The 18 Most OMG Movie Scenes Of 2014

Toothless bears down on Hiccup’s dad

After falling under the command of an “alpha” dragon controlled by the power-mad Drago (Djimon Hounsou), Toothless bares down on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) to kill him, until his father Stoick (Gerard Butler) intervenes at the last minute and is killed instead. It is so upsetting, and so heartbreaking after Toothless snaps out of it and realizes what he’s done.

Artemisia and Themistokles get to know each other better

There's a lot in this sequel to 2007's 300 that we've seen before: men in homoerotic leather thongs, stylized slow-motion violence, and the outré decadence of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his empire. So, what's new? Eva Green as Xerxes' naval commander Artemisia, a fabulously over-the-top character, ruthless and cunning. When she meets her enemy Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) halfway through the film, she attacks him, not with violence, but with a knock-down, drag-out sex session that leaves poor Themistocles dazed, unsure as to what exactly just happened to him. We know the feeling.

The car crash and its aftermath

The climactic jazz concert in which aspiring drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) finally confronts his bullying instructor Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) is certainly one of the most satisfying and unexpected endings this year. But our first understanding of just how desperate Andrew is to succeed comes earlier when, determined to make it to a concert, he drives so recklessly that he is hit by another car — and then goes to the concert anyway, bleeding from the head.

She reaches 100%

Throughout writer-director Luc Besson's gonzo sci-fi action spectacular, we watch Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) access an increasing percentage of her brain after inadvertently absorbing a magic blue drug derived from pregnant women. (It is best not to dwell on the scientific underpinnings for this movie, since they don't exist.) Accessing more of her brain bestows Lucy with near godlike power to control and access the world around her, but once she reaches 100%, things get much more magnificently weird. Lucy begins to transcend time and space in a hallucinogenic onslaught of cosmic imagery, until she winds up zooming back in time and standing in front of the famed Australopithecus Lucy. Then she becomes a noncorporeal being that is at one with the universe, or something. Co-star Morgan Freeman barely understood it either.

The most effed up classroom ever

There are so many unnerving scenes in director Bong Joon-ho's post-apocalyptic-train-as-metaphor-for-what-ails-society sci-fi thriller, in which Curtis (Chris Evans) and his fellow rebels work their way up to the front of the train. What Curtis discovers there — how the mysterious conductor (Ed Harris) has been keeping the train running, and the nature of his relationship with Curtis' mentor Gilliam (John Hurt) — makes for some truly head-spinning twists. (Then there's Curtis' monologue about the depths to which he sunk as a kid just to survive on the train, killing whatever appetite I had left in the theater.)

Before all that, however, there is the scene in which Curtis and his company come upon a whacked-out elementary classroom run by a scarily cheery pregnant teacher played by the incomparable Alison Pill (The Newsroom). Everything up to that point in the film had been soaked in bleak, dimly lit gloom, so to be greeted with a bright, airy classroom of singing children — and then have that classroom collapse into a hail of gunfire — is kind of like walking for hours through the desert, suddenly dunking your head into a giant bucket of ice, and finding a dead bunny inside it.

Amy and Desi have incredibly messy sex

By the time this scene comes up in Gone Girl, we've known for a while that Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is a dangerous person willing to go to outrageous lengths to get what she wants and destroy those she feels have wronged her. But no one suffers a worse fate than her old boyfriend Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), who "rescues" Amy, only to "trap" her within his elaborately posh lakehouse. And for his creepy possessiveness and materialistic generosity, Amy lures Desi into his bedroom, strips him naked, fellates him, and fucks him — and then slices his throat with a penknife. It is the bloodiest, grisliest sex scene in a major feature film in a very long time — maybe ever? — and I am still trying to get over it.

We find out what happens in the goo

Before this scene, we've witnessed Scarlett Johansson's seductive alien lure men into a home with an interior that is simply an inky black void. She undresses. He undresses. And then, as he follows her, hypnotized, further into the void, he sinks into the floor, and disappears amid some kind of goo.

Roughly a third of the way through the movie, we see what happens to the men in that goo. And what happens is that their insides get liquified until they are sucked out in one sudden gush, leaving just the skin, drifting in the goo, and leaving us with nightmares that will never cease.

The final two shots

This one is going to take some time to explain. I happened to watch this movie on a plane, and when the moment in question happened, I screamed so loud that I startled everyone seated around me. It was that scary, and that embarrassing, and now I am sharing it with you.

Most of Enemy operates at a frequency of unnerving elision, of a sense that we are only getting glimpses into a far larger story. Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal), an anxious and lonely college instructor, discovers he has an exact double, Anthony (also Jake Gyllenhaal), a louche former actor with a lovely pregnant wife named Helen (Sarah Gadon). Anthony also has a secret life running an underground event of some kind that involves scantily clad women and… well… large spiders. After Adam arranges to meet Anthony, Anthony forces Adam to swap lives, so Anthony can sleep with Adam's girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent). Instead, Anthony and Mary get into a car accident and die, and Adam finds himself in Anthony's apartment, with Helen, taking over Anthony's life. Helen seems to know Adam is Adam and not Anthony, and she also seems fine with it. She goes into the bedroom. Adam asks her a question. She doesn't answer. Adam goes to the bedroom door and finds… well… a massive tarantula the size of the room, which screams and cowers onto the back wall. The camera cuts to Adam, who just sighs. End of movie.

Still recovering.