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Ricochet Movie Fight Club: Question 20
Two-time champion, Brian Watt, learned exactly how hard it is to win three in a row. Teaching that lesson (with a little help from a blind Audrey Hepburn) was J D Fitzpatrick, who earned the right to ask: What movie has the best duel? All movies should be pre-CGI. For this question, a duel is defined as a single moment of combat between two characters, with a clear resolution. Duels can be short or long, but they should display unity of time, place, and action, meaning that the contest is restricted to a particular moment in the film, not drawn out over its course.
The Rules:
- Post your answer as a comment. Make it clear that this is your official answer, one per member.
- Defend your answer in the comments and fight it out with other Ricochet member answers for the rest of the week.
- Whoever gets the most likes on their official answer comment (and only that comment) by Friday night wins the fight.
- The winner gets the honor of posting the next question on Saturday.
- In the case of a tie, the member who posted the question will decide the winner.
Notes:
- Only movies will qualify (no TV shows) however films that air on television (BBC films, a stand-alone mini-series) will qualify.
- Your answer can be as off-the-wall or controversial as you’d like. It will be up to you to defend it and win people to your side.
- Fight it out.
Movie Fight Club Questions by Week:
- What is the best film portrayal of a book character? Winner: Charlotte with 18 likes for Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies.
- What is the best motion picture comedy of the 21st century? Winner: split decision. In an exemplary display of genuine sportsmanship, Randy Webster conceded the fight to Marjorie Reynolds’ pick Team America: World Police.
- What film provides the most evocative use of location? Winner: Taras with 21 likes for Lawrence of Arabia. Wasn’t even close.
- What is the best film that utilizes or is inspired by a work of William Shakespeare? Winner: Dr. Bastiat with five likes for The Lion King, a film inspired by Hamlet.
- Which movie has the best surprise ending, or unexpected plot twist? Winner: Repmodad with 18 likes for The Sixth Sense.
- What pre-1970s black-and-white movie would be most enjoyed by a modern 18- to 25-year-old audience? Winner: E J Hill with 9 likes for a Casablanca. (He didn’t exactly designate it his official answer, and most of the likes may have been for the modern Casablanca trailer rather than for it as an answer to the question, but nobody seemed to dispute it on those grounds, so that’s how the cookie crumbles.)
- What movie did you go to based on the trailer, only to have felt cheated? (i.e., the trailer was 10x better than the movie?) Winner: Back to back wins by E J Hill with 9 likes for Something to Talk About.
- Name the worst movie portrayal of your profession (where applicable.) Winner: LC with 8 likes for Denise Richards’ Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.
- What is the worst movie that claims to be based or inspired by a true story? Winner: Tex929rr with 16 likes for the, “…terrible acting, and countless deviations from history,” in Pearl Harbor.
- What is your favorite little known movie? Winner: A last-minute rally for Tremors made the difference as Songwriter took the week 10 win!
- What is the best movie that you never want to watch again? Winner:
HitlerCharlotte with 15 likes for Schindler’s List. Sorry, Richard Oshea but Jesus won the real fight.
Week 11.5 Exhibition Match (as a make-up of sorts, since Songwriter didn’t get the week 11 question submitted in time) Name the best movie theme song ever? No winner declared but I’m pretty sure it was I.M. Fine with “Moon River.” - Name the best animated feature-length movie of all time. Winner: I.M. Fine with 10 likes for Pinocchio, and justice for I.M. Fine prevailed.
- What is the worst acting performance in an otherwise good film? Winner: In one of the most brutal fights we’ve seen yet Repmodad fended off a furious 12th-round onslaught by Gary McVey to give Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves the win with 20 likes.
- What is the quintessential American movie? Winner: Miffed White Male pulled off the comeback with 20 likes for The Right Stuff. There was a two-way tie at 19 for second place as well.
- What’s the most entertaining movie set during WWII? Winner: Arahant clearly won with Casablanca’s walloping 30 likes despite the withering onslaught by Sisyphus on the final day.
- What is the best movie love story? Winner: Songwriter with 20 likes for The Princess Bride with 20 likes. Up managed to make a strong showing and Dr. Bastiat is still conducting recounts trying to “find” some uncounted votes.
- What’s the best’ buddy’ movie? Winner: Brian Watt wins with 12 likes for The Man Who Would be King.
- What is the worst movie (not a made-for-TV movie) ever made? Brian Watt joins E.J. Hill as the only other back-to-back winner with 16 likes for Barbarella. Brian will get another crack at it by choosing the week 19 question. Can he make it three?
- What is the most frightening non-bloody film you’ve ever seen? The winner: J D Fitzpatrick with Wait Until Dark, starring the lovely Audrey Hepburn getting terrorized over a doll, sort of.
Mouse? Is it still 1998?
I think the newspaper won that duel.
The Adventures of Robin Hood. Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone. Swashes buckled in glorious Technicolor.
Final answer.
Read them all Boss. Thanks. Only problem with Hunter is he can’t write them as fast as I read them.
On a lighter note
One man duels with his inner demon…and loses
Say what you will about the prequels, but the double-bladed lightsaber was freaking awesome.
I do love this one and had considered it for my pick.
Escapes are an essential part of wrestling. We learn a lot about how to do it.
In Sanjuro, Toshiro fight a clowder of kittens with maybe two cats. In Yojimbo, he fights one tiger.
The whole point of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is that the duel is a botch and a sham.
(SPOILER: Liberty Valance is assassinated from ambush.)
Yep. But it doesn’t matter. The legend lives on.
“assassinated”?
There are ways to escape a clinch in Thai boxing, but most people seem to favor breaking it. Clinches are fun to practice, but nothing will give you a sore neck like a practice session on them. Any kind of contact sport also leaves you with a lot of not always explicable bruises, clinches in very visible places, so I’ve had to reassure more than one person that I’m not in any kind of toxic relationship. “No, I did get it from being punched in the face, but…” (I should also say that I’m incredibly grateful people keep their eye out for that kind of thing).
Certainly my father’s pick. I almost went with it for the post image.
Basil Rathbone was the finest fencer in Hollywood.
According to Wikipedia, he was “twice the British Army Fencing Champ, a skill that would serve him well in movies and allow him to even teach actors Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power the finer art of swordsmanship.”
The question is, which Rathbone duel is the best.
I have a soft spot for the fight in the surf between Rathbone, and Errol Flynn at his athletic peak, in Captain Blood (1935), where what’s at stake is not merely restoring King Richard to the throne, but a glowing young Olivia de Havilland.
Let this be my Official Answer.
Also a good one. The duel in Robin Hood is iconic.
The duel between the German (Ed Harris) and Russian (Jude Law) snipers in Enemy at the Gates.
Crossroads.
Not all duels involve weapons.
Steve Martin turned 75 years old yesterday. He was born on VJ day.
His Netflix special (a filmed version of their two man show) that came out with Martin Short this year is excellent, as was Short’s apparence on Conan O’Brien’s podcast recently. I think it would be cool to see them do a Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau style movie sometime.
@vinceguerra, these conversations have only gotten better every week. Your stirring the pot on the last day is great fun to watch.
Bravo Zulu.
May he live many years more in good health.
Oh, my!
I’ve refused to watch Enemy at the Gates. They took four pages out of the middle of a 400 page book about the Stalingrad campaign, and blew up an essentially meaningless incident into the whole story. A pox on them. A 13,000 man Russian division would go into the tractor works in the morning, and 100 men would leave in the evening. That was the drama.
It was still a good movie.
Is that a second one? Because I saw one a couple years ago that was awesome.
Martin Short’s “Step-Brother to Jesus”, especially his closing challenge to Steve, was hysterical.
Edit: Ok, gotta watch the trailer first. That’s the one, and they even included the line.
I think it’s the same one, it came out in 2018. I’m an idiot; I thought it came out this year because it was a new addition to Netflix UK, and I never bothered to see if it was already on the US platform.
This is now playing on Netflix appears, but it was 2018.
Just mistaken. Careful of your words. Your mind might believe them.