Top 6 Friday: Those great bits of movie dialogue (Modern)

I may aswell be trying to empty the ocean in trying to pick just six selections that would satisfy everyone’s favourite bits of dialogue. Even as I write entries from movies such as ‘The American President’, ‘The Big Lebowski’ and ‘Fight Club’ are running through my head but as ever I will stay true to my instincts and present the list that means the most to me. There are some criteria, these are not exchanges between characters, they are just well written dialogue delivered with panache and neither are they catch phrases or one-liners and the courtroom scene from ‘A Few Good Men’ is excluded because it has been done to death. I realise also I have not even ventured outside of the 90s, so clearly there is room for expansion of the topic.

6. Pop quiz hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. Once the bomb goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?

The great premise of 90s action movies

5. Never, never, interrupt me, okay? Not if there's a fire, not even if you hear the sound of a thud from my home and one week later there's a smell coming from there that can only be a decaying human body and you have to hold a hanky to your face because the stench is so thick that you think you're going to faint. Even then, don't come knocking. Or, if it's election night, and you're excited and you wanna celebrate because some fudgepacker that you date has been elected the first queer president of the United States and he's going to have you down to Camp David, and you want someone to share the moment with. Even then, don't knock. Not on this door. Not for ANY reason. Do you get me, sweetheart?

Jack Nicholson in what all romantic comedies should be like, ‘As Good as it Gets’

4. Wait a minute. Robin Hood steals money from my pocket, forcing me to hurt the public, and they love him for it? That’s it then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas

Alan Rickman, the villain and the best thing about ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’

3. The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, putting motion to Cameron Crowe’s poetry in ‘Almost Famous’

2. My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

Russell Croew entertains us in ‘Gladiator’

1. I'm a schoolteacher. I teach English composition... in this little town called Adley, Pennsylvania. The last eleven years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was a coach of the baseball team in the springtime. Back home, I tell people what I do for a living and they think well, now that figures. But over here, it's a big, a big mystery. So, I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even going to recognise me, whenever it is that I get back to her. And how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today. Ah, Ryan. I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. The man means nothing to me. It's just a name. But if... You know if going to Rumelle and finding him so that he can go home. If that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that's my mission. You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.

Tom Hanks, the everyman at war in 'Saving Private Ryan'