Two that I’ve always thought were smart:
Danny retracing his footprints in the snow from The Shining.
I believe that was a classic Stanley Kubrick move, in that over the years it made me think a lot about the psychological effect that the Overlook Hotel had on Jack Torrance. Jack was clearly under some type of paranormal or demonic possession at that point, but as Jack left the building to chase after Danny in the hedge maze, the hotel's "hold" on Jack seemed to weaken as he became more sluggish and disoriented. Perhaps it was the cold weather that was doing this, but it didn't seem to have that effect on Danny who had been outside in the cold longer than Jack; but then again Danny could have been under an intense adrenaline rush due to his fear of Jack, not to mention that he had been under some type of possession of his own due to Tony. Was it Tony that realized that the Hotel's power was weakened the further away that Jack was from the Overlook, and why Tony led Jack into the hedge maze? Could we expect a 5 year old kid to think outside the box like that and retrace his own footsteps, or did Tony think of that? Who in tf was Tony, come to think of it?
Granted, those questions never seemed to be answered completely in the novel, other than that Tony was a completely separate entity from Danny as he saw Tony's shadow leaning against a lamppost down the street during one of Danny's "visions" in the novel. But the hedge maze had to have been Kubrick's idea, and it is the fine mark of a great storyteller that we are still talking about the movie like this over 40 years later.
