Watching a film with kids means finding something that works on two levels - holding their attention completely while giving you something worth watching too.
Go back far enough and you find films that had no idea they'd become classics. The 80s and 90s produced more of them than any other era.
Mystery cinema works because it turns passive watching into active thinking. Every frame is a question.
When the diabolical Professor Ratigan kidnaps London's master toymaker, the brilliant master of disguise Basil of Baker Street and his trusted sidekick Dawson try to elude the ultimate trap and foil the perfect crime.
Bedraggled college professor Michael Faraday has been vexed - and increasingly paranoid - since his wife's accidental death in a botched FBI operation. When a seemingly all-American couple set up house next door, Michael begins to suspect there's more to them than meets the eye.
As the world is overrun by zombies, scientists and military personnel in an underground Florida bunker must decide on how they should deal with the undead.
In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.
Veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan is a man haunted by his failure to save President Kennedy while serving protection detail in Dallas. Thirty years later, a man calling himself "Booth" threatens the life of the current President, forcing Horrigan to come back to protection detail to confront the ghosts from his past.
The films here work because they respect the audience. Every clue is planted. Every reveal is earned. Nothing is arbitrary.
After witnessing a mysterious woman brutally slay a homemaker, prostitute Liz Blake finds herself trapped in a dangerous situation. While the police thinks she is the murderer, the real killer is intent on silencing her only witness.
Catherine, a novelist with an insatiable sexual appetite, becomes a prime suspect when her boyfriend is brutally murdered -- a crime she had described in her latest story.
On their cross-country drive, a married couple, Jeff and Amy Taylor, experience car trouble after their SUV breaks down. Stranded in the New Mexico desert, the two catch a break when a passing truck driver offers Amy a ride to a nearby café to call for help. Meanwhile, Jeff is able to fix the car and make his way to the café, but Amy isn't there. He tracks down the trucker ― who tells the police he's never seen Jeff or his wife before. Jeff then begins a desperate, frenzied search for Amy.
Mulder and Scully, now taken off the FBI's X Files cases, must find a way to fight the shadowy elements of the government to find out the truth about a conspiracy that might mean the alien colonization of Earth.
An opulent beach resort provides a scenic background to this amusing whodunit as Poirot attempts to uncover the nefarious evildoer behind the strangling of a notorious stage star.
Great films that make you cry do so because they've made you care. By the time the emotion lands, you're not surprised - you're just not ready for it.
Few things are more satisfying than a mystery that respects your intelligence, plants its clues fairly, and still manages to surprise you.