Star Trek (2009)
[7] Director J.J. Abrams reboots the Star Trek franchise with a new cast playing the original 1960s crew. The cast is perhaps the best thing about this new movie, particularly Chris Pine as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as…
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)
[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…
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…
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,…
Weapons (2025)
[8] After his strong debut film, 2022's Barbarian, writer/director Zach Cregger returns with a sophomore effort as good or better. Weapons starts off with a compelling mystery -- why did seventeen school children, all in the same class, suddenly get…
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
[8] Russell Crowe stars as a British naval captain pushing his ship's crew to the breaking point in pursuit of the Acheron, a stealthy French vessel he's been ordered to track and destroy. The plot of Master and Commander isn't…
Ex Machina (2015)
[8] Writer/director Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men) delivers a thoughtful, character-driven psychological thriller with sci-fi overtones in Ex Machina. Domhnall Gleeson plays a computer programmer summoned to a remote research facility where an eccentric entrepreneur (Oscar Isaac) has created a highly…
The War of the Worlds (1953)
[8] The War of the Worlds, based on H.G. Wells classic sci-fi novel, hits the ground running with Martians invading the world! We experience the invasion through an ensemble of characters in a quaint California community where one of the…
The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
[8] Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas star in this true story adaptation about two man-eating lions who killed dozens of railroad workers in Tsavo, Kenya, in the late 1800s. Kilmer plays a bridge engineer who enlists Douglas, a world-famous big…