Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

[8] Tom Cruise returns, 36 years later, to the role that made him a star. Top Gun: Maverick bests the original film as drama and entertainment, putting characters with universal appeal in thrilling, high stakes situations. The film opens with…
Top Gun (1986)

Top Gun (1986)

[7] Tom Cruise shot to superstardom at just twenty-four years of age with Top Gun, a hyper-stylized action/drama about Naval fighter pilots jockeying for top position at an elite academy in San Diego. Cruise plays the skilled but cocky Maverick…
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

[7] In this age of superhero fatigue, I was surprised to enjoy the first Venom movie so much. Color me equally surprised that they could pull off an entertaining sequel with Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Tom Hardy returns as…
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

[9] George Lazenby makes his one and only appearance as 007 in this underappreciated installment of the series. Lazenby was a model with little-to-no acting experience trying to take over a role that Sean Connery made iconic. With that said, the…
You Only Live Twice (1967)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

[7] James Bond (Sean Connery) travels to Japan for the fifth film in the franchise. Someone is capturing both Russian and American space vessels in attempt to start a war between the two superpowers. Bond works with the Japanese Secret…
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

[6] Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) concludes the Mission: Impossible franchise with this eighth, overly-long and curiously somber film. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team spend half the film wrestling with the U.S. government before finally being cut…
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

[5] After wrapping up a terrific trilogy of Planet of the Apes films (2011-2017), Fox and Disney saw fit to give us another film that takes place generations later. I went into this latest film with great skepticism, and at…
Thunderball (1965)

Thunderball (1965)

[7] James Bond is sent to the Bahamas to locate two nuclear bombs stolen by S.P.E.C.T.R.E. in Thunderball, arguably one of the most widely anticipated 'event movies' since Gone with the Wind. Sean Connery's fourth time at bat starts off…
John Carter (2012)

John Carter (2012)

[5] Director Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Finding Nemo) makes the leap from animation to live-action with this overly-ambitious adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' story A Princess of Mars. Taylor Kitsch (TV's Friday Night Lights) stars as the title character, a world-weary…
Goldfinger (1964)

Goldfinger (1964)

[8] In the third James Bond film, agent 007 (Sean Connery) is trying to stop the title character, a nefarious gold tycoon, from breaking into Fort Knox. Goldfinger is a standalone story, without any connection to the overarching SPECTRE storyline,…