X was a real person or not, that doesn't stop him from being one of the most important characters
10:13in the whole film.
10:14Appearing for just one scene opposite Kevin Costner's Jim Garrison,
10:17X delivers the revelation that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a group effort involving the CIA,
10:24the FBI, the Secret Service, the Mafia, and Lyndon Johnson.
10:27Encouraging Garrison to keep on digging deep on his mission to discover the truth,
10:31X explains how Kennedy was killed because he wanted to pull the US out of the Vietnam War,
10:36and that he was also going to disband the CIA.
10:39In that one 14-minute scene, Donald Sutherland went down in history,
10:43delivering one of the best speeches of his career.
10:45The T-Bone Waitress, Hello High Water
10:48David McKenzie's brilliant neo-Western Hello High Water features too many excellent scenes to count,
10:54with every part being perfectly cast from the A-list leads to the most minor fleeting cameos.
10:59And few characters have ever left as much of an impression in just 70 seconds as Margaret Bowman's T-Bone
11:04Waitress does,
11:05when Texas Rangers Marcus and Alberto visit her eatery.
11:08Upon serving the two men, she asks them the massively confusing question,
11:12what don't you want?
11:13Before elaborating with a hilariously cantankerous explanation for her odd line of questioning.
11:19I've been working here for 44 years,
11:20ain't nobody ever ordered nothing but a T-Bone steak and a baked potato.
11:23Except this one a-hole from New York ordered a trout back in 1987.
11:28We don't sell no goddamn trout.
11:29T-Bone steaks, so either you don't want the corn on the cob,
11:32or you don't want the green beans,
11:34so what don't you want?
11:35When Alberto follows up that he'd like his steak cooked differently,
11:38she insists that she don't want no questions,
11:41and then basically forces the pair to both order iced tea.
11:43To cap it all off, Marcus then tells Alberto,
11:46well I'll tell you one thing, ain't nobody gonna rob this sonbitch.
11:49Bowman, who sadly passed away shortly after the film's release,
11:52takes a potentially forgettable role,
11:54and with the help of Taylor Sheridan's tack-sharp script,
11:56makes this surly waitress one of the movie's most memorable characters.
12:00In barely a minute, no less.
12:01Bravo.
12:02Mrs. Miller.
12:03Doubt.
12:04So impressive was Viola Davis' performance as Mrs. Miller in 2008's Doubt,
12:09it instantly propelled the actress from a minor player in big movies,
12:12to a superstar who proudly had an Academy Award nomination under her belt.
12:17The Mrs. Miller character herself is a very troubled one,
12:20playing the mother of a son who is allegedly being molested by a priest.
12:23After hearing this news, Miller's one scene saw her react
12:26not quite in the way that people would expect.
12:29Instead of shock, anger, or even vengeance,
12:31she believes that all of this is God's plan.
12:34As such, Mrs. Miller openly admits that she would rather turn a blind eye to these accusations of
12:39molestation, rather than have them investigated and be proven true.
12:42She even adds more weight to this by revealing that her father would kill the boy if he found
12:47out that Donald was gay, and or he was being abused.
12:50The fact that Viola Davis received an Oscar nomination for just eight minutes of screen time
12:55should tell you how memorable and troubled a character that Mrs. Miller is.
12:58Daniel Collateral.
13:00Despite being centered around an assassin called Vincent,
13:03being driven around Los Angeles and killing people,
13:05many of Collateral's best moments are instead focused on tense chit-chat.
13:09Case in point, the fantastic scene where cabbie hostage Max drives Vincent to a jazz club
13:14so they can meet with its owner, Daniel.
13:15The three men sit down for a seemingly relaxing post-gig drink,
13:19where Daniel, a man of natural gravitas,
13:22regales the pair with a story of the 1964 night where Miles Davis entered his bar and played with the
13:27band.
13:28Daniel is such a natural storyteller that it's easy for both the audience and Max to forget
13:32that Vincent is here for a reason.
13:34To kill Daniel for testifying in an upcoming grand jury case against drug law Felix Reyes-Tarena,
13:40Vincent offers Daniel an out.
13:41If he can answer a question about how Miles Davis learned his craft,
13:44he can live.
13:45Daniel answers confidently,
13:47but Vincent isn't satisfied with the detail of the answer,
13:50and promptly plugs him through the head with a silenced pistol.
13:53Everyone here is on their A-game.
13:55But between the higher-profile crews and Fox,
13:57it's Henley who lends real soul and grit to the scene.
14:00In barely five minutes, we learn a lot about the man's life and passions,
14:03only for it all to be snuffed out in a single second.
14:06Captain Coons.
14:07Pulp Fiction.
14:08Taking place in flashback,
14:10this scene showed how Bruce Willis' Birch received the gold watch
14:13that he holds so dearly in the present day across Pulp Fiction.
14:16As the young Butch sits a foot away from his TV set,
14:19Christopher Walken's Captain Coons arrives on the scene.
14:22Captain Coons regales Butch with a tale about a gold watch.
14:25Not just any gold watch,
14:27but the one that Butch's great-grandfather got during World War I,
14:30and that has since been passed down through every generation of the Coolidge Boys.
14:34Now, following the death of his father,
14:36the watch belongs to Butch.
14:38Walken spends four solid minutes delivering a story of how the watch had spent five years
14:43hidden inside Butch's father's behind,
14:45before Coons himself stored the watch in his own behind for a further two years.
14:50Only after the old man passed away from dysentery did he come across to talk to Butch.
14:55And also thanks to Tarantino for making this stuff up,
14:58so people like me can talk about it on YouTube.
15:00Perrier Lepidit, Inglourious Bastards
15:03This might seem like a bit of a cheat,
15:04given that the opening sequence to Inglourious Bastards runs over 20 minutes in length,
15:09but it is one long, unbroken scene, so it still counts, damn it.
15:12As much as Christoph Waltz stole every scene he was in
15:15in this Oscar-winning portrayal of SS Colonel Hans Lander,
15:18don't let his outstanding work overshadow his primary screen partner in that opening set piece.
15:23The scene revolves around Lander interrogating French farmer Perrier Lepidit,
15:27who he believes is hiding a Jewish family, the Dreyfusses,
15:30under the floorboards of his farmhouse.
15:32The whole exchange, as Lander slowly but surely breaks Lepidit down
15:35by promising to spare his family if he gives the Dreyfusses up,
15:38is terrifically tense,
15:40due to both Lander's chillingly calm demeanour
15:42and the rising fear with which Lepidit regards him.
15:45It's a superbly understated performance,
15:47taking a character who could so easily be a passenger to Lander
15:50and making him incredibly interesting and memorable in his own right.
15:53Blake, Glenn Gary Glenn Ross
15:55Few actors and characters have ever made quite as much of an impression on an audience
16:00as Alec Baldwin's Blake in Glenn Gary Glenn Ross.
16:03As it happens, Baldwin's character doesn't actually exist in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play
16:07that the movie was based on,
16:08but this just goes to show that sometimes adding new elements to existing source material
16:13can prove to be a masterstroke if done right.
16:16Blake holds court for one of the greatest monologues in 90s cinema.
16:20Spitting sheer acid for 10 minutes,
16:22Blake encompasses everything that was the high-pressure, high-end sales environment
16:26of the 80s and 90s.
16:27Blake is the encapsulation of so much of what drives Glenn Gary Glenn Ross,
16:32and with Baldwin's fiery delivery,
16:34the character remains ridiculously popular,
16:36even though it's almost three decades since the movie was released.
16:39Bill Murray, Zombieland
16:41Cameos where famous actors play themselves don't get much funnier, surprising,
16:45or more howlingly self-aware than Bill Murray's single-scene appearance in Zombieland.
16:50Murray plays a slightly exaggerated version of himself who terrifies Tallahassee,
16:54and the other survivors after they break into his mansion.
16:57Murray surprises the heroes by wearing zombie makeup,
17:00allowing him to move around town undetected by the real undead.
17:03After Tallahassee gushes over Murray,
17:05the pair get stoned with Wichita and re-enact scenes from Ghostbusters.
17:09Tragedy abounds, however, when Columbus mistakes Murray for a real zombie
17:13and fatally shoots him in a panic.
17:15As Murray bleeds out, Little Rock asks him if he has any regrets,
17:18to which he hilariously replies,
17:20Garfield, maybe.
17:21You can argue that Murray isn't so much playing a character
17:23as he is playing a slight caricature of himself,
17:26but he still manages to steal the movie in a scene
17:28that's far more creative and inspired than a typical fan survey.
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