It’s no great secret that I’m a longtime film junkie with a bent toward science fiction. Growing up as a poor, lonely kid in the desert ghost town that was 1990s Odessa, Texas, movies were sometimes the only friends I had in the evenings or on the weekends. They were the storytellers who spun two-hour yarns that snatched me out of the real world like faerie kidnappers come to transport me to some faraway fantasy realm of danger and adventure, and they always brought be back home in time for dinner.
Presented in this article by no one’s suggestion are my personal “Top Ten” favorite motion pictures to date.1 These films inspired me in some way, either by their storytelling, their visuals, or by the emotional connections they formed within me during my formative years.
Author’s Note: Though I consider myself a rabid longtime fan of Star Trek and Star Wars, no films from either of these multimedia franchises appear on this list. In my estimation, the films in these beloved long-running franchises transcend any arbitrary “Top Ten” list and deserve their own rankings. I will write a separate “Top Films” list for my favorite Star Trek and Star Wars films later.
10. Glory (1989)
This award-winning Civil War drama about the all-black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment boasts an all-star cast including Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman. Directed by history nerd Edward Zwick and written by the late Kevin Jarre (screenwriter of Tombstone and the awesome 1999 Brendan Frasier film The Mummy), the screenplay is based on the personal letters of the regiment’s commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, an upper-class Boston abolitionist turned Union Army officer.
I first saw this film in junior high as part of our U.S. History class’s Civil War unit, and the film immediately burrowed its way into my memory, forever affecting the way I viewed period works and war films from then on. The movie chronicles its events in a far more realistic manner than most period films, which tend to prefer stylized depictions or highly fictionalized accounts over the often brutal honesty of history. Contrary to the film’s title, the glory of warfare — even in a war waged for a just cause — is absent from the conflict itself. Even the Union Army, the heroes of the Civil War, are still guilty of wartime atrocities.
The members of the 54th Regiment were no legendary war heroes; they were ordinary men fighting for the right to exist free from slavery, but their sacrifices ensured freedom for their people. Glory neither magnified nor denigrated the Civil War. It depicted events as true to life as the moviemakers could. The true glory in the film is found in the hearts and minds of the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, who were molded from former slaves and civilians into men willing to sacrifice so much for so many. For me, Glory forever set the standard by which all historical films should be judged.
09. The Blues Brothers (1980)
I’ve never been a die-hard fan of musicals. Disney movies, Sweeny Todd, Cats, Oklahoma, and The Phantom of the Opera are as musical as I get when it comes to cinema. If I had a favorite musical, however, it would have to be the John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd vehicle The Blues Brothers. Aside from being a magnificent musical spectacle that serves as an exceptional introduction to the Rhythm & Blues genre, the movie is also one of my favorite action/comedy films.
Belushi’s and Aykroyd’s Jake and Elwood Blues — characters they created for the comedy variety series Saturday Night Live — were the epitome of cool in my youth, from their stoic demeanors (especially Aykroyd’s amusingly flat line delivery) and their grimy-yet-stylish black suits and black hats to their beat-up old former cop car with seemingly magical speed and durability.2 The deadpan comedy is spot-on thanks to the presences of veteran comedy actors like John Candy, Henry Gibson, and Muppet Meister Frank Oz, and the story is as fun and action-packed as any car chase film. If you love the modern Blues genre, the film is packed with celebrated musicians like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, and the legendary Jazz man Cab Calloway. The movie also features some pretty bad-ass appearances from the late, great Carrie Fisher in one of her best roles since Princess Leia. If you love comedic musicals with a heavy dash of action, I cannot recommend The Blues Brothers enough!
08. The Matrix (1999)
Written and directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski and released by Warner Bros. Pictures, The Matrix was hailed as the Star Wars of its era and was poised to launch what could have been a comparable multimedia empire. Steeped in existential philosophy and religious symbolism drenched in science fiction trappings, The Matrix — which starred Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburn, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano — dominated the box office upon release, revolutionized the CGI industry (for better or for worse), and made American audiences take the cyberpunk genre far more seriously than they had since the release of Blade Runner.
Unfortunately, the three sequels (the convoluted The Matrix Reloaded, the laughably simplistic The Matrix Revolutions, and the incredibly lackluster relaunch film The Matrix Resurrections) were not as well received, and The Matrix as a franchise has fallen by the wayside as other science fiction franchises were successfully revived for the modern era.3
Even so, viewing The Matrix for the first time was a mind-blowing, transformative experience for me back in high school. For a brief time, I would rewatch this film — which greatly influenced every aspect of my life, from what I read to what I wore — every year and discover new little treasures hidden within the film’s meticulously plotted script and background details.
07. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Still one of the best time travel action movies ever made, James Cameron’s science fiction magnum opus — a far better film than its intriguing predecessor — arguably depicted the conditional nature of time and prophecy (symbolically, anyway) in a much more straightforward and frightening manner than any film in the much-beloved Back To the Future Trilogy.
Starring Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, and the always awesome Arnold Schwarzenegger as the iconic Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator, Terminator 2 was my first introduction to the work of one of my personal heroes, writer/director/historian/undersea explorer James Cameron, who would impress me much more with the film Titanic six years later.4
The Terminator itself is a literal nightmare rendered in chrome and blood,5 but its successor machine, Robert Patrick’s morphenomenal T-1000, is mind-ravaging paranoia incarnate born of a war-ravaged post-Apocalyptic hellscape pulled from the nocturnal torments of the deeply religious. I would suffer delicious Terminator 2-based nightmares for years after seeing the film, and I loved every moment of them.
06. The Dark Knight (2008)
Widely considered to be the best of celebrated auteur director Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight film trilogy,6 The Dark Knight was largely propelled into uber-popularity by the late, great Heath Ledger‘s tour de force performance as the enigmatic anarchistic terrorist known only as “the Joker”.
I’ve been a Batman fan since my mother first subjected me to reruns of the old Adam West series in my early childhood. Ever since I read my first issue of Detective Comics (Issue #647 by Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle) in 1992, though, I longed to see a live-action version of Batman that matched the gritty and intense storytelling of Post-Crisis Batman comics.7 While Batman Begins was a fantastic movie that immediately sold me on Christopher Nolan’s take on the Batman mythos (and on Christian Bale‘s take on the character), it was the film The Dark Knight that pleased me the most and showed me how close live-action cinema could come to the Post-Crisis version of Batman I fell in love with from the comics.
Though we had superhero films prior to the release of The Dark Knight — which also stars Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart, and the chameleon-like Gary Oldman — most superhero films (with the notable exception of The Crow) weren’t as believable and grounded in grimy realism until Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy began in 2005. Even Marvel’s Iron Man (2008) owes much to Nolan’s take on Batman, as Nolan’s Dark Knight films truly showed how profitable and popular a comics-accurate superhero film could be. (It won Oscar awards, for goodness’ sake!)
05. Blade Runner (1982)
Director Ridley Scott likely wasn’t setting out to create an immensely influential cinematic classic when he joined production of this classic sci-fi noir film in 1980. The best laid plans of electric mice and men, however, can sometimes yield miracles. Though Scott’s seminal Blade Runner wasn’t a big box office draw when it was released in 1982, it has since garnered a tremendous cult following, inspired a 2017 sequel, and was even inducted into the National Film Registry for preservation as a cultural artifact by the United States Library of Congress.
While Blade Runner‘s story is superbly performed by Harrison Ford and co-stars Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, the plot is fairly simplistic, boiler plate film noir stuff with a science fiction bent based loosely on a fascinating novel by sci-fi luminary Phillip K. Dick (whose other works inspired Total Recall, Impostor, Paycheck, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly).
The real fun is in the film’s wondrous worldbuilding! Every mise en scene element in the film adds depth and reality to each scene, making the world feel more real and lived-in than many science fiction films before it. This aspect of the movie — and its incredible influence on the nascent cyberpunk genre that would later give us Ghost in the Shell, Johnny Mnemonic, Cyberpunk 2077, RoboCop, and The Matrix — made it one of my favorite films.
04. Jurassic Park (1993)
This film has been among my favorites since I first read the novel it was based on mere days before seeing the movie for the first time. I still watch this movie at least once every year; it’s a fun, smart, scary romp through a man-made “lost world” gone horribly, horribly wrong that modern films — including the sequels — just can’t beat.
Directed by living legend Steven Spielberg and starring Sam Neil, Laura Dern, the ridiculously charismatic Jeff Goldblum, and the late Richard Attenborough, our stars scream their way through a dinosaur theme park where the featured attractions have escaped their enclosures and run amok. This movie — based on the brainy book by science buff and former medical doctor Michael Crichton (one of my literary heroes) — not only reignited my childhood love for dinosaurs,8 but the character Ian Malcolm also influenced both my adoration for the philosophy behind chaos theory and my preference for all-black clothing (an affectation I engage in to this day).
03. The Crow (1994)
If Jurassic Park influenced me to start wearing all black as a child, The Crow and The Matrix kept me wearing it well into my adult years. One of the grittiest, most realistic, yet stylistic and gloriously Gothic movies produced in modern times, The Crow — based on the darkness-drenched comic by James O’Barr and starring Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, and the late martial artist/movie star Brandon Lee — is essentially an introductory text to late 1980s/early 1990s Goth/Alternative subculture.
The comic the film is based on was written by a man still emotionally metabolizing the tragic death of his girlfriend in a drunk driving accident. In the film, a dead man is guided back to life by a mystical crow to take vengeance on the criminals who brutally murdered him and his fiancée on Devil’s Night in 1990s Detroit.
While the film appears to be a straightforward action/revenge flick, the movie boasts surprising moments of heart and hope amidst the darkness of American urban life. Come for the action, stay for the iconic characters and soundtrack.
02. Ghostbusters (1984)
When traditional ghostly horror elements, funky early 1900s Spiritualist concepts, and charmingly seedy 1980s New York urban comedy combine, the classic comedy movie Ghostbusters is the result.
Written by comedian/paranormalist Dan Aykroyd, director Ivan Reitman, and the late Harold Ramis, and starring Aykroyd, Ramis, Ernie Hudson (him again!), Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and the immortal Bill Murray, Ghostbusters is the story of a team of “paranormal exterminators” who trap and remove ghosts from haunted sites for a living.9 Instantly popular upon release, the film spawned a sequel, several cartoon spin-offs, more sequels, and one not-so-well-received reboot attempt.
I have extremely positive memories of watching the sequel in theaters with my mother, and I practically consumed the spin-off cartoon, The Real Ghostbusters, like candy as a child. As an adult, I appreciate the well-paced scripting that works like a hilarious primer for 1980s Spiritualism, the stellar acting and characterization, the special effects that still hold up well today, and the spot-on comedy (much of it improvised).
Though I still adore this film and watch it multiple times annually (especially around Halloween), I’m truly grateful to this film for introducing me to the infinitely fascinating creature that is Dan Aykroyd and his intense paranormal/conspiratorial beliefs.
01. The Ten Commandments (1956)
A Hollywood classic, I watch this old Charlton Heston/Yul Brynner vehicle directed by legendary auteur Cecil B. DeMille every year around Passover. While not the most accurate Moses film (that would be the 1995 Sir Ben Kingsley-led TV miniseries), the most stylistic Moses film (that is Spielberg’s fantastic animated musical Prince of Egypt), or even the first cinematic adaptation of the story (DeMille actually made a silent film version back in 1923), it is still the most iconic version of the Exodus story.10 Though more recent efforts at adapting the movie have been made since then (including the abysmal Exodus: Gods and Kings), none have yet challenged the well-earned dominance and spectacle of The Ten Commandments in the biblical film genre.
In the film’s prologue, director/producer DeMille states, “Our intention was not to create a story, but to be worthy of a divinely inspired story, created 3,000 years ago, the five books of Moses.” Given the epic scope of the film and the magnificent melodramatic acting by Hollywood veterans that this film proudly boasts (in addition to the fantastic, riotously colorful, and wildly expensive-for-its-era use of costuming and mise en scene), I would say that DeMille succeeded with flying colors. If you’ve never seen the film before, even if you aren’t a religious person (or if you don’t subscribe to one of the Abrahamic faiths), I highly recommend it!11
- I specify “to date” because a new movie could be released at any moment that skyrockets itself onto my Top Ten list.[↩]
- If there’s a list of famous televised and cinematic vehicles like the Knight Industries Two Thousand from Knight Rider, the DeLorean time machine from Back To the Future, or Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, the Bluesmobile must be included in that list![↩]
- Well, some of these franchises were revived to one degree of “success” or another.[↩]
- Well, he kind of impressed me with Titanic. I hated the love story, but I grew obsessively fascinated with studying Cameron’s historic details for the film. Critique his writing all you like, Cameron is a fastidious researcher, and he impressed me tremendously with the intricate detail work he put in on his Titanic sets. The fact that he dived to the wreck of the Titanic himself to obtain footage of the wreck only impressed me more.[↩]
- The robot from the first film was based on a nightmare Cameron had while he was ill.[↩]
- The trilogy was even named for this film![↩]
- The closest we got to seeing a Post-Crisis Caped Crusader in either motion pictures or television was the phenomenal Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s.[↩]
- Jurassic Park introduced me to my all-time favorite family of dinosaurs, the Dromaeosauridae.[↩]
- Sadly, the Ghostbusters do not release the ghosts back into the wild after trapping them, even though would be guaranteed job security… and absolutely something Peter Venkman might approve of.[↩]
- Ask anybody older than age 30 if they’ve seen “that Moses movie” and they’ll either think of The Ten Commandments or Prince of Egypt.[↩]
- Warning To Those Who Have Never Seen This Film: The Ten Commandments is crazy long! The movie is almost four hours long and includes a ten minute intermission around the 2 hour 15 minute mark! If you plan to see this film, watch it like you would watch one of The Lord of the Rings movies: have plenty of snacks and drinks around and take breaks when needed. This film is practically a movie marathon on its own![↩]
