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 80s and 90s are where a lot of cinema's DNA was written. Films that set the templates still running today.
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.
The epic saga continues as Luke Skywalker, in hopes of defeating the evil Galactic Empire, learns the ways of the Jedi from aging master Yoda. But Darth Vader is more determined than ever to capture Luke. Meanwhile, rebel leader Princess Leia, cocky Han Solo, Chewbacca, and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are thrown into various stages of capture, betrayal and despair.
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.
Ten years after the events of the original, a reprogrammed T-800 is sent back in time to protect young John Connor from the shape-shifting T-1000. Together with his mother Sarah, he fights to stop Skynet from triggering a nuclear apocalypse.
What separates great action from great noise is consequence. Every punch, every chase, every choice has to matter. These films make it matter.
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo's deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years. Although her story is initially met with skepticism, she agrees to accompany a team of Colonial Marines back to LV-426.
Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
These films exist. They're excellent. The only reason you haven't seen them is that nobody told you to. Now someone has.
The best action films leave you with more than adrenaline. They leave you with a character you won't forget and a story worth retelling.