Eric Wittmershaus | I take my marmalade with bits

When I go to the movies, I'm very much a fan of individual scenes, lines of dialogue or slight, barely noticible bits of technique. Given that much of the Oscar ceremony relies on showing clips of performances or movies nominated for editing and the like, what were some of your favorite piecemeal bits from movies released last year? Here's a partial list from me to get the ball rolling.

The transitions between scenes in Ghost World: I'm thinking specifically of the one where the carpet sweeper served as sort of an updated wipe, but there were plenty of others.

The opening scene in Swordfish: Yeah, the movie was shit, but looking at all those hostages with the explosives and ballbearings strapped to them, then seeing the destruction wrought when one of them detonated made the rest of the picture bearable. What was with John Travolta's facial hair in that movie?

The scavenger-hunt scene in Amélie: Watching Nino follow the arrows when Amélie — looking a lot like Audrey Hepburn in this scene — was never far away to begin with.

The pig lamp turning itself off in Amélie: I think that movie had better animation than any of the best animated feature nominees.

Dialogue from Vanilla Sky: Even if you didn't like the movie, you had to smile a bit when you heard "I'll see you in another life, when we are both cats."

The opening scene from Sexy Beast: Gal works his tubby mojo to The Stranglers' "Peaches" while a cascading boulder merely musses his hair. A great bit of foreshadowing.

Well, there are a few, anyway.

Andy Ross | "The people who have come upon me"

I totally agree about both the pig lamp in Amélie. Along those lines, I also very much enjoyed the fur on Sulley's arm rhythmically blown by his own snoring in Monsters, Inc..

Yes, to "I'll tell you in another life, when we are both cats" in Vanilla Sky. Also, the "When I think about all the people I have come upon in my travels, I have to think about the people who have come upon me" line from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Michael Showalter saying, "I want you inside me" under his breath to a girl in Wet Hot American Summer.

There was the wussy-yet-violent catfight between to upper class men in Bridget Jones's Diary, with its head protecting and kicking. The business manager calling team member a cunt for not speeding up a game of charades in The Anniversary Party. Jake Gyllenhaal calling the self- help guru Patrick Swayze the Antichrist in Donnie Darko.

Maggie Smith discouraging clapping for the piano-playing actor in Gosford Park. The inmates secretly saluting by running their hands through their hair in The Last Castle. Gene Hackman and others on the firetruck in The Royal Tenenbaums.

And, last, but most importantly, the "Llorando" scene in Mulholland Drive.

Sean Weitner | Animal attraction

You're both right-on in your picks for great scenes; those all stand out in my memory when I look back on the year. Eric, I called the opening of Swordfish "the five minutes of film you must sneak into this summer followed by the 115 minues you must not pay for."

And Andy is especially right that the best scene in 2001 is the "Llorando" scene in Mulholland Drive. And, really, as a scene, all it is is Rebekah del Rio "singing" a Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," and it's beautiful both visually and aurally, but also narratively — because it plays with your pre-conception of how the scene is going to end — and thematically — because it's at the center of the "No hay banda!" sequence — and ontologically — because of the havoc it wreaks on Betty and Rita … . Outrageously good.

The second-best scene of the year is Betty's audition in the same film. In A.I., both of the scenes in which David gets stranded underwater. Hannibal Lecter's climactic sacrifice for Clarice my favorite part of that film, and that was unique to the screenplay.

The writing on the road signs was maybe my favorite part of Joy Ride, although it epitomizes the utter improbability of the movie that, in the end, I just couldn't get over. Any of the cellphone fake-outs in Jurassic Park III got me going. And I remember considered one scene of Kiss of the Dragon a real stand-out, although my inability to recall it now doesn't speak highly of it.

Boromir's fight to the death in The Fellowship of the Ring. More scenes in The Man Who Wasn't There than I want to mention; I also can't pick a favorite out of Ocean's Eleven. The chase scene in Memento.

The whole Brendan Fraser/Chris Kattan fight sequence in Monkeybone, with the surgeons in tow. The much-ballyhooed sex scene in Monster's Ball is as effective as the hype suggests, although those dumb birdcage shots didn't warrant inclusion. The nightclub scene was probably Osmosis Jones's finest. The stakeout scene in The Pledge. The tracheotomy scene in The Princess and the Warrior. The in-labor gunfight in Series 7.

And my dark-horse pick: The climax of The Animal was pretty funny. On the premise that none of you have seen it: Rob Schneider is a cop who (a) gets transplants of animal organs after a near-fatal accident and therefore inherits animalistic qualities and (b) has a friend, played by Guy Torry, who is black and who disdains being given special treatment, considering it reverse racism — for instance, when a waitress fills his water glass first even though he's sitting in the middle. Anyway, the Frankenstein-esque mob gathers to hunt down whoever it was that's been killing area livestock, and when they get Schneider surrounded, it looks like he's a goner. And then Torry pipes up, sacrificially saying that it was in fact him. The mob grows silent, looks at one another, and disperses, making apologetic gestures and shrugs.

I mean, I admit to, by the time I'd sat through all the rest of the movie, being pretty softened up for a concept joke, but even still, it was pretty funny.

Andy Ross | Chopsticks

I'm willing to bet that the scene from Kiss of the Dragon that Sean liked so much involved Jet Lee using chopsticks in a fight.

Finally, Sean, the kick that you get out of Andy S. and I recognizing Anthony Rapp is nothing compared to the kick I get from your enjoyment of Monkeybone and The Animal.

Sean Weitner | Two different animals

Aw c'mon, Andy: You can't really put The Animal and Monkeybone in the same class, can you? One's a Rob Schneider comedy that acheieved 100 percent of the low bar it set for itself; Monkeybone's a noble, messy failure from the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. And I will continue to go on record singing the praises of the comic Brendan Fraser; I've avoided both Mummy movies, but whatever other problems Monkeybone, Bedazzled and Encino Man had, it wasn't Fraser. And I think he was especially valuable in a squarer role in Gods and Monsters.

Also, with a cast like Fraser, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley and, well, Alicia Silverstone, I find it hard to believe I've avoided Blast from the Past for three years. Anyone care to vouch for or defame the movie?

Walken, Spacek, and Foley make Blast from the Past really enjoyable despite some dumb plot elements — homeless cults and the like.

Also, Monkeybone and The Animal both have loud, dark-haired SNL cast members, after being on the operating table pulling dumb physical comedy with the help of computer graphics. I think that puts them very close to being in the same class.

Eric Wittmerhaus | Didn't leave me crying

As a lover of Roy Orbison's music, David Lynch's movies and cover tunes, I should have been the target audience for that "Llorando" scene, yet I found myself roundly disappointed. Maybe it was its blatant homage to "Twin Peaks," or maybe the two of you had hyped it so much in your coverage of the movie that I was bound to be disappointed, but I definitely didn't dig on that scene as much as I expected.

Though I must say the final scene of that movie with the two little people running under the door made me cringe. It's the kind of thing I would have shot if I was making a parody of a David Lynch movie. Yet here it was, in one of Lynch's own movies. So that may be another possible side to this discussion thread. What were some regrettable scenes or aspects of otherwise good movies?

Andy Stilp | Hate to say it

I hate to say it, but A Beautiful Mind did not need the resolution it provided. Rather than explore the healing process, we zip to near-current day, where Nash is picking up accolades for his now-revered equilibrium. It could have been replaced by a text-on-fadeout trick, and it was probably just included to flex the muscle a little more, doll up aged Crowe and Connelly, and show that yes, Virginia, every movie does have a happy ending. The pens! That's so touching!

It's a big starfuck from Ron Howard, really. What it really does is mess up the pacing of the whole film — some gas- and brake-pedal problems. It also leaves the production wide open to criticism of what they omitted (the bisexuality, the indecent exposure, the aliens, the divorce) by spanning a wider time period. (sigh) I don't know. I saw the same happy tack-on doom L.A. Confidential, and I'd hate to see such a move tank another Crowe flick. The end of the script didn't even support any words worth shooting. It was a strange shift in scope after an awkward slide through time. It still proves to me that Ron Howard can't quite steer the ship right — not yet.

Andy Ross | A few of my least favorites

Normally, I either like or dislike an entire movie. If there is a scene off-putting enough, I usually use that scene to find fault with the entire film. For instance, the ending of Vanilla Sky gave me an excuse to nitpick all the good performances and sets up to that point.

But, the thing that really got me this year were the moments of out-of-place uberviolence meant to shock out of complacency. When used well, such as the attempted suicide in The Royal Tenenbaums, I think that the strategy can work. However, mostly it was used really poorly this year. Holy crap, the neck-breaking in Kiss of the Dragon? In close-up, Jet Lee drops a guy on his neck. I'm not one for censorship, but if I had wanted to watch Faces of Death, I'd have bought it online like any other degenerate trash. That, and the glass eating scene in The Princess and the Warrior. Or, the rape/murder flashback in K-PAX. It's not that I dislike any violence onscreen, but I hate it when an unnecessary level of violence comes out of nowhere. One: It's pandering. Two: It's easy. Three: It's gross.

And, on a totally different vibe, I found Julia Roberts' giant lip in the Ocean's Eleven really distracting. Steven Soderbergh's love of close-up in the restaurant scene made me wonder why people call her attractive.

Sean Weitner | Hate morsel

The ending of Joy Ride was just too much. I was digging it a lot, and was willing to allow a certain amount of supernatural ability to the villain, Rusty Nail, in the same way that Mike Myers was only a little supernatural in the original Halloween (extra resilient, stronger and more intuitive than expected, etc.). But the filmmakers continued to tax this leeway that I had been all too happy to extend until utter preposterousness reigned. Something gritty and creepy turned into something that was just much too much.

Let me take this space to decry the proliferation of the twist ending. The success and Best Screenplay Oscar for The Usual Suspects put the ball on the tee; the combination blockbuster/sleeper success of The Sixth Sense drove it down the fairway … and now, hopefully, its total mainstreaming by A Beautiful Mind has sunken it so deep into a sand hazard that it will never get out. Filmmakers had been relying on the twist ending so heavily over the latter portion of the '90s that either the middle of the movie bent over backwards to accommodate the twist or the twist was so unhinged from the rest of the film that it betrayed what came before. A Beautiful Mind is guilty of this to some extent — when Christopher Plummer quizzes Jennifer Connelly about Russell Crowe's roommate, her half-answers don't hold water, and if you stop to expand this thought to the movie as a whole, it becomes a plausibility nightmare.

And the total mainstreaming of the twist ending — hopefully leading to its retirement as a storytelling crush — is whatever twist ending is going to append the Kevin Costner Sixth Sense-knockoff Dragonfly, opening Friday. When a technique becomes so common that the director of Ace Ventura and Patch Adams feels moved to try something, you can trust that the tastemakers have moved along to the next trend.