Recently in Movie Stills Category

Barbara Steele (left) and Paul Muller
Still from Gli Amanti d'oltretomba (aka Nightmare Castle; Caiano, 1965)

This is a still frame from the final scene of Time Bandits, an overhead shot that pulls back, farther and farther away from the risible suburban subdivision where young Kevin live(d) with his father and mother. You can see the top of Kevin's head -- he's standing on the lawn very near the center of the frame. Above him in the image, on the sidewalk, are two smoking piles of rubble. Those used to be Kevin's parents. Well, he warned them.

I was pretty young when I saw Time Bandits -- 12 years old, I think -- and this ending, Gilliam having Kevin's mum and dad exploded before his eyes by a pile of smoking rubble from Hell, had a profound effect on me. For one thing, it was an attack on parents who don't listen to their children. For another, it greatly expanded my idea of what was possible in a film narrative. A director, playing God as merry prankster, could detonate the very pillars of the 20th-century suburban household, throwing the future of a young boy into complete doubt just as he rolls the credits. Who does a thing like this?

It was a wicked thing, but it was a delightful thing as well. It prepared me, in some ways, to tackle Buñuel, Bergman, and the likes just a few years later. And in its rudeness it's stuck with me as surely as any scene from any movie I've seen over all these years.

Vincent Gallo and Christina Ricci
Publicity still, Buffalo 66 (Gallo, 1998)
[deep-focus movie review]

Toni Basil
Stills from "Breakaway" (Bruce Conner, 1966)

Kirsten Dunst in "Akihabara Majokko Princess" (McG, 2009)
Produced by Takashi Murakami