Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars (1977)

[10] Writer/director George Lucas (American Graffiti) surprised the world with this unassuming and unheralded matinee-style fantasy adventure that, by all industry standards, would be dead on arrival at the box office. But then word-of-mouth catapulted Star Wars to the highest echelons of…
Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur (1959)

[10] Charlton Heston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince whose life is thrown into years of soul-crushing turmoil after being betrayed by a childhood friend. That friend, a Roman soldier named Messala (Stephen Boyd), turns against Judah after he refuses to…
How the West Was Won (1962)

How the West Was Won (1962)

[8] Debbie Reynolds and George Peppard get the lion's share of screen time in the all-star epic western How the West Was Won. The film chronicles the Prescott family as they charge west in the 1830s, encountering river pirates, deadly rapids, Civil…
The Right Stuff (1983)

The Right Stuff (1983)

[7] Writer/director Philip Kaufman chronicles the birth of the U.S. space program in The Right Stuff, beginning with the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Based on Tom Wolfe's novel, the…
The Sting (1973)

The Sting (1973)

[7] Robert Redford and Paul Newman play Chicago con artists who team up to bankrupt a crime boss (Robert Shaw) who authorized the killing of Redford's grifting partner. Several other con artists join in on the elaborate betting scheme, which is threatened…
Anora (2024)

Anora (2024)

[7] Mikey Madison stars as Anora, a New York stripper and escort who accepts a marriage proposal from a super-rich Russian playboy (Mark Eydelshteyn) during a lavish excursion to Las Vegas. The romance burns fast and bright before the boy's oligarch parents…
Dune: Part One (2021)

Dune: Part One (2021)

[8] Director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival) takes a stab at delivering Frank Herbert's dense, complicated science-fiction novel to the big screen. Dune centers around a teenaged royal named Paul Atreides (Call Me By Your Name's Timothée Chalamet) whose family is…
Apollo 13 (1995)

Apollo 13 (1995)

[9] Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton star as the astronauts of 1970's ill-fated Apollo 13 mission to the moon, one in which their vessel suffered an exploding oxygen tank that threatened to leave them stranded in space forever. Losing power,…
One Battle After Another (2025)

One Battle After Another (2025)

[3] It's possible I'll see this movie again in the future and understand it better. I have to assume this is possible, because I love several other Paul Thomas Anderson movies, including Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and Licorice Pizza.…
Platoon (1986)

Platoon (1986)

[8] Oliver Stone's Platoon was one of the first major motion pictures to deal with the Vietnam war. Charlie Sheen stars as an infantry volunteer who finds himself in a moral quandry, torn between two sergeants of differing philosophies. Tom Berenger and…