This week's clip joint is from Nick Bromley. If you've got a topic you'd like to tackle for a future week's blog, email adam.boult@guardian.co.uk.  From claustrophobic phone booths to the roaming freedom of mobiles, telephones have long provided film-makers with ways of creating tension, driving the plot and adding humour. But to be truly great, a telephone scene can’t rely on cheap and lazy short-cuts, like a flat battery, loss of signal or a phone wire severed mid-conversation. It can’t be a mechanism for crudely delivering exposition. Like so much in film-making it relies on the holy trinity of dialogue, performance and direction. Here are five of my favourite such scenes.  There’s no one quite like David Lynch when it comes to creating weird minor characters, and Robert Blake’s smiling, unblinking mystery man is one of his finest. As smooth lounge jazz segues into a typical Lynchian bubble of nightmarish sound design, Bill Pullman’s bemused musician is taken aback by one hell of an un-nerving party trick.  It’s testament to Peter Sellers’ comic genius that this one-sided conversation between his US President Merkin Muffley – worthy almost to the point of banality – and the unseen, unheard Russian Premier, Dmitri, is so hilarious. His measured, understated delivery, echoing around the otherwise silent war room, fits hand-in-glove with Kubrick’s low-key direction, while the reactions of George C Scott’s gung-ho general provide a wonderful tonal contrast.  An enthralling and intimate scene – shot in one long, glorious take – that sees Mia Farrow’s Rosemary increasingly desperate for outside help and protection. Whether you believe the satanic events are all in her mind or actually playing out for real is irrelevant – Farrow’s performance is utterly captivating. Her restlessness, her trembling voice and darting eyes … you’re convinced that she’s convinced: "All of them. All of them. All in it together." It’s topped off by a wonderful heart-in-mouth moment near the end.  It’s a video phone but it still counts in my book: it’s a call home and what a heart-rending call it is. Sam Rockwell’s performance as a whole was woefully neglected by mainstream press and awards, but it’s in this standout scene that he lays down the rock-solid emotional core of the film. Just as Sam Bell’s body starts to break down, so his past life and memories begin to unravel to one of Clint Mansell’s finest compositions. As Earth looms large on the horizon, we feel his sense of distress and isolation, made all the more acute by the knowledge of who he really is.  OK, so sometimes a cheap trick wins out. But what a gloriously cheap trick it is. Freddie Krueger gives a new meaning to the term "mouthpiece".  Last week Helena Tsangacos picked out five clips on the theme of 'good guys gone bad. Here are our favourite suggestions from the thread.  1. FreakyChucker1: "How about Cypher selling out his friends in The Matrix."  2. MisterIks: "Alec Guinness gets his wires crossed in Bridge on the River Kwai."  3. Monkeybug: "One does not simply forget Boromir from Fellowship of the Ring. It is folly."  4. RobBarwick: "Good Guy gone bad because it turns out he was the Bad Guy all along... What Lies Beneath."  5. finnyfish: "How about a good robot gone bad? I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
Ring ring … Hello?, this is clip joint speaking. Could you let us know your favourite film scenes involving telephones?