Empire: 50 Iconic Movie Stills

Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 at 3:59 PM Central
Last updated Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 3:11 PM Central

by John Couture

Sometimes with the advent of technology, we forget that movies are simply single stills moving past a light source at 24 frames per second (usually). That basically "moving pictures" is nothing more than an optical illusion.

We also tend to forget just how iconic a single frame can be. Think about Titanic and that one shot of Leonardo DiCaprio becoming "the king of the world." That one still encapsulated the entire 3+ hour movie into a single frame.

That's when you know a movie is powerful. Our mates across the pond at Empire picked out 50 of their most iconic images and put them in their Picture Perfect: Iconic Movie Stills feature and I must say that this is one list in which I pretty much agree with their picks verbatim.

They list the images alphabetically by title of the movie and let's face it, it would be almost impossible to rank these images. And fret not, there's no images from Titanic on the list, I just wanted to use that as an example.

One film that did make the cut is the image I included above from one of my favorite movies of all time Casablanca. Normally, I despise click-heavy features that make you click for each installment of a list, but I will make an exception for this one because it's just that good.

What do you think of their choices? Did they forget any that should be on the list?