The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
The 2000s produced a remarkable run of intelligent, ambitious cinema - a decade that took genre seriously and rewarded patient audiences.
Great action cinema isn't about spectacle â it's about stakes. You only care about the chase if you care about what's being chased.
Wounded to the brink of death and suffering from amnesia, Jason Bourne is rescued at sea by a fisherman. With nothing to go on but a Swiss bank account number, he starts to reconstruct his life, but finds that many people he encounters want him dead. However, Bourne realizes that he has the combat and mental skills of a world-class spy-but who does he work for?
When the sinister Sith unveil a thousand-year-old plot to rule the galaxy, the Republic crumbles and from its ashes rises the evil Galactic Empire. Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker must choose a side.
A deaf man and his girlfriend resort to desperate measures in order to fund a kidney transplant for his sister. Things go horribly wrong, and the situation spirals rapidly into a cycle of violence and revenge.
Jaded ex-CIA operative John Creasy reluctantly accepts a job as the bodyguard for a 10-year-old girl in Mexico City. They clash at first, but eventually bond, and when she's kidnapped he's consumed by fury and will stop at nothing to save her life.
The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot -- the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal.
These films understand that action is a language. Used well, it communicates character and stakes faster than any amount of dialogue.
Kim Sun-woo is an enforcer and manager for a hotel owned by a cold, calculative crime boss, Kang who assigns Sun-woo to a simple errand while he is away on a business trip; to shadow his young mistress, Hee-soo, for fear that she may be cheating on him with a younger man with the mandate that he must kill them both if he discovers their affair.
Bourne is brought out of hiding once again by reporter Simon Ross who is trying to unveil Operation Blackbriar, an upgrade to Project Treadstone, in a series of newspaper columns. Information from the reporter stirs a new set of memories, and Bourne must finally uncover his dark past while dodging The Company's best efforts to eradicate him.
Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.
The fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of bitter rivals. One, James Kirk, is a delinquent, thrill-seeking Iowa farm boy. The other, Spock, a Vulcan, was raised in a logic-based society that rejects all emotion. As fiery instinct clashes with calm reason, their unlikely but powerful partnership is the only thing capable of leading their crew through unimaginable danger, boldly going where no one has gone before. The human adventure has begun again.
Demons that once almost destroyed the world, are revived by someone. To prevent the world from being destroyed, the demon has to be sealed and the only one who can do it is the shrine maiden Shion from the country of demons, who has two powers; one is sealing demons and the other is predicting the deaths of humans. This time Naruto's mission is to guard Shion, but she predicts Naruto's death. The only way to escape it, is to get away from Shion, which would leave her unguarded, then the demon, whose only goal is to kill Shion will do so, thus meaning the end of the world. Naruto decides to challenge this "prediction of death."
Films that mess with your mind work best when they've earned your trust first. The disorientation only lands if you were fully in. These get you in.
These films prove that action and intelligence are not opposites. The best of them require both to work.