Mission: Impossible III

Ethan Hunt is the perfect spy who makes a fatal mistake: he falls in love and lets her get pulled into his work.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Listening to HAL 9000 beg for its life makes it seem a whole lot more human than any of the astronauts it killed on that trip to Jupiter, doesn’t it?

Apocalypto

Amid this epic adventure, we are reminded that every civilization has an expiration date. No exceptions.

Battle Royale

Battle Royale’s bleak vision of a future where children are made to kill each other for the amusement of adults isn’t scary because it could happen. It’s scary because it already does.

The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys portray vampires as hellraisers so cool that they didn’t just steal the show, they changed vampire movies forever.

Labyrinth

Labyrinth is a Jim Henson masterpiece for an entire generation of dreamers looking to navigate their own path from adolescence to adulthood.

Contact

In Contact, the vast distance we’d have to travel to visit an alien world pales before the lengths we need to go as a species just to deserve the trip.

The Abyss

The Abyss plumbs two kinds of depth: the fathoms of the deepest sea, and the distance we’ll go to save the ones who matter to us.

Mission Statement

In Taken, we see what happens when you test the resolve of an ex-CIA agent’s pledge to protect his daughter, no matter what.

Jump in the Line

If Beetlejuice teaches us anything, it’s that it ain’t cool to cut in line, especially when that line is about 300 years long.

The Little Details

In Ocean’s Eleven, the grandest plans succeed or fail on how much attention you pay to the little details.

You Give a Little Love

Bugsy Malone manages to tell a gangland Prohibition story with nothing but child actors and tommy guns that shoot creme pies. And it is AWESOME.

Red Laces

Green Room’s intense survival horror story of punk rockers vs. neo-Nazis offers a good look at how people willingly turn themselves into monsters.

Heads or Tails

No Country for Old Men provides a stark reminder that the most destructive thing in the world is the delusion that you can control it.

Games of War

I Declare War shows us that some kids play war games, while others play games of war, and there’s a big difference between the two.

The Right Hand of Doom

In Hellboy, when a guy known as the Right Hand of Doom starts talking about girl problems over milk and cookies, you things are serious.

Oh, Bite Me

Deep Blue Sea gave us the greatest death scene in cinematic history. This is not even open to debate.

The Bard and the Muse

Shakespeare in Love shows us what happens when star-crossed lovers in Elizabethan England cross the thin line separating life and art.

What She’s Having

When Harry Met Sally… shows that sometimes the path to romantic honesty is acting out a screaming orgasm in a crowded diner.

A Nose for Romance

In Roxanne, an epic verbal takedown of a bully is a great victory for Charlie Bates, but it also reveals how much he wants to be loved.