Troys Bucket?
How about Shawshank's "Get busy living..."
What are some of your favorites?
Confession? I don't like monologues. I'll even say that monologues detract from any film or play that features them. The sole function of a monologue is to grab the audience by the lapel and say "you know that symbolism and allegory we've been wafting at you for an hour and a half? Sit down, we have a spoon. Yes, now open wide. Wider. WIDER. There. Now there can be no confusion." Quint's speech - "I'm an old man that's seen a lot of shit. Here, I have depth." Goonies - "In case you missed it, we're oppressed but this is an adventure all about us." American President - "people are mostly stupid, they follow charisma." Network - "TV is bad, mmmkay?" Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now - "Marlon Brando is a visionary, also dangerously crazy." Monologues pretty much exist for the screenwriter to go "Fuck show don't tell! I do words for a living goddamn it!" And the most egregious of them monologue the fuck out of everything. John Milius? Good grief. That's Quint's Speech, Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, James Earl Jones in Conan and the "half a million chinamen" in Red Dawn. Paddy Chayefski? Sweet jesus the dude could ramble. It's such a pernicious problem that the actors won't do roles unless there's a big juicy monologue because we've got this idea that if there isn't a bolus of Shakespearean bombast in it somewhere, it isn't a movie. William Broyles managed to write Cast Away without a single monologue. Nothing. The whole thing is this beautiful, light, show-don't-tell thing of pure, unabashed emotion and then Tom Hanks gets ahold of it and decides he's not going to get an oscar for talking to a volleyball for three hours so they weld this shit on: It's like the Cliff's Notes of the movie. We know, Tom. We've been sitting here for three hours watching it happen. Wanna see it done right? Here's Dennis Hopper's all-time favorite role - he said as much on Inside the Actor's Studio. To set it up - this is 10 minutes into the film. We've never met this character before. And he's the first adult we've seen in the movie, other than the back of Keanu Reeves' mom's head and a clerk selling beer: Or hey - here's William Goldman (Princess Bride, All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy)'s big brother, showing how to give actors dialogue they love, to each other: Worth seeing purely for "Introducing Anthony Hopkins as Richard the Lionheart" but also to watch Catherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole hate each other marvelously. And yes, that is Timothy "The Living Daylights" Dalton.
O_O silently starts editing "awesome" monologues from my secret screenplays
Princess Bride spoilers ahead... To the pain - Princess Bride Hello, my name is Indigo Montoya speech - Interesting antecdote about this scene - Mandy Patinkin lost his father a few years before the filming. In a 25 year later inverview, this came up: "Despite the laughter, the story of Inigo and his father struck a nerve with Patinkin, whose own father had died a few years before filming. 'I would walk through the maze of the gardens while I was just trying to relax or while they were lighting the scene, and I was talking to my father, who had died not that many years before we made the film, and I always had it in my mind that if I could get the six fingered man, if Inigo could get the six fingered man, then my father, Mandy's father, would come back and be with me.'" Source Opening monologue of Rubber
GOONIES! YES! I love that movie. Shawshank Redemption is a different kind of great. I'm a big fan of the monologue at the end of 2 Days in Paris: The bench scene in Good Will Hunting is also up there for me as it might be my favorite performance from Robin Williams. Well, after Good Morning Vietnam.
Also known as the "Perfect Day" scene; Trainspotting
Jean-Claude's soliloquy in JCVD is one of my favorite movie monologues of all time. The break in the movie, him just taking a minute out was totally unexpected, hell the film was totally unexpected. I've seen people who never watched a Jean-Claude movie in their life have a little cry at this scene. Give this movie a chance. It's unlike anything he has done before or after and isn't a dumb action movie. Had a rating of 83% on rotten tomatoes last time I checked, probably twice as a high a rating as anything else he ever did. It's masquerades as an autobiographical work with Jean playing Jean and goes somewhere strange. Sorry this was the only clip I could find with an English translation, whoever posted it decided to interject a bunch of semi-inspirational quotes.