Long takes are a staple of filmic language that, when employed correctly, can both dazzle and enrich. They are virtuoso feats of technical derring-do, mounted and mastered by technicians and craftsman working at the top of their respective game to choreograph a beautiful, eye-popping moment. But it’s not enough to be technologically astounding. The best long, unbroken takes, are the ones that draw us deeper into the story, reveal something new about the characters, or get information across with an economy of dialogue or unnecessary exposition. The long take that combines form and function are truly awe-inspiring.

The long take (or “oner”) has seen proliferation in the digital age, when Oscar-nominated movies like 1917 can appear to be shot in a single, unbroken shot and TV dramas (like the first season of True Detective) managed impressively complicated long shots. But if there are more of them these days, that means that the ones that really pop, really mean something, are fewer and farther between.

So, presented below are a collection of incredible and incredibly long takes that continue to delight.

Any Scene, Really • “Rope” (1948)

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Image via Warner Bros.

On an episode of Dick Cavett’s talk show many years later, Alfred Hitchcock said that the reason for filming Rope — based on the stage play by Patrick Hamilton that was inspired by the infamous Leopold and Loeb case — in a series of unbroken takes, was that he was “trying to get some movement into what is essentially a theater piece.” Mission: accomplished. John Dall and Farley Granger play two brilliant young men who set out to commit the perfect murder, strangling a former classmate and place their body in a large chest in the middle of their swank Manhattan apartment. Hitchcock’s long takes, which ran as long as the film magazine would allow (usually around 10 minutes), serve to amplify and increase the tension and suspense, as the boys hold a dinner party in their apartment and one of their guests, played by James Stewart, starts to uncover their misdeed. The cuts between each take are handsomely hidden, utilizing the same techniques that filmmakers will use today when “stitching” together several takes to form one unbroken shot. One of Hitchcock’s more underrated achievement, it feels like both a technological breakthrough for the director (it was also his first shot in Technicolor) and a storytelling one; at a fleet 80 minutes, it’s one of his most nimble, propulsive thrillers.

Bomb in the Trunk • “Touch of Evil” (1958)

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Image via Universal

Most “best long shot lists” start with this beauty, the opening sequence to Orson Welles’ brilliant Touch of Evil. It with a bomb being placed in the trunk of a car, and those unsuspecting folks driving away with the bomb in the car. Throughout the course of the shot, we are introduced to our two main characters – a Hispanic lawman (played by Charlton Heston, don’t ask) and his lovely wife (Janet Leigh) as they stroll towards the US-Mexico border. What is so striking about this shot isn’t just the way that it moves, craning up to get an almost God’s eye view of the dusty Mexican neighborhood, with an eye on how the car tracks, geographically, through the streets, while other times booming down to get snippets of Heston and Leigh’s conversation, about him finally coming to America, and what that means. We even get a chance to linger, with the couple at the border, as the car gets tangled in traffic. Not only is the sequence beautifully choreographed, but it also covers so much ground, story-wise, in a way that never feels condescending or trite. This shot is stuffed with stuff. And the language of the shot adds suspense and informs what will happen next, almost acting like a ticking clock. When the clock finally ends, the bomb goes off.

Hooper, Brody and the Mayor • “Jaws” (1975)

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Image via Universal Studios

In recent years, Steven Spielberg has been rightfully applauded for his invisible oners; long shots that accomplish the work of several individual shots but in one, continuous, unbroken take. There are great examples like this throughout his career, from Marion’s introduction in Raiders of the Lost Ark to the car chase in Ready Player One (and, yes, we have a wholly animated example of this later in the list) and there are plenty of great long shots in Jaws, his commercial breakthrough and the film that established him as a wunderkind able of making great art inside the restrictive Hollywood frame. But the greatest shot, and one of the least-showy, is when Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss confront the slippery mayor (Murray Hamilton) about the shark still being out there. (This is the sequence that directly follows the scene of Dreyfuss finding the giant shark tooth and the severed human head.) It’s a conversation with them pleading with the mayor to shut things down, and the choreography of the three actors, as they walk up a hill, crisscross in front of one another, and finally end up on the street, with the camera revealing a billboard for the town that has been vandalized with shark iconography, is both intimate and dazzling. Not an immediate knock-your-socks-off moment, for sure, but one that is incredibly impressive, especially given the amount of dialogue all three actors had to remember and the timing required for that perfect reveal of the sign. Just wonderful.

Robert Redford Makes a Phone Call • “All the President’s Men” (1976)

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Image via Warner Bros

All the President’s Men, Alan Pakula’s masterpiece about the investigation that exposed the Watergate break-in for what it really was, amazingly photographed by Gordon Willis, who staged a number of bravura moments like the shot that pulls back from our plucky reporter heroes (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman) while they’re researching in the library. But his most impressive moment is when Redford is making a phone call. It’s deceptively complicated – Willis shot the moment with a split-diopter lens, and in the background, Redford’s Washington Post coworkers are watching Nixon’s inauguration. Meanwhile, Redford makes another phone call, while the first caller calls back. (At one point Redford gets confused as to who he is actually talking to.) The sequence goes on and on, for more than six minutes (!), and the unbroken nature of the shot amps up the tension and suspense considerably, so when a real bombshell is revealed, it lands hard. This is one of those long shots that never appears on lists like this, because it’s so subtle and understated and people aren’t, like, running through a castle or something. But it speaks to the craftsmanship and cleverness of Pakula and Willis and the unflappability of Redford for being able to play a scene for that long and to communicate that much within it. By the time the sequence is over, you’d have no idea that you were watching a single shot for more than six minutes. But you would be aware of being on the edge of your seat.

Tricycle Ride • “The Shining” (1980)

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Image via Warner Bros.

When The Shining was in production, it was in the nascent days of the Steadicam and one of the first films, after trailblazers like Bound for Glory (which very nearly made the list), Marathon Man, and Rocky, to utilize it extensively. Garrett Brown, who had invented the Steadicam technology, was heavily involved with the film and collaborated heavily with director Stanley Kubrick, who suggested modifications to the system’s video playback capabilities and helped design a rig to properly capture the sequence of Danny riding his tricycle around the haunted Overlook Hotel. (They wanted to be able to capture the actual noise of the wheels on the hardwood and them going quiet against the soft carpet.) These sequences are mesmerizing, of course, but they also serve a number of functions, namely to lull the audience into a sense of complacency (it’s just a little kid on a toy bike!) while also heightening their nerves and their awareness of the stillness of the hotel (and its ghostly inhabitants). It also establishes the geography of the hotel – where the ballroom is located, relative to the kitchen, and so on. But it is precisely this that has caused so much consternation amongst Shining obsessives (and opened up numerous conspiratorial wormholes) – in the sequence of Danny traversing the hotel, things don’t add up. He’ll jump floors, for instance, or turn a corner into a part of the hotel he never should have encountered. This was likely due to the configuration of the set, but it hasn’t stopped Shining sleuths from investigating its mysteries. (Just watch the fabulous Room 237 documentary.) With The Shining, nothing is as it seems, even the most amazing, hypnotic Steadicam shot.

“Let’s Go Get Your Daughter” • “Poltergeist” (1982)

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Image via MGM/UA Entertainment Co.

This is a shot that is rarely talked about but is absolutely amazing (just watching it you can feel the sweat pouring off the focus-puller while they were filming). In Poltergeist, there’s a moment when the tiny medium (Zelda Rubenstein) decides they’re finally going to retrieve a child that has been abducted by ghostly forces. The shot begins on one of her assistant ghost-hunters writing a number on a tennis ball, and Rubenstein addressing the parents of the girl (Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams) and the scientific team (led by Beatrice Straight). Rubenstein walks almost into the camera, but there’s activity going on throughout the depth of the sequence, with Williams calling out to her missing child, and Nelson sulking in the back. (The doctor just looks worried.) The camera booms down as Rubenstein starts getting more information from the other side, and Nelson and Williams come forward. This is when she has that famous exchange about which parent disciplines the child more. Then it booms up to the much, much taller Nelson, to where he’s almost looking into the camera, calling out for his lost daughter. Rubenstein then recedes to the back of the room, with the doctor. The camera then pushes in and allows for Williams to get into the camera lens and speak to her off-screen daughter. The sequence ends all the way back, with Rubenstein delivering some more spooky dialogue and the camera moving over to a doorknob. (It goes without saying that, by the end of the shot, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is really cranking.) Like All the President’s Men, the sequence is subtle and doesn’t draw a whole lot of attention to itself, building the intensity steadily and brilliantly until it’s punctuated by them opening the door. You’d think that this shot would lend credence to the claims that Spielberg ghost-directed Poltergeist, although Hooper has undertaken similarly complex moments in movies like The Funhouse and Lifeforce. More than anything this feels like a true meeting of the minds.

The Copacabana • “Goodfellas” (1990)

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Image via Warner Bros.

This Goodfellas shot is one of those scenes that is in every list of the great unbroken shots, and for good reason. Martin Scorsese is a master of long shots and cinematic language in general, and as cool and unforgettable as the shot is, following Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco as he makes his way through the club, it also carries so much storytelling and character water. This is Liotta exposing his wife to his new wise guy lifestyle; he tips every goon on the way down, traversing velvet-lined corridors and making his way through the labyrinth of the kitchen (when Liotta gets snagged on a tabletop, it’s not just a charming gaffe, it also shows that maybe he isn’t quite as settled into his mob persona as he thinks he is). Everywhere, Liotta is greeted with respect; Bracco is confused as to how he kept handing out $20 bills and why he gave his car keys to somebody to “watch the car.” It’s particularly telling that when Liotta sits down, Scorsese (and legendary cinematographer Michael Ballhaus) whip around to see another table full of “made men” toasting to Liotta’s success.

It also works as a wonderful juxtaposition to the end of the movie, when Liotta’s life is unraveling and he is becoming increasingly paranoid and skittish and his mindset is characterized by quicker cuts and more manic camera movements. But back then, when he was really the man, things were smooth and velvet-lined. (It also gives a great sense of geography of the restaurant itself, something that Quentin Tarantino would borrow for similar shots in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Paul Thomas Anderson would shamelessly replicate for the opening of Boogie Nights.) There’s a reason this shot is so admired and often imitated.

The Thing About Movies Today • “The Player” (1991)

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Image via New Line Cinema

Another shot that is in every list of great opening shots is the opening shot from Robert Altman’s pitch perfect, acid-dipped Hollywood satire The Player. In one continuous shot, Altman and cinematographer Jean Lépine sets up the entire movie – not just the abundance of characters (this is a Robert Altman movie after all) and their interpersonal relationships (including Tim Robbins’ frazzled movie exec, our morally nebulous main character), but also who these characters are and what the movie studio itself is like. (The camera doesn’t have to do that much when there are so many characters zigging and zagging through the frame.) But perhaps most crucially, it sets up the tone of the movie, with Fred Ward’s security chief Fred Ward bemoaning the “cut-cut-cut” style of the MTV generation and actually referencing, directly, the Touch of Evil opening shot, which The Player is clearly riffing on. The shot quickly and economically establishes the world of the film but also establishes what rules can be broken in the telling of the story, which The Player fully follows-up on for the next 120 minutes, with its cavalcade of cameo performances, endlessly pop culture references, and metatextuality (it becomes a murder mystery that harkens back to old noirs). Altman was often happy turning the camera on and letting the actors simply go, improvising and talking over one another; it’s just as exhilarating to see his command of the camera when orchestrating something this complex and regimented, where every actor has to hit a mark, say their dialogue, and get out of the way.

Hospital Shootout • “Hard Boiled” (1992)

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Unlike some of these other scenes, where the single long shot undoubtedly adds to the complexity of the scene, the first part of the hospital shootout in John Woo’s brilliant, bloody Hard Boiled was actually constructed to lessen the amount of work put on the cast and crew. Apparently everyone was so worn down by the production (which stretched for more than 100 days), that Woo constructed the sequence to lessen the amount of time needed for set-ups and thus allow for less stress on the cast and crew. The sequence was photographed inside a disused Coca-Cola bottling plant, which production just took over. If you’ve never seen Hard Boiled, that’s fair, since it’s not readily available these days, but it climaxes with our heroes (Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung) invading a hospital fortified with bad guys. There are a couple of moments in the sequence, which is arguably more violent and stylized than the John Wick movies, where Woo slows down or speeds up, which could be a place for a cut, but no, he keeps going. The highlight of the shot is a sequence where Woo and Leung get in an elevator that is going down; during which time the entire set was swapped out for a new one, so when they get out of the elevator, the “floor” is completely different. Genius. Woo was able to establish the size and magnitude of the threat our main characters were facing and orient you geographically in a way that would have been impossible if it was all quick, successive cuts. The only thing disappointing about the shot is how abruptly it ends.

 

Walk and Talk • “Raising Cain” (1992)

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Image via Universal

This entire list could be full of beautifully choreographed Brian De Palma long takes; he’s sort of the master. And while there are moments in Carrie, Blow Out, and even his doomed adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities you could easily point to, read heads have an unsung favorite – the moment in Raising Cain when Frances Sternhagen visits the police department and talks to a pair of cops (one of them played by De Palma regular Gregg Henry), essentially delivering a nonstop exposition dump as the characters walk through a very 90s-looking municipal building. De Palma knew how boring this would have probably been if it had been delivered, say, in a conference room or with a series of quick cuts, so he stages it as one long walk-and-talk sequence, the kind that would make Aaron Sorkin weep with envy. The shot is impressive on multiple levels, but what struck me the most about re-watching it, besides a moment when the actors seem to pause and look towards the camera acknowledging that, yes, this shot is long and, yes, it’s still going, is how densely populated the sequence is. There are a ton of people in this building, not just the principal actors performing but dozens of naturalistic extras and some secondary actors towards the end of the scene. This was done at a time before stitching, when it all had to be for real. And it says something about De Palma as a filmmaker, who had moved out of his heyday and could have attempted something much more comfortable, that he ended up still pushing the envelope in such an artistically and technically ambitious way.

The Mirror • “Contact” (1997)

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I have watched several YouTube videos on how the mirror shot from Contact was made and I’m still not totally sure I understand it. And that is part of the magic of the moment. The shot is a flashback to the younger version of Jodie Foster’s character (played by Jena Malone), whose beloved, inspirational father (David Morse) collapses so she frantically runs up the stairs of their home, at one point becoming slow motion, which makes it feel like her legs are stuck in quicksand (and makes us root for her even more to get up and going). She finally comes into the bathroom and opens the medicine cabinet to retrieve his pills. But as she reaches the cabinet, it is revealed that the entire shot, which includes movement, slow-motion and the character coming up a flight of stairs, has been reflected in the cabinet’s mirror. It’s absolutely staggering. Robert Zemeckis is a director who has always been innately in tune with technological advancements (and would shortly abandon live-action filmmaking to experiment with motion-capture animation), so there is definitely some kind of computer-generated futzing involved in the completion of this shot. But the bones of it, the actual camerawork and movement, is real. And the technological aspect doesn’t lessen the impact at all. Zemeckis, at least at the time (Welcome to Marwen be damned), would never use technology as just a cool trick; it always had to amplify the emotional depth of the shot or scene. This is definitely true for the mirror shot, a sleight of hand I’m still puzzling out.

The Television Studio • “Magnolia” (1999)

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Image via New Line Cinema

Since Paul Thomas Anderson’s breathless debut with Hard Eight, he’s always been in love with long, unbroken shots (in recent years those shots have become more static and less showy). But whittling down an entire career’s worth of long shots to a single moment is tough. Luckily, Magnolia is here to help. On YouTube somebody has labeled it “The 135 Second Shot,” and it’s true – it’s really long. But that’s also diminishing some of its power. It’s incredibly complicated, following a pair of characters as they enter a chaotic TV studio. When the two characters get split up, the camera follows one and then, piggybacking on a secondary character, meets back up with the other main character. The camera is never floating around, with a God’s eye view, it is very specific about who it chooses to track and where it ends up. It orients us geographically, since the television station (home to another central character and a game show that becomes a recurring motif) is of central importance. But more critically, it reinforces the movie’s themes of interconnectivity and its stylistic obsessions, including characters talking over one another and the biblical plague about to bring them all together. Plus, there’s a reference to Corey Haim’s 1996 direct-to-video stinker Demolition High, so the shot has that going for it too.

Orientation • “Panic Room” (2002)

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Image via Columbia Pictures

Panic Room is director David Fincher at his most over-cranked. There are shots that push into a concrete wall so close that you can see particles of dust vibrating, a shot where the floor disappears like in a cartoon to reveal what’s going on underneath it, and where slow motion is employed to the slowest, smoothest degree imaginable. But if there’s one shot that outdoes a movie already full of overkill, it’s the shot that zooms around Jodie Foster’s luxurious New York townhouse as a trio of burglars attempts to gain entry. The shot is physically impossible – the camera whooshes through coffee machine handles and into keyholes – but it was constructed using elements that were shot all through production, including a number of the actors being there for various parts of the shot (like Foster). And for a shot that extra, it does serve a storytelling purpose – it gives you the layout of the townhouse (supposedly based on writer David Koepp’s home in Manhattan), establishes the three villains coming in, and lets you know exactly how they could get into the house (and how our heroes could get out). And it really is just the coolest thing. It properly sets you up for the rollercoaster ride you’ve just strapped in for. It’s also a natural evolution of similar shots he achieved in Fight Club and is super important because it was the last truly showy Fincher shot of his career (so far). Sure, there have been brilliant shots in his later films, that have similarly been computer-augmented (the top-down shot of the cab in Zodiac comes to mind) but they have been much shorter and much more subtle. There hasn’t been anything as look-at-me as the Panic Room shot since. In some ways, it’s the end of an era.

The Hammer Fight • “Oldboy” (2003)

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Image via Tartan Films

One man. Countless thugs. A single hammer. This is the set-up for the unforgettable hammer fight in Chan Wook-park’s masterpiece (and the centerpiece of his so-called Vengeance Trilogy) Oldboy. Choi Min-sik plays a man wrongfully accused of murdering his wife and forcefully imprisoned for 15 years. When he’s released, he has to uncover what sinister forces are behind his imprisonment and untangle why he was really locked away in the first place. And also he has to beat up a bunch of thugs with a hammer. Apparently, the shot took three days to film and was staged 17 separate times. (Apparently, the only thing artificial is the knife that is stickin out of his back.) The shot goes on for so long that it has separate movements, when Min-sik is tired, the thugs are wary, and back again. Like a wave. And besides being one of the coolest action sequences in modern Korean cinema (no small feat, that), it also does so much to inform Min-sik’s character. This is somebody who will not stop, even against seemingly impossible odds. It’s also somebody whose mind maybe got wired the wrong way while in solitary confinement for 15 years (hey, the guy also eats a live octopus!) Now that he’s out, nothing will stop him from getting to the truth, even if the truth is very ugly. When Spike Lee remade Oldboy 10 years later, he copied the hammer scene nearly beat-for-beat, and later Lee claimed that his version of the sequence was even longer and more impressive, but it was cut down by a nervous studio. That shot was on YouTube for a little while but taken down. Sure, it was impressive, but it wasn’t like seeing the hammer fight in Oldboy and being blown away. Sorry Spike.

A Visit to the Opera • “Birth” (2004)

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Image via New Line Cinema

There are a number of gorgeous long shots in Jonathan Glazer’s chronically overlooked Birth, including one that opens the movie and follows Nicole Kidman’s husband as he runs through Central Park in the snow and drops dead. But the shot that remains seared into my brain is one that takes place after a young boy appears to Kidman and claims to be the reincarnation of her dead husband. Afterwards, she heads to the opera. And as the opera is going on, the camera starts out at the audience, ultra-wide, and gets tighter and tighter and tighter until Kidman’s face occupies the whole frame and she starts crying. It’s up to us to decide what is going on in her mind, although it’s pretty apparent that she is trying to piece together whether or not this child is a fraud or some clever con artist, and what that means if her husband has returned from the grave, in the form of a young boy. That’s a lot to think about. And yet as a woman of high society, she has certain obligations. Like the opera. It also helps that Birth itself is so operatic, from the astounding camera movements (it was shot by the dearly departed Harris Savides) to Alexandre Desplat’s all-consuming score to the fairy tale-ish nature of the story, making the opera setting pitch-perfect. And if you haven’t seen Birth, let this be a perfect excuse for you to finally watch.

Car Attack • “Children of Men” (2006)

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Image via Universal

Another shot that is incredibly difficult to figure out, even if you’ve watched behind-the-scenes footage, this is the car chase in Children of Men where the main characters (including Clive Owen and Julianne Moore) are stopped by an angry mob. The complexity of the shot is really something – there are burning cars, a motorcycle chase, squib effects (spoiler alert: somebody doesn’t make it out of the car alive), fire effects, and some very tricky maneuvering. It’s absolutely breathless filmmaking, made all the more intense and scarier by how lackadaisical the shot begins, with Owen and Moore doing a flirty game with a ping pong ball (the ball is definitely computer-animated) and joking around. Like everything else in Children of Men, chaos erupts unexpectedly and with little fanfare. And there’s even more suspense and danger wrung out of the fact that, at this point in the story, Owen doesn’t know that another passenger in the car is the last human being in this futuristic dystopia to have been naturally impregnated. So the fact that she could have just as easily been the one to get the bullet in the throat is a real possibility and is terrifying.

The shot was accomplished with some kind of crazy mechanical arm that was attached to the roof of the camera and moved around to go inside the car (with the opposite side of the car completely opened up), but even then it’s hard to be sure how Alfonso Cuaron, Emmanuel Lubezki and the rest of the team pulled it off. (There might have been some digital stitching, as well, look at the road at the beginning and end of the shot.) However he did it, it’s a corker, and would set up the equally impressive feats in Gravity and Roma.

The Tank Chase • “The Adventures of Tintin” (2011)

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Image via Paramount

Just because a shot is entirely animated doesn’t make it any easier. (Think about how many exceptionally lengthy shots you’ve seen in any animated feature, computer-generated or hand-drawn.) And there is certainly a lot going on in Steven Spielberg’s lone animated film, The Adventures of Tintin. The sequence is an elaborate chase, with boy detective Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his boozy sidekick (Andy Serkis) chasing the villain (Daniel Craig) and a pair of hugely important scrolls. In some ways, it feels like the ultimate expression of Spielberg’s love and mastery of the single shot that accomplishes what several other, separate shots would normally do, only this time he’s unencumbered by the rules of physics, the limitations of technology, or the length of the film magazine. Here, Spielberg was set free. But instead of going completely over-the-top, he still focuses on all of the characters (including moments devoted to both a dog and hawk character), following them as they careen down a road, causing dams to open up and all sorts of chaos to ensue (eventually a tank gets involved). And just when you think the sequence is over, it keeps going, including a moment when a motorbike becomes a unicycle on a telephone line. It’s a bravado sequence, flawlessly realized by Spielberg and the wizards at Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, but one that is full of character (Serkis fires a bazooka in the wrong direction), humor, and wit, encapsulating the joy of reading the original Belgian comic books.

Subway Fight • “Hanna” (2011)

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Image via Focus Features

While most best long shots list will include a reference to Joe Wright’s staging of the Dunkirk invasion, via one continuous take, in Atonement, we went with another Wright film and (in our estimation) an even more impressive long take. In his thriller Hanna, Wright stepped away from austere period pieces to direct a thoroughly modern spy story, but still retained his technical classicism. The shot in question follows Eric Bana’s weathered ex-spy, as he leaves an airport and walks towards a subway. When he gest down into the subway, he’s surrounded by goons (sent by Cate Blanchett as a witchy CIA director), who he must then dispatch. (They have no idea what’s coming to them.) So much of modern action filmmaking, defined by films like the hugely influential Bourne Identity and its sequels, is defined by quick cuts, turning a shootout or fistfight into something abstract and cubist. Wright’s approach is the opposite, as he and cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler move the camera around Bana, always keeping him in frame, which provides some great spatial awareness and means there aren’t any cutaways to, say, a goon removing a knife from his waistband (or something). And while the fight itself is quick and brutal (how good is it when Bana throws the knife into that guy?), the slow pace of the shot leading up to the fight, as it just follows Bana around, adds to the tension and intensity, especially with the foreshadowing of the graffiti behind Bana that references the CCTV and the ads for glasses that feature a pair of giant, looming eyes. They’re always watching. Another element of the shot that makes it superior to Atonement is the score by British electronic legends The Chemical Brothers. Their music only adds to the intensity of the scene, with it sometimes literally sounding like alarms.

“Fuck that Mirror Like You Mean It” • “Magic Mike” (2012)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Steven Soderbergh, especially in recent years, has said that he doesn’t want to have a specific style; that he wants to be almost invisible, catering to the needs of whatever story he’s serving. That, of course, is impossible. Soderbergh is one of the most brilliant stylists working in cinema, and his personality comes through no matter what the movie (as if anyone else would have made Contagion the way he did). Magic Mike is one of his slicker movies, from the ingenious title cards noting what time of the year it is, to the expertly photographed and choreographed dance numbers. But one of the best moments is a single long take that you might not have realized was even a single take (there he goes with his invisibility again). It’s a sequence where Matthew McConaughey, elder male stripper statesman, is coaching young buck Alex Pettyfer in the ways of on-stage seduction. McConaughey is talking to him the entire time, as other strippers work out in the background, as he addresses both Pettyfer (“You look around, you tease, you seduce”) and the audience, enabled by the closeness of the camera to the actors and the way McConaughey occasionally looks into the camera (through the mirror). McConaughey’s physicality is electric and the camera clearly loves him; it feels like a treat just to spend that much time in his presence. (Soderbergh also sneaks in a great visual joke when McConaughey backs up and we can see him in the tiniest pair of shorts ever manufactured.) The shot ends with a great line of dialogue, and the seamlessness of the moment is aided by the fact that dialogue from the shot begins before the previous scene has ended. Invisible, almost.

Welcome to Tomorrowland • “Tomorrowland” (2015)

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Image via Walt Disney Pictures

This is another “stitched” shot, combining several different shots into one seamless take. But it’s so artistically impressive and technically ambitious, it demanded inclusion. In the shot, our plucky hero Casey (Britt Robertson), is magically zapped to Tomorrowland, an alternate universe where corporate greed and political gamesmanship is absent, and unbridled imagination and technology advancements have turned it into a glittery, futuristic utopia. As soon as she is transported, the shot begins, and travels along with her, as she walks through a bustling town center, boards a floating monorail, and nearly takes off on a rocket ship (destination unknown). Director Brad Bird and cinematographer Claudio Miranda, utilizing a bigger, boxier format that was favored in the 1950s (2.20:1) and made this sequence look even-more-stunning in IMAX. What makes this sequence notable is that the camera is constantly moving and that Robertson is clearly on some kind of location for at least part of the shot; instead of masking the “cuts” with movement, the camera’s activity undoubtedly made the sequence harder to blend together. (Love that flip that begins the shot too.) And this is without saying the compositing and the endless post-production magic provided by Industrial Light & Magic, including fully animated spaceships, monorails and a series of floating swimming pools that you can dive through. (That’s Space Mountain in the background too!) There are also dozens upon dozens of extras, some of whom have dialogue, and who are all perfectly timed and outfitted in their Tomorrowland finery (with a decidedly throwback-y vibe). And it’s all set to Michael Giacchino’s pitch-perfect score. The response to Tomorrowland was decidedly mixed, but this shot is an undeniable showstopper and a testament to the limitless imagination and ingenuity that would get Bird a spot in Tomorrowland, for sure. Want to go?