While this category always inspires a healthy variety of citations, including many offbeat choices and solo votes, this year appears to have left our voters scattered. The list of various scenes, moments and sequences is the longest and most varied we've ever put together, covering territory from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, from All Is Lost to You're Next and everything in between. (In what other category is, say, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty going to get a shout-out?) You'd think this meant that we couldn't come to a consensus. Yet our winner took the title by the widest margin in the category's history, more than doubling the point total of the second-place finisher. Even when we don't agree, we still find ways to agree.
Usually, I like to go over some scenes that got significant support without winners. But I'm having a bear of a time finding these things this year. So fuck it, we'll jump right in to the top tier.
Third place:
Hotel argument, Before Midnight [138 points / 13 votes]
Second place:
Opening shot, Gravity [142 points / 14 votes]
And your winner...
‘Ludes descending a staircase/coming home, The Wolf of Wall Street [342.5 points / 28 votes]
"Anyone concerned that The Wolf of Wall Street inappropriately glamorizes the world of hotshot millionaire Jordan Belfort is directed to view the Lemmon 714 Quaalude sequence, in which Belfort and his business associate Donnie Azoff are agonizingly, hilariously shown as total fucking clowns. This sequence, occupying a central ten minutes in The Wolf of Wall Street’s three hours, is a micro-masterpiece of slapstick, showing both Jonah Hill and (surprisingly) Leonardo DiCaprio to be highly talented physical comedians, aided by Scorsese’s arm’s-length camera and Thelma Schoonmaker’s perfect timing. Thematically the sequence is a payoff of every drug binge and foolish decision made in the movie up to this point, as Belfort’s hedonistic excesses leave him literally crippled and wriggling like a baby as he tries to prevent his kingdom from collapsing around him. And, as with 2012’s tribute to substance abuse, Flight, this sequence shows that for the serious user the best cure for a drug problem is MORE DRUGS, as Belfort saves Azoff from choking on a bizarrely inappropriate slice of turkey with the help of a jolt of cocaine. Scorsese’s film as a whole suggests that our so-called captains of industry, the much-vaunted “job creators” who drive our economy, are often no more than insatiable ego-driven fratboys. Belfort and Azoff wrestling with each other in slo-mo on a kitchen floor is the true face of the 1%." -- Jeffrey McMahon
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