The Usual Suspects (1995)
The beautifully spun web of lies told to us by Kevin Spacey as - who? Verbal Kint? Keyser Soze? – unravels spectacularly as the film’s narrative rug is pulled from under us in a kaleidoscope of flashback audio and Spacey’s slowly, shockingly straightening limp. Magic.
The Dark Knight (2008)
It’s the timing of Heath Ledger’s brutal and insane magic trick that made it your coolest moment of all time by some margin. There’s no build up or fanfare – a goon approaches Joker and before we realise what we’re watching the pencil that was stuck upright in a table top is inside a corpse lying out of shot.
The leering, triumphant “It’s… gone ” is both funny and dark as hell, the perfect Heath-as-Joker sequence.
