A couple months back, I took a look at the unforgettable musical scores written by the legendary composer John Williams, but for this top ten list, I wanted to spotlight another film composer who has also been among the most influential of the last several decades.  Hans Zimmer may not have as robust a resume as Mr. Williams (and unfortunately he also has fewer trophies as well), but Zimmer’s influence on the soundscape of cinema is just as impactful.  While John Williams had Steven Spielberg and George Lucas , Hans has worked with the likes of Ridley and Tony Scott, Terrence Malick, Guy Ritchie, Denis Villeneuve, and Christopher Nolan.  One of the things that has distinguished Zimmer as a composer is the undeniable modernity of his music.  Some would call his style global in that he combine sounds from many different cultural influences and combines them in a way that makes the music sound unique and unlike anything you’ve heard before.  He has always been an experimental composer, always making the atypical choice in how to use music within a scene.  This has been what has made him such a valuable composer in Hollywood for many years; especially with filmmakers behind big epic productions.  His use of heavy brass, pulse-pounding rhythm, and unconventional beats have made him the king of action movie music.  But, he’s also a highly versatile composer as well having composed for small dramas and romantic comedies in addition to the big epics.  And even in those movies you still see him working on unique rhythms.  Certainly the movies that have spotlighted his work the most have been the big epic films, but what makes his work on those films so memorable is the fact that he was allowed to break the rules of film composition and make the unexpected choice.  This is the guy who had his violists pluck on their strings with razor blade just because it would create a sound unlike anything we’ve heard before.  When you’re making a movie that requires a whole new kind of soundscape for maybe an alien world or a bygone era in time, Hans Zimmer is most often the guy you would want to go to.

Born in West Germany in 1957, Hans was largely a self-taught musician who over time became an expert keyboard player and synthesizer.  When he moved to London as a teenager, he began to fall in with the New Wave band culture , where his use of synth sound became very handy.  He worked with many bands around that time, including the Buggles, and he even can be briefly seen in their music video for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” which of course famously launched MTV a couple years later.  After a couple years working in studio sessions, Hans career path changed when he partnered up with British film composer Stanley Myers.  Myers, who had credits on over 60 films, wanted to combine Zimmer’s modern sounding electronic sound to his more classic style, and the two worked on multiple films together, including Moonlighting (1982) and My Beautiful Laundrette (1984).  After working under Myers’ mentorship, it was time for Zimmer to set off on his own.  His first solo film score was for the thriller Terminal Exposure, but the big break for him would come a year later.  Director Barry Levinson  was looking for a unique sound for his Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman starring drama Rain Man (1988).  Supposedly, Levinson listened to the soundtrack that Hans did for the anti-Aparteid film A World Apart (1987) and like it so much that he sought out Hans personally.  This would result in what would end up being Hans first ever Oscar nomination, and more importantly it opened more doors for him in Hollywood, making him one of the most sought after composers in the business.  In the nearly 40 years since, Hans has earned 12 more Oscar nominations as a composer, including 2 wins.  And he’s still very active, composing not just for film but also for television and even video games.  To show how impactful Hans Zimmer’s music has been, I’ve compiled what I think are his top 10 musical themes.  They of course range from the pulse pounding epic to the surprisingly intimate and comforting, showing that he’s a film composer capable of working in any kind of medium.  So, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Musical Themes from the legendary Hans Zimmer.

10.

“HOMELAND” from SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON (2002)

In addition to the many scores that Hans Zimmer has composed for live action film, he has also been prolific in composing for animation as well.  He famously worked on Disney’s The Lion King (1994), but for the most part, he’s been a Dreamworks guy.  He composed the scores for all four of the studio’s hand drawn animated classics, and then would later be a composer for many of Dreamworks computer animated movies; most notably for the Kung Fu Panda movies.  But one of his best themes for Dreamworks Animation was in the little seen animated Western called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.  The soundtrack for the movie is often derided because of the Bryan Adams pop songs that were shoehorned in, which was the trend in animated movies at the time; a trend that Hans helped to start by the way when he collaborated with Elton John on the songs for The Lion King.  While the Bryan Adams are most hit or miss, Hans score is still top tier, and shows him working at the peak of his talent.  The best melody in the film is the one that opens the movie itself called “Homeland.”  This sweeping overture sets the stage perfectly for the movie, played over sweeping views of natural landscapes, which were beautifully animated in what was the only hand drawn animated film from Dreamworks in the Cinemascope format.  In this piece, we hear Hans Zimmer at his most pastoral, underscoring magnificent vistas with a regal orchestral sweep.  But there still that modern electric sound underneath that to show that Hans is still experimenting with a different kind of rhythm to help make the music sound unique.  Despite the fact that this musical theme was written for the animated medium, it could have just as easily been written for live action two.  There’s just something about the melody that make you get the feeling of a natural world, like it was composed for a national park’s welcome center.  If you can get over the Bryan Adams influence, you can definitely find some really beautiful music in this underrated animated classic, and that’s in large part due to the skills of Hans Zimmer.

9.

“DISCOMBOBULATE” from SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)

For a great example of Hans Zimmer’s experimental method in composing a film score, look no further than this Guy Ritchie directed adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth.  When developing the score for the film, Hans bought an out of tune piano at a flea market for $200, solely because he wanted an instrument that was broken and out of tune to add a quirkiness to the music he was writing.  It’s unorthodox, but it kind of matches the character of Sherlock Holmes himself, especially this version played by Robert Downey, Jr.  The theme “Discombobulate” is the main theme of the movie and the one that opens and closes the film during the titles, and it is a great example of Hans Zimmer at his most playful.  Taking cues from Cockney Victorian English melodies, the theme is aggressive and flashy in an almost parody like way.  That out of tune piano proved to be a wonderful find, because it really sets the tone regarding the criminal underworld that Holmes is about to explore.  You get the sense of this piano having a history, like it came out of some back alley pub deep in the worst neighborhoods in London.  But it’s not just the piano that makes the melody stand out.  The percussion has a very metallic sound to it, like someone is banging on steel pipes, and the cello strings are being plucked rather than strung.  In every part of this theme, Hans is breaking all the rules of orchestral music and that’s what makes it sound so unique.  Holmes himself is someone who solves mysteries by seeing the world in a way that other people can’t, and Hans Zimmer’s score matches that out of normal space vibe perfectly.  It’s a great example of how Hans Zimmer can create a wholly different kind of sound for the music of a movie that also gives the movie more character, mostly by subverting expectations for how the music should sound in the first place.  And that means even going to the extremes of using instruments that are intentionally supposed to sound bad like a broken down piano.

8.

“LEAVING WALLBROOK” from RAIN MAN (1988)

We certainly need to spotlight the turning point moment in Hans Zimmer’s career as a film composer.  Barry Levinson’s Oscar winning drama about a road trip taken by a young business man and his older autistic brother across the country is not the kind of film you would expect to hear African style rhythms as a part of the music score.  But Levinson wanted Hans Zimmer to bring that same kind of sound that he used for the South African set A World Apart to this movie.  Levinson’s reasoning was because of Hoffman’s character’s severe autism, which disconnect him from the rest of the world and leaves him in a world of his own mind.  So Levinson wanted to match that with a score that fells like in his words, “a world music for a world that doesn’t really exist.”  Hans would be just the right person for that assignment, because he could take all of those cultural influences he absorbed from working on a movie like A World Apart.  In the film’s main theme called “Leaving Wallbrook,” there’s definitely an African influence in the the percussion beats, but he also combines it with Peruvian style flutes, and of course his own synth beat underneath it.  In all it makes the music feel like its coming from everywhere in the world, and also from nowhere in particular.  And of course this is all for a movie about a road trip across America.  It’s a prime example of Hans bringing an atypical approach to scoring a film.  It’s something that would define his style over the course of the decades after.  He’s the guy you go to when you want to make the surprising choice in how a movie’s music will sound.  It may not have been as atypical as Vangelis’ music for Chariots of Fire (1981), where that synth score really stuck out compared to it’s time and place in the story.  Oddly enough, Han’s score for Rain Man actually felt like it fit with the story being told.  It proved that Hans was a unique voice in film composition, and of course we would see many more great things to come in the years that followed.

7.

“THE KRAKEN” from PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST (2006)

Of course one of the movie franchises that Hans Zimmer had a strong influence on was the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  But it probably surprises most people that he wasn’t the one who did the music for the first film that launched the series.  Producer Jerry Bruckheimer wanted him to score the first Pirates film, but he was already too deeply in the middle of scoring the movie The Last Samurai (2003).  Instead, Hans offered Bruckheimer one of his proteges, Klaus Badelt, to work on the score though Hans did contribute some uncredited melodies to the film, including the main theme itself.  But after the success of the first Pirates movie, Hans was committed to scoring the sequels that followed.  He would be the sole credited composer for both Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End (2007), contributing some of the franchises most epic and memorable themes.  His best contribution to the scores would probably be this composition written for the mammoth sea monster that hunts after the pirates in the movie.  “The Kraken” theme is a fantastic chaotic piece that really matches the ferocity of the monster itself.  It’s big and orchestral, but Hans also throws in some electric guitar to add a little bit more unpredictability to the music.  The music itself does kind of feel like a monster on the hunt as the piece starts low and then builds to a concussive wall of sound.  The low, pulse beat that Hans opens the piece with sounds very much like a reference to John William’s iconic two beat rhythm from the opening theme of Jaws (1975).  But instead of a shark, Hans is writing music for a giant squid, so when the score finally builds that moment of attack, the music goes wild and hits from multiple directions, similar to how a squid’s tentacles would lash around wildly.  It’s definitely the standout piece in the film Dead Man’s Chest, and perhaps the best thing he wrote for the entire series, except maybe the main theme himself which he was partly the author of.  It’s hard to imagine that Hans Zimmer wasn’t always the composer of these Pirates movies, because his signature style is all over them.  But, once he was fully involved, these movies certainly brought out the best in his talents.

6.

“YOU’RE SO COOL” from TRUE ROMANCE (1993)

Proof that not all of Hans Zimmer’s scores had to be big, epic productions.  Sometimes all he needed was just one instrument.  For this particular piece, he composed a tune for nine marimbas played in unison.  The unique sound of this tune is catchy and joyful, which is a stark contrast to the film that it’s found in.  It’s hard to think that Hans Zimmer wrote this romantic and bubbly tune for a hyper violent and gritty thriller directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino.  But, that’s exactly what the movie called for, because at the center of all the stark violence in the movie, there is this tender and heartfelt love story between two star-crossed misfits played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette.  Amidst all of the violent action, their romance becomes the heartbeat of the movie, and Tony Scott wanted a melody that matched that.  It stands out in stark contrast from the rest of the movie, but that is honestly what Hans Zimmer has always been good at.  In most of his other films, he’s been called upon to write music that added a modern edge to a film, but here he does the opposite.  His romantic theme called “You’re So Cool,” is used to soften the edges of the film, and help it live up to what the title says.  It’s another great example of Hans Zimmer doing the unexpected, only this is a move that is unexpected in contrast to all of the other music he’s written.  One of the reasons why Tony Scott wanted such an upbeat tune in his hyper violent movie was because he viewed the romance between Slater and Arquette’s characters to be like a Fairy Tale.  It’s a bright light in an otherwise dark world, and he trusted Hans to find that in the music as well.  It also shows Hans experimentation in full display, managing to create a unique sounding tune that only required one kind of instrument, which itself is used in a very unexpected way.  Hans is a composer who can definitely go big, but here we see that he’s just as brilliant when he goes small and simple too.

5.

“NO TIME FOR CAUTION” from INTERSTELLAR (2014)

Certainly one of the strongest collaborations that Hans has had with any filmmaker is his time working with Christopher Nolan.  Hans first worked with Nolan on the score for Batman Begins (2005), working alongside James Newton Howard.  They would continue working together on all of Nolan’s films up to Dunkirk (2017), before Hans started getting involved in the Dune series and Nolan started working with Ludwig Goransson (because of Hans’ suggestion by the way).  Through that decade of collaboration, Hans wrote some of his most impressive and epic themes.  One of his most celebrated scores was for Nolan’s space epic Interstellar.   For a movie about exploration in the vastness of space and looking for a new home on alien worlds, Hans was certainly the right guy to score this adventure.  It’s probably the most haunting of musical scores in Hans Zimmer’s body of working, with him using pipe organs as a key instrument in the film, possibly as a nod to Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathrustra” which was famously used in Stanley Kubrick’s own space opera 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  One other thing that also was a continuing theme in Nolan and Zimmer’s collaboration was the idea of time passing.  Zimmer’s scores in Nolan movies always had this pulsing beat to them, like a ticking clock, and that’s certainly found in this piece from Interstellar.  The theme “No Time for Caution” plays during the harrowing docking scene where Matthew McConaughey’s character has to push the space ship to the limits of survivable G-forces in order to match the spin rotation of a damaged and out of control mothership in order to dock.  Hans keeps building that pulse of a score to more harrowing heights in order to match the tension of that scene, and once it resolves we get that release from the pipe organ.  While Hans Zimmer has worked mostly with modern sounds in his scores, this is a great example of him using classical instruments to create music that is quite literally out of this world.  If anything, this is probably Hans at his most harrowing as well, with a music theme that’s all about driving up the tension to an unbelievable level.

4.

“WORM RIDE” from DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

Speaking of the series that Hans left his partnership with Christopher Nolan for, this is another great example of Hans Zimmer using his knowledge of global music to create music for a world that’s never existed.  In this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic, director Denis Villeneuve wanted to have a score that was big and orchestral, but still very modern, fitting the movie’s far distant futuristic setting.  Hans’ musical score for Dune: Part One was certainly great in itself, and it even earned him a long overdue second Oscar win.  But it’s in Part Two where Hans was really let loose to go big and heavy with the orchestrations.  In particular, he created a fantastic piece of music for the pivotal scene when Timothee Chalamet’s Paul Atreides proves his worth by learning to ride a sand worm for the first time.  It’s an epic moment in the movie, with the sand worm being this colossal monstrosity that makes the scene all the more harrowing.  It’s here where the main theme of the series hits it’s apex, and the moment hits with a heavy triumphal note.  Hans Zimmer’s music is just as much a part of the character of this film series as anything else, sounding uniquely of his style, while at the same time still showing the composer trying out new things to make the unexpected choices.  The moment where Paul Atreides takes command of that worm is a crucial moment in the story, and Hans gives it the epic weight that it deserves.  The unsung element in this piece of music is vocalist Loire Cotler, who does the chant at the center of the piece, and can also be heard through much of the rest of the film’s score.  She really gives a haunting  and otherworldly element to the music, making the moment in the movie almost a religious experience.  It’s not the first time that Hans Zimmer has used vocals in his orchestrations, but few are quite as iconic as the one used in the Dune movies.  Thankfully, Hans is once again scoring the upcoming Part Three, so it will be interesting to see what he has left to do in this franchise.  Thus far, it’s been some of his best work in recent years, with this piece from Part Two being a definite highlight.

3.

“STAMPEDE” from THE LION KING (1994)

Hans won his first Academy Award for his one and only Disney Animated film.  The choice in having him score the film was quite a departure for the studio at the time, as most of the other Disney Renaissance films were scored by Alan Menken.  But Hans was exactly the right man for the job, bringing his African influences with him into the orchestration of the film.  One of the most important choices he made in his development of the score was writing it an African vocal choir in mind.  This led him towards working with South African musician Lebo M, who was instrumental in helping to bring an authentic African sound to the movie.  Lebo was the one who would conduct the choir himself and he even provides some of the vocals as well.  His voice is even the first thing you hear in the movie with the iconic sunrise opening and his “Naaaaaaah” chant to kicks off the film.  There are a lot of iconic musical moments throughout the film, but perhaps the one that demonstrates Hans at the peak of his abilities is the music from the pivotal Wildebeest Stampede scene.  The scene shows Hans using all the tools in chest to create this cacophonous musical moment, creating the feeling of a stampede rushing by you with incredible force.  It’s especially effective in the way that it starts off small, with the eerie feeling of danger approaching from a distance.  And then the first waves of that tsunami of sound come crashing in and doesn’t relent.  Lebo M’s choir chanting through it all also gives the moment an extra special boost, acting almost like a Greek chorus lamenting the tragedy that’s unfolding.  All the while, that distinctive electronic sound that defined much of Hans Zimmer’s early film work also can be heard underneath.  While many people throw a lot of praise towards Elton John’s songs from the film, you also can’t deny that Hans Zimmer had the most profound effect on the movie’s emotional core with his unforgettable musical themes, his “Stampede” theme being an especially iconic highlight.  It’s why this music has endured not just as a legacy of the movie itself, but also as something that helped to make The Lion King a huge hit on the stage as well.

2.

“TIME” from INCEPTION (2010)

If there was ever a movie that represented the best out of the collaboration between Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer, it would be Inception.  In creating the music for Nolan’s dreamscape heist movie, Hans in a way went on to influence a whole generation of action movie scores.  It was because of this movie that action films began to have that oppressive “BWAH” sound in their scores.  The reason it was used in Inception was because Hans was creating the feeling of music itself being slowed down as time is experienced differently within dreams.  In particular, Edith Piaf’s rendition of “Non, je ne Regrette rien” is played throughout the film and when played at normal speed in the real world, it becomes this booming ticking clock to the characters within the dream.  It’s a plot device in itself that becomes part of the character of the score itself.  And while the whole movie is full of incredible, pulse-pounding music (especially in the hallway fight scene) it’s the final closing piece of music that shows Hans Zimmer at his absolute best.  In a piece called “Time” we see the characteristic Nolan and Zimmer motif of time ticking away in a clockwork like rhythm, but here Zimmer creates it into this triumphal sounding march.  The film actually plays out the final scene in the film with little to no dialogue with the music instead guiding the moment.  But even as it sounds triumphant, there’s also this uneasy feeling underneath pondering if it is all actually real.  That’s the mystery that Christopher Nolan leaves in the final moments of his film, creating an open-ended question that he never intends to answer; did our heroes escape or are they still stuck in that dream?  The brilliance of that ending is given even more weight by Hans’ music, especially at the end.  Nolan finishes the movie with a shot holding on a spinning top, a symbol that determines if the world is real or a dream.  The top continues to spin, but right before you think it’s about to stop, the movie cuts to black.  Brilliantly, Hans Zimmer brings the music down to almost silence and then throws in a slight sharp sting right before the screen goes black.  Inception represent the best in what Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan could do together, and it still represents a peak in both of their respective careers.

1.

“NOW WE ARE FREE” from GLADIATOR (2000)

Out of all the scores that Hans Zimmer has written throughout his career, the one that feels the most complete in it’s majesty is the one he composed for Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic Gladiator.  The movie was both a throwback to classic Hollywood sword and sandal epics and at the same time a boldly modern reimagining of legends from Ancient Rome.  A lot of what makes Gladiator such a iconic film is undeniably Hans Zimmer’s score.  He pulls out all the stops throughout the film, from the opening battle against the barbarians, to the melancholy of Maximus’ tragic return home to find his family already killed, to the climatic gladiatorial battles in the Coliseum.  But no other piece of music sticks with you more than the closing theme of the movie.  After Maximus (Russell Crowe) himself succumbs to his wound and rejoins his family in Elysium, Hans Zimmer takes over the emotional weight of the movie’s closing moments.  We see Djimon Hounsou’s Juba symbolically burying the figures of Maximus’ wife and son in his own blood spilled on the Coliseum floor, where we tells his fallen friend the titular words of the piece, “Now we are free.”  And the music carries us out of the film and into the credits like the final movement of an opera, which is fitting because the movie we had just watch had an operatic quality to it.  Like many of his other film scores, Hans works in some incredible vocal arrangements into the music, and for this piece he called upon the angelic voice of Lisa Gerrard, who worked closely with Hans on much of the film’s music with her even being credited as a co-composer on the soundtrack.  Lisa’s voice beautifully carries the emotion of the piece, making it sound somber in remembrance of Maximus’ sacrifice, but also triumphant in recalling the way Maximus was able to avenge his fallen family and do what no one else could do which was defy and defeat the tyrannical Emperor Commodous (Joaquin Phoenix) and restore order to Rome.  This particular theme has become a favorite piece of music people have used to remember lost ones in their lives, given how it both mourns a death and celebrates a life purely through music alone.  This represnts more than anything Hans Zimmer’s ability to reach for something truly profound in his music, and that’s what make it (in my opinion) his greatest piece of music from his entire body of work.

Undeniably one of cinema’s greatest composers, Hans Zimmer has left a lasting impact on Hollywood.  One of his greatest lasting legacies has been his ability to craft new kinds of sounds from unlikely places.  Whether it’s using a broken down piano for Sherlock Holmes or basing the motif of your film score off of a slowed down version of an Edith Piaf song in Inception, he is a film composer that definitely thinks outside of the box and refuses to repeat himself.  What really has defined him is the ability he has to create soundscapes for new kinds of worlds.  That’s what has made him so valuable in creating musical scores for epic fantasies, like with the Pirates of the Caribbean and Dune series, because you can always count on him to make the music of it’s own world.  He’s also the kind of composer you can count on to create the unexpected choice, like he did by adding African rhythms to a small road trip drama like Rain Man, or a single instrument love theme to a violent thriller like he did with True Romance.  Despite having been in the industry for over 40 years now, Hans is still not done writing music yet.  He’s still a high in demand film composer, and later on this year we’ll see him continue to build upon his previous work with the highly anticipated Dune: Part Three.  The special thing about Hans’ career is that he takes chances as a composer, and thankfully he’s found the right filmmakers who embrace his experimental way of composing music.  The decade long collaboration he had with Christopher Nolan especially proved to be fruitful, and even though they have taken different trajectories in recent years, there is no doubt that they both recognize that they brought out the best in each other.  It’s quite a journey that this self-taught synth keyboardist from West Germany has been on.  He went from backing up new wave rock bands to creating the soundscapes of the cosmos on the big screen.  And it’s a career far from complete as well.  Hopefully this list has been helpful in spotlighting the impactful and memorable body of work that he has created.  It’s one thing to create a soundtrack for the world we know, but also another to create the music of a world we never knew could be possible.

There probably is no other person in the business of filmmaking that has more control over setting the tone than the one who composes the music.  From the beginning of cinema itself, music has been an integral part of the experience.  Silent pictures always had to have accompanying music, often played live in the theaters themselves either on a piano or a pipe organ, depending on how grand a theater was.  Eventually, Hollywood figured out how to put a synchronized soundtrack on the film itself, and this changed the way music was used to accompany a film even further.  One of the few benefits that Hollywood got out of the wartime period was that many of the great European composers of the time had moved to America to escape the rise of Fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust.  This included legendary maestros like Franz Waxman (Bride of Frankenstein), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Max Steiner (Gone With the Wind).  These artists helped to elevate the artform of composing music for film, and suddenly the most popular orchestral music was no longer being written for the concert halls, but rather for the movie palaces.  These composers helped to raise the bar of music in cinema, and many other great composers would follow in their footsteps.  Future film score composers like Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Maurice Jarre, and Ennio Morricone would continue to define the high standard of musical composition over the years, but perhaps no other film composer has left a bigger mark over the industry than a boy from Long Island named John Williams.  While John Williams certainly had the talent to become a legendary composer, he also had the benefit of becoming friends with Hollywood power players like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  In a career that spanned over 50 years, Williams would define the standard of epic musical scores in the Blockbuster era of Hollywood.  No other film composer has won as many Oscars as him (5 total) nor have received as many nominations.  He is quite simply in a league of his own, and yet he still retains a low profile, choosing to let his music speak for him.  It’s hard to encapsulate what John Williams means for the history of Hollywood as a whole, but with this Top Ten List, I hope to spotlight the individual pieces of music he wrote that have come to define his legacy.  So, here are the Top Ten Musical Themes Composed by John Williams.

10.

“SETTING THE TRAP” from HOME ALONE (1990)

There probably is no stronger example of a composer’s influence on a film than John Williams work on the Chris Columbus holiday comedy Home Alone.  Williams took what was an ambitious but still fairly small scale Christmas movie and made it feel like an epic.  The music of Home Alone is just as iconic as the comedic pratfalls that play out throughout the film, and the two often go hand to hand.  In many cases, a lot of the music in this movie have become standards on Christmas time playlists.  There of course is the slightly ominous opening credits theme as well as the rambunctious theme that plays over the McCallister family’s mad scramble to get to their airplane in time.  But for me the peak of Williams’ work on this film is the scene when Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) rushes home to set traps for the Wet Bandits, who are planning to break in and rob him.  The music of this scene just feels so grand, and it’s a perfect tone setter for the mayhem that is about to follow in the movie’s third act.  Williams also brilliantly keeps it sounding very Christmas-y, with the jingling of the choir bells underscoring the main theme.  In the movie itself, this music has an excellent interlude, as it builds from an actual church choir singing “O Holy Night.”  In the film, when Kevin leaves his pew in the church and begins to run, Williams hits you with that cacophony of a transition from the choir to the score, and it makes that moment feel so grandiose.  Really, nothing about the movie really called for a musical score this ambitious, and yet John Williams over-delivered as usual.  The whole score is beautiful, including the original choir piece, “Somewhere in My Memory,” but it’s the piece called “Setting the Trap” that really shows what John Williams was capable of as a composer; elevating a moment in a movie to iconic status.  It would be something that he would continue to deliver on in every movie he worked on over his multi-decade career.

9.

“CATCH ME IF YOU CAN” from CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002)

It should be noted that John Williams wasn’t just a great composer when it came to big sweeping musical moments.  He could also write subtler pieces as well that were just as brilliant.  The best example of this is the jazzy sounding main theme from the Spielberg thriller Catch Me if You Can.  This theme which plays over the opening credits is a beautiful self contained piece that definitely feels like a throwback to 1960’s Hollywood, which matches the tone of the movie itself perfectly, given that it very much is an ode to the era.  With this, it does feel like Williams returning a bit to his roots as a composer.  Before he was an award winning movie composer, Williams started off his music career as a jazz club pianist.  This was how he paid his way through college while attending UCLA and it eventually led to him getting musical internships in Hollywood that would eventually lead him to where he is now.  With Catch Me if You Can, he finally was able to tap into that past life working in the jazz clubs of LA during the 1950’s and 60’s and put it into one of his own musical scores.  This main theme is a beautiful tone setter for the film, which becomes a fun little cat and mouse game between Leonardo DiCaprio’s chameloen like con artist and Tom Hank’s hardlined government agent.  The musical piece is playful, but with a sense of underlying danger beneath it.  The music also goes perfectly with the animated opening credit sequence (a rarity for a film by Spielberg).  The rest of the musical score is standard stuff for Williams, doing a great job supporting the tone of the film.  But it’s this opening title theme that really stands out and is a great example of John Williams showing his versatility as a composer.  When you first hear this piece in the movie, you know that you’re in for a fun ride.  And it’s also a prime example of a composer never loosing the lessons that he learned in his early years when he was a struggling artist.

8.

“MAIN TITLES” from JAWS (1975)

John Williams had been working around Hollywood for a while before he had met a young rising filmmaker named Steven Spielberg.  In fact, by the time the two had met, Williams already had an Oscar on his shelf for his score adaptation of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971).  But it would be that fateful joining of forces between Spielberg and Williams that would forever change the course of each other’s careers, and it all started with their work on the movie Jaws.  Spielberg tasked Williams with writing the music for his movie about a killer great white shark, and when Williams presented Steven with the first few notes that would become the Jaws theme, the director thought it was a joke at first.  It was just two notes, repeated over and over again, with building tempo.  But this was the brilliance behind what Williams envisioned.  Williams subtle but chilling score is meant to invoke a creature lurking beneath the ocean waves, searching for it’s next victim.  The faster the tempo builds, the closer you know that that the monster is to attacking.  Of course Williams fleshed out his theme to be more than just those two notes, with more and more instruments like horns and strings building to a cacophany of sound by the time the shark attack happens.  But what still sticks in your mind through it all is those original two notes, like a heartbeat that matches ones own thrilling reaction to watching the movie.  Spielberg of course warmed to Williams’s score, and indeed he needed to rely upon it a lot given the struggles his production team had with the mechanical shark they used in the film.  Because the shark only has a scant few moments of screen time, it’s the musical score that does most of the work making it’s presence felt throughout the movie.  John would of course win his second Oscar for this film, and his first for writing an original piece of music.  The Jaws theme is still one of the most instantly recognizable in movie history (which is true for a lot of Williams musical scores) and one of the most imitated as well.  Of course, it’s that original piece that still resonates today, and continues to make us fear going back in the water.

7.

“MAIN TITLE MARCH” from SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when super hero movies were not considered viable at the box office.  The old Hollywood thinking was that no one was interested in seeing comic book characters on the big screen.  That of course would change with the arrival of Richard Donner’s 1978 big screen adaptation of Superman.  This film would become the gold standard for many years of how to do a comic book movie right, with it’s then ground breaking visual effects and earnest performances from the likes of Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder, bringing their comic book characters fully off the page and into real life.  But, perhaps more than anything, it was John Williams’ score that really sold home the belief that a man could fly.  Williams’ score throughout the movie is thrilling and epic in all the best ways, but it’s with his introductory overture that Williams really works his magic.  His “Superman March” is an iconic piece of work, perfectly setting the tone for the adventure that we are about to watch.  It’s Williams at his most operatic as well, really emphasizing that we are about to see something truly beyond belief.  It’s placement in the film couldn’t be more perfect either, playing over the now iconic opening credits, with the names of the actors and crew members flying across the screen through the vastness of space.  Williams’ Superman theme would go on to set the bar high for all the comic book movies to follow, and only a few have ever come close to matching what Williams accomplished with his music here (examples being Danny Elfman’s Batman theme and Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme).  In fact, the music still follows the character of Superman to this day.  When James Gunn made his own Superman movie last year, he passed on having a new theme written for the character, and instead incorporated a new variation of John Williams’ original theme.  That’s when you know you’ve made an iconic piece of music, when a filmmaker has the opportunity to replace your theme with something new, and chooses not to, knowing well that you can’t do better than perfection.

6.

“MAIN THEME” from SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993)

Writing music for a movie with this kind of heavy subject matter was never going to be easy.  Steven Spielberg took on the daunting task of adapting the Thomas Keneally book of the same name that told the story of Oskar Schindler, an war profiteer who managed to save the lives of over a thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust.  For the first time, Hollywood was tackling one of the worst crimes against humanity on the big screen and doing so in a stark and realistic way.  Spielberg, a Jewish American himself, had a lot of weight put on his shoulders to get this story right and fully pay honor to the survivors of this horrific moment in human history.  When it came to having music written for this film, Spielberg put his trust in his old friend John Williams.  Williams has never identified with any religious affiliation himself, but he has collaborated with many artists over the years who were from the Jewish community, including many people who either survived or fled the Holocaust.  One artist that he had gotten to know over the years was violinist Itzhak Perlman, the son of Polish Jews who fled to British Palestine before the German invasion.  Perlman had become world reknowned solo violinist, often playing many classical works along with pieces written within his own ethnic Jewish community.  Williams was looking for inspiration for his musical score for this film, one that would sound like it was representative of the Polish Jews depicted in the film itself, and Perlman’s upbringing would make him  a valuable consultant on William’s orchestrations.  Williams’ score is certainly a melancholy piece, emphasizing the tragedy that befell the Jewish people during the Holocaust, but underneath it, there’s still a stirring of hope, emphasizing the perseverance of the Jewish people, even through the worst suffering imaginable.  As part of the recording of the film’s score, Williams had Itzhak himself perform the violin solos, which are beautifully stirring on their own.  It may be a much less rousing piece of music compared to Williams’ other scores, but his Schindler’s List theme is still a brilliant work of musical composition, offering a profound and fitting tribute to those who were lost and those who managed to survive to tell their stories.

5.

“DUEL OF THE FATES” from STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

Of course John Williams’ most career defining work would be the many amazing musical themes he wrote across the whole Star Wars franchise.  Spanning 9 films and over forty years, John Williams was the man responsible for creating the soundscape of that galaxy far, far away.  So, it may be a little surprising that one of his greatest themes in all those years was in one of the worst film of that franchise.  Suffice to say, The Phantom Menace is a very flawed movie, and one that sharply divides the Star Wars fan community.  But across all the people who love or hate the film, the one consensus that everyone agrees on is that John Williams’ musical score for the film is still amazing.  And one musical track in particular, “Duel of the Fates” is considered to be among the very best pieces in the franchise as a whole.  It’s another example of John Williams over-delivering.  The scene that this piece of music plays under is not exactly one of the most iconic in all of Star Wars.  It accompanies the fight between Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Darth Maul (Ray Park), which is a fine fight scene, but not among the greatest of all time in the series.  And yet John Williams makes this moment feel operatic with his music here.  The opening with the chanting choir particularly establishes this as something grand, and Williams just keeps building the piece to some chilling levels of grandeur.  20th Century Fox certainly knew the power of this piece of music as well, and they put it out individually as a single as a way of building hype for the film and it’s soundtrack.  There was even a promotional music video made for it aired on MTV’s Total Request Live series, showing just how respected John Williams was in the musical community that even the pop music world was paying tribute to him.  The movie may be a let down for some, but John Williams’ musical score certainly lived up to the hype.  It had a companion piece in Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) called “Battle of the Heroes,” but “Duel of the Fates” was still undeniably the highlight of the prequel era of Star Wars, and proof that John Williams still had the magic touch after so many years.

4.

“SLAVE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE” from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984)

If there was a series that John Williams was renowned for creating iconic music for as much as Star Wars, it would be the Indiana Jones series.  Just like the movies themselves, his scores for the Jones movies are incredible throwbacks to old Hollywood, with Williams taking especially heavy inspiration from the work of Max Steiner, who wrote many of the great action scores of the classic era.  While the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), is a great iconic score on it’s own, I feel like it is outdone by the absolute brilliance of the score that came after with the sequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.   From beginning to end, Temple of Doom isn’t just the strongest musical score of the series, but probably one of the most complete scores that Williams has ever written across his entire career.  There is not a single weak track on that entire soundtrack, and many of it’s themes are still among the best things that Williams has ever written.  The best piece of them all is a track called “Slave Children’s Crusade,” which plays over the scene where Indiana Jones helps to save the enslaved children held captive in the mines under the titular Temple of Doom.  Even more so than the iconic “Raider’s March” that acts as Indiana Jones theme music, I think that this is the piece of music that defines what makes the Indiana Jones series as great as it is.  This is simply one of the best musical themes for a fight sequence ever composed.  The way it serves the story in the movie too is quite brilliant, with all the ups and down of the fight being felt within the music.  You also hear little references to other parts of the score depending on what’s going on in the fight itself, including parts of Short Round’s theme, Mola Ram’s theme, and even a little bit of the Raider’s March.  This music also does a great job of building up the mythos of Indiana Jones himself, emphasizing his own presence as a crusader in this moment.  It’s still a chillingly cool moment when you see Harrison Ford’s Indy appear backlit out of the mist in the caves with this music playing underneath.  In a score that’s full of some of John Williams’ best overall work in general, “Slave Children’s Crusade” stands out as something truly special and unmatched.

3.

“FLYING” from E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

Another case of John Williams over-delivering.  Steven Spielberg’s charming coming-of-age tale about a boy befriending an alien from another world would have almost certainly connected well with audiences.  But when you add John Williams to the mix writing the music for the film, you have the makings of an all-time classic.  Williams’ stirring score for the movie is a brilliantly tender musical score that really emphasizes the child like wonder of the adventure that these characters go through in the movie.  This is certainly true with the theme called “Flying.”  Variations of this theme can be heard throughout the whole film, as it is the defining piece of the whole movie, but it hit’s it high point in the scene where E.T. uses his powers to make the bicycle of his friend Elliot (Henry Thomas) fly off the ground.  This is the famous scene where the two fly past the moon in the sky, an image so iconic that it now serves as the logo for Spielberg’s own production company, Amblin’ Pictures.  It’s a pretty grand feat when John Williams can successfully capture the sensation of flying through just music alone.  When you hear the piece hit that crescendo moment where the strings build to the moment of take off and then go into that main theme, it’s just a magical moment.  It’s easy to see why this was one of John Williams Oscar wins (his fourth in fact) and you can’t imagine the movie E.T. without Williams music as a part of the experience.  The “Flying” theme would also be a major part of the epic finale piece that ends the movie, played during the moment when E.T.’s ship closes it’s doors, with him and Elliot possibly seeing each other for the last time ever.  Not only did John Williams create a piece of music that could make us feel in awe as we watched a bicycle fly, but he could also use that same music to make us cry as two friends say goodbye forever.  That’s what makes Williams so special as a composer; that mastery he has in controlling the way we feel while watching a movie.  E.T. certainly wasn’t the only musical score he wrote that could do that, but it may have been the best example of what he could do, and it’s still one of his most iconic pieces.

2.

“WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK” from JURASSIC PARK (1993)

The year of 1993 was trully a marquee year for both Steven Spielberg and John Williams.  If they only had the movie Schindler’s List alone released that year, it still would’ve been a great year for both of them, and indeed Williams won his fifth and to date final Oscar for Schindler’s List, but the duo also had another all time classic come out in the same year.  Jurassic Park indeed is a movie that displays both Spielberg and Williams at their very best, showing just how fruitful their decades long partnership had been.  John Williams music at this point has made us travel to far flung galaxies, made us believe a man can fly, and defined the friendship between a young boy and extra-terrestrial life.  Now, Williams was about to make us gaze and awe and wonder as dinosaurs walk the Earth again.  “Welcome to Jurassic Park” is perhaps John Williams at his most symphonic.  The theme plays under the moment when Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern’s characters spot their first sightings of a dinosaur.  Spielberg brilliantly doesn’t show you what they are seeing at first, instead letting their look of amazement set the moment and then the moment we finally see the dinosaur (a brachiosaurus to be exact), that’s when John Williams’ music kicks in and it makes the scene feel all the more special.  Williams perfectly captures that moment of disbelief, that we’ve seen the impossible become possible, and it’s played with an almost comforting tone.  Of course, in the typical John Williams style, the music keeps building and building towards a crescendo and that’s where the main theme of Jurassic Park hits it’s high point.  Of course, the rest of the movie then shows us how dangerous a place the park can be, but in that first moment of wonder, Williams certainly makes us feel the majesty of what Jurassic Park could be.  It’s like he was trying to reach for something akin to Beethoven’s Pastoral rather than just the kind of music you would typically write for a theme park.  Even Disneyland doesn’t present itself to guests in such a profound way at it’s main gates.  Spielberg and Williams together have given the world some of the greatest music ever written, and Jurassic Park’s main theme perhaps it the greatest proof of their collaborative magic overall.

1.

“MAIN TITLE” from STAR WARS EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE (1977)

Of all the things that have defined John Williams career as a film composer, none stand out more than his work on the Star Wars films.  His pieces from across all the films including the Cantina theme, the “Imperial March,” the Han and Leia love theme, and the aforementioned “Duel of the Fates.”  But none of those would have become classics had John Williams not set the tone perfectly with the very first notes of the score for the first movie.  Fans of Star Wars everywhere remember how iconic those first few moments were when they witnessed this opening for the first time.  First the 20th Century Fox studio logo with the iconic fanfare, and then 10 seconds of silence as the words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” appear on the screen. And then the Star Wars logo flashes instantly on screen with the blare of Williams’ blast of an opening note.  And as the scroll of the prologue text unfolds on screen, Williams’ iconic main theme plays out, perfectly setting the tone for what’s to follow.  It could be said that cinematic empire that is Star Wars was built on the foundation of that crucial opening scene, and John Williams was a critical part of making it work.  For a while, George Lucas was uncertain that his space opera would actually come together.  The shooting off the film was not exactly going smoothly for the still untested young filmmaker, and there were plenty of doubts rumbling through 20th Century Fox at the time that it would turn into a financial disaster.  But, Lucas managed to save his film in the editing room, and a crucial final piece would be having John Williams there to make the film feel grandiose in the final product.  For Williams, he found inspiration in the music of composer Igor Stravinsky, a composer who helped to redefine orchestral music in the 20th century with pieces like The Firebird and The Rite of Spring.  In Stravinsky’s brass heavy musical pieces, he found the kind of soundscape that would fit perfectly in an adventure set across the reach of space and interplanetary battles.  And with that huge blast of an opening note, Williams helps the movie announce itself to the world in a big way.  When AFI put together their list of the Top 25 movie soundtracks of all time, it was a pretty unanimous choice to pick John William’s Star Wars as number one.  Also, it wasn’t the only John Williams score on that list too, which tells you a lot.  Even after all the many brilliant scores he’s written for other movies, I don’t think he’d be insulted if you called him the “Star Wars” guy, because he certainly is proud of the work he’s done in the series as a whole.  It’s a central part of all the concerts he’s conducted over the years, so it shows that he himself holds a special place in his heart for the work he did in those films.

Williams’ career is unparalleled as a film composer.  No other score writer has had the same level of consistent success as he has had.  A lot of that has to do with knowing the right people at the right time, and you can certainly not go wrong with having friends like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas by your side.  But John Williams has the talent to back up his place in the history of film.  Few other composers have written as many iconic pieces of work; the kind of music that you can easily identify within just a couple of notes.  Of course he’s known best for Star Wars, but he’s also the mastermind behind the iconic themes of the Indiana Jones and Harry Potter franchises as well.  After writing the score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), John Williams went into a semi-retirement.  His days of studio work are over, but he’s still open to writing music as special favors for friends, and indeed he has a new score coming out this Summer for the movie Disclosure Day (2026), Steven Spielberg’s new sci-fi thriller, continuing their long time partnership for yet another film.  At the ripe old age of 94 as of this writing, John Williams has more than earned a well deserved retirement, but it’s still nice to know that he still has that creative spark still in him, and that he’s willing to continue to compose new music even in his old age.  We’ve been more than blessed to have had someone of his caliber writing the soundtracks of our lives over these last 50 years.  It should also be noted that he hasn’t just composed for movies alone.  He’s also the guy who wrote the main theme of the Olympic Games that plays on the television broadcasts from NBC.  He also has composed unique pieces solely for orchestral concerts throughout the years, many of which he personally served as conductor for, which is another talent that he has.  There certainly are a lot of other great film composers who have worked throughout movie history, and many who are still leaving their mark on the industry today, and even they will tell you that John Williams is certainly in a class all his own.  Hopefully these picks I made for this list give you a good idea of just how prolific and versatile a composer he was and continues to be.

2025 was definitely a year of an industry in flux.  A lot of the things that seemed like sure things over the last few years didn’t exactly go as planned this year.  Super Hero movie fatigue seems to have really set it, with Marvel especially seeing diminishing returns on their franchise films, despite movies like Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps getting positive critical reception.  We’re also seeing the fact that a movie franchise cannot sustain on just star power alone, as Tom Cruise’s latest and possibly final Mission: Impossible movie struggled at the box office, even after Top Gun: Maverick (2022) broke records only a couple short years ago.  But, as we also saw, areas where movies have failed in the past suddenly showed signs of life again.  Comedy saw an unexpected return with the surprisingly successful relaunch of The Naked Gun series with Liam Neeson.  Also, horror films had perhaps their greatest year ever, led by massive hits like Sinners, Weapons, Final Destinations: Bloodlines, and The Conjuring: Last Rites.  But, it’s a year where uncertainty about the future, especially with regards to the role AI is going to play in it, has cast a cloud over Hollywood.  Couple this with mega-mergers creating less competition and it’s creating a lot of anxiety with creatives across the spectrum of Hollywood.  Some of the movies this year seemed to strangely reflect the mood of the world and the business in their stories and it was interesting to see how storytellers dealt with a world that is rapidly changing.  The mood of the industry certainly started to become a lot more dour, given that the year began with a devastating fire in Los Angeles that left many people, including a lot of movie industry professionals, without a home.  A lot of bad things went down over the last year, and it especially seemed to hit close to home for Hollywood.  And yet, even still, the show must go on and the industry that has helped the world heal through terrible times with their ability to uplift through storytelling is proving to itself why it’s important to keep creating.

Just like every year I will be sharing my picks for the Top Ten Movies of the Year, as well as sharing what I think are the bottom 5 (aka the worst).  I once again bested my number from the previous year and saw a total of 132 films total in a theater setting, which has given me the widest pool possible to make my choices for the list.  Some were easy choices, while a couple proved to be tough choices.  Below are a few of the films that didn’t make my Top Ten, but I still feel are worth recommending, in alphabetical order:  28 Years Later, A House of Dynamite, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Black Bag, Blue Moon, Die My Love, Eephus, Freaky Tales, Hamnet, It Was Just an Accident, Kpop Demon Hunters, The Long Walk, Marty Supreme, Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning, The Naked Gun, The Phoenician Scheme, Sentimental Value, Thunderbolts*, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Warfare, and Zootopia 2.  All very good movies worth checking out, but the Top Ten I’ve selected below are the ones that struck a cord with me the most.  So, with all that said, let’s dive into my picks for the Top Ten Movies of 2025.

10.

FRANKENSTEIN

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

You’ve got to hand it to Guillermo Del Toro; the man never misses when it comes to creating a lavish visual feast for the eyes.  But, here he managed to undertake a particularly difficult challenge, which was to bring something fresh and new to one of the most often retold stories in cinema.  We have seen so many filmmakers bring their own voice to the classic story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein over the years, dating back to the early days of cinema with James Whale’s 1931 original starring Boris Karloff; a movie that Del Toro cites as one of the films that inspired him to become a filmmaker.  So, how was Del Toro going to tell this 200 year old story differently than everyone else?  It turns out his method was to go all the way back to the beginning and bring to life Shelley’s original text, with his own sense of style of course.  For the first time, we actually get the story the way Mary Shelley had written it, with the original novel split into two parts, one telling the story from the point of view of Victor Frankenstein, and the other from the view of the Creature he created.  The duality of these two stories told together particularly brings out the overall theme of Shelley’s novel much better, talking about the nature of creation itself and in particular the role me must take in the nurturing that which create.  This movie was a passion project for Del Toro for many years, and it shows.  It has all of his trademark gothic style, much of it striking, but it’s all in service of a compelling story about these two characters.  Oscar Isaac is of course brilliant as Victor, but the movie really belongs to Jacob Elordi’s remarkably soulful performance as the Creature, creating one of the most interesting versions of this iconic character we’ve ever seen on the big screen.  The only thing that’s keeping this movie from being higher than 10 is the fact that it does feel a bit too long and indulgent at times.  But Guillermo’s incredible eye for design and texture, and the standout performances from Isaac and Elordi, help to elevate the film past it’s shortcomings, and the movie is without a doubt the most visually stunning accomplishment of the year.

9.

SOVEREIGN

Directed by Christian Swegal

Moving to something on the grittier end of the scale, writer/director Christian Swegal created a harrowing portrait of extremism in America with a few of the year’s most poignant performances from some unlikely players.  The movie tells the story of a young man, played by Jacob Tremblay, who is caught up in the actions of his extremist father, played by an incredible Nick Offerman, who is a leader in the Sovereign Citizen movement in America.  Their journey together, which is a harrowing look at the effect intergenerational trauma has on male adolescence, leads them down some very dark roads and towards a fateful confrontation with the law, personified by a local sheriff played by Denis Quaid.  The great thing that Swegal does with his story is to not throw judgment on his characters from any side.  The movie of course doesn’t condone the actions of Offerman’s character, nor supports his movement.  But the movie still treats him like a human being, and shows how the actions he takes are a part of a bigger problem systemic in American society, namely the toxic masculine social pressure that is pushing young and old men into radicalization.  Tremblay’s character in particular perfectly demonstrates the way that extremism is tearing people like him apart and denying them a happy and fulfilling life.  The film does a great job of delivering that message, while at the same time telling a compelling story that feels true to the nature of rural American life.  And it is really neat seeing an actor like Nick Offerman, whose mostly been known as a comedic performer, showing off his dramatic chops here, delivering one of the year’s most grounded and emotionally raw performances.  Even though the movie hits some dark places, it is a story that absolutely needed to be told in this current social climate, and given the fact that actors from opposite ends of the political spectrum like Offerman and Quaid felt that it was a story worth telling gives me hope that we can all find some common ground.

8.

WEAPONS

Directed by Zach Cregger

One of the surprise hits of the Summer, this horror film had one of the year’s best mystery box storylines with a killer (literally) payoff.  Cregger got some strong notice for his 2022 film Barbarian, but Weapons really illustrated his ability to tell a story in a truly unconventional way.  It’s a horror movie that doesn’t leave anything up to the imagination, and yet still manages to leave us surprised with things we never expected.  I don’t want to spoil much of what happens in the movie, since the twists and turns are part of what makes the experience so fun.  But, I will say that it makes great use of non-linear storytelling; breaking up the story between multiple point of view characters, and allowing the story to piece together as it unfolds with each new character.  The movie even manages to darkly comic at times, with some of the best laughs you may likely have watching a movie this year.  Cregger certainly had to have been mapping out this story and it’s many different layers for years, because it all remarkably comes together in the end, with perhaps the year’s greatest and most cathartic ending scene.  The film does have some great performances too, particularly from Julia Garner and Josh Brolin, and also from a great debut performance from young actor Cary Christopher.  But of course it’s veteran actress Amy Madigan who is getting the most attention for her villainous role in the film, which is all well deserved.  It’s a movie like this that is making a lot of people believe that we are currently in a Golden Era for horror filmmaking.  A lot of that is because audiences are choosing to flock to movies that feel original and unlike anything we have ever seen, and currently the freshest and most original stuff is coming out of the horror genre these days, including Weapons.  If it weren’t for another entry you’ll see on this list later, I would say that Weapons was easily the best horror film of the year, but even as a runner up it is already a film that I can see being a classic for many years to come.

7.

TWINLESS

Directed by James Sweeney

Without a doubt the year’s most original comedy.  This sophomore feature film from writer, director and co-star James Sweeney tells a richly funny story about male companionship built out of loss that also includes some unexpected turns.  Two men meet at a support group for twins who have lost their twin brother or sister, and they become fast friends through their shared grief.  But, of course, not all is as it seems, as one has ulterior motives for creating this friendship.  Sweeny has a lot to balance in this story with regards to tone, particularly with his own character who could have really come across as unlikable if handled poorly in the story.  But, he manages to carry the movie through with a lot of creative ideas, and his performance perfectly captures the underlying angst that would drive someone like him to take such drastic measures.  But as strong as Sweeney’s performance is, the biggest standout in this film is Dylan O’Brien, giving a truly raw and emotional performance as this tragic and fragile young man who lost his gay twin brother (who O’Brien also plays in a flashback).  Dylan O’Brien is an actor who is really starting to come into his own as a performer, and Twinless is his best work yet.  It’s impressive to see him play two twin brothers with very divergent personalities (one confidently gay and the other uncomfortably straight), but it’s also astounding to see him really give the surviving brother such a soulful presence, especially when that grief bubbles up to the top.  Sweeney makes great use of his co-star’s truly Awards level performance, and does an excellent job of telling a story about a lot of things all at once; about grief, about how twins interact, about being a gay millennial, and so much more.  And he manages to make it all thoroughly funny and clever as well, showing that he’s a comedic voice worth following in the years to come.

6.

SUPERMAN

Directed by James Gunn

DC Comics struggled to define itself in the Snyderverse years when they were in direct competition with the MCU.  With the DCEU finally put to rest, it was time to start anew, and it called for a movie that would set the right tone for what they planned to do in the future.  James Gunn, who had already found success at Marvel with his Guardians of the Galaxy series, would be the man who was now calling the shots and it was up to him to take the first step in DC’s new era.   Naturally, he would choose to launch the new DCU with it’s most iconic character, the “man of steel” himself, Superman.  But, bringing the last son of Krypton faithfully to the big screen has been a challenge over the years.  Christopher Reeve’s pitch perfect performance in the original Richard Donner classic has just cast too much of a shadow.  Brandon Routh and Henry Cavill gave it their best shots, but the movies they were featured in just never really got the character and what he represents right.  But James Gunn managed to figure it out.  With the ideal casting of David Corenswet as Superman, Gunn and company managed to bring the character back to what he truly was meant to be in the first place, not just as a guy who punches really hard but also as a guy who actually cares about being good.  Gone is the Christ-allegory of the Snyder films and in it’s place is a Superman who is relatable and sympathetic, and likes punk rock.  Corenswet is easily the best to wear the cape since Reeve, and he puts his own unique stamp on the character, making him both funny and sincere in that typical James Gunn fashion.  We also get Nicholas Hoult creating the greatest version of Lex Luthor ever put on screen, finally bringing to life the truly menacing and loathsome nature of the character from the comic book page.  And as with all other James Gunn projects, it is the weird and obscure outsider characters that really shine, especially Edi Gathegi who immediately turned Mr. Terrific into a fan favorite.  It was a smart choice on James Gunn’s part to build the foundation of this new cinematic universe on the shoulders of it’s most famous but often mishandled character.  And it brings to DC something it has been deeply lacking for a long time, which is a lot of heart.  Easily the best blockbuster film of the year, and hopefully a good sign of things to come from DC Films under the guidance of James Gunn.

5.

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

Directed by Mona Fastvold

It’s surprising to think that the year’s best screen musical wasn’t in the land of Oz, but rather was set in the backdrop of the American Revolution.  Last year my pick for the movie of the year was The Brutalist (2024), directed by Brady Corbet.  He co-wrote the movie with his wife Mona Fastvold, who herself is also an accomplished filmmaker.  Right on the heels of their Oscar-winning success with The Brutalist, the husband and wife team of filmmakers got funding for another one of the scripts they co-wrote; this one about the founder of the “Shaking Quakers” religious movement that rose to prominence in revolution era America.  This time, it would be Mona who would call the shots behind the camera, and she gets to show off her own impressive vision with this lavishly crafted movie.  The movie is hauntingly beautiful, but it also is an incredible exercise in staging.  The film may not have the traditional characteristics of a musical; all the musical performances are portrayed as natural, grounded moments in reality.  But Mona Fastvold allows the camera to capture some incredible moments of movement around all of these people whose expression of worship is through dance and song.  And the songs are performed in full, so you can still say it’s a musical in that sense.  The standout of course is Amanda Seyfried as the titular Ann Lee.  She is no stranger to singing on screen, having appeared in traditional musicals like Mamma Mia (2008) and Les Misérables (2012), but this is a very different kind of musical performance, and she delivers an incredible, raw portrayal of this real life religious leader while at the same time showing off those impressive pipes.  She gives perhaps the most multifaceted performance of the year for any actress, and it’s great to see her emerge as a performer capable of this style of acting.  The film is also incredibly well crafted, effectively bringing us back into that time period, and doing so on a limited budget, similar to what we saw with The Brutalist.  As a team, both Corbet and Fastvold are on a roll, and it’s great to see them both reminding us all of what epic filmmaking can be.

4.

NO OTHER CHOICE

Directed by Park Chan-wook

Korean cinema has really taken the world by storm in the last several years, and one of the filmmakers who has been instrumental in making that possible is Park Chan-wook.  He first made his name known around the world with his ground-breaking Oldboy (2003), and since then he’s continued to create a steady stream of iconoclastic, genre-bending masterpieces, both in Korea and also in western cinema as well.  His newest film, No Other Choice is an especially poignant film that feels especially prescient with today’s current events.  The story involves a man who must find work after being let go from his job of over 20 years.  But, in order to get his desired job, he must eliminate the competition of equally qualified men who could beat him to it.  The movie is the darkest of dark comedies, as the main character bungles his way through not very well thought out assassination attempts.  And Park Chan-wook is not afraid of taking this story down some dark paths, even while pointing out how ridiculous the whole plan is.  And as we see in the film, it’s for a prize that is not all that deserving of all the effort and may not even be a permanent solution to the main character’s problems.  That’s the brilliance of Park Chan-wook’s satire, showing how our hyper-capitalistic society is pushing those in the middle class to take on such dehumanizing efforts just in order to hold onto what little that they have.  It definitely feels very akin to the film Parasite (2019), made by Park’s friend and frequent collaborator Bong Jong-ho, and No Other Choice would make a great double feature with that film.  The movie also has a great standout performance from Squid Game alum Lee Byung-hun, who does a great job of balancing the humor of his character’s predicament with a very real portrayal of man panicking about his future.  Another accomplished achievement from one of the most unique filmmakers of world cinema.

3.

BUGONIA

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

I don’t think I have ever turned around on a filmmaker as much as I have with Yorgos Lanthimos.  I first became aware of him after watching a movie that I deeply despised called The Lobster (2015).  But since then, he has made some of my favorite movies of the last decade.  Two things have made this possible.  One is he stopped writing his own movies and instead directed screenplays from other writers.  And secondly, he started working with Emma Stone, who has become his muse in the last decade.  The duo are now on their fourth collaboration together, after The Favourite (2018), Poor Things (2023), and Kinds of Kindness (2024), and remarkably they have struck gold again.  I was worried about this new film Bugonia because Yorgos wasn’t working with the same writer of the other two films that I loved, Favorite and Poor Things.  Instead of Tony McNamara, this film is written by Will Tracy, who also recently wrote the thriller The Menu (2022).  Thankfully, Tracy’s script is just as twisted and unexpected as McNamara’s, and perfectly fits with Lanthimos’ oddball style.  The movie is a simple but intriguing character study that explores the twisted world of unchecked conspiracy theory delusions.  Jesse Plemons, whose already built a impressive career up to now, gives perhaps his best performance to date as a conspiracy nut who kidnaps a pharmaceutical company CEO (played perfectly by Emma Stone), believing that she is an alien sent to conquer the world.  Stone and Plemons are electrifying in their performances, and the movie is a deranged and hilarious delight while we watch these two spar off each other, while things get increasingly more off the wall.  Yorgos takes some pretty hefty swings with this movie, especially in it’s finale, but it all feels in line with the demented world that these characters live in.  And the cat and mouse game that evolves over the course of the movie also helps to make it thrilling to see unfold.  Again, I’m happy to have come around on Yorgos Lanthimos as a filmmaker because he is really one of the most daring storytellers out there right now, and I am anxious to see what he’s going to do next.

2.

SINNERS

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Ryan Coogler has been one of the most fortunate filmmakers to have emerged in his still young career.  His debut, Fruitvale Station (2013) helped to bring him to the Rocky franchise, which he delivered a phenomenal reboot to the long lasting series with the movie Creed (2015).  He then followed that up with a move over to Marvel where he soon set records with his adaptation of Black Panther (2018).  While working on the second Black Panther film, he was also pitching his idea for a vampire movie set in the Deep South during the Great Depression.  A lot of studios passed on the idea, until Warner Brothers gave it the greenlight.  And with it, not only did Ryan Coogler show that he was more than just another franchise filmmaker; he was a auteur capable of even wowing some of the greats.  Sinners is Ryan Coogler really showing us what he’s capable of as a filmmaker, which is something given the resume he has had already.  The film is a harrowing portrayal of the Deep South under Jim Crow that also is a celebration of black culture not just of it’s time but throughout all of history, and it even manages to find a way to bring vampires into the mix.  It’s a combination of elements that shouldn’t work, and yet Coogler masterfully ties it all together into an unforgettable experience.  It’s also great to see him playing around with the mechanics of cinema as well.  This is very much a big screen spectacle, utilizing two different large film formats in the process; the extremely wide Ultra Panavision 70 and the enormous 15 perf IMAX 70.  Both make this a movie that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.  One particular scene in the movie, where the central night club location is captured in a breathtaking oner that moves throughout the set and includes musicians and dancers from multiple eras, is perhaps the single most impressive cinematic moment of the year; a scene that even left Christopher Nolan impressed.  The movie also has Coogler’s longtime friend and frequent leading man Michael B. Jordan delivering his best performance yet as the Smoke Stack Twins.  Coogler has delivered his greatest cinematic effort yet with Sinners, and showed us that he is indeed one of the best filmmakers working right now.

And my choice for the Best Movie of 2025 is…

1.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

There is really no other filmmaker that tells stories quite like Paul Thomas Anderson.  One Battle After Another is his most expensive movie to date, with a budget north of $100 million, but he doesn’t put any of that money to waste.  This is an incredible feat of filmmaking that keeps on surprising the further it goes.  It’s also a film that feels very prescient to out point in time, with spirited revolutionaries pushing back against authoritarian regimes.  But Anderson doesn’t just tell his story in any conventional way.  The fascist villains of his story are as absurd as they can be, especially when you have a white supremacist organization of elites that call themselves the Christmas Adventurers Club.  It’s that sly bit of satirical edge that makes this a distinctively P. T. Anderson story.  But even with all of the weirdness going on in the world, there is this poignant story at it’s heart about a father who will go through hell and back just to bring his child safely home.  The movie manages to become transcendent thanks to the performances of Chase Infiniti as the girl caught up in all the madness of the world around her, and Leonardo DiCaprio as the long out of practice revolutionary who has devoted himself to being her father.  Infiniti really shines in her big screen debut, making her character Willa this one pure thing in a crazy backward world.  And DiCaprio gives yet another brilliant performance, and perhaps one of his funniest as well.  His whole bit arguing with the customer service rep of their secret revolutionary network is probably the funniest thing you’ll see all year.  Sean Penn also delivers a knockout performance as the villainous Col. Lockjaw, which can also be side-splittingly hilarious.  And for the second straight year, a movie shot in the Vistavision format tops my list for the year, showing how well that long dormant format has come back into fashion in Hollywood circles.  Anderson uses the format in particularly spectacular fashion with the climatic chase scene at the end; one of my favorite screen experiences of the year.  It’s great to see a filmmaker with an already impressive body of work like Anderson hit a home run once again and even surprisingly exceed expectations.

So with having gone through all the best that the year had to offer, it’s time to quickly run through the very worst movies that I had to sit through in the last year.  I usually try to avoid watching movies that I know are going to be bad when I go to the movies, but there are some that either peaked my curiosity with regards to how bad they would be, or ended up sneaking up on me.  So, let’s take a look at my choices for the Bottom Five Movies of 2025:

5.  JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH – Perhaps there was a thought that moving away from the increasingly bad storyline of the last couple Jurassic World movies that centered around stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard would be a good thing.  Boy was I wrong, as the movie just got even dumber.  Sadly, good actors like Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are wasted trying to bring new life into this franchise that clearly has run out of new ideas.  And to make it even worse, the movie clearly tries to rip off scenes wholesale from the other films in the franchise just to earn some nostalgia points.  The shameless use of John Williams’s iconic score to elevate a scene that ultimately means nothing felt especially insulting.  Please just lay this franchise to rest so that it doesn’t disgrace the memory of the original classic anymore.  Sadly, given how much this movie made again at the box office, we’re likely going to go back to Jurassic Park again soon for even more nostalgia baiting.

4. THE SMASHING MACHINE –  Mark this as my Oscar bait that missed the mark for me this year.  The Safdie Brothers team that delivered one of the most remarkable thrillers of the last decade with the Adam Sandler starring Uncut Gems (2019) split up in the six years since, with both pursuing their own solo directorial efforts.  Of the two brothers, Josh Safdie was the one who actually created a movie that felt like it belonged in the same category with Uncut Gems; Marty Supreme, starring Timothee Chalamet.  The other brother, Benny Safdie (who has also been making his mark as an actor) made a different kind of movie; a biopic about pioneering MMA fighter Mark Kerr, starring Dwayne Johnson.  Unfortunately, it became the kind of biopic that I don’t like, which is all about the transformation of the actor, and offering no actual insight into the actual subject himself.  I also found it to be a bit self-indulgent and emotionally manipulative as well.  In the end, it just ringed hollow, which is too bad given the talent in front and behind the camera.  Can Benny Safdie deliver as a solo filmmaker? Of course, but this movie was not the one to convince me of that.  And I don’t quite know if it was him, or Dwayne Johnson’s influence that ended up making the movie not work.  Credit Dwayne Johnson for trying to be more of a dramatic actor.  I feel like we’re going to actually get a better realization of that when his upcoming Scorsese film premieres.

3. THE ELECTRIC STATE – Probably the year’s most pointlessly bloated and wasteful cinematic spectacle, and it didn’t even play on the big screen.  This movie is one of the brightest examples of why Netflix’s business model doesn’t make much sense, since they spent $300 million on this Russo Brothers directed fiasco, more than most blockbusters that still play in theaters, and they just let it run unceremoniously on their platform where it quickly got buried by the algorithm.  Maybe they knew this thing was a turkey a long time ago, and their reluctance to screen it in theaters was to spare them the embarrassment of flopping at the box office.  Regardless, it’s perhaps the clearest example of wasteful spending from Netflix.  Starring Chris Pratt and Netflix “golden girl” Millie Bobby Brown, this movie is ugly and unimaginative, and certianly a failed attempt at world-building.  Given that this movie is the one that is preceding the Russo Brother’s return to Marvel, where they are directing the massive new Avengers films Doomsday (2026) and Secret Wars (2027), doesn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence.  It’s also another reason to worry about the acquisition of Warner Brothers that Netflix is attempting, given that they waste so much money on movies like these and just let it be forgotten in the glut of streaming options. Hopefully they learn the right things from Warner Brothers, and that Warner Brothers doesn’t take on the worst of Netflix.

2.  ELLA MCCAY – It’s sad when you see one of the great veterans of cinema try to make a return to filmmaking in their twilight years after many years out of practice and just show us how out of touch they are.  Last year, we saw Francis Ford Coppola fall flat on his face with his long in the making flop Megalopolis (2024).  This year, 85 year old James L. Brooks makes his first film in 15 years, and suffered the same embarrassing fate.  At least with Coppola, Megalopolis turned into a fascinating failure of a movie.  I can’t say the same about Brook’s Ella McCay.  There is nothing that works about the film, not even on the WTF kind of way that Megalopolis did.  Brooks, who once crafted some of the smartest screenplays in the world like Broadcast News (1987) or As Good as it Gets (1997), just lays on nothing but schmaltz and self-important non-sense on this would be political satire.  None of the characters talk or act like real people, which would have worked if this was a more heightened world, but Brooks just makes this world as bland as possible, while also dragging some really talented people into this mess, including working with his Broadcast News star Albert Brooks again.  Just ignore Brooks’ late career attempt at recapturing the magic and just stick with the classics.

And the Worst Movie of 2025 is…

1. LOVE HURTS – It wasn’t a particularly strong year for John Wick style action movies.  Two franchise films like Wick spinoff Ballerina and the sequel Nobody 2 failed to live up to the success of their predecessors.  But at least those movies had some creative moments that stood out.  Nothing like that can be said about the movie Love Hurts, which not only was an action movie that lacked any substance at all, but it even made me start to get bored with the whole John Wick style action beats as well.  This should’ve been an easy sell.  The movie stars Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan, who himself at one time was a stunt coordinator before he decided to make a come back into acting.  You have a star who is naturally charismatic and is a capable stunt fighter as well, and yet the movie doesn’t capitalize on any of that.  Quan’s character is a hollow void of character cliches and the movie’s fight choreography is so poorly shot that none of it ever looks impressive.  Not only that, but the movie also wastes the talents of another Oscar winner, Ariana DeBose, here trying to be a sort of femme fatale figure from the main character’s shady past.  The story is insultingly dumb, and it wasted so much potential.  I really hope that the John Wick formula is not fully played out, because the Wick movies really did prove that action movies could be fun again.  Hopefully, the Wick franchise is saving their A-game for the next chapter, because these spinoffs and rip offs are starting to make the formula fall apart.

And there you have my choices for the Best and Worst of 2025.  It was a year of change and anxiety for the industry, but there was still good entertainment in there as well.  Though not much of it ended up on my best of the year list, I actually thought we had one of the most consistently strong Summer seasons this year, with most of the films from week to week actually getting good reviews from audiences and critics; the only rotten score going to Jurassic World: Rebirth in fact.  But the ones who really need some help are the movie theaters.  2025 was supposed to be a big recovery year, but sadly that recovery didn’t manifest the way people hoped it would.  Only two Hollywood productions managed to cross the billion dollar mark at the box office (Disney’s Lilo and Stitch remake and Zootopia 2) last year with maybe a third (Avatar: Fire and Ash), which is the best since the pandemic, but still down from pre-pandemic levels.  Hollywood and the movie theater chains are going to need some heavy hitters in the next year.  We will be getting Christopher Nolan’s ambitious adaptation of The Odyssey next summer, a movie so hotly anticipated that it managed to sell out IMAX screens a year ahead of release.  We’re also getting Denis Villeneuve’s next chapter in the Dune series, another sci-fi blockbuster from Steven Spielberg, a Tom Cruise/ Alejandro G. Iñárritu collaboration, Toy Story 5, another Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, and we’re going to close out the year of 2026 with Avengers: Doomsday.  Can the next year turn things around?  We’ll have to wait and see and hope for the best.  Things in our world are changing rapidly and not always for the better.  Let’s hope that movie theaters, which have already had to suffer through the pandemic and strikes, don’t have to deal with yet another disruption.  Movies on the big screen is still a cherished past time and my hope is that this year shows us a lot more reasons why we should still keep going to the movies.  So, have a great 2026 and let’s hope that better days are ahead.

One of the most popular icons of this Halloween season is the Witch.  Of course, we all have our ideas of what a witch looks like; pointy hat, flying around on a broom, usually accompanied by a pet cat and brewing spells around a cauldron.  But, as pop culture has shown, witches aren’t all typical of that familiar image.  Witchcraft can be by just about anyone who knows the spells to cast.  We’ve seen witches in movies and television that look like they’ve stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting and give the appearance of an ordinary life.  There are also many examples of good witches that have been portrayed in media.  The Wizarding World of Harry Potter for example is a story all about young witches and wizards learning to hone their craft for noble purposes.  And while it never explicitly states it in the book or the movie, it can be argued that Mary Poppins is a witch; of course using her command of magic for the goodwill of others.  But, when we think of witches in the movies, the ones who stand out are the wicked kind.  They are the kind of witches that live up to the scary image that we commonly refer to around Halloween time.  And they aren’t all the ugly, wart faced crones that we commonly see as the archetypes.  Sometimes bad witches are stunningly beautiful, using their beauty as a weapon in catching their prey.  For this Top Ten List, I’m taking a look at some of the most noteworthy movie witches that stand as the most wicked ever put on the silver screen.  Of course, each one of these entries has to be undeniably evil within their own stories; so no misunderstood outcast witches or good witches.  These represent the worst of the worst, and in turn, they are among the most iconic.  So, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Wickedest Witches of them all.

10.

THE SANDERSON SISTERS from HOCUS POCUS (1993)

Played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy

The trio from this Halloween movie favorite certainly fit the bill of everything we expect out of a portrayal of witches.  But what makes these characters stand out is the campiness of their characterizations.  This Disney made comedy definitely makes the Sandersons very cartoonish caricatures of the classic witch aesthetic.  But it’s the actors performing the parts that really helps to make them memorable.  Bette Midler, a noteworthy performer known for her musical talents on the stage and screen, hams it up the most as Winifred, the de facto leader of the group.  It’s a testament to Midler’s acting chops that she manages to make the caricature work, especially with those chipmunk like buck teeth, and still find a way to make Winifred menacing within the story.  She’s also balanced well by Sarah Jessica Parker’s sultry portrayal of Sarah Sanderson and Kathy Najimy’s bumbling Mary Sanderson.  The Three Stooges come to mind as inspirations for the character dynamic between the sisters.  And while the movie itself is a mixed bag, never really being as funny nor as scary as it wants to be, the Sandersons are easily the highlight of the movie, and the element that indeed has helped to turn Hocus Pocus into a perennial favorite every Halloween.  And of course, given that Bette Midler is in the starring role, there has to be a musical number to show off her musical theater skills.  In this case, it’s a cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” which the movie puts a disco night club spin on.  When it comes to the Sisters, this movie definitely puts a fun spin on being Wicked.

9.

MOTHER HELENA MARKOS from SUSPIRIA (1977)

Played by Lela Svasta

One of the most surreal depictions of witchcraft on the big screen is found in Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria.  The story revolves around an American dancer named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) coming to Germany to study at a prestigious ballet academy, only to find that the academy is a front for a coven of witches who feed off of the beauty and youth of their students.  At the center of the coven is a mysterious benefactor named Mother Markos, someone who the ladies at the school never see in person, and yet her dark presence is felt everywhere.  Markos is a great example of portraying the specter of witchcraft without letting us see her fully in person.  The spells she casts present to us the evil presence she holds over the academy, and that in it’s own way makes her scarier than just seeing the old crone that she would have normally been presented as.  The 2018 Luca Guadagnino directed remake does show us Mother Markos in it’s final act, and she’s portrayed as a grotesque, monstrous figure (played by Tilda Swinton under a ton of make-up).  The portrayal of the character is much more effective in Argento’s original film, with her being more of a specter than an actual physical presence.  The movie gets away with so much with just the littlest hints of evil lurking around.  An image of two disembodied eyes in the darkest is an especially unnerving moment in the movie.  We do eventually get the briefest of looks of her when Suzy manages to stab her in the neck while she has been sneaking around while invisible.  Lela Svasta, who was not a professional actress, does fit the imagined appearance of what Mother Markos would look like, and while she only gets a second of screen time, it’s enough to embody this mysterious figure that we’ve come to fear throughout the movie.  The whole coven of witches in the movie are terrifying enough, but by being the most enigmatic of them all, Mother Markos stands out as the scariest of the whole movie.

8.

MINNIE CASTEVET from ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)

Played by Ruth Gordon

One of the prime examples of going against the stereotypical image of a wicked witch.  From the moment she first appears in Roman Polanski’s eerie thriller, Minnie Castevet comes across as disarming and a somewhat sweet old lady from across the hall.  Neighborly and attentive, she offers help to make Mia Farrow’s Rosemary time during pregnancy as comfortable as possible, which makes her seem like a kind matronly figure.  But, it’s only during the course of the film that we learn that Minnie’s true aim is to help Rosemary give birth to what will ultimately be the Anti-Christ.  All those kind gestures were in their own way subtle works of witchcraft in the service of her true master, Satan.  A glass of milk here, a piece of cake there.  It’s only after Rosemary pieces together all the peculiar things that have been happening around her that we ultimately see that Minnie this whole time was a diabolical witch.  And not just her, but everyone else in the apartment building; all part of a cabal of Satanists intent on bringing forth the Anti-Christ.  What is great about Ruth Gordon’s performance is that her character never changes, even after the truth of her intentions is revealed.  She plays Minnie as this charming, batty old lady who has this charmingly silly way about her.  Once she is revealed to be the witch that she is, she still acts like the disarming, sweet old lady that she was before, only now it comes off as more menacing that we know the truth of who she is.  Gordon was a Hollywood veteran who surprisingly got her start as a writer before going into acting.  She uses her witty bravado well in creating the character, and her performance ended up earning her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year.  There are a lot of movie witches that certainly stand out as scary from the get go, but what makes Minnie Castavet so memorable is that deception in her character.  Like Rosemary, we are lulled into feeling safe around such a colorful and seemingly sweet person like Minnie, but it ultimately makes the reveal all the more terrifying when we realize all that was in the service of something truly demonic.

7.

MISS ERNST, THE GRAND HIGH WITCH from THE WITCHES (1990)

Played by Angelica Huston

An actress like Angelica Huston definitely seems at home playing gothic characters.  She of course famously played Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1991) only a year after playing a terrifying witch in this adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel of the same name.  She’s also an actress not afraid to disappear under a ton of make-up.  That’s what makes her performance in this movie so special.  We get to see her excel in both sides of the performance, in her human disguise of course, which certainly seems like a dress rehearsal for her role as Morticia, as well as her full blown appearance as the Grand High Witch.  The movie involves a boy stumbling upon a Witch convention at a hotel which leads to him being turned into a mouse which the witches then intend to eat him as.  The movie is exceptional in it’s use of practical effects, all done by the talented artists at the Jim Henson Company, and that is especially true about the transformation that Angelica Huston goes through to become the Grand High Witch in her truest form.  Her witch makeup is the most extreme of all in the entire movie, with a gigantic hooked nose and wrinkly skin all over.  The fact that Ms. Huston was still able to give a wildly expressive performance under all that make-up is especially impressive.  But when she’s in her more beautiful disguise, she also manages to deliver a menacing presence.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this role helped to make her the easy front-runner for that Morticia part in The Addams Family, as the characters have a very similar look to them; though of course, Morticia is the far less evil of the two.  And as a portrayal of this character in particular, she is far better than that nightmare inducing, CGI enhanced version that Anne Hathaway played in the Robert Zemekis directed remake from 2020.  This movie in particular is a clear example of why practical effects are better in bringing a fanciful story like this to life, as well as having an actress willing to fully disappear under some really imaginative make-up.

6.

URSULA from THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

Voiced by Pat Carroll

Disney has had it’s fair share of memorable witches, given that so many of their movies have been adapted from classic fairy tales.  Their first film had one of the most iconic witches ever put on screen when the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) transforms into her hag disguise.  But one of the greatest Disney witches made her debut in the movie that helped to save Disney animation and launch the company’s Renaissance era.  In Hans Christian Andersen’s original story, The Little Mermaid’s Sea Witch is a fairly minor character, there simply to enable Ariel to make the transformation from Mermaid to Human, at the cost of her voice of course.  That’s all there is to the transaction, but for Disney’s version, they sought to make the Sea Witch a far more meaningful presence in the story.  Thus came the creation of Ursula, by far one of the most popular Disney Villains to ever come out of the canon.  Ursula has her goals of usurping the throne of King Triton by manipulating his daughter, and she has no qualms about using her magic for her own evil ambitions.  She even keeps the damned souls of the people she tricked as trophies in her “garden.” Everything about Ursula is iconic, especially her look which was heavily inspired by famed drag queen Divine.  And Pat Carroll gives a tour de force vocal performance as the character, making her equal measures of terrifying while also being surprisingly funny at just the right moments.  The huskiness of her voice especially makes her stand out amongst all other Disney Villainesses, especially with that cackle of a laugh she has.  It’s not surprising that to this day Ursula remains one of Disney’s most popular characters, let alone one of the most popular Villains.  It’s a good thing that Disney was at a point where they allowed their animation team to take some license and create a wholly different take on an evil witch in one of their movies.  With her drag queen like bravado and a killer vocal performance from Ms. Pat Carroll, Ursula was a new kind of movie witch that would indeed set a new high standard for years to come.

5.

AUNT GLADYS from WEAPONS (2025)

Played by Amy Madigan

One of the more recent depictions of a witch to leave a big impact on cinema, Aunt Gladys is the black hearted center of Zach Cregger’s hit mystery box horror flick.  A lot of Weapon’s success lies in the fact that the movie withholds the truth about what really is going on until late into the movie, which makes it a fascinating mystery to unravel.  When we finally find out that every disturbing event in the movie is the product of witchcraft, it helps to reframe the movie in a very satisfying way.  And this largely due to how well they pull off the reveal of the mysterious character that is Aunt Gladys.  Portrayed in an absolutely transformative performance by Amy Madigan, Gladys is a very different kind of movie witch compared to everything else we’ve seen.  She wears bright colored clothes, and almost has the look of a circus clown given her heavy use of make-up.  But, underneath all that color and a bubbly persona that she puts on, she is as black hearted as they come.  She uses her magic to essentially puppeteer people and make them do her bidding, which includes family members as well as an entire classroom of children.  It’s vague about why exactly she does this, and they movie never fully reveals how she became a witch in the first place, other than she uses it to keep herself alive; sort of in a succubus kind of way.  But, the damage she inflicts is pretty terrifying.  It’s a great way to reimagine witchcraft as an element in modern horror.  Zach Cregger wisely avoids using the classic symbols of witches from popular culture; there’s no brooms, no black cats, no cauldron.  Aunt Gladys merely uses twigs from an inky black shrub that she keeps in her room to conduct her black magic.  And Amy Madigan’s performance is remarkably effective, making Gladys an unsettling presence both in her silly moments as well as in her darkest moments.  And the comeuppance she faces at the end of the movie is one of the most cathartic and satisfying finales we’ve had at the movies in a long time.  Gladys will probably become one of cinema’s most iconic witches in the years to come, and it shows that there is a lot of spooky elements to the concept of witchcraft that can still be explored in modern horror movies today.

4.

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE from the HARRY POTTER series

Played by Helena Bonham Carter

It’s hard to have a witch character that stands out in a movie franchise about a school for witches and wizards.  But, one in particular really does leave a mark as one of the most terrifying witches ever put on the silver screen.  Bellatrix Lestrange is a witch that really defines the dark side of magic in J.K. Rowling’s long running series.  Though not the main threat to Harry Potter and his allies, as she is second banana to the Dark Wizard Voldemort, Bellatrix nevertheless stands out as a great and menacing villainess in her own right.  Wonderfully brought to life in an unhinged performance by Helena Bonham Carter, Bellatrix is chaos incarnate.  You really don’t know what she’ll do next, which makes her such a memorable threat in the series.  Carter definitely makes a meal out of her portrayal of the dark witch.  Her maniacal cackles is especially a key part to the portrayal, showing how she clearly gets a kick out of being as evil as she is.  Of course, she is impactful to the story as she ends up murdering Harry’s godfather and mentor Sirius Black (Gary Oldman).  She also commits all of her actions without remorse, including the torture of other wizards and witches.  One of her most sinister moments comes when she teases Harry’s friend Neville about torturing his parents, an act that left them in a vegetable like state.  It’s an effective characterization of a character that you just know is rotten to her very core.  While Voldemort is subdued in his presence, she is everything but, making herself big and loud wherever she reigns her destruction.  While she does fill the bill of a wicked witch, with her gothic attire and unhinged cackle, she manages to stay effectively terrifying throughout and avoids being too much of a caricature.  This is a real testament to Carter’s performance, where she was able to bring a lot more to the character than just her bad girl persona.  She managed to create an evil witch that exists out of something even more terrifying, which is desire to destroy purely out of her own twisted sense of fun.  And among other witches and wizards, that becomes something truly worth fearing.

3.

THE BLAIR WITCH from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999)

Played by ???

It’s kind of remarkable that one of the most terrifying witches in movie history is one that we never get to see; an maybe doesn’t exist at all.  It’s a testament to the movie’s power of suggestion that the presence of the Blair Witch is still felt throughout the movie, and it makes her (or it) all the more scary.  The Blair Witch Project was a groundbreaking horror film that helped to launch the found footage style of storytelling in cinema.  Everything in the film is shot on video tape by the characters, making it a movie within a movie, and it adds to the true life feel of the narrative.  Over the course of the film, the characters document their hunt for the elusive Blair Witch and the deeper into the woods they go, the more weird stuff ends up happening.  We don’t know if this is entirely their own minds playing tricks on them, or if there really is a Blair Witch out there.  The movie does a great job of building that tension over time, and bringing us into the paranoid state of mind of the characters.  We hear strange noises out in the darkness of night.  Shadows begin to play tricks on us.  Eventually, we do see the most direct evidence of the Blair Witches own handiwork, as the explorers capture strange wooden figures displayed near their campsite.  Is it a prank being pulled on the characters?  We never know, and that’s what makes The Blair Witch Project such an effective experience.  It uses the limited information that we see from the found footage to suggest that a Blair Witch may end up being real, and it’s much more effective than actually showing us a real witch.  Something is out there in the darkness, and it is hunting them.  It’s great that the movie commits to the very end in keeping the truth about the Blair Witch literally in the dark, especially with the haunting final scene which is open to interpretation.  It’s a great way of showing how the idea of a witch being present alone is enough to drive out our worst fears.  That’s why the Blair Witch has become one of the most terrifying witches in movie history.  The less we know about it, the creepier and more powerful it becomes, letting our own imagination conjure up what the true evil specter may look like.

2.

MALEFICENT from SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

Voiced by Elanor Audley

While Ursula from The Little Mermaid and the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves are iconic in their own right, there’s no denying that Disney’s greatest cinematic witch is the mistress of all evil herself, Maleficent.  Maleficent has become the gold standard by which all other Disney villains are judged by, and it’s for good reason.  She really epitomizes everything great about an iconic Disney Villain, both in her design and in her presence.  The combination of her dark flowing robes with the bat wing like collar around her neck and that crown of pointy horns just makes her stand out immediately.  Couple that with the absolutely chilling vocal performance from actress Elanor Audley, and you’ve got the makings of one of cinema’s greatest villainesses.  But, Maleficent is not just any witch.  She almost feels like a force of nature, able to command magic without a spell book or magic wand, though she does wield a staff that seems to channel her magic.  One of the best things about her character is her often calm demeanor.  She can loose her temper, but most of the time she is quiet and methodical in her evil deeds, clearly showing how much she knows she’s in command.  She doesn’t seek power; she knows she already has all of it.  Her evil is manifested in toying with those who don’t have magic.  And it’s that petty nature about her that makes her evil all the more loathsome.  Of course, her transformation into a spectacular dragon is one of the all time masterpieces of animation, but throughout the movie she is iconic.  To this day, she remains one  of Disney’s most popular characters, far eclipsing the movie she first appeared in and becoming something of a brand of her own within the Disney company.  There’s a reason why Disney made her the climatic showpiece of their nighttime spectacular at Disneyland called Fantasmic.  A true original all her own among cinematic witches and Disney villains alike, Maleficent is likely going to remain at the top tier for many more years to come.

1.

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Played by Margaret Hamilton

If there was ever a witch that set the standard for all cinematic witches to follow, it’s this iconic portrayal from the classic The Wizard of Oz.  The Frank L. Baum story was brought to magnificent life by MGM in a marvelous technicolor production.  But what really stood out to audiences over the many decades since it first premiered was this iconic portrayal of the villainous Wicked Witch of the West.  She has remained such a fixture in pop culture that even a musical adaptation centered around her called Wicked has become a massive hit on it’s own, both on stage and screen.  But there’s no doubt that the Wicked Witch’s memorable presence is all due to the remarkable performance given by Margaret Hamilton.  She brings the character to vivid life thanks to a delightfully eccentric performance.  From her high pitched cackle to her sinister grin, she delivers the quintessential portrayal of a witch on the big screen.  It’s perhaps the reason why so many depictions of witches today often include a pointy hat and green colored skin.  Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch is true high fantasy, finding the actress really relishing the role and making the performance feel huge in every way.  It wasn’t all easy for her though.  She famously suffered severe burns when a trap door didn’t drop her in time to miss the pyro effects that followed her exit from the Munchkin land set.  And the performance remained so iconic that it unfortunately left her typecast for the remainder of her career, though she found ways of capitalizing on her fame as the character later in life, and she never regretted playing the role in the first place.  One can’t imagine anyone else playing this role, even though there were others who tried out for the part before she inevitably got it.  Margaret just feels like she was born to play this character, and even after 85 years, her performance still captures the imagination of audiences of all ages.  While there are plenty of iconic movie witches out there, it’s the Wicked Witch that more than any of them seems to define the ideal of what a cinematic witch should be.

So, there you have my picks for the most iconic wicked witches ever put on the silver screen.  A couple of them, particularly the Wicked Witch of the West and Maleficent have gone on to set the standard for what we think a witch should be.  And then you have some other ones like Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby that stand out by being contradictory to what we perceive a witch to be.  And then there’s the Blair Witch who remains unseen throughout the whole movie, and yet you can still feel it’s presence.  There’s so many ways to imagine a witch in cinematic storytelling, and so many different ways to make them terrifying to an audience.  There is something innately unsettling about witchcraft itself, even when it’s used for good purposes by good witches.  That’s why it’s still a potent element used in horror movies today, though to varying degrees of success.  The recent horror hit Weapons offers up an especially effective new take on witchcraft and how it would be used in a contemporary setting.  Likewise, Aunt Gladys has emerged as a very new kind of movie witch, and one that really turns into a terrifying presence in her movie.  During Halloween time, witches remain one of the most popular of icons, and it’s largely thanks to some of the witches on this list that many of them have made such an impact in pop culture.  Just look at the phenomenal success of Wicked to see just how much the Wicked Witch, and by extension Margaret Hamilton’s performance, still have a foothold in our culture.  It’s also why Disney continues to mine through so many fairy tales for their animated projects, because they know a good fairy tale is made all the better by the presence of an especially wicked witch.  And with Harry Potter, you get the best of both with good witches (Hermoine Granger) and the bad (Bellatrix Lestrange).  We’ll see a good many iconic witches in the years to come in cinema, but leading up to now, these have been the ones that have undeniably left a huge mark on our understanding of witches overall in pop culture.

There are many types of characters that have come to define the stories we find in cinema.  Some are fun and lovable, while others are dark and menacing.  One particular type of character that can fall into either one of these categories are the artificial lifeforms known as robots.  Whatever type of robot they be, a toy, an android, or a cyborg, these characters have made an impact on the big screen, even going back to the earliest days of cinema.  These characters have particularly been a favorite staple of science fiction.  There’s nothing more futuristic in nature than the creation of artificial life, and robots have been central to that.  Of course we have seen stories where a robot is treated more humanely and they develop personalities of their own which ignites debates about the nature of creation itself, when the very idea that an individual can be manufactured and have a will of it’s own thereafter.  There are also just as many movies about the dangers of robotics, when artificial life turns against humanity and leads to it’s near extinction.  Either type of story has it’s own place in cinema history, but what both have done together is create a vast number of memorable robotic characters over the years.  These iconic character range from the friendly, to the menacing, to even that strange neutral ground in between.  For this article I am putting together a list of the most memorable robotic characters that have appeared in the movies.  There are some ground rules that I have to set for this list, just to be clear which types of robot characters count.  One, these have to be self-reliant robots, meaning they can’t be piloted or puppeteered by another character; so the Jaegers from Pacific Rim (2013) won’t make the list because they are more human powered mechs than actual robots.  Also, these have to be actual physical robots and not a AI program with it’s own sentience, unless it has also created a robotic body for itself.  So, no HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Other than that, any type of robot qualifies.  So with all that laid out, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Robots in Movies.

10.

THE TIN MAN from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Played by Jack Haley

Here we begin with one of the better examples of a friendly robot in movies.  A character straight from L. Frank Baum’s original story, the Tin Man is very different from most typical robotic characters in movies.  What sets him apart is that his creation is more magical than mechanical.  He lives because the Land of Oz is a magical place, where scarecrows are also alive and lions can speak.  Still, as he tells his story, he shares that he was built by a woodsman for the purpose of chopping wood, so by that account he still would a robot.  There’s just one thing that the woodsman forgot; a heart.  It’s an interesting character trait for the Tin Man; that desire to have a heart, which means that he desires to be more human.  Of course, on his adventures with Dorothy, we know that an actual physical heart is not what’s key to being a human.  The Tin Man shows he has a heart through his compassion and devotion to his friends.  The portrayal of the Tin Man in this movie is particularly special, thanks to the performance of Jack Haley, an experienced song and dance man long before his role in The Wizard of Oz.  His jerky, robotic movements, particularly in his introduction scene, really help to sell the idea that he’s made of nothing but metal.  The creation of the costume is also quite a feat, particularly in the make-up, which they had to redo to make it less toxic as it sent the Tin Man’s original actor, Buddy Ebsen, to the emergency room due to a severe allergic reaction to the silver paint.  Even after the changes, it probably still was uncomfortable for Jack Haley to play the character, but he does in the end shine through, much like his metallic skin after it has been polished.  A lot of the other robots on this list are more creations out of realm of science, but the Tin Man stands out as a more magical entity, and one that definitely fits within the world of Oz.  Much more than an empty kettle, he a man on his mettle, because he always had a heart.

9.

AVA from EX MACHINA (2015)

Played by Alicia Vikander

Now we move on to another type of robotic character; one with a darker side.  This cautionary tale about rogue AI from writer/director Alex Garland is becoming more and more prescient by the day as we are going through an AI boom at the current moment.  Oscar Isaac’s eccentric tech billionaire brings one of his young technicians, played by Domhnall Gleeson, to his secluded cabin in the woods to conduct a Turing Test with his new AI programed robot, played by Vikander, in this sci-fi thriller.  The film is more about human hubris than anything else, showing that creating life is more than just a mechanical exercise.  The film does a great job of creating this intriguing question about the nature of humanity.  AVA is an interesting character because she displays all of the outward appearance of a human being, but underneath she is all metal shells and wiring.  The Oscar-winning visual effects used to create AVA’s robotic body are pretty spectacular, making it appear that Alicia Vikander’s physical body is broken up into detachable parts.  It’s eerie to see the clear shells with all the wiring link up seamlessly with the actress’ real face.  The movie delivers it’s message in an effective way, with AVA nearly stripped down completely when you first meet her, making no mistake that she’s a robot, but as the movie keeps moving forward, she puts on more layers concealing that fact, like wearing more clothes and putting on extra layers of artificial skin, to the point where her robotic insides are completely obscured.  And while she does this, she increasingly manipulates Gleeson’s technician, blurring the line further between his conception of her as being a robot.  in the end, we learn that she’s been the one testing her human captors, and not the other way around.  It’s a movie that definitely makes one wary about the implications of making AI too true to life, because there’s always the danger of it becoming too smart that it’ll end up out-smarting us.  And even still, AVA is not as malicious an AI as you would expect.  Over the course of the movie, we see that it has learned the very human trait of survival, and that’s why she manipulates the humans around her; to finally escape and be set free.  Alex Garland leaves it open as to what AVA might end up doing out in the real world, but as the movie showed us, AI reflects back all the things that human beings have programmed into it, and unfortunately a lot of our own programming as humans is not without a few bugs.

8.

THE MACHINE HUMAN from METROPOLIS (1927)

Played by Brigette Helm

A lot of AVA from Ex Machina and many other robotic characters from cinema in general owe a lot to this pioneering depiction of a robot in the silent Fritz Lang masterpiece Metropolis.  This nearly century old classic takes place in an imagined city of the future, where among other technological advancements a mechanical human being has been constructed.  Inspired a bit by the creation of Frankenstein’s monster, this Machine Human is the work of a deranged mad scientist who’s choosing to play God.  But at the same time, the Machine Human’s creation is meant to be the first in a string of robotic workers who will replace the human drones working in the underworld of the city.  This movie is becoming even more prophetic every day, as tech billionaires are using AI to create more automation in society, which is driving out more and more of the human workforce.  And Fritz Lang saw this coming a century ago, making this movie well ahead of it’s time.  The Mechanical Human itself is very iconic, working it’s way into so much of the science fiction that we’ve seen over the years.  It’s design particularly had a major influence on the creation of C-3PO in the Star Wars movies for example.  Another interesting aspect of the Mechanical Human is that it is given a human disguise, showing how it’s purpose is to blur the line between human kind and artificiality, and through that make it easier to manipulate those who are unable to tell the difference.  In the movie, it takes the disguise of a woman named Maria, who has been leading the working class humans in resistance against the upper class in the city above.  This function of manipulating the human mind through an artificial imposter is very much in the same vein of what we saw with AVA in Ex Machina.  It’s also something we see playing out in our own real world with bots manipulating discourse online through social media. Though in terms of personality, the Mechanical Human is very limited, mainly just being the robotic arbitor that it was programmed to be and nothing more.  But even still, it is an iconic depiction of a robotic being that in the nearly 100 years since it’s creation now seems even more realistic than how it was first imagined; a sad reality about how we as a society have used robotics and AI in very bad ways.

7.

ROBOCOP from ROBOCOP (1987)

Played by Peter Weller

Moving away from both the positive and negative depictions of robotic characters in movies, here we find one of the best examples of that gray area in the middle.  In Paul Verhoeven’s dark ultraviolent satire of capitalism run amok, we see a story where Peter Weller’s human cop is transformed into the ultimate weapon of justice.  But, as we see, the more mechanical he becomes, the less forgiving he is to the average criminal.  The movie explores the idea of humanity being further consumed by a technological world, where things like law enforcement no longer serves in the public interest but rather becomes a tool for keeping things in order, mainly in the interest of corporate elites.  A true human police force is subjected to things like personal judgment and ethical review.  Replace that with a fully mechanized form of law enforcement and yes you have a system that doesn’t discriminate but it’s also one that doesn’t empathize either.  It’s a system that carries it’s own biases that purely exists to follow the law and doesn’t take into account the nuances of circumstance that leads to crime.  Verehoeven plays around with this concept in a very broad sense in the movie, leading to some very shockingly violent imagery for it’s time (which at one point earned the film an NC-17 rating).  Peter Weller’s portrayal of the titular Robocop is pretty iconic as well.  The shiny metallic armor he wears is something that everyone remembers about the film, but Weller also perfectly captures that struggle between his character’s rigid programming  and whatever is left of his humanity.  Whether he’s good or bad depends on who’s in the driver’s seat at the time, but eventually Robocop does come around to fighting against the corporate machine that made him who he is, and ultimately chooses his humanity in the end.  As police forces become more militarized and law enforcement becomes more about protecting moneyed interests rather that protecting and serving the community at large, a story like Robocop becomes a more potent satire of how the balance between man and machine being thrown out of balance creates a far worse world overall.

6.

GORT from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)

Played by Lock Martin

Klaatu barada nikto.  These three words are the keys to the most powerful weapon the Earth has ever known.  This Cold War era Sci-Fi classic creates a powerful story about mankind’s first encounter with life from another world.  A flying saucer lands in Washington D.C. and the human like alien being that has travelled inside of it seeks to make peace with us primitive Earthlings.  However, trigger happy military personnel end up wounding Klaatu, the alien ambassador, and this awakens the Guardian sentinel that traveled with him; a massive robot named Gort.  Gort is without a doubt one of the most iconic robots in all of cinema, and an icon of this particular era of science fiction.  He’s limited in personality, more machine than anything else, but he still leaves a chilling impression whenever he’s onscreen.  With a laser blast from his cycloptic facial lens, he’s able to disintegrate anything that gets in it’s way, including unfortunate human beings.  But, he’s not a malicious mechanical being either.  His primary function is to protect Klaatu and the ship at all costs.  But, he also must obey anyone who uses the password I shared at the beginning.  The Day the Earth Stood Still was made at a particularly precarious time in human history, as nuclear proliferation and the tensions between the United States and the Soviet bloc were heating up.  Also the paranoia of the Red Scare was spreading across the country as well.  Gort is viewed by many as an allegory for nuclear deterrents; a weapon of immense power that proves to be so destructive that it fighting against it would mean one’s own destruction.  As the movie portrays him, he serves as a warning against the misuse of such weaponry.  The look of Gort is distinctively mid-century sci-fi.  He was played by 7’5″ tall actor Lock Martin, whose immense stature really helps to make Gort feel big on screen.  But his design is also sleek and simple, very much reinforcing his other-worldly nature.  When we think of mid-century science fiction, Gort will most likely be one of the first things people remember.  He may not stand out as a defining character of the era, but as a symbol there is no doubt that he stood out as an icon.

5.

ROY BATTY from BLADE RUNNER (1982)

Played by Rutger Hauer

Set in what was supposed to be Los Angeles in the far off year of 2019, this Sci-Fi neo-noir features a story about rogue androids known as replicants that are hiding in plain sight among us humans.  The replicants in Blade Runner are so human like that they require a complex exam called the Voight-Kampff test to identify them as the androids they are.  And the leader of these rebel replicants is a menacing and powerful replicant called Roy Batty, played memorably by Rutger Hauer.  The famed Dutch actor brings powerful gravitas to the role, creating a villain that really feels more soulful than a lot of other robotic characters that we’ve seen in the movies.  His portrayal strongly reinforces the idea put forth by the movie, which is the idea about artificial life being capable of having a soul to them.  As we learn in the movie, the replicants themselves are evolving and becoming more human like as a result; to the point where the Voight-Kampff can’t even detect all the clues, and this becomes a problematic dilemma for a society that has used replicants for purposes like hard labor and raises a profound question: Are replicants due rights for themselves, just like any other being.  As sympathetic as the replicants may be, there’s still no doubt that Roy Batty is a pretty bad guy as well.  He leaves a lot of bodies in his wake as he tries to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation to meet his maker.  But, his time is also limited due to a built in flaw that makes the replicants live short lives as a necessity to allow for control over them.  Batty goes out in a harrowing final confrontation with Harrison Ford’s heroic Deckard, the titular blade runner tasked with hunting Batty down and terminating him.  Batty’s dying scene is one of cinema’s most iconic moments, as he shares his favorite “memories” to Deckard while his life slips away, all in a beautifully staged rooftop scene in pouring down rain.  Hauer often cited this scene as one of his proudest moments as an actor, and he has good reason to be proud.  In this moment, he does prove to us that even an artificial mind is capable of human emotion, and thus able to carry a soul, which sadly due to the flaw of his body will be lost “like tears in rain.”

4.

T-800 from THE TERMINATOR (1984) AND TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)

Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger

We’ve talked about friendly robots in movies, as well as malicious and menacing robots in movies.  But here we have in the Terminator franchise an example of one character that has been both.  The original Terminator has the T-800 model be the film’s main antagonist, sent from the future to hunt down the mother of a man who will some day lead human kind in a resistance against a world conquering AI program known as Skynet.  In the sequel, director James Cameron made a very interesting creative choice by having the T-800 return, except this time he’s here to protect young John Conner.  Schwarzenegger’s film career was made by his role in this franchise, and he’s honestly perfectly suited for playing this character.  His robotic monotone helps to hide his true Austrian accent, and he is without a doubt a strong physical presence as well.  But that all works in the favor of the character.  The T-800 is a formidable cyborg with an unstoppable drive to complete his mission.  The purpose of his character in the first film was to be mostly intimidating and scary, which Arnold pulls of well.  But it’s in the sequel, where we see the T-800 turned into a guardian instead of an assassin, that more character nuances are revealed.  He’s not just a machine with mission, but also one that is capable of learning as well.  One of the best moments of Terminator 2 is when we see teenage John Conner (played by Edward Furlong) try to teach the T-800 phrases to make him more personable and human, like saying “Hasta La Vista, Baby.”  It’s a great transformation between movies that helps to define the T-800 as more than just a cold, soulless robot.  When he makes the ultimate sacrifice at the end of the movie, we are at that point just as heartbroken as John Conner to see him go, which is a testament to just how well Schwarzenegger and Cameron made us warm up to his character.  He started as a very simple villainous force in the first movie; nothing more than a scary monster to hunt down our heroes.  But by the end of Terminator 2, he’s grown into more than just a machine; he’s a friend to be missed.  And Schwarzenegger absolutely made him look all along the way.  He’ll be back.

3.

R2-D2 from THE STAR WARS SAGA

Played by Kenny Baker

There are so many types of characters that have gone on to define the magnificent ensemble that is the cast of the Star Wars universe.  But one of the most iconic types of these characters are the droids.  Often represented in these movies as practically built, on set robots, they have become some of the most popular characters in the entire series; not to mention also the most lucrative in the merchandising department.  A lot of droids have populated Star Wars media over the years, but there is no doubt who the most famous ones are.  They are the only characters to appear in all 9 of the mainline movies of the Skywalker Saga; the droids C-3PO and R2-D2.  While C-3PO is a great character in his own right, R2-D2 emerges as a much more important droid in the overall storyline.  He’s the one who carries Leia’s message safely to Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as the one droid that accompanies Luke Skywalker on his mission to blow up the Death Star.  And he’s able to stand out as a memorable character even though he can only communicate through beeps and boops.  Legendary little person actor Kenny Baker was often called upon to play R2-D2 in limited moments where he had to move back and forth on screen in a way that a remote controlled robot couldn’t do on set.  Otherwise, that’s as much real acting that could be put into a character like him.  The rest is all accomplished via puppeteering.  While the filmmakers were limited by what they could do with a faceless and voices robot in their cast, it’s remarkable how much personality they are able to get across with R2.  And like with his frequent companion C-3PO, he set the standard for all the droids that we’ve come to know in the Star Wars universe ever since.  To this very day, nearly 50 years later, R2-D2 is still a fan favorite, and an icon of the franchise as a whole that remains central to it’s identity.  That’s a pretty incredible legacy to have for such a simple little robot that looks like a trash can on wheels.

2.

THE IRON GIANT from THE IRON GIANT (1999)

Voiced by Vin Diesel

If there was ever a cinematic robot that warmed the hearts of audiences, it’s the titular giant robot from this animated masterpiece.  The Iron Giant comes to Earth with no memory of it’s purpose, and as a result he’s able to forge his own purpose, which ends up involving a young kid named Hogarth.  Hogarth and the Giant form a bond, and that bond helps the Giant overcome the instinctual programming that he was sent to Earth with, which was to destroy.  One of the sweetest aspects of the story is that he learns to see himself in a different way thanks to his friendships with the humans.  After reading comics, the Giant sees himself identifying with Superman, which becomes a major plot point when he must save Hogarth’s home from destruction.  The movie ends with the Giant sacrificing himself in a dramatic encounter with a nuclear warhead, and in his final moments he think’s back to Hogarth’s words of wisdom telling him that he can choose who he wants to be.  In his last words, he says “Superman” and embraces his fate with the warhead.  It’s a profound moment that brought audiences to tears and endeared him as one of the greatest robots in cinema history.  A lot of credit should go to the surprisingly nuanced vocal performance given to him by Vin Diesel.  The Fast and the Furious actor managed to deliver so much soulfulness and personality into the Giant with very few spoken words, something that he would also put to great use as the voice of Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.  And Diesel’s gravely voice sounds so perfectly matched for the character as well, even with the metallic filter put on it.  The animation of him in the film is also incredible.  He’s a CGI animated character that blends very well in the 2D animated style of the movie, and has a cool design that is very evocative of the 50’s era sci-fi style that fits with the period setting of the movie.  Though big and imposing, we quickly learn that this cinematic robot is one gentle giant overall, and one of the most lovable to ever star on the silver screen.

1.

WALL-E from WALL-E (2008)

Voiced by Ben Burtt

While there have been many great cinematic robots over the years of all types, none have perhaps displayed as endearing a personality as WALL-E from the Pixar classic film of the same name.  Like a robotic Charlie Chaplain, WALL-E is a lovable little goof that communicates so much through so many little gestures and quirks of character.  His design of course is perfectly constructed to make him instantly likable, with those binocular like eyes and stout box shaped body.  What is even more interesting about him is the setting that they chose to set his story within.  WALL-E has lived a solitary life on Earth after human beings abandoned it hundreds of years ago and all the other sanitation bots left to clean up the mess left behind have all shut down.  Somehow, WALL-E has managed to survive all this time and remains the last one left, dutifully repeating his directive every single day without end.  But over the centuries by himself, he has developed something unique.  He’s a collector, salvaging things from the planet wide junk yard that he finds interesting and adding them to his collection.  He also has developed a love for musicals, in particular 1969’s Hello, Dolly, which he likes to imitate the dance sequences of.  One of the remarkable things that the movie does is that it places us distinctly in WALL-E’s point of view from the beginning of the story, and because he is just a robot, the film tells most of it’s story early on without dialogue.  The first act is mostly wordless, making it more crucial to define WALL-E purely through pantomime.  That’s where the influences of great silent film comedians like Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton come in.  But even when the movie extends beyond it’s earthbound parts, the incredible portrayal of WALL-E still shines through.  The inclusion of a sleek, female coded robot named EVE also shows how the formation of WALL-E’s personality has made him a bit of a romantic as well;  another trait you don’t see in most movie robots.  Legendary sound engineer Ben Burtt (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) was largely responsible for designing WALL-E’s unique electronic voice, and even in the very few words that he’s able to say, it still fits the overall simple charm of the character.  Without a doubt, the most well rounded robotic character that we’ve ever seen brought to life on film.

There’s a tendency to view all robots in movies as limited in character.  For a long time, robotics were more science fiction than science fact, and for a lot of movies that featured a robot as a part of it’s story either had to make their creations limited based on what was capable within the scientific standards of the time, or have them be completely the creation of fantasy.  For a lot of films, robotics have been a part of many cautionary tales.  In the cases of Metropolis and Robocop, the idea of robots taking over our jobs comes across as a serious threat to humanity.  In the Terminator movies, we see the fruition of that fear, with mankind hanging on by a thread due to our foolish naivete in allowing artificial intelligence to take over every function of society, including our weapons systems.  But, there are many films that also show that robots can have a softer side, like with the Iron Giant and WALL-E.  And then you have the cyborg characters, who become almost human and wish to be regarded as equal in that sense despite being born artificially rather than organically, which is central to the story of Blade Runner (1982).  We are currently in a time period where AI is advancing at a rapid place, and some of the scenarios that seemed far off in movies from decades ago no seem to be a lot more relevant.  The worry is that AI will reflect back all of the bad aspects of humanity, and probably end up causing chaos as a result.  One hopes that the ones who are developing this new tech are not doing so recklessly, but then again, we’ve seen the worst case scenario play out in some of these movies.  Overall, there have many really interesting characters in the movies that are robotic in nature.  And many of them are not things to be feared, but rather a force for good in the end.  Good or bad, many of them definitely stand out as interesting and cool looking in their designs.  And their influence on science fiction cinema is particularly immense.  Whether those gears on the inside are turning or not, and the mind is thinking in ones and zeroes or something more complex, they make for some interesting characters in some of our favorite stories, and the hope is that many more in the future will stand out as well, even as robotics and AI evolve further over time.

There are a variety of emotions that audiences go through when they’re watching a movie.  They can be scared, they can have a good cry, or if the movie is terrible, they will likely be bored.  But perhaps the greatest thing that can happen to an audience member while watching a movie is to have a really good laugh.  Indeed, comedy is one of the weapons that cinema has at it’s disposal because it’s the style of filmmaking that best appeals to the communal activity that is going to the movies.  It’s fine if you alone are laughing while watching a movie, but it’s even better when you are laughing along with other people in the theater.  Laughter is contagious and it’s something that a lot of moviemakers hope to deliver with their movies.  Even in a serious movie, a humorous moment can be a valuable thing, because it helps to break up the tension and allow an audience to relieve so pressure in between the heavier moments.  Comedy has been a part of the fabric of cinema from the very beginning.  Many comedy acts from vaudeville halls across the world began to take their routines to the big screen and became some of the most popular icons of the era.  The evolution to talkies also benefitted from comedy, with funny movies favoring more quick witted jabs than physical slapstick.  And all through the history of film, there has always been a place for a good comedy, even as tastes and norms have changed.  In all that time, movies have helped to establish iconic comedic talent through the years, from Charlie Chaplain as The Tramp to Will Farrell as Buddy the Elf, there are plenty of iconic performances that have left audiences in laughing fits that not only leave a mark in their own time, but also have endured many decades later.

For this top ten list I had to make some hard choices about who to leave out and who to put in.  There are so many good choices out there that it was hard to leave it to just 10.  That’s why you’re not going to see comedy icons like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Peter Sellers, Chris Farley, Leslie Nielsen, Adam Sandler, Mel Brooks, Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers on this list, even though they do deserve a place on here.  This list is purely my own preferences, so you can agree and disagree with my choices as much as you’d like.  So, with all that said, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Funniest Performances in Comedy Movies.

10.

GENERAL “BUCK” TURGIDSON from DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)

Played by George C. Scott

One of the finest examples of a hilarious performance coming from an actor not known for doing comedy.  Scott was renowned for his dramatic work in movies like Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and The Hustler (1961), but what surprised many people was a hidden talent in comedic acting as well.  In Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War era satire, Scott plays a caricature of a very hawkish general who’s extremely suspicious of the “ruuskies” and yet has to deal with the fallout of one of his fellow generals going rouge and possibly setting off a nuclear war.  Here Scott plays against the way you would typically suspect an actor like him would perform the role.  He’s naturally fitted for playing someone of military brass, considering that years later he would give an iconic performances as General Patton, but as you watch Dr. Strangelove, you see that veneer of authority diminish in his character and reveal the manic buffoon underneath.  It’s quite a feat when you’re sharing the screen with a comedic performer on the level of Peter Sellers and he’s the one who has to play straight-man to your performance.  Everything about George C. Scott’s performance is beautifully eccentric, with him even getting into some slapstick-y pratfalls as well, including an unplanned tumble where Scott trips over his own feet, does a summersault, and still gets his line out; a hilarious blooper that Kubrick still left in the film.  Even with the subject matter being as serious as it is, the comedic performances throughout the movie all still land and make the film a very unforgettable farce, with Scott’s Turgidson being one of the key highlights.  And it’s a great example of why it works to the comedy’s advantage to have a serious actor delivering some truly ridiculous lines.  Only Scott could sell the President on the idea of committing war crimes like it’s not such a big deal: “I’m not saying we won’t get our hair a little mussed.”  It’s a risky thing to poke fun at something as deadly serious as nuclear Armageddon, but Dr. Strangelove managed to do it in a classic way, and show that even serious people can be silly.

9.

CHER from CLUELESS (1995)

Played by Alicia Silverstone

Proof that girls can be just as funny as the boys, this may be the most iconic comedic role for an actress in the last 50 years.  Clueless was very much a product of it’s time, encapsulating the early to mid 90’s in a brightly colored time capsule.  But it’s the lead performance by Alicia Silverstone as the pampered Beverly Hills teenage matchmaker Cher that still feels timeless to this day.  Silverstone is perfectly cast in this modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, playing Cher with a hilarious level of dimwittedness, but still retaining emotional intelligence that helps to keep her from just being a stereotype.  The way we see how she views the world through her small enclosed, pampered life is hilarious to watch, especially when a lot of it is way off from reality.  But, she manages to remain endearing because there is a funny sense of innocence behind all that.  As the film moves along, we do see her maturity grow, and that ultimately leads her towards being a more thoughtful individual.  But, both Silverstone and writer/director Amy Heckerling both know that the most appealing part of Cher’s character is that airheaded naivete that defines her early on.  There’s some hilarious one liners throughout the movie that very much makes the character live up to the title Clueless.  Everything she says, even the introspective comments, have to be tied into shopping and fashion.  It’s that well-meaning spirit framed within a very enclosed mind frame that makes the lines so hilarious, especially the ones where she thinks she’s saying something very intelligent but it comes out totally absurd.  I will forever laugh out loud when I hear her say “Spora-tacus.”  Sure, it’s a bit dated due to being a product of it’s era, but Alicia Silverstone’s Cher is still a comedic performance that can make me laugh even 30 years later.

8.

SHERIFF BUFORD T. JUSTICE from SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977)

Played by Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason was already a legendary comedic actor long before he appeared in Smokey and the Bandit.  The star of the iconic Honeymooners TV series and a dozen comedic movies along the way had already cemented himself as a iconic performer.  But it was in this late career performance as the heavy in this Burt Reynold’s vehicle where Gleason perhaps created his most consistently hilarious character.  Buford T. Justice is a whole lot more than just a parody of a small town, Southern law enforcement agent.  He is a very larger than life presence that Gleason milks for every laugh he can possibly get.  The most hilarious part of the character is the pressure cooker like way that he grows more and more frustrated throughout the movie.  It’s also great that he has a foil to work off of with his dimwitted son Junior (played hilariously by Mike Henry) who agitates him even more.  The film itself is much more of a road action movie than a comedy, playing to Burt Reynold’s strengths as an actor, but Gleason’s presence easily makes this one of the funniest movies you’ll ever see as well.  He gets all the best lines, many of which Gleason got to improvise himself, and he delivers them with this hilariously over-the-top Southern inflection.  Only Jackie Gleason could make ordering a diablo sandwich and a Dr. Pepper into one of the funniest quotable lines in the movie (and make it fast, he’s in a goddamn hurry).  But even his subtle physical expressions can get a big laugh.  The way he tilts his head when he’s frustrated with Junior’s incompetence is also one of the funniest parts of the movie.  And nobody shouts out “sum-bitch” with more gusto than he does.  It showed that even during the tail end of his incredible career in comedy that Jackie Gleason still had it in him to leave us in stitches.

7.

RON BURGANDY from ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGANDY (2004)

Played by Will Farrell

Will Farrell has played a wide variety of characters both on the big and little screen, honing his craft during his time on Saturday Night Live like so many iconic comedic actors over the last 50 years.  The one thing that most of them have in common is Farrell’s hilarious talent with becoming loud and overly dramatic in his funniest scenes.  Perhaps the movie that bring this out most effectively is in the Adam McKay satire Anchorman.  Ron Burgandy is a true Will Farrell creation; a satirical impression of 70’s era machismo put into the persona of a local news anchor with an inflated ego.  He’s another character that becomes more hilarious due to the misplaced confidence he has in himself when he says things that he thinks are smart but end up being hilariously wrong instead.  One of the funniest bits in the movie though is the hilarious observation about how local news anchors will literally read out anything you put in front of them and not be aware of what they just said, from something as simple as a misplaced question mark (I’m Ron Burgandy?) to flat out telling the City of San Diego to go “F” themselves.  Farrell’s performance is hilarious both in the broader aspects of the character, such as the moments when Ron completely loses his mind and becomes overly dramatic (“I’m in a glass case of emotion”), but he also gets huge laugh through some of the subtler line deliveries that stand out just by how absurd they are (“The human torch was denied a bank loan”).  Anchorman itself is a movie about all the absurdities of male insecurity manifesting as false veneer of foolish self-confidence, and Will Farrell’s Ron Burgandy is a perfect deconstruction of that particular kind of character.  Whether it’s the boisterous WTF did he just say lines that he delivers with such confidence throughout the movie or the hilarious times he goes over the top with his physical pratfalls, this performance shows Will Farrell at the peak of his talent.

6.

LLOYD CHRISTMAS from DUMB AND DUMBER (1994)

Played by Jim Carrey

It is undeniable that Jim Carrey is one of the funniest actors to have made it to the silver screen ever.  There are so many iconic comedic performances on his resume that it’s hard to nail it down to just one.  While there’s something to be said for his hilarious roles in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1993), The Mask (1994), The Truman Show (1998), Bruce Almighty (2003) and even some of his recent work as Dr. Robotnik in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, I have to say that the role that is moment for moment the most consistently funny is Lloyd from the Farrelly Brothers’ Dumb and Dumber.  This movie uses every tool at Jim Carrey’s disposal effectively, from his wild facial expressions to his hilarious line reads.  Of course this is a movie where Jim Carrey has to come up with “the most annoying sound in the world,” but more importantly this movie is a great place for him to show off his talents as a physical performer.  There are so many great slapstick moments in the movie like when Lloyd eats something too spicy and his first instinct is to squeeze ketchup bottles so hard it creates a ketchup fountain and he sticks his tongue out hoping to catch some of it in his mouth.  Carrey’s performance is great, and it’s nearly matched by the surprisingly fearless performance of Jeff Daniels as his equally dimwitted companion, Harry.  Daniels is able to keep pace with Carrey throughout the movie, even though he’s known as more for his dramatic work, and that’s quite the achievement.  But even still, it’s Jim Carrey who delivers the biggest laughs throughout the movie, and it cemented his reputation as a comedy legend.  You can definitely feel the anarchic spirit of classic comedy that flows through his veins in this performance, which is natural given that the Farrelly Brothers made Dumb and Dumber as a throwback screwball in the same vein as the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy.  In a career full of laugh out loud hilarious performances, Jim Carrey’s Lloyd undoubtedly gives up the laughs per minute, and that helps the character stand just a bit taller than the rest.

5.

CARL SPACKLER from CADDYSHACK (1980)

Played by Bill Murray

Caddyshack was definitely one of the raunchiest of raunchy comedies made in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  It’s also become one of the funniest comedies ever centered around sports, in this case golf.  The film is already filled with great comedic talent, including Rodney Dangerfield and Chevy Chase, but it’s Bill Murray who steals the show as the grounds-keeping doofus known as Carl Spackler.  Murray does away with his usually sardonic persona that he brings to his other roles, like in Ghostbusters (1984) or Groundhog Day (1993), and instead creates this entirely different and hilarious character in Carl.  Murray’s Carl is a true oddball, mumbling all the time in this doofus like voice that often is accentuated with a crooked mouth.  And if that wasn’t weird enough, he spends the whole movie delivering strange anecdotes like the time he caddied for the Dalai Lama.  But it’s perhaps the moment when he pretends he’s playing for a championship at the Master’s Tournament that has become the most iconic moment for the character, and perhaps the whole of his career as an actor.  Pretty much any person who has stepped onto a golf course has at one time quoted this scene; I know the people I know who golf have done it (“Cinderella story, out of Augusta”).  One of the other great things about his performance in the movie is the hilarious rivalry that he has with a gopher that lives underneath the golf course, itself played by a puppet.  The way he treats exterminating this gopher like a soldier going into war is another hilarious layer added onto the performance.  It’s too bad that not many more performances like this came out of Bill Murray in the years after.  Certainly the slick talking jokesters that he brilliantly brought to life in the years after are all great, but Carl was a very different kind of funny for him, and it’s too bad we only got to see this side of him as a performance once.

4.

JOHNNIE GRAY from THE GENERAL (1927)

Played by Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton was a pioneer in how to use comedy on film.  Like his contemporary Charlie Chaplain, Keaton relied upon his talents as a physical actor.  The acrobatic actor often put a lot of effort into his comedic bits, and a few of them were fairly death defying.  He famously survived the collapse of an entire wall of a building all around him in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1927), with his placement being conveniently in the space of the window frame, sparing him from the worst of it.  Another stunt involving a train in Sherlock Jr. (1925) also left him with a broken neck that he left untreated for years.  But that accident didn’t deter him from raising the bar of physical comedy, nor make him stop working with trains either.  In what is perhaps his masterpiece, Buster Keaton delivers some of his most impressive visual gags ever in The General, a film that still garners huge laughs even nearly a century later.  There are some incredible stunts accomplished in this movie, including one where he could have killed himself many times as he rides the front grill of a real moving train.  But what really makes the comedy work even better is Keaton’s deadpan face through it all.  He delivers so much humor purely through the blinking of his eyes than he ever would’ve through dialogue.  The juxtaposition of his expressionless face along with the madcap situations that he finds himself in is beautifully realized and it make his performance here still as hilarious as it was when it first played in theaters almost 100 years prior.  While there are so many impressive performances in silent comedy that still resonate today, particularly from Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton stood out just a little more just because of the huge contrast between what he was doing and how he was reacting to it, which often was without emotion.  And all that made his comedy brilliant is on display in every moment of his most impressive work in The General.

3.

NAVIN JOHNSON from THE JERK (1979)

Played by Steve Martin

There are few comedic movies that feel as close to the style of stand up comedy of their creator as Steve Martin’s The Jerk does.  Steve Martin became a sensation in the 1970’s with his oddball style of stand-up, and he translated that kind of comedy perfectly into his first feature film.  This movie is entirely geared around his talents as a performer and it is a remarkable mix of comedy and absurdism all rolled together in one.  You know you are in for a hilarious ride when the very Caucasian Steve Martin introduces his character’s life story by saying, “I was born a poor black child in the South.”  It only gets sillier from there.  Steve Martin’s Navin Johnson goes through life with a hilarious wide-eyed innocent naivete, sort of like a much goofier version of Forrest Gump.  The film, directed by the legendary Carl Reiner, manages to keep up with Steve Martin’s manic performance, taking every wild swing that comes and hilariously staging each gag perfectly.  One of the classic bits involves Navin getting shot at while he works at a gas station, but the sniper keeps missing and ends up hitting the cans of oil on display.  Navin, not having a clue what’s really going on, starts to scream out “Somebody hates these cans.  Stay away from the cans!!”  What is great is the complete commitment to the bit that Steve Martin puts into his performance.  His performance as Navin is sincere even through all of the absurdity, and that makes the comedy hit all that much harder.  The film was a huge hit, and even found an unlikely fan in director Stanley Kubrick who apparently said it was his favorite comedy.  That’s when you know that your comedy performance has truly become transcendent when it earns the praise of the man who made Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Steve Martin has continued to be a great comedic actor, but it’s in The Jerk where we see him at his creative zenith, and showing his style of comedy better than anything else that he has made.

2.

LEO BLOOM from THE PRODUCERS (1967)

Played by Gene Wilder

Mel Brooks is undoubtedly the greatest comedy filmmaker that Hollywood has ever seen.  He pretty much invented the genre spoof film with movies like Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), and in many of these movies he brought out some of the best work of some of comedy’s funniest performers, including the likes of Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman.   But there was no other collaborator of Mel Brooks that shined as much in is films as Gene Wilder.  They worked on three films together, including the aforementioned Saddles and Frankenstein, but it’s in their first film together that we see Gene Wilder at his most hilarious.  His performance as accountant turned theater producer Leo Bloom is one that displays Wilder at his best.  One of the things that Gene was great at was going from understated to manic so effortlessly.  The bit where he gets hysterical during his first meeting with Max Bialystock (a brilliant Zero Mostel) is easily one of the funniest scenes in any Mel Brooks movie.  It’s the escalation of that scene that makes it iconic, where you just see Gene Wilder get more and more unhinged, even after he has water poured on him and slapped across the face as Max fails to calm Leo down.  Gene Wilder was also a master at a slow burn build-up into a manic state, which he also puts to great use in the movie.  It’s fitting that when Mel Brooks won his Oscar for the Screenplay he wrote for the movie, he gave a special acknowledgement to Gene in his acceptance speech.  He knew how much Mr. Wilder was integral to the level of comedy in that movie.  It even made him stand out against a comedy veteran like Zero Mostel, who is also giving a hilarious iconic performance in the film.  Gene Wilder was an undeniable comedy icon, and you can certainly find his best work in his three collaborations with Mel Brooks.  Each one is special in it’s own right, but it’s in The Producers where you see the actor at the peak of his talent.

1.

JOHN “BLUTO” BLUTARSKY from NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

Played by John Belushi

If you were to ask me what I find to be the funniest performance in movie history, the one that never fails to make me laugh every time I watch it, it’s John Belushi’s iconic role as Bluto in Animal House.  This raunchy college set comedy has a lot of things that make it hilarious, but it’s Belushi being completely unleashed in this role that elevates it to the top.  Belushi sadly only ever acted in a handful of movie roles before he dies prematurely from an overdose in 1982.  Some are more iconic than others, especially here and in his big screen debut of The Blues Brothers (1980).  There are so many iconic moments that Belushi is responsible for in this movie.  There’s the food fight scene where Belushi shows off his impression of a zit.  His toga party arrival down a staircase where he breaks apart a guitar on the wall is also another moment that gets a huge laugh.  But it’s also the hilariously idiotic lines that he gets to deliver throughout the movie that also stand out.  His pep talk speech is hilariously dim witted, with him telling his fellow frat brothers “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”  There’s no other character that personifies the chaotic nature of college life better than him, and that makes his performance so brilliantly funny.  It’s not just his knack for hilarious line deliveries or physical comedy either.  Just by giving a look with a raised eyebrow or dead eyed stare he can get a big laugh out of his audience.  It’s easy to see why so many of his peers were jealous of his effortless ability to get a laugh.  He was a true comedy icon and Bluto from Animal House is undeniably where he showed us everything that made him great.  The movie called for a person you could believably see getting a GPA of 0.0 and still be someone charismatic enough to one day get elected to the U.S. Senate.  That’s John Belushi’s undeniable talent as a comedy legend.

So, there you have my choices for the funniest performances in movie history.  It’s pretty evident that tastes in comedy are shaped largely by the time we live in, and a lot of my picks are from movies that I certainly grew up admiring.  Even still, there are a lot of great classic performances in older comedies that are definitely worth spotlighting too, like Jack Lemmon’s cross-dressing turn in Some Like it Hot (1959) or Cary Grant’s rapid fire quips in His Girl Friday (1940).  Some of the best comedic performances can also come from actors you normally don’t associate with comedy, like Barbara Streisand in What’s Up Doc? (1973) or Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys (2016).  One thing that you’ll probably notice in my top ten picks is the abundance of Saturday Night Live alum, with John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Will Farrell represented.  Even Steve Martin has been such a frequent host of the show that many would’ve mistaken him as a regular cast member.  SNL has been an institutional fixture in comedy over the last 50 years, so it’s only natural that so many of the most iconic comedies of the last couple decades have featured someone from that popular show.  But, there are some classic performances that have made it into my favorites as well.  I’m particularly impressed with George C. Scott’s hilarious turn in Dr. Strangelove, especially considering that he upstaged Peter Sellers.  Even with the top ten choices I made here, there are countless other that were certainly on the periphery of the list that should absolutely be celebrated in their own right.  Eddie Murphy in Coming to America (1988), Mike Myers in Austin Powers (1997), Robin Williams in Aladdin (1992), Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (1963) and more.  Comedy is genre with so many styles and flavors that offer up so many different ways that can make us laugh.  Comedy is subjective, and different people have their preference, but when a movie comedy is able to make a room full of complete strangers all laugh at the same time, that’s a great sign of how well your comedy can work on a universal level.  And many of the performances I spotlighted here have been responsible for some of the best and biggest laughs that have ever been captured on film.

The year that has passed has now been entered into the history books, and with 2024 behind us it’s time to look back at how the year went as a whole.  For Hollywood, it was a recovery year, after the strikes of 2023 brought the industry to a dramatic halt.  Some of the effects of those strikes were immediately apparent, but the long term effects may take years to fully manifest, but 2024 overall represented a year of adaptation for both the production side as well as the exhibition side.  Hollywood continued to move around their films on the calendar, with some of the most anticipated movies of the previous year finally getting their release in the last year.  Movie theaters also had to get more creative in the last year in order to bring audiences in more frequently due to the backlog of new movies that the strikes created.  This was the year where novelty popcorn buckets suddenly became a viral craze, with the ridiculous designs for Dune: Part Two’s and Deadpool & Wolverine’s buckets getting social media attention for which one looked more like a adult oriented product.  Regardless of the oddities of the designs, these must buy items were a welcome money generator for movie theaters in need of extra income, and more importantly it prompted more people to come to the movies again.  We saw the revivals of struggling brands like Disney, Pixar and Marvel, all getting huge box office wins this year.  The indie film market also saw a major boost, with indie labels like Neon and A24 seeing their biggest box office successes ever in 2024.  And then there was the record breaking Thanksgiving weekend this year, which saw Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2 almost pulling off another Barbenheimer effect with their shared success.  So, while there are still a number of problems that are plaguing the movie business overall, there are also a number of positive signs about the resiliency of the cinematic experience.  And the hope is that many of those positive signs continue into the next year and beyond.

Of course, like every year, I’s sharing my personal picks for the Top 10 Movies of the year, as well as my choices for the bottom 5.  This year I broke my own personal record of seeing over 120 movies in a theater setting, so I had a very wide pool to choose from.  A couple of the movies that made my list were very easy, but there were a few hard cuts as well.  So, below are the honorable mention movies that I think are worth spotlighting, listed in alphabetical order: A Real Pain, The Apprentice, Bird, Blitz, Boy Kills World, Challengers, Conclave, Deadpool & Wolverine, Flow, Hit Man, Juror #2, Kinds of Kindness, Maria, Monkey Man, Nickel Boys, Nosferatu, Queer, Saturday Night, Sing Sing, Strange Darling, Thelma, Wicked, and The Wild Robot.  All of these movies are definitely worth seeing if you can, but the 10 selected below were the ones that stuck with me the most over the course of the year.  So, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Movies of 2024.

10.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Directed by Rose Glass

Starting off with the first of multiple A24 movies you’ll see on this list (it was a very good year for them), this sophomore directorial effort from Rose Glass was also the year’s most interesting love story as well.  Set in a grimy New Mexico town in the 1980’s, the movie presents a romance between a lady bodybuilder and the daughter of the local crime kingpin.  During the course of the movie, both girls have to confront the bad pasts that they’ve been trying hard to break away from, which leads them down some dark roads.  And yet all the while, there is an almost fairy tale aspect to their love affair that helps to pull them through.  The movie feels very much like a gritty and yet quirky crime thriller that would have come from the likes of the Coen Brothers in their early days, but director Rose Glass is also not afraid to take things in a surreal direction, blurring the lines with what’s real and what’s not in some very inspired hallucinatory moments.  But what helps this movie stand out is the cast.  Kristen Stewart continues to impress in her post-Twilight career as a risk-taking actress, and this film finally gives her a chance to play a queer romantic lead in a film, opposite Katy O’Biren who delivers a star making role as the bodybuilder that she falls in love with.  Ed Harris also delivers an amazing and terrifying performance as the crime family patriarch and father to Stewart’s character, standing out as one of the best cinematic villains of the year.  But it’s the twists and turns that Rose Glass takes with this story that make the whole experience truly unique and memorable.  It’s also strangely magical in the end and works in that oddball way that only an A24 movie could pull off.  The chemistry between the two leads really pulls it all together and it becomes oddly sweet by the end, even though the journey there can get strange at times.  It shows that not all the best love stories need to be rose tinted and elegant.  They can also involve a lot of bullets and blood as well.

9.

CIVIL WAR

Directed by Alex Garland

2024 was a contentious year to say the least when it came to politics in America.  Every election year is as well, but tensions this year have been especially high.  Into this tempest came a new movie from Alex Garland, a filmmaker known for making some provocative movies in the past through the lens of science fiction, and the subject for his new film was as big of a lightning rod you could build in year such as this one.  Many people tried to pick apart the movie to decide what kind of message it was going to deliver about the state of the world as it is right now, and the answer to that was, nothing.  Civil War was a very misunderstood movie that was not about the politics today, or of any era for that matter.  It uses a hypothetical scenario about a modern day Civil War breaking out in the United States as a backdrop for the narrative that Alex Garland was really interested in telling, which was about wartime journalism.  Garland depicts the daily grind of what war photographers and on the scene investigators go through in order to chronicle a war as it happens.  They are there in the thick of it, standing behind the firing lines all in the pursuit of capturing the reality of what war is like.  Sometimes they are doing it for the sake of preserving the truth, while some are doing it purely for the adrenaline rush.  But with the characters portrayed by Wagner Moura, Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinely Henderson, we witness the often unsung bravery that these individuals display in order to witness war and make sure that history is captured.  I especially like the way that Garland breaks up the mayhem of the battle scenes with the silent abruptness of a camera’s snap shot.  In these moments, we are given a window into what is behind those snapshots of war that we see printed in a newspaper or tagged onto a webpage, and it makes us consider the toll of war and the dangerous life that war journalists have.  The politics of this movie really are irrelevant, though there are slight hints about where the director stands on current events.  What matters in this movie is the affects that war has on the people in the middle of it, and the reason the movie sets it’s conflict in a modern day American setting is because we so far have not seen this kind of carnage on our own door step in a modern era, and the hope that this movie delivers is that we can hopefully avoid it again.

8.

PERFECT DAYS

Directed by Wim Wenders

Technically, this was a 2023 film that only finally got a wide release in 2024, but even still, my first viewing was in this last calendar year and it managed to stick with me all the way to the end.   This was last year’s nominee for the Oscar for International Feature from Japan, but it was directed by a legendary German director Wim Wenders in a strange confluence of cinematic forces.  The filmmaker behind classics like Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1988) applies the same grounded but poetic style to this tale about a Japanese man who cleans public toilets for a living.  There isn’t a whole lot of drama at play in this film; it merely observes the daily life of this man who takes his civil service seriously and enjoys the simple comforts of his life.  The only drama comes out of the unexpected arrival of his estranged niece, who forces her uncle out of his simple routine, though not in a way that fundamentally shifts his overall life.  It’s a profound film that speaks a lot about the simple things that make an impact in our lives, including something as simple as a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with a complete stranger you never meet.  Wenders apparently was inspired to make this movie after his visit to Tokyo where he was astonished by the variety and creative designs of the public restrooms found throughout the city, and it led him to craft this story about the kind of person who would be tasked with upkeeping these public facilities.  Honestly, you’ve never seen a movie film public toilets in such loving way and that’s part of the charm of this movie.  In addition, actor Koji Yakusho (who won the Best Actor award at Cannes in 2023 for this film) delivers a beautifully soulful performance as the caretaker Hirayama.  Wenders also fills the movie with a great soundtrack of classic rock standards, including the Lou Reed song that gives the movie it’s title.  Definitely the coziest watch of 2024 and a great life affirming piece of cinema that people will hopefully get to discover more in the years ahead.

7.

DUNE: PART TWO

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve and Warner Brothers took a major risk when they began production on the movie Dune (2021).  Villeneuve split the famous Frank Herbert sci-fi novel into two parts, and only got Warner Brothers to greenlight the first part.  That meant that the completion of the story was contingent on the success of the first movie; which was a major departure from other franchise productions like The Lord of the Rings, which had all the films produced together.  Had Dune not succeeded, we may have been left with an awkward, unresolved half of a complete story.  To make matters worse, the first Dune had to deal with the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw it’s release delayed a year and was truncated by the dual streaming and theatrical release plan that Warner Brothers enacted under the failed Project Popcorn in 2021.  Thankfully, the movie gained enough critical and box office success to convince Warner to greenlight Part Two, so that we could finally see the complete vision of Herbert’s legendary narrative.  But, the strike made a further delay in the completion of this cinematic epic, and it was finally released in the Spring of 2024.  Thankfully, it was all worth the wait as Denis Villeneuve managed to land the plane successfully and complete the story that he had long dreamed of bringing to life on the screen.  Dune: Part Two more than lives up to the promise of it’s predecessor, and surpasses it in many ways.  It’s bolder visually, has an even grander epic heft to it, and even has moments of great emotion between it’s characters.  All the returning cast is at the top of their game, with Timothee Chalamet continuing his win streak as a movie star on the rise.  Zendaya has the most significant upgrade in her screen time in this film, and she brings a lot to the character Chani that helps to elevate her presence in the series.  But perhaps the most surprising standout is Austin Butler playing the villainous Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, one of the best cinematic villains to emerge in a big Hollywood film in a long time.  Denis also ups the ante in the scale of the film, with the iconic worm riding sequence being an especially epic experience to witness on a big screen, preferably in IMAX.  Far and away the strongest cinematic achievement from mainstream Hollywood in a year that surprising delivered very well in terms of popcorn entertainment.

6.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

Directed by Mike Cheslik

There’s always that one movie that takes you by surprise every year that demands attention because it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.  This high concept comedy is one of those films, as it is a strange beast of a film.  It’s also one of the most inventive movies I have seen in quite some time.  And to make things even better, it’s gut-bustingly funny as well.  The movie has the aesthetic of a silent film, but mixed with the cartoonish antics of a Looney Tunes cartoon.  The main protagonist, an apple famer named Jean Kayak (played by a hilarious Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) seeks revenge against a pack of beavers that destroyed his apple jack brewing business, and over the course of several chaotic scenes of hijinks, he learns that the critters are more cunning than he thought.  The whole movie is a beautifully created homage to the cartoons of classic Looney Tunes, as well as to the silent classics of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but it’s also an impressive feat of cinematic storytelling as well.  Through some clever cinematic tricks, the movie comes pretty close to feeling like a cartoon brought to life.  The funniest part is that all the animals are depicted with mascot costumes, adding to the surreal absurdity of the whole piece.  The antics are hilariously chaotic and at times also surprisingly mean-spirited as well, in a good way.  It’s also refreshing to see a comedy that uses visual gags as the primary means of making us laugh, rather than inane banter that we see most comedies today using.  We’ve kind of lost the art of visual comedy over the years, where the filmmakers use the cinematic tricks to get a laugh; something that the silent masters pioneered, but were also carried along into the latter half of the 20th century by great comedians such as Jacques Tati and Mel Brooks.  Hopefully Hundreds of Beavers is that kind of transformative comedy that inspires more filmmakers to try more inventive visual gags in the future.  Easily the year’s best comedy, and I’m already happy to see that the film is already generating a cult following.

5.

GHOSTLIGHT

Directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson

This little seen film that emerged from this year’s Sundance Film Festival managed to be one of the most surprising dramas of the year, and a profound statement about the healing power of art.  The film centers around a family that is broken apart by a recent tragedy and they find surprising solace in the form of theater, after the father ends up joining a small acting troop that’s putting on a staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  The film stars Chicago based theater actor Keith Kupferer in a breakthrough role as the grieving father, and the deconstruction of his rough exterior through the embrace of performance is superbly conveyed in his work here, giving his character a very grounded and vulnerable presence.  His performance is matched by the actors playing his family, who just so happen to be Keith’s real life wife and daughter, Tara Mallen and Kathrine Mallen Kupferer respectively.  This real life family of actors are all astounding, and they are complimented very well by a scene-stealing Dolly De Leon (Triangle of Sadness) as the head of the theater troop.  Their journey towards staging the play, as well as the confrontation they face with regard to their past tragedy is all delivered in this movie with a beautifully poignant sense of authenticity.  And the finale of the film is going to knock a lot of people over with it’s emotional wallop; a tearjerker in the best sense of the word.  Keith Kupferer has been playing bit parts in Chicago shot films for many years, including The Dark Knight (2008) and Road to Perdition (2002) as well as a variety of TV appearances in addition to his acclaimed stage work.  Ghostlight is his first ever lead role in a movie, and he makes the most of that opportunity.  Hopefully Hollywood takes notice and gives him more substantive roles in the future, along with this talented family.  It’s a performance that I wish more people had seen as the film sadly had a very limited release.  It left an impact on this critic, and I hope more people discover it in the years ahead.

4.

LONGLEGS

Directed by Osgood Perkins

2024 was the year where I discovered my preferred type of horror movie.  I watched more new horror movies this year than in any year prior, and the film that stood out the most showed me that I have an inclination for slow-burn, atmospheric horror.  That movie was the new film from Osgood Perkins called Longlegs.  This film is definitely not your standard, shlocky horror flick.  There is a surprising lack of gore in most of the film, and for the most part it’s also free of other horror clichés like jump scares.  What it has instead is a very methodical pace to it that starts things off quiet and foreboding, before escalating more and more through the film until it hits a crescendo at the climax.  And that’s the kind of horror that I vibe with; one that envelopes you in that sense of building dread.  It’s been described as Satanic Silence of the Lambs, and that’s a worthy comparison to make.  It has that same kind of unsettling undertone of the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs, but also combines it with much more of a paranormal element.  Demonic possession is a genuine thing in this movie as we come to learn, and the slow-build of that realization also helps to make it’s emergence all the more creepy.  And speaking of creepy, Nicholas Cage gives a truly terrifying performance as the titular Satan worshipping serial killer, showing us that his over the top style of acting can indeed work wonders in a role that’s tailor made for it.  Osgood Perkins comes from a strong pedigree of horror filmmaking, as his father Anthony was famous for playing Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).  This is his most successful film to date and it shows that he indeed is one of the most interesting voices in horror filmmaking right now.  Too many horror films intend to shock us rather than scare us, and Perkins has created the first film that I’ve seen in a while that’s truly scared me.  Much like great horror classics such as The Exorcist (1973), Longlegs feels like you are actually witnessing true evil on the screen, and it’s not done with any flash, but rather with a carefully constructed sense of foreboding atmosphere.  I know it’ll be horror movies like this one that I’ll be pursuing more in the future, because it’s the one that hit that sweet spot of terror in my imagination.  Hopefully, Osgood Perkins will continue to be one of those filmmakers that continues to deliver in that terrifying mode of horror cinema in the years ahead.

3.

INSIDE OUT 2

Directed by Kelsey Mann

This past year also marked a triumphant return of one of the vanguard names in animation.  Pixar Animation has had one of the roughest rides of the decade so far, suffering a sudden halt to the release of their film Onward (2020) in the early days of the pandemic, and then having their parent studio Disney use them as a guinea pig in the early years of the streaming wars, with movies like Soul (2020), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022) all being denied theatrical runs and being dumped onto Disney+ instead, all the while the other animated films from the studio got to play in theaters.  This was a sad mistreatment of an animation brand that had once been the envy of all of Hollywood.  Now Pixar had to claw back their way to the top, and it didn’t help that movies like Lightyear (2022) and Elemental (2023) underperformed.  It should be understood, Pixar was still making great movies, but they were being denied the chance to prove themselves again in a post-pandemic market.  Thankfully, a savior came in the form of a sequel to one of their most beloved films.  Inside Out 2 not only reversed the fortunes of Pixar Animation, it broke every possible record there is for an animated film.  Grossing over $1.6 billion worldwide, the movie was the undisputed champ of the 2024 box office, and proof once again that Pixar is a force to be reckoned with.  And it deserves it too, as Inside Out 2 not only matches it’s beloved predecessor, but even surpasses it in many ways.  One of the best improvements with this film is that it makes the character of Riley, the girl whose mind is the home of the emotions that are the stars of the movie, a much more rounded character.  You really feel her agency a lot more in this film, and she becomes more relatable as she goes through her awkward puberty phase.  The returning emotion characters are all great and given even more weight in this story, but the newer emotions are just as interesting too.  The character of Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke) may be the best new addition to this movie, as she becomes a truly chaotic new force that raises the stakes in this story.  It’s easy to see why this movie was such a box office juggernaut, because it helped remind everyone what we love about Pixar movies in the first place; their commitment to emotional story-telling and visual innovation.  It’s profound in all the right moments, while also being immensely funny along the way.  And Disney definitely owes Pixar an apology for underestimating their value as a key part of their company.

2.

ANORA

Directed by Sean Baker

Sean Baker has been a filmmaker to watch over the last decade, and he’s been a re-occurring presence on my top ten lists ever since 2017’s The Florida Project.  This year, he released what may be his most assertive film yet with Anora.  It’s definitely the one that has gotten the industry’s notice the most of all his movies, as he became the first American filmmaker to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in over a decade; the last being Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life (2011).  Since then, the movie has been building up a lot of awards season buzz, and it’s very much deserved.  Sean Baker definitely is a filmmaker with a distinct style and interest, focusing on people who live just on the fringe of the American dream (such as the outskirts of Hollywood in 2015’s Tangerine and outside of Disney World in The Florida Project) in a neo-realistic mode of storytelling.  Anora certainly has those elements too, but Baker also delivers here with a more polished, assured production.  Filming with 35 mm stock rather than his usual digital cam or 16 mm graininess, he manages to create a vibrant looking film that still retains the neo-realist character of his earlier films.  At it’s center is a breakout performance from Mikey Madison in a star-making role as a New York stripper who falls madly in love with the wrong boy, and quickly get entangled in his dangerous world of oligarchs and criminals, though they have their hands full trying to control her too.  Its a performance that will almost certainly earn her a well deserved Oscar nomination.  Her performance as the title character is a force of nature, and she continues the same tradition of compelling, flawed characters that are always at the center of Baker’s movies.  It’s also impressive how well Baker manages shifting tones in this movie, as the film evolves from a quirky romantic dramedy in it’s early moments to full on farce in the second act to a somewhat melancholy and tragic denouement in it’s final scene.  Sean Baker is a director who maintains a signature style, but is also showing a lot of growth as a storyteller and filmmaker as he takes on more complex stories.  Anora is his most profound cinematic statement yet, and it’s easy to see why so many people (including myself) see it as one of the best cinematic achievements of the year.  It will be interesting to see if the Academy agrees as well.

And my choice for the best movie of 2024 is…

1.

THE BRUTALIST

Directed by Brady Corbet

This year was a year of bold statements on the big screen.  Some were big swings and misses (like Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis) but in some cases, there were a few attempts at bold filmmaking that actually connected this year.  And no other movie in 2024 managed to wow me personally as a filmgoer than this new epic from director Brady Corbet.  Watching this movie was like witnessing the birth of a new American cinema classic.  This is the kind of movie that I feel is going to be discussed in film studies for many years to come.  And even more remarkable, Brady Corbet was able to make this three and a half hour epic, complete with an overture and intermission, on a $10 million budget.  Hollywood should honestly take note of this movie and what it accomplishes, as Corbet was able to make a $10 million movie look like it cost around $100 million.  The movie reminded me a lot about another film that also topped my list the year it came out, which was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007).  Like that movie, Corbet is able to create a profound, intimate portrait about the human experience, in this case an immigrant architect schooled in the titular style of architecture, and have it become this profound statement about the American experience and all of it’s unseen flaws.  Adrian Brody gives a remarkable performance as Laszlo Toth, the architect at the heart of the film, delivering his best work in years.  He’s also matched by a scene stealing Guy Pearce as the heartless industrialist who funds Laszlo’s vision while also taking increasing possessive control over his life.  And like all the best 3 hour plus epic movies, it’s run time breezes by because Corbet has such a strong command of the narrative that you never feel it lag once.  By the time the intermission started, I was shocked by how quickly 100 minutes had already gone by.  It’s enormously impressive how Brady Corbet can craft a movie that features very economical film tricks (shooting in places in present day Hungary that look like 1950’s Philadelphia so they don’t have to build new sets, for example) and make it feel grandiose in a way that films like The Godfather has been seen over the years.  It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood used to make before getting cold feet after the failure of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.  The movie even stays true to the architectural style it celebrates, with the music and even the style of the opening and closing credits feeling in character.  It’s the most impressive film that I saw all year and hopefully it becomes a blueprint for a more economical way of making epic movies in the future.

So, with my Top Ten Movies out of the way, it’s time to briefly go over the Bottom Five movies that I saw this year.  Keep in mind, I technically like to avoid bad movies when I can; I chose to not watch Part Two of Zack Snyder’s awful Rebel Moon for example, after having to sit through Part One in 2023.  Given the breadth of so many movies that I saw this year, it was still unavoidable watching a few of them.  So, here are my picks for the Five Worst Movies of 2024:

5. JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX –  Consider this the year’s most disappointing film.  It was kind of stunning to see the drop off this movie faced after the enormous success of it’s predecessor. The first Joker movie made over $1 billion worldwide and got it’s star Joaquin Phoenix and Oscar win for Best Actor.  All the same people returned to make this sequel, including Phoenix and director Todd Phillips, and they were also adding Lady Gaga to the mix.  But, nothing worked.  Making it a musical was not a bad, outside-the-box idea, but the execution was severely lacking.  It doesn’t have anything profound to say about comic book movies, the glorification of violence in society, or much of anything else.  It’s just a string of prison and courtroom movie clichés mixed in with musical numbers.  By the end, the movie even provides you with the final insult that (spoiler) the Joker in this movie isn’t even the Joker that will eventually face off against the Batman.  It’s one of the biggest squandering of cinematic potential that we’ve seen from Hollywood in a while, and is only saved from the bottom of this list by having just a little bit of quality craftmanship in it’s production design, but not much else to save it.

4.  DRIVE AWAY DOLLS – This road comedy about two lesbians in trouble with the mob may be more easily dismissed if it wasn’t for the fact that this was made by one of the Coen brothers.  This movie marks the solo directorial debut of Ethan Coen, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, editor Tricia Cooke, and it’s very clear that he is not well adept at making movies on his own without his brother Joel, whose own solo effort The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) was a much better film.  The screenplay is a painful exercise in plot and dialogue, clearly showing a middle aged man trying to approximate the lingo of a younger generation, and failing.  It’s also a horrible waste of good talented actors, with Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, and Matt Damon all delivering some of the worst performances of their careers.  Hopefully it doesn’t take long for Joel and Ethan Coen to reunite and start making films as a team again, because they are clearly not cutting it solo; or at least Ethan isn’t.

3. ARGYLLE – There was a time when Matthew Vaughn could do no wrong as an action filmmaker.  From Layer Cake (2004), to Kick-Ass (2010) to Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), he was setting himself up as one of the most inventive and entertaining action filmmakers in the business.  And then something happened that changed all that.  The Kingsman sequels that followed were nowhere near as entertaining as the first film, and things have only gotten worse with this year’s Argylle.  This should have been a strong return to form for Vaughn, taking his favorite cinematic formula of using actors not known for action roles and turning them into iconic action characters in his movies, which he was trying to do with Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell.  But neither actor had quite the same transformative performance like the one we saw from Colin Firth in Kingsman.  Instead, their performances are drowned out by a terribly overblown CGI extravaganza that never manages to connect with it’s audience.  All of the action scenes feel hollow and the comedy is stale and lifeless.  Matthew Vaughn is at that point where he should really re-consider his choice in film, because this kind of Kingsman style of quirky, violent action just isn’t cutting it anymore.

2. BORDERLANDS – Undeniably one of the laziest attempts at launching a movie franchise that I’ve seen in while.  Based on the popular video game series, this film fundamentally fails on nearly every level.  Directed by a mismatched Eli Roth, the movie feels like a poor man’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and features none of the same wit or creativity.  It’s characters are irredeemable jerks that never have that spark that allows for their edginess to be endearing.  Really talented actors, including Oscar-winners Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis, just look lost amid all the mayhem.  The film is also aesthetically ugly to look at, washed out in browns and neons that try to emulate the look of the video games, but come across as pale imitation.  At a time when video games are starting to gain some respectability in Hollywood as potential franchises worth investing in, such as with Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, Borderlands reminds us that it is often better to leave some video games off of the big screen.

And the Worst Movie of 2024 is…

1. MADAME WEB – Thank god the Sony Spider-verse is being put out of it’s misery, because this was an especially bad year for them.  It’s bad when you can say the only highlight for them this year was the Tom Hardy starring threequel Venom: The Last Dance, and even that was a lackluster movie.  Kraven The Hunter even closed the year out with a whimper by being one of the biggest box office bombs of the year, nearly wiped out of the cineplexes in just three weeks.  But no movie demonstrated the folly of Sony’s failed attempt to build a cinematic universe around obscure characters loosely tied to Spider-Man than the movie Madame Web. This film starring Dakota Johnson as the titular character was the hardest movie sit through that I’ve had since Dear Evan Hansen (2021).  It was astoundingly bad on every level, and it nearly made me want to walk out of the theater.  It gets everything wrong; the comic book lore, the dialogue, the performances, everything.  There was no question that this movie would be my choice for worst film of the year, and it held that distinction from as early as February all the way to the end of the year.  Thankfully, it looks like Sony is putting this Spider-verse thing to rest, at least with live action as their animated films still are performing strong, and are getting ready to relinquish the full Spider-Man stable back into the creative control of Marvel themselves.  Madame Web was an astounding failure that may end up being one of the worst movies of the decade, and I hope it doesn’t get any worse than this in the years ahead.

So there you have my picks for the Best and Worst Movies of 2024.  It was an interesting year to say the least.  The big winners I would say were the indie film studios, particularly Neon and A24.  They accounted for half of the movies on my Top Ten alone (Love Lies Bleeding, Civil War, and The Brutalist for A24 and Longlegs and Anora for Neon).  It wouldn’t surprise me if these two independent labels will also be the top competitors during this upcoming awards season as well.  It wasn’t just Indie producers that had a great year either.  Disney had a spectacular year that helped to lessen the blow of the box office woes they faced in 2023, and it was led by the financial and critical triumph that was Pixar’s Inside Out 2.  Warner Brothers had a mixed year with box office bombs like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Joker: Folie a Deux being mixed in with the successes of Dune: Part Two and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.  Universal may have also found their new big franchise with the immensely successful Wicked, which may also help revive the box office potential of Broadway show adaptations in Hollywood.  The hope is that 2025 will continue to deliver on the good progress that was made in the last year.  I’m interested to see what kind of effect a movie like The Brutalist will have on Hollywood.  It’s been an industry that has been plagued with a problem of bloat, with movies costly far more to produce now than they have in any era before, and that’s leading to a reduction in what kinds of movies get produced, which in turn leads to an overall reduced number of films at the box office.  I hope The Brutalist and Anora become the dominant Awards season favorites, and that they help convince Hollywood that movies can feel grand and important again without breaking the bank to make them.  There’s a lot of lessons to learn still, and hopefully we see this kind of trend bear fruit in Hollywood in the years ahead.  So, let’s hope 2025 is another stellar year for the movies and the movie going experience.

The horror movie genre isn’t exactly known for being the place to find great acting.  Given the lower costs that most horror films are made under, it usually relates to a lower quality of performance seen on screen.  Bad performances in horror movies usually are attributed to the level of quality of the actor themselves, who perhaps are acting in front of the camera for the first time.  Or there might be a good quality actor in a role that is very much ill suited for them and they are just there to collect a paycheck.  Either way, horror movie sadly do not get the same good fortune that other genres get when it comes to showcasing the talents of the actors.  But, there are cases when great performances can coincide with some truly terrifying movies.  Even in some of the cases where a horror movie is clearly done on the cheap there can be an example of a performer giving it their all and treating schlock like it’s Shakespeare.  There are in fact some performances that have transcended the genre and have been heralded as among the greatest of all time.  In a couple cases, there are even Oscar winning performances that came from horror movies.  For a genre that is as old as cinema itself, it’s understandable that many actors have looked to the dark side to find a role that really allows them to flex their acting muscles in ways that other genres don’t allow them to.  For this list, I am going to share my choices for what I think are the top ten most terrifying performances to have ever come from horror movies.  To be on this list, the performance can’t just be a great but not scary one that happened to be in a horror movie.  The performances on this list are ones that genuinely send chills down the spine of audiences while at the same time showcasing just how good the actor is in playing the part.  And in some of the cases on this list, the roles have been so unforgettably terrifying, that they still stick with us many years later.  So, with all that laid out, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Terrifying Performances in Horror Movies.

10.

ANNIE GRAHAM from HEREDITARY (2018)

Played by Toni Collette

Not every performance in a horror movie starts out as terrifying.  Some evolve over the course of the movie and by the finale turn into the things of nightmares for audiences.  One of the most vivid portrayals of a slow burn descent into the terrifying can be found in Ari Aster’s Hereditary, where actress Toni Collette delivers one of her most stellar performances in a career that’s full of great ones.  The character of Annie Graham is on the surface a grieving mother, who not only lost her own mom with whom she had a complicated relationship, but also her daughter in a horrific accident, all in the span of a couple of days.  But, as the movie moves further into the plot, we begin to see Annie unravel in an unsettling way, lashing out at the family she has left and going to extreme measures to reconnect herself with the loved ones she lost.  The movie heads into some very dark territory with her character, revealing that she is a pawn in a satanic cult’s ulterior plans, which have been placed upon her family for some time.  And Toni Collette magnificently navigates the unraveling of her character, while still maintaining a grounded sense of who this woman is.  In the final act of the film, we see the character of Annie fully possessed, and that’s where the character really becomes a nightmarish demon on screen.  But even beforehand, Toni is terrifying in her role as she believably makes us see this character come apart mentally.  Toni Collette’s performance has been seen by many as one of the all time best performances to never get an Oscar nomination, and people attribute this to the Academy’s bias against genre films, particularly horror.  As my other picks on this list will show there are examples where there were horror performances too good for the Academy to ignore, but they did drop the ball by ignoring Toni here.  The only thing that keeps it from being higher on this list is that the terrifying parts of her performance don’t come out until almost the very end, but what we do get is good enough to get her recognized here.

9.

BABY JANE HUDSON from WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)

Played by Bette Davis

There was a weird movement in horror during the 1960’s that people have dubbed “Hag-sploitation.”  It was a trend where horror filmmakers would create movies that centered around “scary old women” to give their stories a more gothic quality to them.  In many cases, these “Hag horror” movies would give roles to aging actresses who were not getting any other work due to the way Hollywood devalued it’s female performers once they reached a certain age, and these roles were often seen as exploitational and indicative of the end of the road for these once beloved starlets.  But this certainly wasn’t the case for Bette Davis.  Even into her senior years, Bette was still at the peak of her talent, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? showcases just how much she still had that spark of talent and was able to completely own even a sinister “hag’ role like that of Baby Jane Hudson.  The film, interesting enough, is about an emotionally stunted former child actor who is clinging to past glory while taking out her aggression on her invalid sister played by Joan Crawford.  What starts out as passive aggressive insults eventually devolves into psychological torture and then eventually acts of murder.  And all the while, Baby Jane continues to slip deeper into insanity, which Bette Davis brilliantly displays in her performance.  By the end of the movie, she has even devolved entirely into a childlike state of mind, and this is where she is at her creepiest, especially in the way that her concept of reality becomes more fractured, and it puts her sister in greater danger as she is witnessing that downfall firsthand.  Davis’ performance certainly helps to raise Baby Jane above the otherwise bleakness of “Hag-sploitation.”  You can tell this wasn’t just a desperate ploy for work; she was really invested in playing this character and it shows.  It’s a masterful performance that even 60 years later still gives off creepy vibes and it was a benchmark role in horror filmmaking which led to a lot of imitations but none were ever able to deliver as powerfully as Bette did here.

RED from US (2019)

Played by Lupita Nyong’o

Sometimes the most terrifying kind of character is the one that looks exactly like us.  That’s the angle that Jordan Peele went with for his sophomore film as a director.  After tackling racial tension in his first film, Get Out (2017), he decided to look at class divisions in his follow-up, with a movie where affluent people on vacation are terrorized by their own doppelgangers, who seem to have come from underground laboratories and are tethered to our world while living in their hidden world under our feet; that is until they begin to rise up.  And their leader is a terrifying character named Red; the only one of the doppelgangers capable of speaking, which she does in a restricted, damaged voice.  Lupita Nyong’o plays the dual parts of Red and her “real world” counter part Adelaide, but it’s the former role where she really displays her acting talents.  Red, with her doll face like expression and husky voice is a nightmarish presence in the movie and Lupita does not hold back in making her a memorable character.  The fact that she’s the only one of the doppelgangers that displays any intelligence, as all of the others are feral by nature, makes her especially creepy.  Lupita brings this almost alien quality to the character, like she is investigating her victims while at the same time seeking malicious ends.  There is a twist revealed about the character, which does add another creepy layer to the character’s story, as well as to her relationship to Adelaide.  Lupita and Jordan Peele could have taken a more conventional route with their take on a home invasion horror scenario, but with the character of Red and the other doppelgangers, they create this twisted examination of a society where the divide between the haves and the have nots could not be more clearly defined.  And when we see our own selves presented back to us through the unnerving, almost frozen expression on Red’s doll like face, it clearly sends the message of the danger that lies beneath the surface of our class divides.

7.

LONGLEGS from LONGLEGS (2024)

Played by Nicholas Cage

This recent horror flick is already developing a reputation for being one of the creepiest in the last couple years, and part of that is due to an unexpectedly chilling performance from Nicholas Cage as the titular serial killer.  The film itself is a bit like Fincher’s Se7en (1995), only with more supernatural elements mixed into it’s murder mystery.  It’s a slow burn horror flick that takes place in an era where “Satanic Panic” was taking hold in pop culture, and the movie takes that theme to the extreme.  What is clever about the movie is that the mystery is not about who is committing the murders, but how and why, and when we get our answers it’s not what you’d expect.  Nicholas Cage is an actor known for going big with any role, and sometimes that can be a curse just as much as a blessing for some films.  Here, his unpredictability as an actor actually works for the character.  This Satan worshiping doll maker named Longlegs is deeply unsettling  from the very first moment he appears on screen, and Cage’s willingness to take the character over the top adds just that extra bit of terrifying to the role.  He speaks with this creepy Michael Jackson-like squeal of a voice and his face is pale and almost plastic like the dolls he creates.  And Nicholas Cage’s penchant for unhinged outbursts really drive home the creep factor of the character, where every moment he spends on screen just gives you this spine-chilling feeling.  It’s clear that Cage was really relishing this role, and the freedom it allowed him to just create something original.  It’s one thing to create a cold, foreboding persona for a serial killer; it’s another to have him smiling and blowing kisses while singing “Happy Birthday” like Cage does as Longlegs.  I have a feeling that this is going to be a character and a performance that people are going to be talking about for a while.  For me, it is certainly the most the creepiest character I’ve seen in a long while in a movie, and proof that Nicholas Cage can be a great actor when his over the top instincts fit the right kind of role.

6.

NORMAN BATES from PSYCHO (1960)

Played by Anthony Perkins

While Cage’s Longlegs performance is fully displayed without any nuance to show us a different side of the character, Anthony Perkins on the other hand presents a very different approach to portraying a murderer.  Norman Bates is one of the great misdirects ever achieved with a character in a horror film.  When we first meet him, Norman seems like a mild-mannered road side motel manager who is devoted to caring for his mother.  Perkins perfectly portrays this everyman aspect of Norman when we first meet him.  He is harmless and soft-spoken and the character of Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) feels safe in his company.  But as we listen to Norman speak a bit more during the fateful night that he and Marion meet, the mask slips ever so slightly, especially when they discuss topics like Norman’s mother and the “women” who come in between him and his devotion to “mother.”  Alfred Hitchcock masterfully hides Norman Bates true nature throughout the film.  Even when Marion is murdered in her hotel room, we quickly suspect that it’s Mrs. Bates and not Norman who did the deed, and we remain sympathetic to the mild-mannered man.  But, as we move further into the plot, we learn that Norman is not what he seems, and by the end we find out that “mother” has been long gone and that Norman is the true killer.  It’s the strength of Anthony Perkin’s performance that helps to keep the rouse up throughout the film, and it makes the ultimate reveal all the more satisfying as a result.  Hitchcock’s Psycho, which itself was based on the notorious Ed Gein murders, changed the horror genre forever, and showed us that monsters are not just the creatures that spook us in the night.  It showed that even the un-assuming boy next door could turn out to be a monster as well.  And that hiding in plain sight portrayal of evil is what makes Norman Bates so terrifying.  To drive that point home, Perkins delivers one of cinema’s greatest evil smiles in his final scene, with his mother’s decomposed skull briefly superimposed over his before the shot cuts away, showing us how the face of evil can sneakily appear so harmless at first.

5.

REGAN from THE EXORCIST (1973)

Played by Linda Blair; Voiced by Mercedes McCambridge

To be fair, the character of Regan herself is not the monster that terrifies in this film, but rather it’s the demon that has come to possess her.  Even still, it’s a remarkable performance from Linda Blair to throw herself into the mayhem of her character’s possession like she does in William Friedkin’s ground-breaking horror flick.  The deterioration of Regan throughout the film is terrifying to watch, and it’s incredibly shocking when we see this once sweet little girl causing self-mutilation and speaking profanities.  As the demon takes hold even more, even her childish voice disappears and is replaced with the raspy, other-worldly voice of the demon.  Veteran actress Mercedes McCambridge contributed her own husky voice to the role of the demon and it’s a remarkable vocal performance, making the demon sound unlike anything of this world.  Mercedes probably relished saying the shocking lines that the demon utters in the film, like “Your mother s**** c**** in Hell,” because not only were they barrier pushing for their time, but there was the added shocking factor that those words were coming out of a child; albeit a possessed one.  A lot of credit is due to Linda Blair perfectly lip-synching to the demonic voice as well.  For a movie like The Exorcist to work, the audience needed to buy into the belief that the demonic possession they were watching felt real.  The results from Linda and Mercedes performances not only made it feel real, they made Regan’s possession feel like evil literally captured on the screen before us.  It had to be daunting for an actress Linda’s age, and there are stories of Freidkin’s set being a bit hazardous at times, but she displayed a command of the role that you wouldn’t expect a young actor to have, especially when their job is to scare the daylights out of the audience.  And what her performance ended up giving us is one of cinema’s most terrifying performances ever.

4.

JACK TORRENCE from THE SHINING (1980)

Played by Jack Nicholson

Much like Toni Collette’s descent into madness in Hereditary, we see the same change in character from Jack Torrence in The Shining, only the fall is much, much bigger in this acclaimed adaptation of the Stephen King novel.  Jack Nicholson is another actor who likes to go big in his roles, and Stanley Kubrick very much let him go big here.  What’s great about Nicholson’s performance is that the build to insanity isn’t so much gradual as it is taking things one step further after starting in an already heightened place.  Jack Torrence is first introduced as even-keeled in the beginning, but the wheels begin coming off not too far from that, especially as isolation begins to take it’s toll on the character’s psyche.  Nicholson’s performance is quintessentially him, with himself ratcheting his own persona beyond it’s limits.  By the time he reaches his full murderous state, Nicholson’s performance becomes truly a nightmarish presence.  We get our first taste of the worst of his character during the “All work and No play” scene when he confronts his wife Wendy (played brilliantly by the late great Shelly Duvall), and it’s effectively creepy how he is able to scare us while also doing so with a smile.  And the of course there’s the climatic chase through the Overlook Hotel where the ax-wielding Jack pokes his face through the door and screams out “here’s Johnny.”  It makes it all the scarier that he’s playing around with his victims while hunting them down in a murderous rage.  By the end of the film, there is zero subtlety left in Nicholson’s performance, but that really is what makes him so effectively terrifying in that final stretch; just the unhinged nature of his character at that point.  That’s the scariest kind of evil, when the person you loved no longer feels anything but blinding rage, and seems to enjoy using their power to terrorize you.  The story leads us to believe that the Overlook turned Jack towards evil, but the movie and Jack Nicholson’s performance also indicates to us that Jack Torrence didn’t need that much of a push to go off the deep end, and they show that to us in quite a spectacular way.

3.

ANNIE WILKES from MISERY (1990)

Played by Kathy Bates

Staying with Stephen King for one more film, we find an example of a horror film performance so good that the Academy was wise not to ignore it.  Kathy Bates star making turn as Annie Wilkes in Misery did earn her a much deserved Oscar for Best Actress, and it’s a role that managed to display incredible acting chops on the part of Bates as well as be terrifying and not watered down at all in order to fit the Academy’s standards.  The character of Annie Wilkes seems to be an externalized expression of fear on the part of Stephen King, as she is the epitome of toxic fandom in the extreme.  What is interesting about Bates performance is that she appears warm and matronly at first, but only a couple scenes later we see her turn into a rage monster that snaps over the most minor of infractions.  There is clearly something going on with the psyche of Annie Wilkes, but Kathy Bates is wise to not soften her character too much.  Annie is a monster to be sure, and the strength of Bates performance is in showing the full range of dangerous extremes that Annie can go to at any time.  Perhaps the best example of Kathy Bates’ brilliance in her performance is the most famous scene in the movie when Annie has the writer Paul Sheldon (a great James Caan) tied to the bed, where she plans to hobble him by purposely breaking his feet with a sledgehammer.  The best part of that scene is just how soothing and calm Annie is, right before she does the shockingly violent act.  It makes her all the terrifying as a result; how disassociated she is from the horror she is inflicting.  Kathy Bates certainly goes over the top too with the character through some rage filled explosions, but it’s those quieter moments of madness that really give us the chilling effect.  Creating a character like her must have been cathartic for Stephen King as he probably encountered one too many fans who displayed a little bit of obsessiveness themselves; though not to the extreme that we see with Annie Wilkes.  I think it’s that familiarity with the character (her obsessiveness and rigid conformity) that makes her one of cinema’s most terrifying characters; evil personified with sugar-coated sweetness.

2.

COUNT ORLOCK from NOSFERATU (1922)

Played by Max Schreck

It’s amazing that one of the earliest horror movies still manages to hold up over a century later, and the same goes for the terrifying performance at it’s center.  Director F.W. Murnau was unable to secure the rights to the novel Dracula from the Bram Stoker estate, so he crafted a vampire story of his own that was still fairly close to the original.  Nosferatu became the first ever vampire movie, and much of the rules of horror cinema stems directly from this ground breaking film.  The vampire at it’s center, Count Orlock, is vividly brought to life by the unforgettable Max Schreck.  The lanky build and statuesque height of the actor creates this image of an otherworldly creature, and it’s a nightmarish image that still sticks with audiences today.  It’s especially terrifying when we see him standing at the end of a dark corridor in the middle of the night, and even more terrifying when he later stands in the frame of a doorway about to enter the room to feed on his prey.  Murnau effectively creates this sense of terror without having Schreck do much action at all.  It’s all about how Count Orlock’s mere presence creates this foreboding atmosphere in every scene that he’s in.  Murnau also makes brilliant use of shadows to invoke the vampire’s presence even when he’s not physically on screen.  The performance that Schreck gave was so convincing that speculation rose that he was an actual vampire, which became the basis for a behind the scenes biopic called Shadow of the Vampire (2000), where he was played by Willem Dafoe.  We have since seen Dracula brought to the screen many times, including brilliantly the first time by Bela Lugosi, but even in all his many versions, I don’t think there has been a Dracula that has terrified audiences the same way as Count Orlock.  For a 100 year old movie to still have the ability to terrify it’s audience is a real testament to the effectiveness of Schreck’s performance, and we owe every portrayal of vampires in cinema to the high bar that he set with his spine-chilling on screen portrayal.

1.

HANNIBAL LECTER from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

Played by Anthony Hopkins

For all the critics who look down on acting found in horror movies, it should be noted that what many regard as one of the greatest performances ever committed to celluloid did in fact come from a horror movie.  Anthony Hopkin’s became a cinema icon with his portrayal of the hyper intellectual cannibal behind bars in this Oscar winning Jonathan Demme film.  It’s interesting to note that Dr. Hannibal Lecter, for as terrifying as he is, is not the main antagonist of the movie, nor is he an obstacle for the hero Clarice Starling (an equally brilliant Jodie Foster) as he spends the movie as her ally in her search for the “Buffalo Bill” serial killer.  But make no mistake, Hannibal is still a monster and the movie does such an effective job making every moment in his presence the stuff of nightmares.  The brilliance of Jonathan Demme’s direction is that he puts the camera right in the faces of his actors.  Anthony Hopkins delivers his chilling performance while looking right down the barrel of the camera, making his presence feel all the more invasive.  It’s also unsettling that we rarely see him blinking as well.  With Hannibal Lecter, it’s not about what he does that terrifies, but the way he casts a pallor of foreboding over a scene with his methodical way of talking and the stillness of his movements.  He’s like a demon that you feel waiting for you in the darkness, only he’s here fully lit and we are unable to escape his piercing gaze.  The movie still shows us how dangerous he can be with the prison break scene, where he goes on a bloody spree of violence after spending the whole rest of the movie behind bars.  Hopkins’ Oscar win for the role was a no-brainer, and he would continue to bring the character back to the screen in subsequent sequels and prequels.  But it’s here in The Silence of the Lambs  that we see him at his most terrifying.  No other performance on screen makes you feel like the villain is piercing right into your soul and haunting you without doing much at all.  It’s that psychological terror that makes Anthony Hopkin’s performance as Hannibal Lecter the most terrifying ever put on screen.  It raised the bar in portraying terror on screen, and showed that even horror could raise the bar high for all cinematic acting in general.

So, there you have my choices for the most terrifying performances ever in movies.  Some are more obvious than others, but what I find interesting is how well older horror films have held up over the years in showcasing great performances that still can terrify audiences today.  Anthony Perkin’s portrayal as Norman Bates is still a brilliant bait and switch that can still shock audiences, as well as Bette Davis giving us one of the most vivid portrayals of madness on screen as Baby Jane Hudson.  And then of course there’s Max Schreck whose chilling portrayal of a vampire is still the gold standard for the sub-genre 100 years after the fact.  Also the fact that both Anthony Hopkins and Kathy Bates have won Academy Awards for their unapologetic horror movie performances shows that the genre is just as capable of presenting quality acting as any other genre out there.  Recent examples like Toni Collette in Hereditary and Lupita Nyong’o show that great actors can still deliver their best work in scary movies, and I feel like Nicholas Cage’s recent work in Longlegs will also stand the test of time and be regarded as one of the best in the genre.  What is great about all the performances on this list is that they displayed great acting while also accomplishing the goal of being scary.  It shows that you don’t have to water down a terrifying performance in order to get critical praise.  Are there bad performances in horror movies?  Sure, but no more so than any other genre.  The low budget stigma surrounding horror movies seems to have also extended to the perceptions of the performances given in them as well, but that seems to have changed in the last few years as more and more A-listers are looking to spread their wings in the horror genre.  While it can sometimes be risky, horror movies tend to do better when they allow their actors to abandon their guardrails and just let loose, and that seems to be what is appealing to actors more and more these days.  There is a freeing aspect to what the horror genre can do for actors who just want to do something wild and weird every now and then.  And as this list has shown, some of those unhinged performances turn into some of our favorite performances.  That’s the blessing of horror in Hollywood; it gives it’s talent the chance to be weird, wacky and unbound in a genre where all that is valued.  And as we’ve seen, the best actors alive have been the ones who have scared us the most.

We all know what a movie musical is supposed to be.  There’s an expectation that most of the story is going to unfold with the support of catchy and emotional songs, and in most cases some incredibly well choreographed dancing as well.  But, not all of the best musical moments that have come from cinema are found in musical movies.  Sometimes there are moments where a magnificent musical number will suddenly break out in a movie that beforehand had none and will not have any thereafter.  And these unexpected musical treats can sometimes be among the most memorable moments ever in film.  You find these moments mostly in a comedy, where the joke usually is the unexpected break into a musical number.  Other times, the moment just springs out of the scene naturally, with the characters feeling the mood of a particular song that is playing within earshot and they either break out into a dance or sing along.  In any case, these scenes reinforce the power that music can have when it’s in the service of storytelling, and all it can take is just one song to do it.  For this article, I will be counting down what I think are the best musical moments from non-musical movies.  To make it on this list, the movies themselves have to specifically be not in the musical genre.  The movies can have more than one song in it, but the moment itself has to be one that is essential to the scene that it’s in; so no needle drops as part of the musical score.  The characters in the moment have to be actively participating in the music or reacting to it.  There are actually a surprisingly large amounts of great musical moments like these found in non-musical movies, so narrowing it down wasn’t easy.  And so with that, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Musical Moments From Non-Musical Movies.

10.

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

“Camelot”

Remember when I said that many comedies will throw in a musical number as joke, intended to make fun of other musicals.  Well, here is one of the best examples.  Like most of the jokes found in this classic comedy, the musical number comes completely out of nowhere and blindsides you.  Where it falls within the story is after King Arthur (Graham Chapman) has assembles all of his Knights of the Round Table, played by all of the other Monty Python members.  Their journey begins as a search for a kingdom, and of course they arrive at the mythical Camelot (It’s only a model).  Arthur orders his knights to follow him there and we immediately jump into the musical number in all of it’s lunacy.  In typical Python fashion, the “Camelot” song is utter nonsense with the singers desperately straining themselves to rhyme words with Camelot.  At the same time, we see knights dancing in a chorus line, knocking plates off tables and a page using their metal helmets as a percussion instrument.  Even a cat getting stepped on becomes part of the musical bridge.  And the funniest part is that the scene contributes nothing else to the story other than to convince Arthur and his knights to leave Camelot, because “tis a silly place.”  It’s a fun, absurdist diversion that stands out in a movie that is full of absurdity.  Eric Idle, one of the Monty Python members who co-wrote the song, would take the joke further by actually creating a full stage musical called Spamalot based on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail itself, which became a huge success on it’s own.  It’s easy to think that this small like musical number meant as a gag may have itself gone full circle and sparked into existence a who musical.  That in itself is funny when you think about it.

9.

BIG (1988)

“Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks”

Sometimes you don’t even have to sing to create a great musical moment.  This is the case with this memorable scene from the movie Big.  The movie that centers around a teenage boy who makes a wish to grow bigger and the next morning finds himself in the body of an adult man (played by Tom Hanks) offers plenty of potential for comedic hijinks.  But, director Penny Marshall and screenwriter Gary Ross also managed to find a lot of heart in this story as well, giving it an emotional coming of age resonance.  A lot of the film’s best moments come out of Tom Hanks’ performance, where you see him not only convincingly playing a child in a man’s body but also someone who is learning to grow up at the same time.  That balance between becoming more mature while still having that childish sense of playfulness is perfectly captured in this scene, where Hank’s character is trying to connect with the owner of a major toy company that he works for, played by Robert Loggia.  They unexpectedly stumble upon a floor piano display and Hanks’ character’s childish instincts kick into gear.  He begins to play “Heart and Soul” by tapping his foot on the right keys and as he gets more into it, the piano playing becomes more of a dance.  He somehow manages to convince the senior business owner to jump in, and he too starts to feel a little bit like a child again.  It’s a simple but charming scene that just springs naturally out of the moment, and uses music as a great story-telling tool to show human connection.  It helps that it looked like Hanks and Loggia were having fun while filming the scene.  Indeed, the two made an effort to make the scene work, as there were apparently back up dancers on set in case they missed a note or two.  Neither missed a step and the stand-ins were never needed.  Just a sublimely charming use of music in a movie that otherwise is just a comedy.

8.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008)

“Jai Ho”

This Oscar winning film on the surface seems to be a film deeply rooted in the country of India.  But, when you look at the team behind it, it’s actually a British made film, from the director to the screenwriter to many of the key positions behind the camera all being filled by people who are distinctly not Indian.  But the film does make an effort to draw inspiration from the subcontinent’s vast cinematic history.  Bollywood after all is the second largest film industry in the world behind Hollywood, and even in recent years it has begun to catch Tinseltown by surprise.  The film Slumdog Millionaire is for the most part a straight forward drama about a young man named Jamal (Dev Patel in a star making role) trying to survive as an orphan and societal cast-out, only to take all of that struggle and learn from it and have it help him win millions of dollars on a trivia game show.  In many ways, the straight forward approach to the drama separates the movie from it’s Bollywood contemporaries.  That is until the finale though.  After the story comes to a close, and Jamal ends up a millionaire and with the girl he loves (played by Frieda Pinto), the credits begin to roll and suddenly the movie breaks into a full blown Bollywood musical number.  It’s a brilliant move to wait until the very end for the movie to spring this on us; it would have felt out of place anywhere else, which sometimes is something that Bollywood filmmakers are not concerned about.  The musical number in the end feels earned and is something of a victory lap for the film.  It helps that it feels tied into the story as well, as it takes place in a train station that was a key meeting place for the characters, both as children and as adults.  The movie brilliantly includes shots of the child actors who played the younger counterparts of the leads also dancing.  The song won composer A.R. Rahman an Oscar.  Over a decade later, a true Bollywood film would win the same award with the hit song “Naatu Naatu” from RRR (2022).  Slumdog may not have been a true Bollywood musical in the same sense, but it use the Bollywood style to give us one hell of a closing note to leave the movie on.

7.

RISKY BUSINESS (1983)

“Old Time Rock and Roll”

Sometimes a great musical moment can happen in a movie when a character just feels the vibe in the moment when a song comes on.  In this iconic scene from Risky Business, Tom Cruise’s character Joel is enjoying the freedom of having the house all to himself with his parents away.  So much so, he feels the urge to dance around, pants-less I might add, to his favorite rock song.  If it were any other actor than Tom Cruise, this scene wouldn’t matter as much as a great musical moment, but he is the ingredient that makes the difference.  It helps that he has those natural good looks, but Cruise’s whole performance in this is all in, and it looks like he is genuinely having a blast doing this.  It’s hard to listen to this Bob Segar classic, particularly the first few notes, and not think of Cruise sliding into frame back turned to the camera with his socks on that hard wood floor.  This moment has been widely imitated across media over the last 40 years, and I’m sure many people have even tried it at home when they see an open hard wood floor.  But it holds a special honor for being the moment that turned Tom Cruise into a movie star.  Sure he had already appeared in a films before this, like Taps (1981) and The Outsiders (1983).  But when people saw Risky Business, they couldn’t stop talking about “the scene.”  Without Tom Cruise’s lip-synching in his underwear, the Top Guns and the Mission: Impossibles might not have come after.  Risky Business does have a memorable soundtrack that includes the likes of The Police and Phil Collins, but they are merely mood setters, while “Old Time Rock and Roll” stands out as a moment where the movie lets the music make the scene.  And Tom Cruise’s career for that matter.

6.

WAYNE’S WORLD (1992)

“Bohemian Rhapsody”

It really says something about a song used in a movie when it forever puts an imprint on it afterwards.  The Saturday Night Live spinoff comedy starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey was a perfect translation of the comedy sketch in a film format.  It maintained the humor from SNL while managing to expand on the concept well enough to make it work in full length.  And while the whole movie is hilarious and has many classic moments, nothing hits the mark more than this opening scene with Wayne and Garth and their crew driving to their favorite haunt listening to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  The sing along is appropriately goofy, with the characters going over the top with each lyric.  And I don’t think anybody ever since this movie came out can listen to the guitar riff transition after the lyric “FOR MEEEEE” without headbanging like Wayne and the gang do in this scene.  It’s such a joyful, funny moment showing rock music fans just really getting into the music in that moment.  This moment, as it would turn out, would have a larger impact beyond the movie.  Because of Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” suddenly jumped up back on the music charts, helping it become a hit once again.  Queen had kind of fallen out of popularity during the late 80’s, so this movie raised their profile once again.  And it had the extra poignancy of happening mere months after lead singer Freddie Mercury had died from complications of AIDS.  The remaining members of Queen would pay Mike Myers back by giving him a role in the award-winning biopic Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).  30 years later, it’s still a hilarious moment that remarkably is now ubiquitous with the song.  If anything, I don’t know if a song as weird and experimental as “Bohemian Rhapsody” would ever have been remembered beyond it’s era without this movie.  Today, it is seen as Queen’s signature song, and they have a bunch of local access TV party animals to thank for that.

5.

FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986)

“Twist and Shout”

John Hughes movies always incorporate pop music into their soundtracks that work as perfect tone setters, whether they be classic or contemporary.  Bands like Oingo Boingo, Simple Minds, and Spandau Ballet got a major boost by having their songs featured prominently in a Hughes flick, but the most memorable musical moment in any of his movies actually takes it’s cue from the greatest rock band of all; The Beatles.  In a scene that perfectly illustrates how the character of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) can charm his way into anything, Ferris is seen taking over a parade float in Downtown Chicago and he manages to lead the parade performers and audience into a playful performance of the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.”  Sure it’s another lip-synching performance, but Broderick puts a lot of energy into it, and in that moment you see the character at his most charismatic.  The fun thing about the scene is that it seems to organically change from a spur of the moment routine from Bueller into a full blown movie musical moment, with people in the crowd suddenly staring to dance like they rehearsed it.  For a bit, it looks like John Hughes is breaking the veneer of reality a bit by making the sing along feel like a true Hollywood musical.  It’s no surprise that Broadrick was and still remains a Broadway musical performer of note, and that talent for musical performance can definitely be seen here.  The scene also feels like a love letter to the city of Chicago from John Hughes, who would set most of his movies in the Windy City.  Both Los Angeles and New York have been the spotlighted in classic musicals before.  With Ferris Bueller, we see the city come alive with it’s own musical spark.

4.

PULP FICTION (1994)

“You Never Can Tell”

One thing that definitely defines the movies of Quentin Tarantino is the soundtrack.  And what is particularly interesting about the music in a Tarantino movie is that he doesn’t always pick an obvious, popular song to underscore his scenes.  He likes his deep cuts, and it’s often the case where a long buried song from an obscure band may end up being re-discovered by being featured in one of Quentin’s movies.  For the most part, he uses music as a tone setter, being a non-diegetic factor in the scenes.  But there are instances where he does have his characters reacting to the music they are listening to.  In some cases, those songs become such an iconic part of those scenes, that it’s another case where those songs have been imprinted with the movie that they featured in.  The torture scene from Reservoir Dogs (1992) with Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” is a great example of this, as you can’t listen to the song anymore without picturing Michael Madsen’s little shuffle step before he cuts the policeman’s ear off.  But as memorable as that moment is, Tarantino’s most memorable musical moment is found in Pulp Fiction, with John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s iconic dance in the Jack Rabbit Slim’s Twist Contest.  Performed to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” their dance is simultaneously absurd and impressive to watch.  Travolta’s waving of the two fingers in a “V” across his eyes alone is a shorthand gesture that immediately recalls this film whenever somebody imitates it.  In all of Tarantino’s body of work, this is the closest he’s ever come to making an all out musical moment in one of his movies.  He probably felt that he had to put a scene like this in a movie that was going to feature John Travolta, the star of Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978).  And it’s a good thing he did, because in a film full of some pretty dark and harrowing moments, it’s the one part of the movie that just allows itself to have a little fun; and in turn it makes for an unforgettable musical moment.

3.

DIRTY DANCING (1987)

“I’ve Had the Time of My Life”

A lot of movies like to finish on a strong note, and in most cases the best way to do that is with music.  Dirty Dancing, for most of it’s runtime is a simple romantic melodrama, complete with a soundtrack of 60’s standards to help set the time and place of this movie.  But, in the closing scene of the film, when dance instructor Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze at the top of his game) pushes his top student and love interest Baby (Jennifer Grey) to show off all the dance moves he’s been teaching her in a public gathering, the film suddenly launches into a full musical number that to this day defines it’s era.  In contrast with the rest of the movie, the scene is scored not with a classic, era appropriate song but instead with a contemporary 80’s ballad, sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. And the film suddenly shifts to staging the shots like it’s a music video.  For a film that had been a laid back drama up to this point, this final scene puts a fantastical spin on the moment and in many ways it feels earned.  You can definitely feel the shift in the movie when Swayze looks at Jennifer Grey sitting quietly at her table and delivers his now oft quoted line, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”  And the film just closes out it’s story purely through song and dance from then out, something that the rest of the movie wouldn’t have indicated up to that point.  Of course the moment that becomes the highlight of the scene is when Baby perfectly lands the leap into the air, where Johnny holds her aloft over his head.  This is a move that has been attempted at many weddings across the world in the nearly 40 years since, to varying degrees of success.  It may have been peak 80’s, but it’s a moment that still represents one of the best uses of music to carry a scene and present a grandiose musical moment into a generally straightforward film and help it become something truly cinematic.

2.

BARBIE (2023)

“I’m Just Ken”

It’s actually a bit of a surprise that we got a Barbie movie that wasn’t more musical.  This Greta Gerwig directed satirical comedy became a massive box office hit in no small part to it’s perfectly executed concept and hilarious observations about gender roles and the societal pressures that reinforce them.  It also had a great soundtrack that surprisingly also contributed to the messages of the movie.  Most of the songs are great to listen to, but only one stands out as being a true musical number in this movie.  And boy does it stand out.  Penned by songwriter Mark Ronson, whose had a hand in many Top 40 hits over the years, this show-stopper is devoted to the Kens that live in Barbieland, and is a tour de force that perfectly toes the line between absurd and sincere, which makes it the perfect encapsulation of the movie itself.  Ryan Gosling’s performance completely sells this song.  It’s a hilarious parody of a rock opera ballad that is absurdly over the top.  While the initial melancholy opening part is hilarious enough, the movie really hits it’s high when we reach the “dance off” portion.  From this point, the song goes from absurdly hilarious to epically hilarious, with these wannabe alpha males trying to assert their manhood by way of interpretive dance.  In a film that already has plenty of great comedic moment, this is where the movie takes everything to an iconic level.  It’s such an imaginative road to take with what is on it’s own a very absurd song.  It’s a relatively new entry compared with all the other musical moments on this list, but the fact that it lands so well as both a joke within the scene as well as a sincerely great song on it’s own really has elevated it to being one of the best musical moments of this type.  It’s an inspired moment that really punctuates the comedy of it’s film and shows how well an unexpected musical moment can help to elevate the movie as a whole.

1.

THE PRODUCERS (1968)

“Springtime for Hitler”

The legendary Mel Brooks has always tried to work at least one musical number into most of his films.  Whether it’s the title number from Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), or Lily Von Shtupp’s dance hall routine in Blazing Saddles (1974), or the iconic and hilarious version of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” from Young Frankenstein (1974), he’s always managed to get a musical moment that fits well into his movies that are otherwise more comedically driven.  But out of all of his big musical numbers,  I don’t think any stands out more than the title number for the intentionally bad stage musical “Springtime for Hitler.  In a multi-layered gag, Mel is able to poke fun at the over the top spectacle of musical theater while also getting in his shots at the expense of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  There’s actually a profound meaning behind the joke here.  Mel Brooks distilled the Nazis down to their pageantry, showing that this was the biggest weapon they had in spreading their propaganda, but when you take that pageantry out of the context of a scary Nazi rally and put it into a Broadway musical spectacle, you really see the absurdity of what it actually was in the end.  That’s the genius behind Mel Brooks’ satire in The Producers, that once you strip propaganda down to it’s naked pageantry, you rob it of it’s power by showing how ridiculous it looks out of context.  And the musical number “Springtime for Hitler” is a perfect illustration of this, with Nazi’s looking absolutely ridiculous when imagined as chorus line dancers.  The best part of the scene is seeing the horrified faces of the Broadway audience; just utterly petrified by the audacity of what they are seeing.  Even though the movie centers around musical theater, this is the one true musical number in the movie and it shows the talent that Mel Brooks had in staging a musical sequence for a film, even if the intention was for it to be a joke.  Mel would go on to take The Producers and turn it into a stage musical for real many years later, which itself would become one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time.  For a musical sequence that appears in a movie that’s not a musical, there really is nothing that quite hits as hard musically or thematically as this one does; a brilliant accomplishment from the comedic and cinematic genius that is Mr. Mel Brooks.

So, there you have my picks for the best musical moments in non-musical movies.  There is often a fine line between what we consider to be a true Hollywood musical.  Most movies contain great music, but to be a movie musical that music must also be an integral part of the story telling and not just a mood setter.  These examples that I spotlighted blur that line even more, because in most cases they are moments that you would normally find in a standard movie musical, and yet they stand alone within their movies.  Some were a part of their movie as an intentional parody of movie musical numbers, like with Monty Python‘s “Camelot” or The Producers‘ “Springtime for Hitler.”  Other times, it’s just the characters getting into the music they are hearing and that in turn creates an iconic moment on it’s own, like in Risky Business, or Big, or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  And then there is there’s the coda from Slumdog Millionaire where the movie divorces itself from the grounded story it was telling to give us a fun celebratory dance number to leave the movie on.  In all the cases, these scenes used music effectively to embellish their moments, and in turn created iconic moments that made their films even better.  Risky Business was defined by Tom Cruise’s bare legged dancing to rock music and Dirty Dancing was defined by that triumphant leap that Jennifer Grey made into Patrick Swayze’s arms, lifted high into the air.  And of course Pulp Fiction was given it’s most iconic moment with whatever dance Travolta and Thurman were trying to do in their scene together.  All of these show that a movie doesn’t have to be musical in the traditional sense to have a great musical moment.  Often these stand out as the best cinema has to offer because of how unexpected they usually are. And the best ones will also sometimes leave their mark on the songs they showcase, like what Wayne’s World did with “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  That’s a true sign of the power of music in storytelling.  One of the best kinds of surprises you’ll find in watching a movie is seeing how well one song can make a movie shine even brighter when it’s used in the best way possible.

When television first emerged onto the scene in the post-War years, it shook up the entertainment world in a big way.  While it did pose an existential threat early on to the theatrical model of film distribution, it also in many ways made movies a whole lot better.  The mid-century disruption of television led the movie studios towards an era of innovation, hoping to coax away people from their TV sets with the spectacles of widescreen film and surround sound speakers; the kind of things that at the time you could only experience in a theater.  Eventually, a balance was struck where movie theaters were able to thrive even with the competition of television.  What television brought was the opportunity for studios to tell long format stories through serialized programs.  Over time, television shows had just as much of a cultural impact as the movies, and became a mighty pillar of the industry that generated enormous profits along the way.  The proliferation of media went even beyond that with the advent of cable television and the emergence of the likes of HBO, FX and AMC on the scene; creators of shows that very much feel cinematic.  But, the movie industry would continue to prosper, and in some cases they would inspire hit television series spin-offs, such as The Odd Couple or M.A.S.H.  What is definitely fascinating is the flip side of that; when a show inspires a film.  There are several instances when a series makes the big leap from the small to the big screen, and how much of a stylistic change that can be.  Working with a bigger canvas, sometimes the story or aesthetic of a series transforms the property into something very different than what we are used to.  There have been many failures in that translation to the big screen, but sometimes the marriage of cinema and television does work out and creates a film not just worthy of it’s place alongside the show that inspired it, but also is able to stand on it’s own as a great movie.  What follows are my top ten picks for what I think are the best movies based on television shows that have been made so far.

10.

21 JUMP STREET (2012)

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

It should be noted that before this movie came out, nobody had any interest in seeing it.  We had been bombarded with a ton of bad movies based on television shows in the years leading up to this, most of them just nostalgia bait that never justified their existence on the big screen.  On the surface this just looked like another one, re-worked into a comedy vehicle for actors Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.  So it was surprising once we saw the actual movie that it turned out to be a smart and hilarious meta commentary on the very notion of cheap nostalgia cash ins.  It helps that the movie was made by the same guys who turned what could have been a lazy toy commercial into one of the best animated movies of the decade with The Lego Movie (2014).  The team of Lord & Miller are just masterful at making movies that shouldn’t exist work extremely well.  21 Jump Street really bears very little resemblance to the more dramatic show that it is based on, basically just using the premise as a springboard for the comedy, but the movie goes above and beyond just easy fish out of water jokes about two undercover cops posing as teenagers at a high school.  It is very self aware that it is a nostalgia cash grab, and it leans into that meta aspect to some hilarious results.  Jonah and Channing also have incredible comedic chemistry in the film.  Given that the movie had a lot of things going against it, especially with the fact that it was based on an early 90’s drama that most audiences today have little knowledge of, it is refreshing to see how well Lord & Miller subvert our expectations at every turn.  But, even fans of the series do get some shout outs, especially given that two of the original cast members of the show, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise, have surprise cameos (which the movie also puts a hilarious subversive spin on).  Given that too many TV shows to movie translations miss the mark by just banking on their nostalgia, it’s nice that one such movie calls that out and has some fun with it in the process.

9.

SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT (1999)

Directed by Trey Parker

One of the most common small screen to big screen translations that we see are from the medium of animation.  If an animated show is popular enough in the pop culture, it almost certainly makes the leap to the movie theaters.  Some of the times, it’s a show that gets translated from animation to live action, such as with The Flintstones (1994) or Transformers (2007).  But more often we’ve seen animated shows cross over with their animation style in tact, just beefed up with a cinematic budget.  In most cases, the movies just are just another episode taken to cinematic length.  This includes movies based on popular properties like Rugrats, Spongebob Squarepants, or The Simpsons.  Most of the time, these movie adaptations come out after the original run of the show is over, but a couple of these movies will make it to theaters even while they are still on the air on television.  And in the case of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, it came out very early in the show’s run.  South Park was a mere 3 seasons into it’s run when show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone created this movie based on the show.  And yet even with that brief amount of time under their belt, they managed to create one of the best TV to cinema leaps ever.  The movie is far more ambitious than anything they had ever done on the show up to then (or even since), becoming a full blown musical with an epic scale story line, and all the while still maintaining the same raunchy, subversive appeal that the show was beloved for.  The movie is a prime example of how a TV series adaptation brings out the full potential of what it can do on the big screen.  And even 25 years later, with the show still running on the air to this day, this is still the pinnacle of South Park for many.  Most of the jokes still hit today, and some feel even more relevant than ever.  Also, you’ve got to love any movie musical that brought out classic tunes like “Blame Canada” and “Uncle F$%#a” to the world.  There are a lot of great movies based on classic animated shows, but none hit quite as hard as South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut still does all these years later.

8.

WAYNE’S WORLD (1992)

Directed by Penelope Spheeris

One of the most prolific shows to have spawned countless movie adaptations over the years has been Saturday Night Live.  The long running sketch comedy series has shepherded the rise of many comedic talents over the years, and with them they have also popularized many of the characters that these comedy actors have created.  Unfortunately, Saturday Night Live’s track record of success has been spotty.  It’s hard to take something that worked in a 5-7 minute sketch and expand it out into feature length.  And a lot of time it becomes a bridge too far, as you can really feel the premises stretch to their breaking point in so many of these SNL movies.  There are three adaptations that did buck the trend and became comedy classics in their own right.  One is the underrated MacGruber (2010), another is the classic The Blues Brothers (1980) which the first such SNL sketch to jump to the big screen, and the last one is what I think is the best of the bunch, Wayne’s World.  While so many of the SNL movies seem to be dragged down by too much adherence to back story, Wayne’s World in many ways was more free to develop into whatever it wanted to be.  The original sketch was just a parody of a low budget cable access show made in a basement.  The appeal wasn’t so much in who these characters were, but what they were.  Mike Myers and Dana Carvey perfectly maintain the appeal of their characters Wayne and Garth, and the movie builds around them and their show, allowing freedom to tell a story that doesn’t have to stick so strictly to formula.  As a result, we get a movie that is clever and creative, with fourth wall breaking jokes, hilariously cartoonish situations, and a surprising amount of heart as well.  What’s more, it’s a movie that actually feels like it adds something to the world of these characters, rather than just resting on the laurels of their familiarity from the show.  It’s something that sadly far too many other Saturday Night Live movies have forgotten to do.  It’s a movie that knows it’s playing in a bigger sandbox, and it makes the most of it while giving the characters the chance to grow along the way.  Party on.

7.

THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD (1988)

Directed by David Zucker

Sometimes a movie adaptation becomes so popular that it will even eclipse the TV series that it was based on, to the point where you even forget that the TV show existed in the first place.  The comedy team of Jim Abrahams and Jerry and David Zucker created a short lived comedy series called Police Squad after their success with the movie Airplane (1980).  The show ran a short 6 episodes i during the spring of 1982 before getting prematurely cancelled.  Though it’s run was short, the episodes that did air were given critical acclaim, as the show maintained the same hilarious visual gags that made Airplane an all time classic comedy.  A few year later, Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker re-pitched their Police Squad brand as a movie, retaining their star Leslie Nielsen and fleshing out the premise into a feature length story.  The result was a smashing success, leading to what many consider to be a comedy classic on the same level as Airplane.  Leslie Nielsen is in his best element as Lt. Frank Drebin, perfectly accentuating the hilarious sight gags with his no nonsense stoicism, something that he also brilliantly applied in Airplane.  The movie also fleshes out the cast with some talented supporting players that also nail the right tone; including George Kennedy, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban Nancy Marchand, and yes even O.J. Simpson (back when he wasn’t on trial for murder).  The comedy in these movies works is because everyone plays things straight amidst all the absurdity, with Nielsen hitting the mark exactly.  In the end, the failure of the Police Squad series proved to be a good thing, because it inspired this comedy classic into being, though I strongly recommend seeking out the original show too, which surprisingly still holds up even against the movies.  For Leslie Nielsen and the team behind the movie, this would be a hard act to maintain, as their comedic formula lost it’s potency over time.  This original Naked Gun is still the best the best of them all as it hits the right notes with the greatest frequency.

6.

THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

While a lot of the show to movie translations tweak with the formula a bit, a lot of them still maintain a familiarity with what we already know from the original source.  Then there are movies based on television shows that completely reimagine them entirely.  Though the movie adaptation of The Addams Family owes a fair bit to the original comic strip that the series was based on, you can’t help but notice the DNA of the television show in the movie as well; especially with the use of the catchy theme song complete with the snapping fingers.  The movie is a wonderful re-imagining of the spooky themed comedy series, maintaining it’s tongue-in-cheek macabre sense of humor, while at the same time taking advantage of the cinematic medium to up the visual aesthetic.  Visually, the movie owes a lot of inspiration to the movies of Tim Burton, who surprisingly was not involved in the making of this film, with cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld making an impressive debut as a director.  Ironically, 30 years later Burton would take his own shot at adapting The Addams Family by turning it back into a series with his hit spin-off Wednesday for Netflix.  What makes this adaptation really shine is the perfect casting of all the classic characters.  Raul Julia and Angelica Huston are just the ideal choices to play Gomez and Morticia Addams respectively.  Christopher Lloyd also makes for a wonderfully manic Uncle Fester.  But the movie’s absolutely dead on casting choice was a very young Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams.  Her chilling deadpan delivery has left a lasting mark on the character, and her performance is the reason why the character has become so popular over the years.  The movie definitely ups the ante of the macabre aesthetic that never quite felt as spooky in the show, but it still remembers to stay true to it’s comedic roots, and it is a hilarious movie throughout, owing a lot to the talented cast that understood the assignment.  It’s definitely a case where the movie really took the full potential of cinema to deliver something new, mysterious and spooky with this familiar family.

5.

TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983)

Segments Directed by John Landis, Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, and George Miller

This adaptation of the classic anthology series unfortunately has a dark cloud of controversy hanging over it.  The film was a combination of four different stories adapted from individual episodes of the award winning anthology from acclaimed writer Rod Serling, with each segment given to some of the biggest movie directors of the time.  The segment that sadly has the bad reputation is the one directed by John Landis, who was fresh off of his success with comedies like Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers.  His segment features actor Vic Morrow playing a bigoted businessman who is transported into the middle of several crises where he must suffer through the same injustices that the people he professes to hate have gone through.  One such moment involves a recreation of a battle in the Vietnam War, and Morrow’s character must help two young Vietnamese children to safety.  Sadly, during the filming of this scene, a malfunction with a prop helicopter caused it to crash on Vic Morrow and the two children he was carrying with him, killing all three instantly.  It’s one of the most notorious on set accidents in movie history, and it’s something that has clouded Landis’ reputation ever since, given the lax safety standards on set that were discovered later.  They were able to finish the film without the star, and it is an otherwise dark side note to an otherwise excellent big screen adaptation.  Fittingly, the Landis portion is the least interesting of the segments, and Spielberg’s is wonderfully whimsical but perhaps a bit too bright for this kind of movie.  Where the movie really shines is in the more horror themed segments from Joe Dante and George Miller.  Dante’s re-imagining of the “It’s a Good Life” episode is especially weird and disturbing in all the right ways and is definitely the highlight of the movie.  And George Miller’s re-make of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is elevated by an incredible unhinged performance by John Lithgow in the role famously played by William Shatner in the original series.  The movie had the unenviable task of taking one of the most iconic and influential shows on television and giving it a cinematic make-over, and thankfully these talented filmmakers were able to bring their own imaginative spins to help make it worthwhile.

4.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

Directed by Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma was no stranger to adapting a hit series  into a movie before he tackled this movie based on the classic spy thriller show.  In 1987, De Palma put his own spin on the acclaimed Prohibition Era set crime show The Untouchables.  And while that movie was an excellent adaptation on it’s own, his more longer lasting legacy in translating a show for the big screen came with this adaptation of the show Mission: Impossible, which ran from 1966-73.  The interesting thing about this movie is that it is in the continuity of the show, integrating the main character from the show (Jim Phelps), but putting him in charge of a new team.  Out of this, a new lead character was created in Ethan Hunt, a character molded specifically for a movie star named Tom Cruise to play.  The great twist with this movies is that (spoilers) Jim Phelps, the previous main character, is revealed to be the villain this time around; an interesting subversion on the original premise.  That twist is probably why the original actor who played Phelps (Peter Graves) refused to appear in this movie, but award winning actor Jon Voight fills the role perfectly in his place.  There’s no denying, this was a vehicle first and foremost for Tom Cruise to shine, which is not surprising given that he’s also the producer of the film.  Brian De Palma does do a great job of taking the iconic elements of the show (the gadgetry and the famous face masks) and giving them a cinematic flair.  He also does a masterful job of staging the action scenes as well, with the break-in to a sensory security room via rope suspension being one of the most iconic ever put on screen.  Though Brian De Palma left after one film in the series, he still left a strong foundation on which Cruise and his team have continued to build over the years, creating one of the greatest action franchises in history.  It’s definitely a case where the movie takes the premise of the show and brings it to it’s full potential, and is even not afraid to take some creative risks in order to rewrite the history of the show itself.  It’s definitely a mission worth choosing to accept.

3.

THE MUPPET MOVIE (1979)

Directed by James Frawley

The Muppets throughout the 1960’s and 70’s were a television institution.  The felt made puppets created by Jim Henson and his company had two hit shows airing at the same time, with The Muppet Show being a primetime hit on network TV, as well as Sesame Street being a beloved program for younger audiences on public broadcasting.  So it wasn’t at all surprising that the Muppets would eventually make it to the big screen.  The only question was, what kind of movie would they make.  The Muppet Movie in some ways is an origin story of how the characters got their start in showbiz.  We start off with Kermit the Frog (played by Henson himself) and his friend Fozzie the Bear (Frank Oz) taking a road trip cross country to make their break in Hollywood.  Along the way, they meet up with all of the familiar faces we know from The Muppet Show.  In a nice meta joke, they also run into Big Bird, whose heading in the opposite direction to New York to start his own show on public television.  It’s a great way to build a movie story around familiar characters without having to adhere to the format of the show they came from.  One thing that the movie does carry over from the show is the many celebrity cameos sprinkled throughout the movie, with icons such as Mel Brooks, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, and even Orson freaking Welles showing up at the end.  By the movie’s end, we see the Muppets given their big break, and it’s easy to see how the famed Muppet Show would have been a continuation of their story.  The movie is itself very iconic, with the Paul Williams penned song “The Rainbow Connection” becoming something of an anthem for the Muppet brand.  And of course this would lead to a series of loosely connected Muppet movies over the next several decades.  Most of them are excellent in their own right, but the fact that they made it to the big screen is because of how well this movie set the standard going forward.

2.

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)

Directed by Nicholas Meyer

If there is a brand that can definitively say it’s the most popular brand to have even come from television, Star Trek can make a very strong claim.  The sci-fi series created by Gene Rodenberry may have lasted only 3 seasons, but it’s legacy is enormous in the history of television.  It has created one of the largest and most devoted fan bases in pop culture and has spun off a whole bunch of hit television series based within the same universe.  About a decade after it’s original run, the series had grown so popular through years of re-runs that it convinced Paramount Pictures to pursue a big screen adaptation of the series.  Bringing back the full original crew of the starship Enterprise, the movie was a big budget spectacle, intended on giving the sci-fi brand the same cinematic appeal as other classics of the genre like Star Wars (1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Unfortunately, director Robert Wise didn’t understand the fundamental basics of what made the show work in the first place, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was a disappointing bore that alienated fans and turned away audiences.  Still, Paramount was eager to still make it work.  Nicolas Meyer was brought in to re-work the franchise for a sequel.  What he ended up doing was create a movie that indeed lived up to the legacy of the show while at the same time giving it a worthy cinematic upgrade.  What’s even better is that it picks up as a continuation of an on-going storyline from the series, bringing in Ricardo Montalban to reprise his role as the villainous meta-human Khan, with a performance now considered iconic to most Trek fans.  The Wrath of Khan really does feel like the true successor to the original series.  It rewards long time fans with a return of a classic villain and at the same time delivers moments that elevate the Star Trek franchise as a whole, including Shatner’s iconic guttural scream of  “Khaaaaan” and Leonard Nimoy’s tear-jerking final moments after Spock’s sacrifice.  This was the movie that truly resurrected Star Trek and helped to turn it in not just a force on television, but on the big screen as well; a legacy that continues to this day.

1.

THE FUGITIVE (1993)

Directed by Andrew Davis

While a lot of hit movies have been inspired by television series, only one can lay claim to have been so good that it got a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.  The Fugitive is a classic in every sense of the word, taking the premise of the original hit series that ran from 1963-67, and updating it with a pulse pounding adaptation.  The story of wrongfully convicted Dr. Richard Kimble became one of the must see event shows of it’s time, and the final episode is still to this day one of the most seen in television history; on par with the finale of M.A.S.H.  It took nearly 30 years for a big screen adaptation to happen, and by that time there was enough separation from the source series to help make this film feel like a fresh new thing.  The movie wisely cast Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble, a role that perfectly utilizes his intensity as a performer while also feeling different enough from his work as Han Solo and Indiana Jones in the past.  It was the kind of meaty dramatic role that Harrison Ford really wanted to show his acting chops with, and he delivers a great performance overall.  But, the movie is made even better with the scene stealing performance of Tommy Lee Jones as Samuel Gerard, the top cop in charge of hunting Richard Kimble down.  Jones strikes the perfect balance between intensity and absurdity, with a whole movie’s worth of great one-liners.  The role would even win Tommy a well deserved Oscar for Supporting Actor.  Of all the movies based on television shows, this one feels like the one that strives the most to be a great movie, and for the most part it succeeds.  It’s another case where the film is so iconic it eclipse the show it was based on, and that show was an icon in it’s own day too.  There are moments in this movie that are just thrillingly cinematic, including Ford’s dive off of the top of a dam, which is the movie’s most iconic scene.  So many adaptations of television shows try perhaps a little too hard to break free of their small screen roots.  This adaptation is definitely a case where the story was calling for a great big cinematic re-telling and the filmmakers managed to craft a film that transcends any size screen.

One of the things that I noticed in putting this list together is that the success rate of creating a big screen adaptation of a television series is found more often on the comedy side.  It would seem that comedies lend themselves better to a feature length expansion.  It’s probably because comedies tend to be more stand alone stories with every episode, meaning that a movie fits in better with the continuity of a show by just being a longer episode.  Dramas on the other hand are serialized for the most part, which can be difficult to condense into a two hour length for the big screen, or to expand upon in a re-imagining.  The best dramatic adaptations of television shows are the ones that usually just take the premise and start with a fresh new take, kind of like what we saw with The Fugitive.  Because telling stories for television and for cinema are so different, it is often difficult to make that transition work.  Movies don’t break for commercial, and television shows have to adhere to more standards and practices than movies do.  They very much are two different formats for telling a story, so a lot of things are going to have to change in translation.  Still, there are a number of cases where it has worked and payed off immensely well.  Star Trek and Mission: Impossible are both cinematic franchises that have stood well on their own even with the television shows still standing out within the pop culture.  And in some cases, great movies can rise out of even the most trivial of inspirations seen on television, like Wayne’s World managing to become a hit comedy movie based on a short sketch from a weekly variety show.  The continuing blurring of the lines between television and cinema in the age of streaming is making the definitions of a small screen to big screen adaptation change as well.  At some point, a cinematic adaptation of a television series will not seem as much of a reward as it has been in the past, but more of an inevitability.  Even still, as seen with some of the examples on this list, there have been some great films that owe a lot to their success to the foundation that was made for them on television beforehand.  Great stories always find a way to capture an audience, and as we’ve seen it’s not so much the size of the screen that matters, but rather the strength of the story that comes through and entertains us and makes these classics endure in any format.