There's a particular kind of film for a rainy night alone - absorbing enough to pull you fully in, good enough that you don't check your phone once.
The 2000s produced a remarkable run of intelligent, ambitious cinema - a decade that took genre seriously and rewarded patient audiences.
The best action films use movement to reveal character. What a person does under pressure tells you everything about them.
Bob Parr has given up his superhero days to log in time as an insurance adjuster and raise his three children with his formerly heroic wife in suburbia. But when he receives a mysterious assignment, it's time to get back into costume.
Edmond Dantés's life and plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes are shattered when his best friend, Fernand, deceives him. After spending 13 miserable years in prison, Dantés escapes with the help of a fellow inmate and plots his revenge, cleverly insinuating himself into the French nobility.
D, a legendary dhampir competes with a motley family of bounty hunters to track down Charlotte Elbourne, a young woman who has seemingly been abducted by vampire nobleman Meier Link.
After being held captive in an Afghan cave, billionaire engineer Tony Stark creates a unique weaponized suit of armor to fight evil.
In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.
The action films that hold up aren't the ones with the biggest explosions. They're the ones where you understood what was at stake before anything started moving.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Sayra, a Native Honduran teenager, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra's life collides with a pair of Indigenous Mexican and Mestizo-Mexican gangmembers who have boarded the same USA-bound train.
In the 22nd century, a paraplegic Marine is dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission, but becomes torn between following orders and protecting an alien civilization.
Set in the Mayan civilization, when a man's idyllic presence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, he is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
After the Second Impact, Tokyo-3 is being attacked by giant monsters called Angels that seek to eradicate humankind. The child Shinji's objective is to fight the Angels by piloting one of the mysterious Evangelion mecha units. A remake of the first six episodes of GAINAX's famous 1996 anime series. The film was retitled "Evangelion: 1.01" for its DVD release and "Evangelion: 1.11" for a release with additional scenes.
The best-kept secrets in cinema aren't obscure for lack of quality. They're obscure because distribution is cruel and algorithms are indifferent.
These films prove that action and intelligence are not opposites. The best of them require both to work.