Whether out for themselves, their mother countries, or even, sometimes, James Bond, Bond girls add mystery, style and stakes to stories of glamour and espionage. (And yes, we recognized the term “Bond girls” is anachronistic, but we think it’s been grandfathered into the movie lexicon — it even has its own Wikipedia entry.)

As we await the next Bond film — from Dune director Denis Villeneuve — let's look back on some of the women who made past James Bond movies so memorable.

Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in Dr No (1962)

Though she was preceded onscreen by Sylvia Trench and Miss Taro, Honey Ryder, a Jamaican shell diver played by a dubbed Ursula Andress, is widely considered the first Bond girl.

Perhaps it’s because of her unforgettable entrance in Dr. No, emerging from the ocean in a white bikini and belt, bearing shells.

Her chemistry with Bond is one of the driving forces in Dr. No, the film that spawned one of the most successful and longest-running of all film franchises.

Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love (1963)

The first Bond sequel found Bond traveling to Turkey to help Soviet consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova — played by Daniela Bianchi, with Connery above.

Of course, this being a Bond movie, sparks fly. But Tatiana is, of course, a pawn in a plan by SPECTRE to enact vengeance against Bond for some things that happened in Dr. No. But the pawn soon becomes the key player in the film.

She was Miss Universo Italia and first runner up at Miss Universe 1960 before becoming one of the most famous Bond girls. And in 1967, she appeared opposite Connery’s brother, Neil Connery, in Operation Kid Brother, a Bond spoof.  

Honor Blackman as Ms Galore in Goldfinger (1963)

Honor Blackman, rehearsing an infamous fight scene with Sean Connery, above, has perhaps the most famous name of any of the Bond girls — and we’re not even sure we can print it here given the cautious sensibilities of some of our syndication partners.

Suffice it to say that Blackman, who was also known for the TV series The Avengers, is one of the most iconic Bond girls of all — a woman who could very much hold her own against Bond, or anybody.

Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson in Goldfinger (1964)

Shirley Eaton played Jill Masterson, aide to the villain who gives Goldfinger its title. When she spends a night with Bond, he enacts a cruel but colorful vengeance: Having her killed via “skin suffocation” from being painted gold.

The image was iconic enough to land Eaton on the cover of LIFE magazine for its November 6, 1964 issue.

If you’re wondering, it took about 90 minutes to apply all that gold paint. The task fell to makeup artist Paul Rabiger, who also worked on the Bond movies Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and From Russia With Love.

Claudine Auger as Domino in Thunderball (1965)

Claudine Auger earned the titles of Miss France Monde 1958 and became first runner up in the 1958 Miss World compeition before landing the role of Dominique “Domino” Derval in Thunderball, the fourth Bond film.

Her chemistry with Sean Connery, onscreen and behind the scenes, should be obvious.

She later starred in the 1966 World War II drama Triple Cross, and, in 1968, appeared with fellow Bond girl Ursula Andress in the Italian comedy Anyone Can Play.

Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe in Thunderball (1965)

Luciana Paluzzi as SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe helped create the template for the Bond femme fatale. She’s one of the fiercest early Bond girls.

Her later roles included playing as a Southern belle in the 1974 film The Klansman — with her voice dubbed — for Thunderball director Terence Young.

Diana Rigg as  Tracy di Vicenzo in Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Diana Rigg (left) is the first of the Bond girls to be arguably more famous than her co-star: She had already the lead of The Avengers when she was cast as new Bond George Lazenby’s partner in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby, an Australian model, played Bond just once before Connery returned for Diamonds Are Forever.

Rigg also holds the distinction of being the only woman to marry Bond — though, horribly, she was murdered moments after their wedding, making On Her Majesty’s Secret Service perhaps the biggest bummer of all Bond movies.

Still, Rigg did very well — her many post-Bond roles included playing  Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. And she played a crucial part in Edgar Wright’s 2021 Last Night in Soho, which was completed just before her death.

Gloria Hendry as Rosie Carver in Live and Let Die (1972)

Live and Let Die, the first film to feature Roger Moore as Bond, was produced at the height of the Blaxploitation trend and has several attempts at nods to Black culture, including the casting of Gloria Hendry as Rosie Carver, who is the first Black woman to be romantically entwined with 007 onscreen.

One could argue that Jane Seymour’s Solitaire is the most prominent of the movie’s Bond girls, but we don’t have a picture of Jane Seymour posing behind the scenes by a pinball machine in one of the most gloriously 1970s images ever, so.

Maud Adams as Andrea Anders and Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Oh wait, we may have found a more 1970s image. We hope you’ll forgive us for the fact that not one but two Bond girls are in this photo. Maud Adams, left, played Andrea Anders in The Man With the Golden Gun, and returned to play the title character in a 1983 Bond film we don’t think we can name here for reasons previously mentioned.

Meanwhile, Britt Ekland, right, played Mary Goodnight. Mary as been derided for being kind of clumsy as Bond girls go — but also praised as one of the most fashionable. Don’t blame Ekland for the writing. Director Guy Hamilton has said in audio commentary for the film that she was so “elegant and beautiful that it seemed to me she was the perfect Bond girl.”

And yes, that’s Fantasy Island star Hervé Villechaize, who also starred in the film, hanging out with Moore, Adams and Ekland.

Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Perhaps reflecting the advances of the women’s liberation movement, Soviet spy Major Anya Amasova is one of the most coolly capable of all the women in Bond movies — though even she needs an assist against the hulking Jaws (Richard Kiel).

Almost to the final seconds of The Spy Who Loved Me, we don’t know if Amasova loves Bond or wants to kill him or both.

Grace Jones as May Day and Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill (1985)

In the last of the Roger Moore Bond movies, Tonya Roberts (right) — best known at the time for Charlie’s Angels — plays the heiress of an oil company who tries to fend off the advances of the evil Max Zorin (Christopher Walken).

But the coolest character in the movie is May Day, Zorin’s lover and chief assassin, played by Grace Jones (left). She’s one of the most memorable of all Bond characters, and even kind of gets to die a hero.

Carey Lowell as License to Kill (1989)

Timothy Dalton became the new James Bond in the late ’80s, when fears of HIV/AIDS were very prevalent and an effort was made to tone down 007’s promiscuity. That meant fewer, but more memorable, female counterparts, including the charismatic Carey Lowell as pilot and DEA informant Pam Bouvier, who helps James battle a drug lord. (Why was Bond messing with cocaine kingpins instead of mad scientists? It was the ’80s.)

Lowell went on to be known for playing smart and capable characters in many other roles, including as Jamie Ross in Law & Order.

Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Tomorrow Never Dies is most noteworthy for being the movie that introduced Malaysian action star Michelle Yeoh to Western audiences, a quarter-century before she won Best Actress for her role in 2022’s Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Yeoh plays Wai Lin, a supremely capable Chinese agent.

Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough (1999)

She may be best known for reality TV today, but Denise Richards had two excellent back-to-back appearances in Starship Trooper (1997) and Wild Things (1988) before joining the Bond franchise to play an oddly named nuclear physicist.

She holds her own against terrific 007 Pierce Brosnan, but her name seems like a setup for the worst line ever to appear in a Bond movie: “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.” Blech.

Halle Berry as Giacinta ‘Jinx’ Johnson in Die Another Day (2002)

Halle Berry is another Bond girl who at least matched her Bond co-star in stardom: At the time of the film’s release, she had just won a Best Actress Oscar for 2001’s Monsters Ball.

It was the final Pierce Brosnan movie, but Berry basically hijacked it with her sheer watchability, and not just by paying homage to Ursula Andress’ entrance in Dr. No.

Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (2006)

Vesper Lynd is widely recognized as one of the greatest of all Bond girls, if not the greatest: She breaks the heart of Daniel Craig’s Bond in this film, and he never quite recovers.

Besides being the most glamorous British Treasury agent of all, Lynd is a smooth operator who keeps everyone guessing until the very end — especially Bond.

Ana de Armas as Paloma in No Time to Die (2021)

Ana de Armas isn’t in No Time to Die for very long — just long enough to steal the whole movie.

Dressed in evening wear, her Cuban secret agent shoots it out with Bond in a Havana fight scene that is one of the best set pieces in any Bond film.

Can she be the next 007?

Léa Seydoux as Dr. Madeleine Swann in SPECTRE and No Time to Die (2021)

Léa Seydoux is a standout among Bond girls — or Bond women, as we should probably call them in the modern age. Her character is the only woman to be the female lead in two Bond films, and the only woman known to have a child with him.

Besides On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, No Time to Die is the biggest bummer among Bond films. But Swann and her daughter, Mathilde, provides glimmers of light.

Liked These Images of 20 Bond Girls Behind the Scenes?

You might also enjoy these behind the scenes images of Goldfinger.

Main image: Eva Green in Casino Royale. MGM

The star of Casablanca, Notorious and other masterpieces — and three-time Oscar winner — was born in 1915 in Stockholm to a Swedish father and German mother. She went on to become one of the most iconic actors of all time, starring in many films that still feel as relevant today as they were decades ago.

Let's look back at just five of them.

Casablanca (1942)

Stunningly time when it was released at the height of World War II, Casablanca has somehow never gone out of style — because of its celebration of freedom and resistance, yes, but also because of its crackling dialogue and the unmatched chemistry between its leads, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart.

She plays Ilsa Lund, who one night in Casablanca enters the Rick's Cafe, which just so happens to be owned by her ex-lover, Rick Blaine. The problem: She's now with Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) a Czech Resistance leader battling the Nazis.

Rick and Ilsa still have strong feelings for each other, but must ultimately decide whether to act on them or sublimate them for the greater good. Bergman and Bogart make it feel like a very difficult choice — which makes the film's final outcome all the more heroic.

A Best Picture winner, Casablanca has only gone up since in the appraisal of most film lovers.

Notorious (1946)

Another film tied to World War II, Notorious finds Ingrid Bergman playing Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a German war criminal who is enlisted by U.S. agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to help infiltrate a group of Nazis who fled to Brazil after World War II.

Things become complicated when she's asked to seduce one of the targets — even after she and Devlin have apparently fallen for each other.

For much of the film, Alicia — and Bergman — keep her loyalties very much in question. Bergman and director Alfred Hitchcock walk an impressive narrative tightrope in a fast-moving, elegant thriller featuring one of the most complex female leads in cinematic history. Notorious is one of her three collaborations with Hitchcock, the others being 1945's Spellbound (1945), and 1949's Under Capricorn.

Gaslight (1944)

Adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light — and remaking the British film Gaslight — this American version finds Bergman playing Paula Alquist Anton, whose husband (played by Charles Boyer) manipulates her into believing she may be insane.

It's another demanding role for Bergman, who must maintain the audiences sympathies through a state of manipulated confusion, and Oscar voters rewarded her with the first of her two Oscars for Best Actress. (She won again in 1956 for Anastasia, and won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.)

Like Casablanca — scenes of which still turn up frequently as memes — Gaslight remains so influential in modern expression that "gaslight" remains a modern term for people accused of manipulating reality.

Stromboli (1950)

The neorealist drama Stromboli is a pleasure to watch at a surface level: It tells the story of a Lithuanian woman (Bergman) who meets an Italian man (Mario Vitale) at an internment camp, and journeys with him to his home island, which is very different than she expects.

Stromboli is even more fascinating when you keep in mind the behind the scenes story of the film. It was born from Ingrid Bergman writing a letter to director Roberto Rossellini, saying she wanted to work with him. They set up a production company and funding through RKO and its owner, Howard Hughes.

But their collaboration went much further — they began a romance during the film that led to the birth of their daughter, actress Isabella Rossellini.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

The Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express would be captivating for the casting alone, and Bergman is a standout. She won an Oscar — her third — for Best Supporting Actress.

The rest of the cast included another woman famously paired with Bogart onscreen, Lauren Bacall — Bogart and Bacall were also married for more than a decade — as well as a who's who of stellar actors, including Sean Connery, just emerging from his run of James Bond films; Jacqueline Bissett, Michael York, Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Anothony Perkins, and many more. It's fascinating to see so many screen icons mix it up.

Bergman died eight years later, of breast cancer on her 67th birthday in 1982. But she continued to work, and shine, until the end.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of Classic 1940s Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch.

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Main image: Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. RKO Radio Pictures

Editor's Note: Corrects main image.

Not Another Teen Movie (2000)

One of our favorites 2000s comedies is a pitch-perfect sendup of '80s and '90s comedies: Not Another Teen Movie is brutal takedown of teen movies from Lucas to She's All That to Fast Times at Ridgemont High to The Breakfast Club, but it's obvious its creators love teen movies and really know their stuff.

There's lots of sex and violence and racial humor, yes, but it's almost always in service of making fun of the sex and violence and racism of '80s teen movies. The one shockingly violent joke — which ends with a pipsqueak bisected football player declaring "I'm a hero!" Is one we think about often. And we love the cameos from the likes of Mr. T and Molly Ringwald.

Not Another Teen Movie could cut every offensive joke and still be very funny, but it gets extra points for the sheer audacity of keeping them in.

White Chicks (2004)

Marlon and Shawn Wayans play Black FBI agents who impersonate rich white socialites to infiltrate a pompous Hamptons social scene — and break up a conspiracy.

Yeah, it's a broad setup. But the movie fully seizes on its funny premise when the duo learn how white people act when they think no one of other races are around — and start to see the world from a woman's perspective.

If you're not offended by something in White Chicks, you aren't paying attention. The Wayans take down privileged white people, sure, but they also make some sharp observations about weird racial and sexual hangups, leaving no one unscathed.

It's one of those 2000s comedies that has aged better than anyone expected, a few jokes aside.

America: World Police (2004)

It's hard to say who or what this comedy hates the most: xenophobia, Kim Jong-Il, or Matt Damon.

The creators of South Park missed at the box office with this one, but they were right and audiences were wrong.

It's a masterpiece of smart-dumb moviemaking, especially a scene in which a drunk explains U.S. foreign policy with a disgusting metaphor about three body parts.

And the musical numbers are absolutely top-notch. This is one of our favorite 2000s comedies and one of the most ridiculously audacious comedies ever made.

Borat (2006)

By far the best movie on this list — and there are a lot of great 2000s comedies — Borat is the story of sexist, anti-Semitic, generally clueless Kazakh journalist whose idiocy puts everyday Americans at ease enough to say some truly horrible things.

Sacha Baron Cohen's unbelievably good, mostly improvised acting makes you laugh, but also lament the open prejudice he encounters. His feigned guilelessness brings out the worst in people, and makes us wonder how we would behave in their shoes.

Somehow we end up feeling sorry for Borat, but even sorrier for the state of things. The 2020 sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, is also terrific.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Tropic Thunder viciously and hilariously lampoons Hollywood self-importance at every turn, but especially with Ben Stiller's Simple Jack character and Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who really, really commits to playing a Black character.

Though some people have accused the movie of insensitivity, Stiller has admirably stuck to his guns.

“I make no apologies for Tropic Thunder,” Stiller tweeted when someone erroneously said he had apologized for the film. “Don’t know who told you that. It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”

John Tucker Must Die (2006)

John Tucker Must Die criticizes the womanizing ways of its lead character (Jesse Metcalfe) while also making him look... pretty cool.

It also offers a female empowerment narrative — a bunch of girls John Tucker has wronged team up to enact revenge — while simultaneously sexualizing its young characters in a way that was very typical of Maxim-era 2000s comedies. A classic case of Hollywood having it both ways.

Here's how little the John Tucker team cares if you're offended about their movie aging badly: A generation later, they're working on a sequel.

Wedding Crashers (2005)

The Wedding Crashers revolves around the main characters (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson) deceiving women in order to sleep with them. There's also a bit about a gay son who is basically a sexual predator.

Sure, the guys get their comeuppance and learn to change their scamming ways. But we're still asked to root for them — what a couple of scoundrels! — until the turnaround.

As star Isla Fischer told the Herald Sun: "'I'm not sure that a Wedding Crashers sequel would work in the Time's Up movement."

Knocked Up (2007)

Knocked Up, one of the biggest hits of all 2000s comedies, follows Seth Rogen as a fairly unmotivated guy whose hookup with a Type A TV journalist (Katherine Heigl) leads to an unexpected pregnancy. They opt to try to make it as parents.

There are crass jokes all over the place, but that's not the issue. Heigl said in a 2008 Vanity Fair interview that she found the film "a little bit sexist" because it "paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight," while the men are "lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."

She also said “it exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I’m playing such a b----; why is she being such a killjoy?”

Rogen told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that he felt "betrayed" by her comments, and writer-director Judd Apatow said in 2009 on Howard Stern that he expected to get an apology from Heigl that never came.

Shallow Hal (2001)

Shallow Hal is a big fat joke that even one of its stars, Gwyneth Paltrow, has criticized in retrospect. It's about a man named Hal (Jack Black) who falls under a spell that causes him to only see a woman's inner beauty.

As a result, many conventionally attractive but cruel women appear fat, while the kindly but heavyset Rosemary (Paltrow in a fat suit) appears lithe and flawless. The internal logic of the movie is that skinny is better.

It's also easy to be offended at the notion that larger women would throw themselves at the average and shallow Hal if only he would pay them the slightest bit of attention. It turns up often on lists of 2000s comedies that didn't age well.

Brüno (2009)

With same-sex issue a big and divisive issue in the 2004 presidential campaign — and its long-overdue 2015 legalization very much on the horizon — the 2000s were a very big decade for jokes about gay panic.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat followup sets out to lampoon homophobia the same way Borat mocked xenophobia — he plays a charater who is so silly and lacking self-aware that the unsuspecting real people he entraps feel free to let down their guard and say incredibly ignorant things.

But Brüno is such an exaggerated and stereotypical character — as well as an inconsiderate buffoon, sexuality aside — that's it's easy to understand why he often freaks people out. Are they always offended by his being gay? Or perhaps by his frequent rude-at-best attempts to cross their boundaries?

Which isn't to say Brüno isn't funny. Every once in a while he finds the perfect target and executes his points perfectly. We think often of the ridiculous self-defense scene and the showstopping line, "How do you defend yourself against the man with two d-----s?

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)

The whole point of Chuck and Larry is to dance around dicey issues, and it delivers.

Released before the aforementioned 2015 Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage the law nationwide, it's the story of two New York firefighters, Chuck (Adam Sandler) and Larry (Kevin James) who pretend to be gay so that Larry's children can be beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. (Just go with it.)

Things get tricky when Chuck falls for their lawyer, Alex (Jessica Biel) and gains her trust under the falsehood that he's gay. And the gay panic jokes galore — were ubiquitous and risque in 2000s comedies — just seem dated now.

Liked This List of Shameless 2000s Comedy Movies That Don't Care If You're Offended?

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Main image: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Universal Pictures.

Think we missed one? Let us know.

Here we go.

John Tucker Must Die (2006)

This movie is absolutely a product of its time. Beneath a thinly veiled attempt at criticizing womanizer character John Tucker, the movie really serves more to glamorize him and make him out to be cool for dating so many women at the same time.

I understand that the movie is supposed to be about women teaming up together to defeat a common enemy, which is nice, but there is wayyyy too much sexualization of high school aged girls in this movie.

However, it does barely squeak past the Bechdel test, which is requires three things to pass: 1. It has to have two (named) female characters who 2. talk to each other 3. about something other than a man.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)

Whew — where to begin? We all love Adam Sandler, but this movie has a lot of elements that would never be accepted today.

To name a few, two straight men pretending to be gay in order to abuse the system is problematic for obvious reasons, and the countless gay jokes aren't funny anymore by today's standards; Rob Schneider in yellow face; Sandler's character acting predatory towards Jessica Biel's character, who trusts him because she thinks he's gay, when in reality, he's ogling her.

Waiting... (2005)

Let's start with this line: "Hey there Natasha, how's my favorite minor doing today?" Ryan Reynolds' character asks a hostess. "I'm only a minor for another week," she says.

Let that give you a taste of the sexism, homophobia, and misogyny in this movie. While it has its funny moments that many who have worked in the restaurant industry will find relatable, there are a shocking amount of jokes and scenes about sexual harassing women at work, pursuing minors sexually, and using foul words like the F slur that we won't repeat here.

This 2000s movie has not aged well at all.

What Women Want (2000)

This movie isn't as outright problematic as some others on this list, but it still has some very outdated ideas about women.

The plot revolves around Mel Gisbon's character, a suave and successful man who magically gets the power to hear women's thoughts. He soon realizes that virtually all the women in his life can see right through him, and don't find him as charming as he thinks he is. However, there are some lame bits, like the scene in which the entire joke just the fact that Mel Gibson is wearing pantyhose. Now that gender fluidity and dressing in drag is much more accepted in society, these parts fall flat.

Gibson's character is also way too easily forgiven by the women in his life, including by his daughter, who views him as an absentee father until he shows up to her prom one single time to help her, as if that makes him some kind of hero.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

This movie is beloved by many, but watching it again, you might notice that a lot of the jokes have not aged well. Revolving around Steve Carrell's character Andy, who has never had sex at the age of 40, the film revolves around his friend's attempts to help him lose his virginity.

There are jokes about women not being able to drive, a lot of misogynistic remarks, and even a problematic scene where Catherine Keener's character Trish gets angry when Steve Carrell's character Andy refuses to have sex with her. Yes, we know, it's a comedy classic — but there are a lot of parts that just aren't as funny as they used to be.

Bring It On (2000)

It only takes about 10 seconds of watching just the trailer for this movie to see that it's all about sexualizing teenagers. It also uses the R-slur and a big plot point about white cheerleaders stealing Black cheerleaders' work.

Though it's considered a classic teen movie, you could never have a scene today with a high school cheerleader going topless at a football game and call it comedy.

The Hangover (2009)

Another comedy classic that has some scenes that are really uncool today. Perhaps the worst is the scene that revolves around Ed Helms' character being disgusted when he finds out that the sex worker he had a relationship with is actually a trans woman.

Helms and Bradley Cooper's characters make a big show of being grossed out when the realize that Yasmin Lee's character Kimmy is actually a trans woman. Now, this scene is really hard to watch.

Wedding Crashers (2005)

Much of the plot of Wedding Crashers revolves around the main characters lying to and deceiving women in order to sleep with them. There's a racist grandmother, sex that is not consensual, and jokes about gay men being predators.

Even Isla Fisher, who has a role in the movie as a virgin who becomes obsessed with Vince Vaughn's character after they sleep together (also unfunny), told the Herald Sun: "'I'm not sure that a Wedding Crashers sequel would work in the Time's Up movement."

Crash (2004)

One could argue that this one never aged well to begin with, but it did win the best picture Oscar over Broke Back Mountain. It's since been criticized for its shallow take on racial issues.

The main complaint is that Crash presents the idea that racism can be cured and absolves white characters of their horrible past too easily, like Matt Dillon's police officer character who assaults Thandiwe Newton's character but is forgiven later because he saves her from a burning car.

There's also the scene when Sandra Bullock's racist character is seemingly absolved because she falls down a flight of stairs, and also decides to be nice to a Latina maid — as if that makes all the problematic things she did before somehow okay.

Knocked Up (2007)

The plot of Knocked Up follows Seth Rogen as a loser-type who sleeps with Katherine Heigl's hard-working TV journalist character. When she gets pregnant, they decide to try to stay together and be co-parents.

But Heigl doesn't feel that the film was fair to women. She notably said in a 2008 Vanity Fair interview that she found the film "a little bit sexist" because it "paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."

She also said “it exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I’m playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy?”

Her co-star Seth Rogen and director Judd Apatow seem to disagree, however. Rogen told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that he felt "betrayed" by her comments, and director Judd Apatow said in 2009 on Howard Stern that he expected to get an apology from Heigl that never came.

Shallow Hal (2001)

This movie is one giant fat joke, and it's been widely criticized for that, including by star Gwyneth Paltrow, who wore a fat suit for it. She called acting in the film a "disaster," and its easy to see why when you consider the plot of this film. Jack Black's character Hal is put under a spell that allows him to see only women's "inner beauty", causing conventionally attractive but mean-hearted women to appear fat but kindhearted women to appear thin, and therefore, by this movie's standards, beautiful. 

That carries with it the mistaken implication that thinness goes hand in hand with good qualities like kindness, while fatness is synonymous with bad qualities. Hal starts dating Paltrow's character, Rosemary, who is, in reality, fat, but who appears thin only to him.

Further fat-shaming in the film includes but is not limited to: a scene when Jason Alexander's character tries to "rescue" Hal from speaking to fat women at a club; referring to Rosemary as a "rhino"; a scene in which Rosemary jumps into a pool causes a splash so large that it cast a small child into a tree. We rest our case.

Liked This List of 2000s Movies That Didn't Age Well?

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Main image: Bring It On. Universal Pictures

We saw almost all of them in theaters. Of course these things are subjective, so please let us know if you think we missed something.

And now, onto the '90s movies.

Kids (1995)

It's hard to oversell how worked up some people were about Kids in 1995, because of how bluntly the film portrayed sex and drugs.

It's a rarity among coming-of-age '90s movies in that it isn't focused on a high school — because its characters spend all their time on the street, in parks, in bodegas, in houses where parents aren't home, doing things they shouldn't be doing.

Directed by Larry Clark, and written by Harmony Korine when he was barely older than his teenage subjects, Kids helped launch the career of two of the most iconic Gen X actresses, Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson (above). It also has one of the most excellent soundtracks ever, anchored by Folk Implosion's "Natural One."

By the way, that thing Chloe Sevigny is using in the photo? That's a public phone. People used to scrounge for change for the privilege of sharing a dirty phone. Whenever people tell you everything was better in the '90s, consider that this was a common method of contacting your friends.

Pump Up the Volume (1990)

Christian Slater plays a pre-internet edgelord who uses a pirate radio station to vent his teen angst and play some cool rebellious music.

LIving in a Phoenix suburb, he's known by day as Mark, a bookish high school student who struggles to make friends. But at night, he becomes Hard Harry, a kind of Gen X shock jock who rails against parental hypocrisy and unleashes the full fury of... Leonard Cohen?

That musical selection is one of many tip-offs that Harry is secretly a sensitive soul, driven more by sadness than rage. Pump Up the Volume is one of the most fascinating '90s movies because it felt almost instantly dated once the internet came into wide use — no one needed a pirate radio signal anymore to share their uncensored thoughts.

But it's hard not to see a blueprint for our modern lives, in which we sometimes behave one way in the real world, and another online.

Freeway (1996)

If you think of Reese Witherspoon mostly as a producer-star of inoffensive rom-coms family dramas, go see Freeway, and buckle in. A very dark, very '90s retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, it's one of our favorite mostly forgotten '90s dark comedies — and the '90s was maybe the best decade for dark comedies.

Witherspoon plays an illiterate runaway, fleeing from the authorities after the arrest of her sex worker mom and abusive stepdad, who somehow lands in an even worse situation when she accepts a ride on her way to her grandmother's house. She's been targeted, it turns out, by Big Bad Wolf, aka Bob Wolverton, a creep played by a vanity-free Kiefer Sutherland.

Their loaded supporting cast includes Den Hedaya, Amanda Plummer, Brooke Shields, Bokeem Woodbine and Brittany Murphy. Wow.

It was produced by Oliver Stone, because of course it was.

Also Read: 12 Shameless '90s Comedies That Just Don't Care If You're Offended

Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

Is Can't Hardly Wait a Gen X movie, or millennial movie? It's stacked with Gen X rising or soon-to-be stars, including Ethan Embry, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, Melissa Joan Hart and of course Jennifer Love Hewitt (above), who anchors the whole thing.

And while the soundtrack is very Gen X — it's named for a Replacements song, and features showstopping needle drops by Run-DMC and Guns N Roses — the characters are right on the blurry line between two generations, at the end of a relatively carefree decades for suburban teens. They don't know it, but they're about to enter a much scarier decade and world.

It's one of the most breezy and fun '90s movies, taking its cues from '80s teen movies. But it's also fascinating. We think about Can't Hardly Wait all the time when we think about the years when you're relatively free of responsibility, and all the problems you make for yourself as you set out into the world.

Its writers-directors, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, also made a terrific Gen X satire that's on our list of Smart Movies Disguised as Dumb Movies.

Dazed and Confused (1993)

A similar question: Is Dazed and Confused a Baby Boomer movie? Or a Gen X movie? It's stacked with Gen X actors, from Ben Affleck to Parker Posey to Matthew McConaughey, but is set on the last day of school in 1976, arguably Baby Boomer territory.

Richard Linklater, who wrote and directed the film, was inspired by his own Texas youth. Born in 1960, and a Gen X icon since the news media seized on his 1990 film Slacker to help define a generation, he isn't sure what generation he falls into.

"We called oursvelves Busters," Linklater told MovieMaker in 2022. "We were the end of the boom, beginning of Gen X."

Whatever the case, he took the wisdom of the past and the energy of the future to make a timeless movie that resonates across decades. McConaughey's reprehensible but hilarious line about high school students perfectly captures the paradox of movies: We get older, the movies that raised us stay the same.

Hangin' With the Homeboys (1991)

A lot of '90s movies present an America that is mostly white, suburban, and affluent. The main characters of Hangin' With the Homeboys are well outside that demo, and the film provided a fun, smart, endearing look at a quartet of four young men from the Bronx, two Black and two Puerto Rican, who go looking for a night of fun and end up confronting their futures.

Directed by Joseph Vasquez, it has a light touch and a stellar cast including Mario Joyner, Doug E. Doug, Nestor Serrano and John Leguizamo. Critically acclaimed, it missed with audiences but later got plenty of VHS play.

Quentin Tarantino has said one of the best things about Dazed and Confused is that you feel like you're hanging out with the characters, and that's very true of Hangin' With the Homeboys, too.

Election (1999)

There was something incredibly funny and profound about seeing Ferris Bueller himself, Matthew Broderick, turn into one of those teachers Ferris tormented. Adding to the joys of Election is that he isn't bedeviled by a slacker or rebel, but by the most type A of achievers, Tracy Flick, played to perfection by Reese Witherspoon.

Election is one of those high school movies we're almost everyone is smarter than they let on and no one is as nice, or naive, as they seem. Is it possible to make a movie that feels as dark as actual high school? Director Alexander Payne, working off the novel by Tom Perrotta, proved it was very possible.

We're also very excited for the adaptation of Perrotta's 2022 election sequel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, a novel that found the now-adult Flick in the unenviable position of high school administrator.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

"You can do that?" was the frequent reaction to Baz Luhrmann's brazenly 90s — but surprisingly faithful — adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Dispensing with old costumes and settings to put his star-crossed lovers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes) in hyper-modern (for the time) Verona Beach, he made the bold and daring decision to barely touch The Bard's dialogue. Or, even more daringly, to go for long stretches without it.

Thanks to the music of Des'ree, The Cardigans, and many more, this is an utterly intoxicating movie, especially if you happened to be a 90s teenager in love. Not every song still works, but the ones that do — most notably Des'ree's "Kissing You" — really do.

Empire Records (1995)

The story of a record store perhaps on the brink of sale to a corporate chain, Empire Records is a time capsule of a time when "selling out" was recognized as a bad thing. It boasted an irresistible cast, including Ethan Embry, Debi Mazar, Rory Cochrane, Renée Zellweger, and Liv Tyler, as well as an even more irresistible song in Edwyn Collin's '60s/'90s mashup "A Girl Like You."

It failed miserably at the box office — Variety brutally called it "a soundtrack in search of a movie" — but has since become a cult classic. Sometimes a soundtrack (and a bevy of future stars) is enough. Is it a '90s movie that was too true to itself? Or one of those '90s movies that felt too in the zeitgeist?

Also, for people who weren't around in the 90s: "Selling out" was the concept of abandoning the things that made you or your art cool in order to make money. It's what we're doing at this very moment by writing photo galleries instead of making four-track demos in our bedroom.

Cruel Intentions (1999)

At a time when 18-year-olds are routinely infantilized, this movie feels like all kinds of wrong — but we love it. What sick genius thought of remaking Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses with a bunch of high schoolers?

The credit goes to Gen X writer-director Roger Kumble, who gave a clearinghouse of Gen X actors – notably Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Selma Blair — their first shot at darker, more grown-up roles. (Reese Witherspoon was already an old hand at this thing, having broken out with the aforementioned Freeway.)

The movie artfully manages to be extremely dirty without being explicit, a smart line-trading given that it was targeted at people the same age as the characters.

And it inspired a 2024 revamp, because of course it did.

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Speaking of lines: Todd Solondz seems to live for laying down challenges some audiences will just refuse to cross, and his indie classic Welcome to the Dollhouse was one of the first to make that clear. (At one point the movies title was F-----s and R-----s, two words everyone who was every on an elementary-school playground in the 1980s heard an awful lot.)

Another product of the '90s movies indie boom, Welcome to the Dollhouse was the breakout for Heather Matarazzo, who plays the unpopular Dawn "Wiener Dog" Wiener, a girl so desperate for contact she agrees to meet up with another kid who threatens to assault her. Things only get darker from there.

But Solondz's next film, the stunning Happiness, went even further.

The Craft (1996)

Teeming with style and a don't-talk-about-it-just-do-it brand of girl power, The Craft became a surprise 1996 hit, even if it paled in cultural impact to the other big 1996 Neve Campbell high school horror movie, Scream.

A sequel to The Craft came and went in 2020, which wasn't, let's be honest, the best year to release a movie. But the original still holds up spectacularly, especially its blunt, ahead-of-its time take on bullying.

The cast, meanwhile, is spectacular, including Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Rachel True, Christine Taylor and Campbell's Scream castmate, Skeet Ulrich. Just watch it. It's one of the teen '90s movies that holds up the best.

Wild Things (1998)

A delightfully twisty high school noir with as many dark surprises as a swamp, the Florida-set Wild Things features Denise Richards and Neve Campbell as very different high school students who get involved in a very complex situation we don't want to reveal too much about here.

It flirts with being exactly the right kind of exploitive trash, but it's equal opportunity exploitive thanks to a wonderfully gratuitous scene involving Kevin Bacon.

The stellar cast also includes Matt Dillon and Bill Murray. Some people may clutch your pearls throughout Wild Things, but no one will be able to deny being shockingly entertained.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon or this list of 80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

And we'd love for you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Dazed and Confused. Gramercy Pictures.

Yes, we know what you're thinking: How can anyone narrow it down to just seven?

We did our best, and came up with the following.

7. Amish Stud: The Eli Weaver Story (2023)

Try as we might, we can't find a better movie title than that of the ripped-from-the-headlines Lifetime film Amish Stud, which is drawn from the screen name that Eli Weaver (Luke Macfarlane) used to meet women in chatrooms.

The film follows the wayward Eli as he plots with his mistress to murder his wife, to the horror of his conservative Amish community, which is strongly opposed to using the internet, and more specifically using the internet for online dating, and especially to using the internet for online dating that leads to the murder of one's spouse.

The movie has its sexy moments before the killing.

6. Sex Drive (2008)

Sex Drive seems like one of those Old Hollywood classics in which they thought of the title first and built the movie around it. And what a movie.

The plot concerns a young man named Ian (Josh Zuckerman) who meets a woman online (don't worry, he's not Amish, no rules are broken yet) and embarks on a long road trip to meet her. He's joined by his best friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew, a perfect Cute Brunette Friend in an '80s Movie, except in a 2000s movie.)

The sexy Amish stuff comes into play when the gang has car trouble, and a sarcastic Amish guy named Ezekiel (Seth Green, great as always) provides some help. Lance soon meets an Amish girl named Mary (Alice Greczyn).

But here's the twist: When Lance learns that his dalliance with Mary could lead to her being shunned, Lance chooses to stay with her, and they marry. Lance sports an Amish beard at the end, strongly suggesting that he has adopted Mary's way of life. And so this sex drive turns out to be a love drive.

It's not only one of the sexiest movies about the Amish, but also one of the most pro-Amish.

5. Amish Affair (2024)

Not content to rest on the laurels of Amish Stud, Lifetime delved back into the Amish erotic thriller subgenre with another ripped-from-the-headlines bodice ripper, Amish Affair.

The film tracks the passionate barnyard trysts between Hannah (Mackenzie Cardwell) and Amish also-stud Aaron (Ryan McPartlin) after he welcomes her into his home to help with his ailing (and inconvenient) wife.

Lines are crossed, questions are raised, and, as so often happens in these situations, rat poison is dispensed.

This Lifetime original received a mostly positive reception, though one YouTube user commented, "OMG! We Amish are so not like this! LOL." It was probably Eli Weaver.

4. Deadly Blessing (1981)

We know, we know: Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing, as everyone remembers, isn't technically about the Amish. It's about the Hittites, a very Amish-like sect. (WesCraven.com notes that the film "is set in Amish Country, at a local farm, where a woman's husband is mysteriously killed by his own tractor!")

But the Hittite stuff feels like a fig leaf covering up the fact that the sect is intended as an obvious stand-in for the Amish. This slasher film, which landed between the early mayhem of Craven classics like Last House on the Left and the commercial success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, relies heavily on the appeal of its scantily clad actresses (including Sharon Stone in an early role) as they deal with an evil incubus. (Though really, is there any other kind?)

There's lots of Biblical imagery, including an icky scene with a snake in a bathtub. It combines titillation and terror, in classic slasher tradition, but with some religious extremism thrown in. We can understand why the Amish probably wouldn't want to be connected with it, and its ickier aspects explain why it's only fourth on this list.

Also: Stone grew up in a part of Pennsylvania not far from Amish country, which makes us like Deadly Blessing more.

3. The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968)

Though it's set in the 1920s, you can really feel the '60s swinging through The Night They Raided Minsky's, one of many films that had fun with the changing sexual mores of the year that followed the Summer of Love. Minsky's was also one of the first films to pit the plain Amish against the constant temptations of the outside world.

A pure romp, the film follows Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel, a young Amish woman hoping to make it in New York City with dance numbers inspired by the Bible. Through a series of complicated events, she ends up performing her chaste numbers at a burlesque show. When her furious Amish father tries to drag her offstage, ripping her clothes, she accidentally invents a new kind of entertainment.

The people involved in The Night They Raided Minsky's are A-list all the way, and include producer Norman Mailer, director William Friedkin (who would go on to direct The Exorcist), and actors Jason Robards, Elliott Gould and Denholm Elliott. The latter would go on to appear in two Indiana Jones films with a gentleman who stars in the next film on our list.

2. Witness (1985)

A basically perfect movie, Witness is rather chaste by the standards of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Of course it wasn't the first film to juxtapose the plain lifestyle of the Amish with the sultriness of the big city, but it is one of the first to do it with respect.

There's a passionate, beautifully shot makeout scene between Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Philadelphia cop John Book (Harrison Ford) before the big fight with the English who come to invade Rachel's idyllic community to get her son, Samuel (Lucas Haas), who has witnessed a murder. The scene is as effective as it is because of the restraint leading up to it: John and Rachel's silent assignation is naturalistic, cathartic and entirely convincing.

Witness follows a lot of Hollywood tropes — the fish out of water, the mismatched lovers — and yet it works completely because everyone, from Ford to McGillis to director Peter Weir, commits and tries to give the Amish depth and dignity, instead of just treating them as comic foils.

But this isn't a list of the best movies about the Amish — it's a list of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Which brings us to No. 1 on our list.

1. Kingpin (1996)

For our money, Kingpin is one of the funniest Farrelly brothers films, and has a proud spot on our list of '90s Comedies That Just Don't Care If You're Offended.

It follows bowling burnout Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to exploit Amish bowling savant Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). But he must compete with Claudia (Vanessa Angel) who uses her considerable wiles to both corrupt and liberate the naive Ishmael. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kingpin come when Claudia uses the aforementioned wiles to help her boys on the bowling circuit by distracting their opponents.

What makes Kingpin so satisfying is how all three main characters, despite their intense differences and flaws, ultimately uplift one another. As in many Farrelly brothers films, the tawdrier parts of life lead to wholesome outcomes.

Liked Our List of the 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish?

Did we miss one of your favorite sexiest movies about the Amish? Please let us know in the comments.

You may also like this list of 11 Shameless Movies That Glamorize the Devil, including Bedazzled, above, which somehow manages to be one of the sexiest movies around, despite lacking any Amish.

Main image: The Night They Raided Minsky's. United Artists.

Here are 12 behind the scenes images of her on the set of the first 007 film.

Let's go.

But First

Yes, Ursula Andress, who plays Honey Ryder in Dr. No, is preceded onscreen by Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson, left) and Miss Taro (Zena Marshall, above center).

Both make great contributions to the film, but Ryder (Andress, above right) is the much more significant and iconic character.

On the floor, of course, is Sean Connery as James Bond, in a Dr. No publicity photo.

Enter Bearing Shells

Honey Ryder's job is shell diving, and appropriately she enters Dr. No bearing shells.

If her opening costume in the film — a white swimsuit and belt — seems a little revealing, consider that in the Ian Fleming film upon which Dr. No is based, she only wears the belt.

Thanks for your decorum, Dr. No. Though we suspect 1963 censors may also have factored into the decision.

'It Was Going to Be a Low-Budget Flop'

The shells sequence, in which Ryder emerges from the ocean singing "Underneath the Mango Tree" — and Connery's Bond joins in — turned around the expectations for the film.

"‘It was going to be a low-budget flop,’" says Blanche’s son Chris Blackwell, son of Ian Fleming's muse and love, Blanche Blackwell, in the new Nicholas Shakespeare book Ian Fleming: The Complete Man. "It all changed when we watched the rushes of Ursula Andress emerging from the sea."

He added: "It was electrifying. We suddenly felt, 'Gosh, we’ve got a movie.’"

'Shooed Off Like Little Boys'

According to Shakespeare's book, Fleming almost spoiled a take of the iconic beach scene. He was leading two friends on a walk along Laughing Waters — the name of the beach where the scene was filmed — and almost walked into the shot.

Director Terence Young yelled at them to "Lie down!" which they did. Shakespeare writes: "The composer Monty Norman had arrived in Jamaica to write the music and he watched Young shout at them — ‘They were shooed off like little boys.’ Ian and his friends were left lying behind a dune, forgotten, until someone remembered to release them an hour later."

That's Andress with Ian Fleming, above.

'This Bikini Made Me Into a Success'

In addition to boosting Dr. No — thereby launching the 007 franchise — the scene helped Andress' acting career.

She later said: "This bikini made me into a success. As a result of starring in Dr No as the first Bond girl I was given the freedom to take my pick of future roles and to become financially independent."

She offered the quote after finding the bikini in an attic and putting it up for sale through Christie's in 2001. It fetched over $52,000.

She and the bikini are seen above with Dr. No director Terence Young, center, and Sean Connery.

Language

Andress, who is Swiss, speaks several languages — English, French, German, and Italian — but the producers opted to dub her dialogue with the voice of Nikki van der Zyl and her singing voice with that of Diana Coupland.

She's seen above with Connery and Young.

Chemistry, Raw Chemistry

Of course, she didn't just stand out in a single scene. The publicity photos for Dr. No is the radiant, transcendent chemistry between Connery and Andress. Which was exactly the idea.

"He was very protective towards me, he was adorable, fantastic," Andress said in a 2020 interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera after Connery's death at 90. "He adored women, He was undoubtedly very much a man.''

'My First Film and Maybe My Last'

Andress told Corriere della Sera that when she joined the film, “I didn't know Sean, and I thought it would be my first film and maybe my last.

"But instead it took off, the chemistry between us worked and it was the perfect combination.”

At Sea

She added in the Corriere della Sera story : “We spent many evenings together and he would invite me everywhere, Monte Carlo, London, New York, from when we met until now we always remained friends. Friends, friends.'"

She was married to John Derek during the filming of Dr. No.

More Andress and Sean Connery on the Dr. No Set

The actors show off their athleticism and chemistry while frolicking on a Jamaican beach during filming.

Nice work if you can get it.

Ursula Andress and Sean Connery in 'A Very Small Budget Production'

Did they have any idea people would be watching their movie and writing about them, more than 60 years later? Or did it just seem like a fun, beachy spy thriller? You have to wonder.

 ''It was a very small budget production and I agreed to do it thinking not many people would see it," Andress told Corriere della Sera.

More Connery and Andress

Andress won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1964 for her appearance in Dr. No.

The next year, Andress, who is now 88, appeared opposite another icon, Elvis Presley, in Fun in Acapulco.

She would later go on to star in films including 4 for Texas (1963), She (1965), The Southern Star , The Fifth Musketeer (1979), Clash of the Titans (1981) and more.

More Bond

But she wasn't completely done with Bond. In 1967, she starred as Vesper Lind opposite David Niven, playing the "original" James Bond, in the spy parody Casino Royale, based on the first Ian Fleming book about 007.

The book, of course, was also the basis for a much more serious Bond film, starring Daniel Craig as Bond and Eva Green as Vesper Lind. 

Liked These 12 Ursula Andress in Dr. No Behind the Scenes Photos?

You might also like this excerpt from Ian Fleming's excellent Ian Fleming biography about casting Connery as Bond, or this list of 10 Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.

Main image: Dr. No. All photos from the United Artists 1962 publicity campaign for the film.

Editor's Note: Corrects formatting and main image.

Also: These aren't the sweetest or most romantic or most important comedies — but they are, for our money, the funniest comedies. The ones that really made us laugh, and weren't out to save the world.

Here we go.

The Jerk (1979)

Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk isn’t really a jerk at all — sweet-natured and naive Navin Johnson is one of the most lovable protagonists we’ve ever seen, even when he becomes a bigshot.

One could argue that all of The Jerk is just a setup to the kung-fu smackdown that occurs when some nefarious real estate developers loop Navin into their racist business plan. His screamed reaction is politically incorrect and passionately anti-racist at the same time — totally cathartic and naive and beautiful. We love this movie.

We also love The Jerk for finding room for an extended, pointless stretch that features the line, “I’ve heard about this — cat juggling!”

Airplane (1980)

“Oh stewardess? I speak jive,” says Barbara Billingsley in one of the millions of absurdist, anarchic jokes in this parody of disaster movies that plays every situation, no matter how impossible, completely straight.

No other movie has a higher jokes-per-minute ratio, and most of them are good. Some are absolutely brilliant.

This belongs near the top of any list of the funniest comedies.

Top Secret! (1984)

David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker followed up their massive hit Airplane! with this very strange comedies that is a parody between a cross between an Elvis movie and a war movie. Even Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker consider it a bit of a misfire — there aren’t many jokes at the beginning, and you can’t blame audiences for not understanding what exactly is being satirized.

But the setup is just an excuse for a series of absolutely brilliant sight gags, like the backwards library scene, the moving train station scene, and the tunnel gag. The more you like esoteric and obscure jokes (sorry, Ford Pinto) the more you’ll like Top Secret! This is a movie where you need to constantly watch the background, because there’s almost definitely something ridiculous happening.

We also love the songs, and Val Kilmer’s outstanding performance as the American singer Nick Rivers — though he has said that when he made the movie, he was a little embarrassed to be making something so silly.

One of the things that makes us consider this one of the funniest comedies is that so many people will never get it.

Coming to America (1988)

A spectacular display of Eddie Murphy’s talents, Coming to America comes for everybody of every demographic, and heaven help you if you can’t take a joke. Murphy’s Prince Akeem plays straightman, mostly, to a cavalcade of self-owning weirdos.

The movie presents a version of New York where almost everyone is a scammer on some level — freeing up Murphy and Arsenio Hall to play a barrage of questionable characters.

But the movie has a good heart: Akeem has a fundamental decency whether living the life of a rich man or poor man, and his desire for a true partner keeps us invested through all the lunacy. It’s one of the funniest comedies and one of the most thoughtful.

Best in Show (2000)

Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, in which Christopher Guest was one of the stars, introduced the rich comic power of the documentary format, but Guest’s 1996 Waiting for Guffman is the movie that made it so ubiquitous for the next decade.

We could have put a lot of Christopher Guest movies on this list, but we gave the edge to Best in Show because of Jennifer Coolidge’s monologue about talking or not talking for hours.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

We had to get Monty Python in here somewhere. This sendup of Arthurian legend films is packed with silliness disguised as intense seriousness, a Python specialty.

It also marks the directorial debut of Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, who shared directorial duties — a practice that seems to lend itself to great comedy movies, as the number of co-directed films on this list will hopefully illustrate.

We love the Trojan Rabbit, the Knights Who Say “Ni!,” the coconuts, the French Taunter, and especially Eric Idle (above) saying “Message for your, sir!”

There’s Something About Mary (1998)

Our favorite of the many funny Farrelly Brothers comedy movies is built around Cameron Diaz as the magnetic Mary, whose kindness, cool and beauty make her the obsession of almost every man she meets.

But the one we’re all rooting for is Ben Stiller’s Ted, who survives a harrowing high-school dance disaster involving franks and beans to remain Mary’s most devoted admirer.

The Farrellys once told screenwriter William Goldman that while some people think that bathroom scene is the one that makes audiences root for Ted, they think it’s actually his decision to seek out Mary even after Matt Dillon’s shady P.I., Pat Healy, has lied that she’s living a depressing life.

Also, the hair gel scene (above).

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

We laughed very, very hard through this movie as we watched it in a theater one night with zero expectations. Its total commitment to self-serious lunacy immediately won us over.

Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) is the only reasonable human being in a San Diego news media chock-full of blowhards and buffoons, none more ridiculous than Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy. Standout scenes include the teleprompter showdown, the jazz flute scene, Baxter talking to a bear, and of course the news anchor rumble.

But our single favorite scene may be Brian Fanta (Paul Rudd) musking up. Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

One of the things we most respect about this Mel Brooks comedy is how hard it kicked open the door for many of the other comedies on this list.

Packed with jokes that would never fly in a modern comedy movie, it tells the story of a Black sheriff (Cleavon Little) trying to protect a town full of people whom his friend the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder, right) describes as “simple farmers… people of the land, the common clay of the New West. You know: morons.”

Co-written by Richard Pryor, it’s a smart mockery of bigotry. And the whole thing is worth watching just to see Mongo punch a horse.

Tommy Boy (1996)

Chris Farley and David Space established themselves as one of our favorite comedy movie duos before Farley’s death cut short their partnership after just two movies — Tommy Boy and the also-funny Black Sheep.

Farley’s earnest sweetness and Spade’s wry cynicism make for a perfect road trip movie filled with jokes we think about every day — fat guy in a little coat, “Why I suck as a salesman,” and “what’d you do?”” especially.

And we couldn’t relate more to the scene that ends with Farley and Spade crying along to the Carpenters’ “Superstar.” We love this movie.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

We love the weirdness of Mike Myers’ time-traveling, swinging ’60s spy movie satire: Austin Powers is a gloriously ridiculous character, and the movie is basically a joke delivery system for Myers’ observations about such arcane subjects as henchmen and maneuvering tight parking spaces.

What makes the whole movie work is the excellent Elizabeth Hurley as Austin’s extremely competent modern-day partner Vanessa Kensington. But we’re also all in on the many stupid puns, goofy visual gags, and Dr. Evil demanding the shocking sum of one millllion dollars.

One of our criteria for funniest comedies is smart-stupid humor, and Austin Powers has it. Yeah baby.

Office Space (1999)

Is there a more quoted movie in the last 25 years than Office Space? Mike Judge’s masterpiece finds Ron Livingston leading an ensemble cast that also includes the outstanding Gary Cole and Jennifer Aniston and steals its central plot from Superman III.

That’s OK — they own it. It’s all just an excuse for fantastic riffs about TPS reports, pieces of flair, bad cases of the Mondays, and your O face. Though it was initially slept on, audiences who watched it on cable or DVR quickly recognizes it as one of the funniest comedies ever made — especially to people who’ve had the misfortune to work in an office.

Mmmm. Yeah.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

We don’t know if we’ve ever laughed harder during a movie than we did during Borat, a savage prank on Americans who foolishly allow themselves to feel superior to the ignorant journalist played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

We love even the throwaway lines: “Not so much,” “king in the castle,” “like a real man.”

And the buying cheese scene that somehow didn’t make it into the movie is one of the funniest things we’ve ever seen.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of the 13 Strangest Movies We’ve Ever Seen (which could include Top Secret!, now that we think about it.)

And if you have a movie you think should be on our list of the funniest comedies, let us know.

And we invite you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Elizabeth Hurley in Austin Powers, one of the funniest comedies we’ve ever seen.

Editor's Note: Corrects main image and formatting.

Spoilers follow, obviously.

They're ranked from least to most great.

But First

These things are subjective, obviously. So if you disagree with any of these picks, let us know where we fell short in the comments.

We're always looking for good TV recommendations, after all.

And now, the list. Starting with...

13 — The Good Wife

The Good Wife stunningly called back its excellent first episode — when Alicia (Juliana Margulies) slapped cheating husband Peter (Chris Noth) — by having Diane (Christine Baranski) slap Alicia.

It was payback for a courtroom betrayal that marked Alicia's transformation from aggrieved spouse to shrewd operator — and neatly set up Diane as the star of the Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight.

It's one of the best TV finales, and one of the best setups for a continuation.

12 — Barry

Bill Hader spoke for all of us as Barry went out with an "oh wow."

Did anyone else anticipate that logical yet extremely surprising final-episode death? We did not. But we loved how the show investigated its own investigation of fantasy versus grim reality in a movie within the show.

The Barry finale also deserves credit for commitment: It made clear that there will be no more Barry. We love a TV finale that leaves nothing unanswered.

11 — Game of Thrones

We know, lots of people hated this finale. To which we say: Did you watch Game of Thrones? A good finale is both unpredictable and inevitable, and that was certainly true of the rise and fall of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke).

Of course power would corrupt Khaleesi. And of course expectations would be subverted. That's the whole game of Game of Thrones.

But the biggest, coolest twist was that it all resolved with the key characters — after so much bloodshed — just talking out their problems and coming to a somewhat boring, but actually quite reasonable, solution. The game ended with a talk instead of a battle, which no one could have anticipated.

10 — The Wire

The Wire gets points for resolving everything — and realistically. No tacked on happy endings here.

McNulty (Dominic West) had a bittersweet, long-overdue exit from the police department, Bubbles (Andre Royo) got sober, the scheming Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) got elected governor, and good guy Carver (Seth Gillam) got deservedly promoted. But we also saw a young life lost to addiction.

There were never any easy answers on The Wire, and it stayed true to that with its final episode, one of the best TV finales.

9 —The Americans

The 2018 end of the FX spy series is devastating and hopeful at the same time. As Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) make an against-all-odds escape from the United States, they realize at the last moment that their freedom comes at a horrible cost: Their daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) won't be joining them.

Her future is full of promise. Theirs seems bleak. The mixed emotions are very much in keeping with the spirit of The Americans.

8 — St Elsewhere

The '80s NBC hospital drama blew viewers' minds with the last-second implication that the show's entire six-season run might have taken place in the mind of an autistic boy staring into a snow globe.

Yes, really.

After airing in 1988, it spent years as the gold standard of stunning TV finales.

7 — Newhart

The Newhart finale felt like a heady, almost satirical spin on the St. Elsewhere ending — and every "it was all a dream" endings.

After eight droll, delightful seasons, Newhart ended in 1990 with Dick Loudon (Bob Newhart) getting hit by a golf ball and waking up... in bed with Emily Hartley (Suzanne Pleshette), Bob Newhart's previous TV wife on his previous sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show, which ran for six seasons from September 16, 1972, to April 1, 1978.

It turns out he's been Robert "Bob" Hartley — his Bob Newhart Show character — all along. A sublime and silly conclusion to a sitcom that was filled with them.

6 — The Office (Original British version)

Ricky Gervais' David Brent got most of the laughs on the original version of The Office, but the show's emotional core was always Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis), the inspiration for Jim and Pam on the American The Office.

It's kind of impossible not to cry at Tim and Pam's final scenes, because the show skillfully sets you up to expect the exact opposite of what happens.

And we love that it all ends with a simultaneously poignant and crass observation about the great Dolly Parton.

5 — Succession

The ending of one of the all-time best TV shows felt both completely unpredictable and exactly right: Shiv (Sarah Snook) finally reaches a detente with Tom (Matthew Macfayden), Roman (Kieran Culkin) admits that his and his brother Kendall's whole act is nonsense.

And Kendall (Jeremy Strong) shows the depth of his desperation by shouting "I'm the eldest boy!" It's funny, it's sad, and everyone gets better than they deserve.

Succession made a brilliant and laudable decision to wrap things up after four seasons and leave everyone wanting more. One of the best TV finales in every sense.

4 — Better Call Saul

After the fireworks of the Breaking Bad finale, this spinoff led by Bob Odenkirk went in the opposite direction, with an often-bad man doing the right thing.

It was a moving and kind counterpoint to the brilliant ruthlessness of the show that inspired it.

Vince Gilligan, who co-created Better Call Saul with Peter Gould, is the only creator to land two different shows on this list.

3 — Six Feet Under

It's impossible to forget the 2005's finale's cathartic, wrenching, astonishing final moments, as we see every character we've grown to love experience exactly the fate that we all will, in a sometimes tragic, always humbling combination of ways.

As sad as the Six Feet Under finale ending is, it's beginning is filled with hope: It is the only episode in the HBO drama's five-season run to begin with a birth instead of a death.

We know many people who cried at the conclusion of the episode, and rightly so.

2 — Breaking Bad

Going into the 2013 final episode, it seemed impossible that creator Vince Gilligan and his top-notch writing team could possibly tie up the countless threads he and his team had spun over five spectacular seasons.

But somehow they did. The show was thrilling to the very end, with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) getting just about everything he could ever want, while getting exactly what was coming to him.

The film El Camino, which followed Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) after the events of Breaking Bad, was a fun revisiting of the Breaking Bad world, but the finale stands just fine without it. Similarly, the prequel/sequel series Better Call Saul stands alone just fine without Breaking Bad, and Breaking Bad stands alone just fine without Better Call Saul — but the whole Breaking Bad universe also gels together nicely.

1 —The Sopranos

At the top of our list is the most talked about finale ever.

The Sopranos went out in 2007 with a cut to black that said everything, whatever you think happened.

What's most impressive is that the TV show that reinvented TV shows went out with no sentiment and no patting itself on the back. It kept taking risks to the very last second.

Disagree with this list? Let us know in the comments. And you might also like this list of the 15 Greatest Sitcom Casts in TV History.

We'd also love for you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Keri Russell in The Americans. FX

Editor's Note: Corrects links and main image.

Here are the 12 best Robert Downey Jr. roles, including his most famous one: playing Tony Stark in the Iron Man and Avengers films.

Here we go.

Back to School (1986)

Robert Downey Jr. is the son of a beloved cult filmmaker (you can probably guess his name), and the younger Downey appeared in a couple of his father’s films as a child., starting with 1970's Pound, when the younger Downey was five.

But as a young adult, he found himself finding his footing. He was briefly a cast member of Saturday Night Live starting in 1985, and also appeared that year in Weird Science.

He came to be associated with the group of young actors condescendingly called The Brat Pack, alongside young stars like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. One of his first major roles was in the Rodney Dangerfield campus comedy Back to School.

While he doesn’t play Dangerfield’s character’s son (that would be Keith Gordon), Downey got to play Derek Lutz, the quippy, partying best friend of Gordon.

Less Than Zero (1987)

On the flip side of the silly comedy of Back to School (a movie that climaxes with Dangerfield winning a diving competition) there’s Less Than Zero. It’s based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel, so you know it’s dark and sordid. It's the film where Downey first demonstrated his serious dramatic chops.

He plays Julian, who comes from money and lives a life of leisure, but collapses into addiction. In a 2024 career retrospective at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Downey said the role "was "was a bit of a Ghost of Christmas Future," given the problems he would eventually have with addiction.

He starred in the film alongside Andrew McCarthy, playing his best friend, Clay. And while the movie is a mixed bag, they are both quite good.

Chaplin (1992)

To prove his bona fides as a serious adult dramatic actor, Robert Downey Jr. did the same thing many had done before him: Starred in a prestige biopic.

Charlie Chaplin was probably the biggest movie star of his generation, and Downey got to play him from youth to old age, under the guidance of Gandhi director Richard Attenborough, no less.

Chaplin was commercially unsuccessful, but Downey came off well: He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, and won the BAFTA in the same category.

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Natural Born Killers is an Oliver Stone film based on a story that originated with Quentin Tarantino, so you know it’s bananas. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play Mickey and Mallory Knox, a couple who also happen to be mass murderers.

They also become celebrities for it because… satire? It’s Stone, so it’s not subtle — but it's kind of a mess. Tarantino has said the movie on-screen isn't the one he wrote.

Even so, Natural Born Killers was a bit hit and embedded itself into the culture to a degree. While Downey was not one of the two thrill-killing lovers, he popped as the third billed as Wayne Gale, an Australian tabloid journalist who is primarily responsible for turning the Knoxes into sordid celebrities. He's the highlight of the movie.

Oh! And it's the second of his films that also features Rodney Dangerfied.

U.S. Marshals (1998)

The Fugitive was a huge hit and won Tommy Lee Jones an Oscar. That led to a sequel, U.S. Marshals, which brought back Jones as Sam Gerard, with most of his team from The Fugitive intact as well. The two key new additions to the cast? Wesley Snipes as the fugitive, and Downey as DSS Special Agent John Royce, who joins Gerard’s team, but may be hiding something.

Yeah, spoilers we guess: Royce is hiding something. It’s a sequel to The Fugitive! Of course the presumed killer didn’t do it.

U.S. Marshals is fine. It’s a step down from The Fugitive, but it’s a sequel to a bit hit, and it gave Downey a notable role at a time when he was starting to slip from the spotlight. Don't worry: He would soon be back.

Wonder Boys (2000)

Wonder Boys was Downey’s last notable film role before his comeback. He’s not the star, but settled contributed in a supporting role.

In this adaptation of a Michael Chabon novel, Michael Douglas stars as a college professor and novelist who is struggling with his writing work, and Tobey Maguire (pre-Spider-Man) plays a promising, troubled student.

Downey plays Douglas’ editor, and he's good in a flashy, if limited, role. That’s about what Hollywood had to offer the actor at that point. He couldn’t be called upon, or relied upon, to carry a film. Still, the charisma was there, even in fitful doses.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is generally considered the “rebirth” of Downey’s film career. For the first time in a while, he had a lead role in a flashy film, and was wildly charming.

Downey plays a criminal who accidentally lucks his way into Hollywood, where he finds himself hanging out with Val Kilmer’s private eye, who is supposed to teach Downey the “actor” the ropes of his job. They end up working on an actual mystery together.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was popular, paid off for both Downey and famed screenwriter Shane Black, who made his directorial debut with the film. The two reunited when Black directed Iron Man 3.

Zodiac (2007)

David Fincher’s lengthy look into the Zodiac Killer mystery is an ensemble piece. It’s dark, obviously, but many consider Zodiac his finest work, and one of the best movies of the 2000s.

What part does Downey play in the ensemble? He’s Paul Avery, a real-life journalist who covered the Zodiac murders in San Francisco. It was bleak stuff, and Avery suffered from his efforts to unfold the story, and the mystery. Downey, able to call upon a lot of his own personal demons, excelled in the role.

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (2008-2019)

Tony Stark is one of the iconic roles of the last 20 years. After years of addiction issues, the film helped Downey rise to levels of fame and success he had never achieved before.

“I will never be as cool as Tony Stark, but it was it was so great to be associated with someone like that for a while, you know? And then it wore off,” he told critic Leonard Maltin at the aforementioned Santa Barbara International Film Festival retrospective.

But once he won his Oscar — and had nothing to prove to anyone — he agreed to return to the MCU, albeit in a different role, for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.

He'll be joined by Chris Evans, who previously played Captain America — and who we think will play someone different next time.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Tropic Thunder allowed Downey to take a major creative risk — playing a daffy Australian actor, Kirk Lazarus, who undergoes surgery to play an African-American character in a war movie.

Downey joked at his Santa Barbara International Film Festival career retrospective that he knew either he would get in trouble for the role, or Ben Stiller — who wrote, directed and starred — would get in trouble for playing an actor who becomes "Simple Jack," a mentally challenged man, in desperate pursuit of an Oscar. Downey joked in Santa Barbara that he emerged unscathed, and that Stiller took the bigger hit.

Oscar voters seem to have gotten what Downey was doing: He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Marvel taking a gamble on Downey to play Tony Stark paid off, but so did its gamble on an Iron Man movie. He was far from the most-famous superhero out there, until Downey got a shot at him.

The year after Iron Man, Downey played one of the iconic literary characters of all time. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes was more action-packed than most films about the character, but Downey had fun as Sherlock, and Jude Law is also good as Watson.

The first film is actually quite enjoyable, and was successful enough to earn a sequel. That film is fine, but is never going to make our list of sequels that are better than the originals.

Oppenheimer (2023)

The MCU largely took over Downey's 2010s, and after 2019's Avengers: Endgame, he made just two films — 2020’s Dr. Doolittle and Sr., a documentary about his film director father — before making another impressive return with Oppenheimer.

He might have seemed like an odd choice to play the calculating, secretive Lewis Strauss, the Salieri to Oppenheimer's Mozart. But Downey is grateful Christopher Nolan choose him.

“A visionary filmmaker can see things that other people can’t see,” Downey said at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival retrospective, where he also called Oppenheimer  "probably the best movie I’ve ever been a part of.”

Besides earning nearly a billion dollars, Oppenheimer has swept up awards and earned the most Oscar nominations of any film released in 2023. The 13 nominations include one for Downey for Best Supporting Actor — and he's favored to win.

Liked This List of the 12 Best Robert Downey Jr. Roles?

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of '90s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

Main image: Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin. Tri-Star.

What's that you say? Why yes — we do believe there are 10 Quentin Tarantino movies, despite the director's assertion that his next film will be his 10th and last.

Why 10? Because we insist that Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 are two separate, wonderful films.

Here are all 10 Quentin Tarantino movies ranked.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

We love The Hateful Eight, as we love all Quentin Tarantino movies, but something had to be lowest ranked on our list, and this is it.

Tarantino became known early in his career for certain hallmarks — pop-culture references, impeccable left-field song choices, a very modern sense of cool — and after his initial success, went about proving he could make great films without any of them. The Hateful Eight, set in snowy Wyoming in the late 1800s after the Civil War, leaves Tarantino with no attention-grabbing gimmicks to rely on. But he does have his most reliable tools: a terrific, twisty script, and magnificent actors.

The Hateful Eight puts Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Walton Goggins, Channing Tatum, and other excellent actors under one roof and lets all hell slowly break loose. The stakes aren't as high as they feel in some of his other films, but the movie is still a warm cinematic fire.

Death Proof (2007)

Death Proof is one of the flashiest Tarantino movies, filled with car crashes, mayhem, dancing girls, and cool music. Designed as a parody/homage to exploitation films, as part of Tarantino's Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, it pulls out all the stops to entertain — and it does, relentlessly.

Death Proof is Tarantino at his most unchained — it starts with a long shot of female feet, which feels like a jokey middle finger to everyone who ever accused him of a foot fetish — and inspired hand-wringing about whether Tarantino was objectifying or celebrating his heroines (played by Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Tracie Thoms, Sydney Poitier, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Zoe Bell).

Death Proof has it both ways: It's lascivious while making fun of the lasciviousness of 1970s grindhouse films. It works, and it's a nice breather between the epic scale of the Kill Bill films — which preceded Death Proof — and Inglorious Basterds, which followed it. It may be Tarantino's least important movie, and that's fine — sometimes you just want to have fun.

Also, it features two of the 15 Most Beautiful Cars in Movies.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

The movie that started it all for Tarantino, a former video store clerk and struggling actor who made ends meet, while prepping the film, in part with residuals from a role on The Golden Girls as an Elvis impersonator.

Smaller in scale than any other Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs introduces many of his trademarks: pop culture dissertations dropped into scenes that, in the hands of other directors, would be ultra-serious; shocking violence; cool twists; and an out-of-nowhere soundtrack that — like so many things in a Tarantino movie — shouldn't work but absolutely does.

Reservoir Dogs also introduced Tarantino's phenomenal way with actors and skill at bringing out their best work. Harvey Keitel, Michael Madson, Steve Buscemi and many others shine with dialogue different than we'd previously heard in any crime movie... but then heard throughout the '90s, as countless other screenwriters tried to copy QT.

Jackie Brown (1997)

Even more than The Hateful Eight, Jackie Brown feels like Tarantino setting out to prove he can make a movie that doesn't rely on his most-familiar moves. It's a beautiful meditation on aging, and continuing to hustle as you age, with a little more wisdom and a lot of disappointment behind you.

After the back-to-back success of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino could have done anything — and chose to elevate his genre heroes. The film is the only one of his movies that isn't based on his own original story, and is instead adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch.

The director cast as his leads two actors who were not in especially high demand: Robert Forster, a new Hollywood star for 1969's Medium Cool who later appeared in films films Alligator and Delta Force, and Pam Grier, a Blaxploitation icon for roles in Coffy and Foxy Brown who had not yet gotten the respect she deserved from mainstream Hollywood.

In another unconventional casting choice, he placed A-listers like Robert De Niro, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson in smaller roles, where they waited, like little bombs, to explode.

Tarantino also personalized the material by moving the setting from Florida to L.A.'s South Bay, and setting key moments at the Del Amo Mall, where he (and I) saw many a movie in the '80s.

Also Read: 10 Movie Sex Scenes Someone Should Have Stopped

Django Unchained (2012)

Tarantino hit on a brilliant formula with Inglorious Basterds and continued it in Django Unchained: Find a bad guy so repugnant that you'll be passionately invested in the hero's success. Inglorious Basterds let us delight in the killing of Nazis, and Django lets us thrill in a revenge story against American slavers, as Jamie Foxx's Django and Christoph Waltz's Dr. King Schultz take on the repugnant Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his aide Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) to rescue Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Django does many audacious things, including holding back on the introduction of its biggest star, DiCaprio, and making Candie's enslaved servant, Stephen, a bad guy. All the risks pay off.

Django is also fascinating for Tarantino's exacting use of violence. The pain inflicted on slaves in the film is as real as the violence they suffered in real life. But the fantasy revenge carried out by Django on the slavers is fantastical, even comical.

The film makes us wish the slavers suffered violence as real as the violence they inflicted in real life, but there's a vast emotional chasm between reality and the wish fulfillment on screen. Tarantino thrives in that chasm.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pulp Fiction is a little like Shakespeare — you've seen it imitated so many times it's easy to forget that when it first appeared, it was completely groundbreaking and new.

Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary explicitly elevated inspirations once dismissed as trashy — like the pulpy novels of the title — and combined flashy dialogue and set pieces with grounded, troubled characters, hopeful strivers caught in the muck of violence.

It pulls off a barrage of cool narrative tricks that amuse on a surface level, then drill into and confuse our lizard brains — like having one character we love kill another, in a way that thrills and then horrifies us. And it manages an ambitious spirituality that, again, shouldn't work but does.

It also marks the first of many collaborations between Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, and the start of his partnership with Uma Thurman, who will turn up again in our next entry.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

After three smaller-scale films, with very ground-level characters, Tarantino made epics with the Kill Bill films. They were originally intended as one movie, then were released in two parts, Kill Bill Vol. 1 in 2003 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 in 2004. We love them both.

Once again, Tarantino elevated his genre inspirations, this time martial arts films. Uma Thurman's heroine, The Bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, even wears a yellow jumpsuit modeled on Bruce Lee's in Game of Death.

Vol. 2 has some of Tarantino's most showstopping moments, including The Bride's trailer fight with Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), her escape from being buried alive, and a final faceoff with Bill (David Carradine), whose speech about Superman is one of Tarantino's greatest pop-culture monologues.

But we still like Kill Bill Vol. 1 better, for reasons we'll soon explain.

Inglorious Basterds (2009)

This is the Tarantino film with the highest stakes: Brad Pitt's ragtag group of Nazi-killin' commandos, including Eli Roth's magnificent, bat-wielding "Bear Jew," are out to kill Adolf Hitler himself.

Inglorious Basterds has one of the best opening scenes of any movie, as Christoph Waltz's charming but evil Hans Landa builds up unbearable tension while persuading a French farmer to give up the Jewish family he's been protecting. But it gets even better from there, building to a climax absolutely no one would expect.

More than almost any other movie, Inglorious Basterds asks, "Why can't you do that?" and then does it. It thrives, once again, in the chasm between cinematic fantasy and reality — between what we wish would have happened, and what actually did.

And the cast, including Melanie Laurent (above), is perfect.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Speaking of that chasm: Quentin Tarantino uses our knowledge of the Manson murders to keep us utterly rapt, terrified, on the edge of our seats, through three hours of relatively low-stakes drama involving rising star Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), washed-up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Dalton's dangerous assistant, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).

We watch them over two fairly uneventful days — at one point joining Tate on an errand and a trip to the movies — as Dalton and Booth reckon with their faltering prospects in life. Everything is imbued with a sense of menace (wait — is that Charles Manson?) because we know the real Tate's fate.

But on the third day, Tarantino plunges us deep into his chasm — the place between what we know really happened, and what we wish could have happened. And he delivers cinematic wish fulfillment unmatched by any film, except perhaps his own Inglorious Basterds.

The film is also very fun for the chance to see early appearances by future stars Mikey Madison, Austin Butler, and Margaret Qualley.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

I mentioned growing up in L.A.'s South Bay in the '80s. If you, like Quentin Tarantino and I, spent any amount of time watching TV in that place and time, you became very familiar with an ad that ran constantly on local TV for a two-record or two-cassette collection of songs by "Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute," available for $19.98 by credit card phone order and pointedly not sold in stores.

It was the embodiment of dull-day, depressing TV schlock, when no one had the internet and not everyone even had cable. The Zamfir ad, like the ad for a four-record or three-cassette collection called Freedom Rock, was a thing you would endure or openly mock during commercial breaks between replays of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or reruns of Gimme a Break, hating yourself a little for not having something cooler to do.

It took Quentin Tarantino to recognize its power. With his knack for elevating the most seemingly disposable elements of our culture, he realized that Gheorghe Zamfir's version of "The Lonely Shepherd" was the perfect way to end Kill Bill, Vol. 1. In doing so, he created, for my money ($19.98), one of the best endings of any movie.

It comes after a stunning battle between The Bride and the Crazy 88s and Gogo Yubari, which leads into a cathartic faceoff in the falling snow between O-Ren Ishiii (Lucy Liu) and The Bride. The movie could have ended with O-Ren's defeat, but instead continues with a montage as The Bride flies home in a plane, against a blood-red sky, as the film's central characters take stock of her revenge mission, Zamfir playing softly behind them.

Bill delivers a final line that changes everything, as the drums and horns kicks in behind the pan flute. It's devastating and hopeful: The chasm opens wide.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of every Christopher Nolan movie ranked.

Main image: Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 2. Miramax

These movies lull you into a false sense of superiority to catch you off guard with their — dare we say it? — brilliance.

So with that, here are 13 smart movies disguised as dumb movies.

Starship Troopers (1997)

One could argue that most of the movies Paul Verhoeven directed in the '80s and '90s were smart movies disguised as dumb movies. The Dutch filmmaker blends high and low culture more successfully than almost anyone.

Case in point: At the time of its release, critics dismissed Starship Troopers as a witless sci-fi flick, missing the fact that it's actually a satire of jingoistic warmongering.

The New York Times Janet Maslin, for example, dismissively wrote, "Where exactly are the hordes of moviegoers who will exclaim: ''Great idea! Let's go see the one about the cute young co-ed army and the big bugs from space.'"

You could maybe understand them not understanding that Verhoeven was making a satire — if not for the fact that almost all of his movies, going back to Robocop, contain large doses of satire and social commentary. (Even the widely reviled Showgirls.)

If you watch it right — meaning, if you realize everyone involved in the movie is in on the joke — Starship Troopers is the best dumb movies ever made about a cute co-ed army and big bugs from space. But it's also a solid movie about militarism and patriotism, in the vein of Dr. Strangelove.

The Terminator (1984)

James Cameron set out to combine high-minded sci-fi with the cheap thrills and DIY ethos of a Roger Corman movie, and ended up creating a classic.

The Terminator holds your attention with violence and shocks, but leaves you thinking, long after it's over, about whether the robots could really take over. And its theory of time travel — in which everything is a loop — is one of the coolest of any movie.

Anyone who started the '80s thinking Arnold Schwarzenegger was all brawn and no brains had to stand corrected by the end of the decade: He had a true gift for selecting seemingly dumb movies that gave you something to think about long after the catch phrases faded.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

Another magnificent dumb movie setup: a swingin' 60s secret agent is thawed-out in the more reserved '90s. But one of writer-star Mike Myers' greatest tricks is finding comedy in the gap between what you expect his characters to know, and what they actually do know.

The Austin Powers movies have a lot of fun lovingly mocking the tropes of Bond films — the villain who gives away his whole plan, the double entendres, the disposable henchmen — but then Austin knocks you out with his surprising sensitivity and decency.

Once, around the height of #MeToo, we saw this movie at a huge outdoor screening with a crowd of mostly millennials. When Vanessa (Elizabeth Hurley) tries to initiate sex with Austin, and he objects that she's too drunk, Austin "Danger" Powers scored himself a long applause break.

Top Secret (1984)

Top Secret — from the folks who brought you Airplane! — was a bomb that felt almost like an exercise in silliness: It's like a parody of an Elvis movie, crossed with a parody of war movie, with an extended Blue Lagoon parody thrown in. We know, it looks like a very dumb movie.

But it's also a loving homage to decades of movie camera tricks, and some of its set pieces are sheer cinematic genius, including a scene that is shot perfectly backwards, before the movie deliberately undercuts its own very impressive blocking.

We'd also call attention to a ludicrously great underwater saloon brawl that required the actors to hold their breath for extended periods of time.

But the camera tricks are just part of its wit. It also finds room for left-field jokes like this one: "My uncle was born in America. But he was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency."

The Running Man (1987)

Another example of Arnold Schwarzenegger choosing a role perfectly.

The Running Man, based on a Stephen King story, wisely predicted the rise of TV reality competitions. Schwarzenegger stars as Ben Richards, a scapegoated helicopter pilot forced to compete in a series of very violent face-offs with cartoonish enemies in order to win a dystopian game show called The Running Man.

There are many nice touches here — including the casting of real-life family feud host Richard Dawson as the host of the show, Damon Killian — but the smartest thing about the movie is how Ben has to not only vanquish his foes, but also win a media war with the totalitarian government behind the game.

If you love The Running Man, you might also like the new reboot directed by Edgar Wright and starring Glen Powell.

Robocop (1987)

If you think Paul Verhoeven's Robocop is a dumb movie about a robotic cop who gets revenge on the bad guys, please give it another shot? It's shockingly prescient in its presentation of a grotesque utopia in which corporations allow artificial intelligence to make life and death decisions.

We can't think of a better summary of how drone law enforcement could go awry than the scene when the ED-209 orders a corporate drone to drop his weapon — then kills him for failing to comply, long after he complies. (In fact, we think about it every time the self-checkout at the grocery store refuses to acknowledge we placed out can of beans in the bagging area.)

One of the coolest things about Robocop is that it works as a top-notch sci-fi adventure, or as a critique of the mindless violence in some of the movies that came out at the same time.

White Chicks (2004)

This looks, on the suface, like one of the dumbest of dumb movies.: Two Black FBI agents (Marlon and Shawn Wayans) have to go undercover as a pair of privileged young white women in the Hamptons to lure a kidnapper.

But White Chicks is good! Not just for its total commitment to comedy, without caring if anyone's offended, but also for its insights into code-switching, stereotyping, and how certain white people talk when they think no one of color is around.

Like most Wayans projects, this one works best when you embrace the silliness and let yourself be surprised by the occasional drops of wisdom.

Friday (1995)

Yes, Friday is filled with jokes about women and weed, but it also sneaks in a potent message about de-escalating violence, while still standing up for yourself.

Coming as it did after a wave of early 90s gang violence — much of it duly catalogued by Friday star and co-writer Ice Cube during his years with NWA and as a solo rapper — it offered a refreshing but thrilling conclusion in which everyone stood their ground, but no one had to die.

And it somehow did it all without ever going preachy.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Mixing smart and stupid is the bread and butter of Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay. So while Anchorman is jam-packed with great dumb jokes — like the whole "sex panther" section ("60 percent of the time, it works every time") — Anchorman is also a pretty great satire of bad journalism and casual workplace sexism.

The many, many great jokes clear the path for McKay and Ferrell to present a portrait of go-along-get-along mediocrity in the San Diego news scene's old boys networks.

In Anchorman 2, they take the mediocrity national. To the point that every time we see a preening, overconfident, self-important news anchor, we think of Ron Burgundy. Time to musk up.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

We were pretty surprised to see this one recently on the Criterion Channel, since we remembered it as a frothy, poppy, disposable confection based on a hazily remembered Archie Comics series.

We remembered it wrong. Very wrong. The film, about a girl group unwittingly enlisted in a consumerist conspiracy, is a very Gen X, very entertaining time capsule about selling out. It used a cartoon from Gen Xers youth to help them explore questions they had seen play out again and again in grunge and hip-hop music — and perhaps in their own lives as they entered the job world.

The film arrived around the same time Napster foisted streaming onto the world, and made it a necessity for many artists to sell their songs to advertisers to stay afloat. So its messages seems a little dated today. But the film is a beautiful dream about what might have been if the world had stayed analog a little longer, and still works as a fun metaphor about art and commerce.

Josie and the Pussycats isn't a cheap cash-in. It's a well-made movie making fun of cheap cash-ins.

Also, the songs, especially "3 Small Words," are cranking pop masterpieces (with Letters to Cleo vocalist Kay Hanley singing lead and stars Rachel Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson on the mic as well.) The film came from Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, the duo also behind the terrific Can't Hardly Wait.

Legally Blonde (2001)

We love a Trojan Horse movie, and Legally Blonde is a perfect example — on the surface it's a silly, frothy comedy, but it sneaks in a Sun Tzu-style message about never underestimating anybody.

Reese Witherspoon is impossibly endearing as Elle Woods,  a sorority girl who tries to win back her ex-boyfriend by attending Harvard Law School. It's impossible not to love a legal movie that climaxes in a big reveal about a perm.

Best of all, the film is inspired by the real experiences of Amanda Brown, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based after attending Stanford Law School and finding that her love of fashion and beauty trends put her out of step with many of her classmates.

Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)

Borat is filled with dumb jokes, but they're a distraction from the film's main thesis: If you act dumb enough to make people feel superior to you, they'll let down their guard and show you who they really are.

Some people turn out to be great: a deleted scene shows the Job-like patience of a man forced to give Sacha Baron Cohen's fake foreign journalist a supermarket tour. But the movie isn't especially interested in showing people being patient: It delights in revealing the suspicions and prejudice of many of the people Borat meets in post-9/11 America.

But what takes the movie into genius territory is its fierce internal logic, held together by Sacha Baron Cohen's jaw-dropping improvisation and timing. Every spontaneous interaction, with real-life people who don't realize Borat is a joke, is somehow manipulated by director Larry Charles and the rest of the team into a cohesive and moving narrative.

If you liked this list of smart movies disguised as dumb movies, you might also like this list of Rad '80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember, including multiple smart movies disguised as dumb movies,

And we'd love for you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Josie and the Pussycats. MGM

Editor's Note: Corrects capitalization in headline.

These classic movies easily stand the test of time.

Here we go.

Notorious (1947)

Alfred Hitchcock's crackling thriller stars Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin, a U.S. agent with a very cool name who recruits the notorious Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman, magnetic) to do his dirty work. Then people start falling in love and things get spectacularly messy.

It's notable for a complicated heroine whose virtue is in question by almost everyone in the movie, until the very end.

The coolest thing about her? She doesn't care.

The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

This story of powerful columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) and ruthless press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a joy for the setting alone — the scenes in and around Broadway in the 1950s.

Add to that a crackling, unpredictable plot involving Hunsecker's little sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and a jazz guitarist and you have one of the most captivating showbiz stories ever made.

It makes today's awful media landscape look almost civilized.

The Apartment (1960)

You'll find yourself saying again and again through this wise, eyes-wide-open comedy: They made this in 1960? Its setup — a young clerk has to loan out his apartment to executives who use it for secret trysts with vulnerable women — is grim even by modern standards.

But you find yourself quickly rooting hard for the irresistible Shirley MacLaine and begrudgingly heroic Jack Lemmon. You don't have to look hard to find a very modern metaphor here about refusing to take it from the man.

MacLaine, Lemmon, director Billy Wilder and screenwriter IAL Diamond reunited three years later for Irma la Douce, which revisited some of the themes of The Apartment.

Psycho (1960)

Psycho will rid you of any ideas that classic movies are stodgy and dull. From the beginning, Janet Leigh's Marion Crane is a good girl gone bad, stealing from her boozy boss to flee across the Arizona desert to the arms of her deadbeat boyfriend.

It's juicy as hell even before she meets the psycho of the title.

Yes, the expository ending is a letdown, but consider that Psycho came out when most people didn't know what a psycho was. Psycho made sure they didn't forget.

Singing in the Rain (1952)

This one's in color, but don't hold that against it. If you just remember a bunch of plucky songs and perfect dance numbers, that's fine.

But Singing in the Rain is also a timeless sendup of Hollywood trend-chasing and vapidity.

Lina Lamont's clueless declaration, "I gave an exclusive to every newspaper in town!" is arguably even funnier in 2023, when seemingly every news story is both "breaking" and "exclusive."

All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis plays a Broadway star who won't give up the spotlight, and Anne Baxter is Eve Harrington, a shrewd manipulator ready to take her place. It's a dynamic we've seen a million times since, from The Devil Wears Prada to Showgirls, but no one's done it better than All About Eve.

It also features an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe.

And consider for a second how cool it is that the line, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" came just a few years into commercial air travel becoming a thing.

The General (1926)

Buster Keaton's character helping the Confederate Army hasn't aged well. Everything else has.

This outstanding silent film, a bit of a bomb in its time, still holds up because of its clockwork slapstick and endlessly ingenious mousetrap machinations. We promise you'll laugh, in joy and relief.

Keaton, "the great stone face" throws his body into impossible violent yet comedic hazards without changing his expression — a skill he developed while being kicked and thrown across vaudeville stages by his father. (Okay, maybe that didn't age so well, either.)

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca is so propulsive, smart and funny that kids in 2023 are still making memes about it.

"I'm shocked, shocked" remains as funny as it was in 1942, and the dynamic between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman is one of the most captivating we've ever seen.

When people say they love classic movies, this is the classic movie they're picturing. It's perfect from beginning to end.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Easily the most fun movie ever made about insurance.

This noir extravaganza sizzles off the screen in moments like the anklet scene — aka the "how fast was I going" scene — between Fred McMurray as an insurance man and Barbara Stanwyck as a scheming client.

It crackles from beginning to end.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1944)

If you ever long for the more innocent days of the past, watch this one to remind yourself they weren't so innocent.

John Garfield makes being a drifter look like a good life choice when his character, Frank, wanders into a service station operated by the drop-dead beautiful Cora (Lana Turner). Sadly — there's always a complication, isn't there? — she runs it with her husband.

Frank and Cora work out a scheme that goes great... until it doesn't.

Rear Window (1954)

Another Hitchcock classic.

This fascinating, fast-moving film is about our natural inclination to pry — whether online, or, back in the day, into our neighbor's windows. Jimmy Stewart plays a news photographer sidelined by a broken leg who doesn't appreciate what a seemingly perfect thing he has going with Lisa (a luminous Grace Kelly, above).

He ponders single life, represented by the ballet dancer Miss Torso (Georgine Darcy) and the sometimes grim compromises of co-habitation.

It's now available on the Criterion Channel.

Contempt (1963)

Something about the unhurried pacing of Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s films — with just a hint of menace below the surface — makes them feel timeless.

So does the theme of this one — a man trying to hold on to his wife, even as he realizes she's drifting away. Michel Piccoli plays a screenwriter working on an adaptation whose wife, played by Brigitte Bardot, draws the attention of an arrogant Hollywood producer played by Jack Palance.

And how's this for timelessness? The script the screenwriter is working on is for The Odyssey — the same Greek epic that Christopher Nolan is presently adapting for the screen.

If you like this list, you might also be interested in trying to identify these hit 1970s movies from a single image... or in these Awesome '90s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

Main image: Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. Embassy Pictures.

Some of the best movies are actually movies about life on the outside, where the prison represents the mental traps imposed on us by society, or our own fears.

Other prison movies are about very real prisons, built for the deserving and innocent alike.

Here are 13 you'll find hard to escape.

Caged (1950)

An early entry in the subgenre of women behind bars prison movies, John Cromwell's Caged is about a married 19-year-old (Eleanor Parker) who is locked up after a botched bank robbery in which her husband is killed.

Hope Emerson plays sadistic prison maven, Evelyn Harper, in a story that reveals that prison may be the most corrupting influence of all.

The film was nominated for three Oscars.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Is it a prison movie? Or a war movie? We would say it's both — David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie that never does what you expect.

Set in a Japanese prison camp in Thailand, the film portrays a battle of wills between captured British P.O.W. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) and his captor, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). Saito demands that Nicholson and his troops build a railroad bridge over the River Kwai, which leads to questions of ethics and honor, and how to maintain your humanity while in captivity.

It was the most successful movie at the box office in 1957, and deservedly won seven Oscars, including for Best Picture. It's one of those 1950s movies that is both a classic and a joy to watch.

Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

One of the greatest prison movies, this Clint Eastwood film was the star's fifth and final collaboration with Dirty Harry director Don Siegel. In fascinating detail, it imagines the circumstances of a real-life escape from the supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz Island in 1962.

Eastwood plays the real-life prisoner Frank Morris, whose whereabouts have been unknown since that chilly night in the early '60s. He'll turn 98 this year, if he's still around.

The FBI's investigation into the escape remains open.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

You knew this was coming, so we're putting it in this gallery nice and early.

One of the most beloved films of recent decades, and pulled from the same Stephen King story collection, Different Seasons, that also spawned Stand by Me and Apt Pupil, The Shawshank Redemption is a story of refusing to surrender your soul.

Tim Robbins stars as Andy Dufresne, a banker sentenced to consecutive life sentences in the killings of his wife and her lover. He befriends Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) — and hatches a plot to dig his way out, while hiding the hole in his cell wall behind a poster of Rita Hayworth.

It's one of the best prison movies and one of the best movies, period — IMDb ranks it No. 1 on its list of the Top 250 Movies of all.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Paul Newman is transfixing as the title character, a man of few words (and hardboiled egg gourmand) who refuses to bend to the cruelty of his Florida prison camp.

Strother Martin, as the captain of the camp, earned a place on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes for this monologue that begins, "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

Guns N Roses fans will also recognize it from the opening of the band's "Civil War."

Penitentiary III (1987)

The third film in a series of hit independent prison movies written and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, Penitentiary III is extremely worth watching for the Midnight Thud fight alone.

Oh, you don't know about the Midnight Thud? Thud is the toughest fighter in the prison, a powerful little person (played by Raymond Kessler, aka the WWE's Haiti Kid) who delivers one of the most captivating fight scenes ever committed to film when he faces off with our protagonist, Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy).

Also, this is the first of two films on this list to feature the great Danny Trejo. He plays See Veer.

Con Air (1997)

Trejo is one of the murderer's row of stars who turns up in Con Air, a prison-on-a-plane movie in which Cameron Poe (played by Nicolas Cage, looking incredibly cool) takes on a whole plane full of felons when its Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom masterminds a hijacking.

This is one of those movies that — if you haven't watched it in a while — will have constantly saying, "He's in this, too?"

The cast includes John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle, and many, many more.

Some people argue that this doesn't belong on a list of prison movies because the characters are on a plane. But as anyone who's ever flown a middle seat in basic economy can attest, planes can be prisons.

The Great Escape (1963)

Steve McQueen leads an all-star cast playing POWs who heroically escape from a Nazi prison camp in this classic, heavily fictionalized story of British POWs' escape from Stalag Luft III during World War II.

Among the concessions to commercialism: sprinkling three Americans into the action. Thanks goodness McQueen's Captain Virgil Hilts was there, or else who could have pulled off that spectacular motorcycle sequence (above)?

Hunger (2008)

And now, a prison movie from the other Steve McQueen — the masterful British director whose film 12 Years a Slave won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.

His directorial debut, however, was Hunger, in which his frequent collaborator, Michael Fassbender, plays Bobby Sands, a real-life member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who led an IRA hunger strike and took part in a no-wash protest behind bars.

Hunger is a brutal, hypnotic film that skillfully captures the day-to-day dehumanization of the prisoners.

Clemency (2019)

Another grim prison saga that was also the directorial debut of a great filmmaker, Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison ward trying to unemotionally do her job — which includes overseeing the death of a young inmate, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge) who maintains his innocence.

Many death-penalty films lecture their audiences (who may have already opposed the death penalty), but Clemency writer-director Chinonye Chukwu does not: She just lays out the facts of the situation, with as much restraint as Woodard's warden — until emotions eventually make their inevitable break.

This is a wise, patient film that sidesteps preaching and Hollywood hokum in favor of a very chilling, very human story.

The Longest Yard (1974)

On the lighter side, The Longest Yard is a sports movie crossed with a prison movie... and a comedy. The film stars Burt Reynolds as a hard-driving, hard-hitting now-incarcerated former NFL quarterback who is tasked by a nasty warden with assembling a team of prisoners to play against the guards.

How do you think that works out?

American History X (1998)

Edward Norton stars as a savage white supremacist, Derek Vinyard, who realizes in prison that all of his beliefs are misguided.

'In one deeply allegorical scene, he learns that a Black fellow inmate, Lamont (Guy Torry) received a harsher sentence (six years) for stealing a TV than he received for killing two Black men (three years).

In another crucial scene, he learns that the prisons Aryan Brotherhood is just using white supremacy as a facade to manipulate hopeless, uneducated people and wrest power for its leaders.

Caged Heat (1974)

A very different look at prison life, released in the same year as The Longest Yard. We aren't going to claim this low-budget Roger Corman production, also known as Renegade Girls, is a great film. But it is the debut of a very great filmmaker: writer-director Jonathan Demme would go on to make Silence of the Lambs, one of the best films of all time, and to repay Corman for his confidence by casting him in the role of FBI Director Hayden Burke.

Silence of the Lambs was also shot but Demme's go-to cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, who also shot Caged Heat.

Caged Heat is a cheap exploitation flick, sure, but it contains some Demme hallmarks: strong female protagonists, a strong sense of empathy for the characters, and social consciousness.

A 1975 New York Times story on the rise of "trashy" midnight movies concluded that it "does not set new standards of cheapness, violence or grossness, as most midnight movies seem determined to do. It is a film about women in prison that offers little more than some zippy music, a lot of bosom shots and a perverted prison doctor."

High praise from the paper of record.

The Big Bird Cage (1972)

Maybe the best example of the women-in-prison subgenre, The Big Bird Cage is a follow-up, but not a sequel, to 1971's The Big Doll House. It's most notable for a cast that includes the great Pam Grier, as well as horror icon Sid Haig as a radical named Django. Both Grier and Haig also starred in The Big Doll House, though they played different characters.

Shot in the U.S. and the Philippines, The Big Bird Cage documents the liberation of a prison camp where women are kept barefoot and scantily clad as they're subjected to hard labor.

Even without ever hearing him talk about it, we're confident Quentin Tarantino has some big opinions on this one. Like Caged Heat, it came from the wonderful Roger Corman's New World Pictures, because of course it did.

Liked This List of Captivating Prison Movies?

You may also like this list of the 15 Movie Con Artists We Fall for Every Time. Some of them end up in prison.

You might also like this list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.

Main image: Caged Heat. New World Pictures.

Editor's Note: Corrects main image.

There are many great '90s movies that technically fall into the comedy genre but aren't always laugh out loud funny. They are not on this list. These are the funniest '90s comedies, the ones that will make you laugh, even while thinking maybe you're a terrible person for laughing. Aren't those the best?

Disagree? Think we missed one of the funniest '90s comedies? Let us know in the comedies. Now here's our list.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day is one of the best comedy movies ever made, but also one of the best movies of any genre. It's so thoughtful that we almost mistakenly left it off this list, thinking it was less a comedy than a profound meditation on life, disguised as a simple comedy.

But then we rewatched some highlights, and, well, it's really funny. Ned Ryerson, the snowball fight, "He might be OK," turning "I Got You Babe" into an anthem of despair... we could go on.

It's easily one of the funniest '90s comedy movies, even without its poignant messages about love, self-improvement and looking out for your neighbors.

Dumb and Dumber (1994)

You just have to surrender to the stupidity of Dumb and Dumber, who were to the '90s what Airplane! creators Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker were to the '80s. It all started with Dumb and Dumber, starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as two lovable dolts who travel from Providence, Rhode Island to Aspen, Colorado to return a briefcase full of money.

The naive pair are lured into a world of grown-up deceit, but never lose their fundamental sweetness. Our favorite part is the Austria-Australia mixup — we made the same mistake when we were kids — and the straight-up van for scooter trade: "I can get 70 miles to the gallon for this hog."

Carrey was a red-hot comedy star at the time of Dumb and Dumber's release, but Daniels more than held his own by just playing everything as real as possible. His performance holds the whole movie together.

Fear of a Black Hat (1994)

Starring  Rusty Cundieff, who also wrote and directed, Fear of a Black Hat is a sharp satire of constantly shifting hip-hop trends that reacted to them almost as quickly as they happened. it's maybe the least celebrated movie on this list, but it's filled with witty bits we think about a lot.

The film, which premiered at Sundance, traces a political/gangster rap group called NWH (the H is for hats) that splinters into various other genres, including desperate diss tracks, P.M. Dawnesque philosophizing, and C&C Music Factory-style dance music.

It's a fantastic time capsule of the explosion of hip-hop, but the comedy holds up very well even if you don't catch the many very of-the-moment references.

Billy Madison (1995)

Adam Sandler is very funny throughout Billy Madison, the story of a man who must go back to school — from the beginning. But one of the best things about Sandler comedies is how much he allows his friends to shine.

There are two scenes we think about most. In the first, Steve Buscemi gets an apology from Billy for giving him a hard time in high school — and crosses Billy off his list of People to Kill.

In the other, understated SNL icon James Downey delivers a much-memed cutdown of Billy's terrible Academic Declathlon answer, finally concluded, "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Clueless (1995)

Besides being one of the visual hallmarks of the '90s — the mall scenes are genuinely iconic — Clueless is loaded with sharp dialogue, as any good Jane Austen adaptation should be.

Built around Alicia Silverstone's massive likability, it also brought us the low-key charm of Paul Rudd, who went on to become, with unending charm, a very big deal.

Our favorite line is the one we're probably not supposed to laugh at anymore, from future Scrubs star Donald Faison: "Are you b------ blind or something? Your man Christian is a cakeboy. He's a disco-dancin', Oscar Wilde-readin', Streisand ticket-holdin' friend of Dorothy."

As one much-upvoted YouTube commenter noted: "Its adorkable how he can come up with so many identifiers without actually being INSULTING or homophobic!"

It's one of the '90s comedy movies that still feels the most fresh.

Tommy Boy (1995)

Much has been written about Tommy Boy because we just hit the 30th anniversary of this gem pairing David Space and the late Chris Farley on a road trip to save an auto parts business — and a town.

It's filled with great bits— bees in the car, fat guy in a little coat, my pretty little pet — but what we love the most are the genuinely heartfelt moments of vulnerability between Farley's Tommy and Spade's Richard, like their explosion of tears listening to the Carpenters' "Superstar."

And we think all the time about the very human moment Tommy lets Richard take the blame for the broken car door: "What'd you do?"

One of our all-time favorite comedy movies.

Friday (1995)

It's hard to believe that Ice Cube was known mostly for ultra seriousness prior to Friday — when he wasn't making sociopolitical points on records, he was doing serious drama in roles like Doughboy in Boyz N the Hood.

With Friday, which he co-wrote, he broke up that image as the good-natured Craig, whose friendship with Smokey (Chris Tucker) gets him in trouble with Big Worm (Faizon Love).

Friday has a barrage of great jokes, mostly from Tucker, but just when things look very bad for Craig and Smokey, the movie makes a flat-out inspiring turn involving Deebo (Tommy Lister Jr.).

It catches you off guard but brilliantly ties in Friday with Cube's previous body of work.

Kingpin (1996)

The second Farrelly brothes movie on our list — but not the last. Kingpin gets a little dark at times as it follows people through what it portrays as the desperate world of bowling. But like all Farrelly brothers movies, its buoyed by a fundamental faith in people — and especially in people who are sweet and naive.

Randy Quaid has never been better than he is in Kingpin as a talented Amish bowling savant. He's almost like a child to the scheming Claudia (Vanessa Angel) and the broken Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson), who hope to exploit his skills.

And we haven't even mentioned Bill Murray shows as one of the all-time great comedy villains, the flashy, vainglorious Ernie McCracken. It's one of the first movies to take a less-is-more approach to Bill Murray, which somehow makes his comedic powers even greater.

There's Something About Mary (1998)

The Farrelly brothers may have been at their all-time best with There's Something About Mary — master screenwriter William Goldman (All the President's Men, The Princess Bride, Misery) even dedicated a large section of his screenwriting book Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade to the care they put into the script.

It has a cast where everyone is perfect — most notably Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, and especially Cameron Diaz. And the Farrellys take time to give every character a real arc, and make us really root for things to work out — despite an all-time best cavalcade of gross-out jokes. (One point they volunteered to Goldman is that they like to write characters into a corner, and then go for long drives to decide how to save them.)

Many, many movies copied the sick jokes of Something About Mary while forgetting the humanity and art, which explains why so few movies live up to its success.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

We'll go out on a limb and say yes: We like Austin Powers more than Wayne's World.

Few movies operate on their own terms more than the first Austin Powers. It's part Bond parody, sure, but Mike Myers also manages incredibly weird and esoteric jokes about time travel, relationships, and comedy itself. Because the movie knows the jokes are silly and gross and stupid, it feels smart, and we feel smart laughing at it. Without losing our heads, of course.

Also, the scene where Austin refuses to bed Vanessa — "'cause you're drunk, it's not right" — has aged very well. We once saw it with a crowd of millennials, in 2017, and the line got an applause break. Yeah baby!

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)

We had no idea South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut would be so prescient — it's about an out-of-nowhere scapegoating of Canada — but we always knew it was one of the funniest '90s movies.

Blaming Canada is just one of the crazy ideas in a movie that also asks us to root for Satan himself as he tries to escape an abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein. There's no line it won't cross, and we love it.

The best thing about the movie is Satan realizing that he doesn't need anyone — not even Saddam Hussein — to complete him. What he needs is a little time alone.

Office Space (1999)

It's hard to explain to Gen Zers who would love to have boring office jobs, but there was a time when people had so much ennui about spending their time in cubicle farms that they fantasized about committing heists borrowed straight from Superman 3.

Mike Judge's Office Space was overlooked in theaters but became a DVD and cable classic thanks to inventive and perfectly executed routines about the O-face, Lumbergh, TPS reports, federal prison, pieces of flair... the list goes on and on.

Judge's genius doesn't let up: He took on tech culture as righteously as he did office culture with Silicon Valley — one of the 15 funniest TV shows we've ever seen — and has a nice potboiler going in the new animated series Common Side Effects.

If you like this list, you might also like this video of '80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

Main image: Kingpin. MGM

Editor's Note: Updates main image.

They work as Christmas movies, or just as movies.

Here we go.

Die Hard (1988)

Let's get this out of the way: Die Hard is the ultimate "is it a Christmas movie" Christmas movie. No one thought of it as one when it came out — it was just a great action movie about NYPD cop John McClane trying to save his estranged wife Holly Gennero (Bonnie Bedelia) from a Los Angeles office tower.

But in decades of internet hot takes and interpretation, Die Hard has come to be pretty universally recognized as a Christmas movie, after all.

Holly's name is very important to this reading of Die Hard — not just because of the Christmas overtones of "holly," but also because she's dropped McClane as her last name, a signal of how the family is disintegrating. Die Hard, like Christmas, is ultimately about a family reuniting and creating a future.

It also has a proud place on our list of the 11 Most Helpful Ventilation Shafts in Movies.

The Apartment (1960)

Like everything in Billy Wilder's magnificent The Apartment, the Christmas element of the film is wisely, beautifully understated. The film is about Fran (Shirley MacClaine), an elevator operator, and her secret affair with bigwig Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray).

Meanwhile, the well-meaning Bud Baxter (Jack Lemmon) pines after her, even while he allows Sheldrake and other executives to use his apartment to carry out their affairs, including Sheldrake's liaisons with Fran.

At the company Christmas party — a symbol of office excess — Fran learns Sheldrake is stringing her along. At a time for celebrating family and togetherness, she realizes she's not just the other women, but one of many other women with whom Sheldrake has had affairs. Things take a dark turn — but turn out rather merrily by New Year's Eve.

Like It's a Wonderful Life — which isn't on this list because it's so obviously a Christmas movie — The Apartment succeeds by acknowledging the grim parts of life, not just highlighting the jolly ones.

Little Women (2019)

Nothing about Greta Gerwig's lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's 1868-89 two-volume novel about the March sisters screams Christmas movie... until a Christmas scene where, joyously, Bob Odenkirk's Father March returns home from the Civil War.

"My little women," he declares, with total naturalism, underselling the title of the film with one of the best line readings in a movie that's filled with wonderful acting.

It's an incredibly cathartic and moving moment, in large part because it doesn't try too hard for big emotion.

Tangerine (2015)

Like Die Hard, Tangerine takes place around Christmas in Los Angeles — a place where winter temperatures in the 70s can make it easy to forget its the holiday season, unless you're at an outdoor mall.

Add to that the fact that when this excellent Sean Baker film came out, coverage of it focused mostly on two noteworthy points: First, that it is a frank, compassionate and funny look at the lives of transgender sex workers (played by Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, both outstanding), at a time when trans people were rarely well-represented on film. And second, it was shot all on iPhones, when that was very rare. It heralded a potential breakthrough in indie filmmaking.

But underneath those two points is something very traditional: Tangerine is a movie about a family at Christmas. It's a found family, yes, and not the kind of family that is typically depicted in sugarcoated Christmas movies. But that makes Tangerine all the more compelling.

The Terminator (1984)

Yes, The Terminator. No, it doesn't take place around Christmas. And no, you didn't miss a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger dresses up as Santa. But The Terminator is perhaps the most true Christmas movie of any film on this list, because it is so obviously inspired by the Biblical account of the birth of Christ.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor symbolizes the Virgin Mary — a teenager who will soon give birth to humanity's savior, by extraordinary means: her meeting with Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese, a time traveler from the future. Her son, John Connor, shares initials with Jesus Christ.

SkyNet, the terrifying AI that sends The Terminator back in time to kill Sarah before her baby is born, is not unlike King Herod of Judea, who ordered the "massacre of the innocents" — the murder of Bethlehem's newborns — because he feared Jesus would one day seize his kingdom.

Interestingly, James Cameron came up with the idea of The Terminator in Rome, not so far from the Vatican.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Set around Christmas in — again — Los Angeles, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the directorial debut of screenwriter Shane Black, who is rather famous for setting films around the holidays (including Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout.)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang starts off as a play on perhaps the least Christmas-y movie genre, noirs, with some deft Hollywood satire. But it embraces the Christmas season as actor Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) and private investigator Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer) team up with Santa-suited Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan), a woman with many secrets.

Notably, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang came at a point in Robert Downey's career when he was still considered a risk, due to a history with drugs. He started his comeback with 2003's The Singing Detective, and built up to landing the lead role in 2008's Iron Man — a casting choice that made him one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood history. Christmas is all about second chances, and Downey seized his.

Which brings us to the final film on our list...

Iron Man 3 (2013)

You would think more Marvel movies would embrace the Christmas spirit, given how tied in they are to marketing and toys. Disney+'s Hawkeye made great use of the holiday season, and so does Iron Man 3.

When Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, decided not to direct Iron Man 3 (though he did return as Happy Hogan), Downey took the opportunity to reunite with his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director, Shane Black.

Despite Black's long history of Christmas-based action movies, he didn't originally intend to set Iron Man 3 during the holiday — but co-writer Drew Pearce brought him around to the idea, as SlashFilm reported.

Black told the outlet: "There's something at Christmas that unites everybody and it already sets a stage within the stage, that wherever you are, you're experiencing this world together."

Iron Man 3 is, appropriately enough, about reunions, second chances, and finding hope when things seem dark. It even has an apparent resurrection, so maybe it's also an Easter movie.

Liked This List of Our 7 Favorite Christmas Movies in Disguise?

You might also like our list of the 12 Spookiest Christmas Movies to Add Some Scary to Your Merry.

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Main image: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Warner Bros.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

Here we go.

James Caan as Sonny in The Godfather

There are a lot of deaths in Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster classic The Godfather, and most of them are foreshadowed in one way or another. But Sonny’s death comes out of the blue.

Sure, on your tenth or eleventh rewatch of The Godfather, it may seem obvious to you that Carlo had a motive for selling out Sonny, and that Barzini would have stood to gain something by eliminating the hot-headed, short-lived Don as well. But we’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wasn’t surprised by Sonny’s ambush on the causeway the first time they watched this legendary film.

Rest in peace, Santino — even though you were a bad Don (Vito’s words, not ours), you sure had a lot of spirit. We wish you hadn’t been among those movie deaths we never saw coming.

Steve Coogan as Damien Cockburn in Tropic Thunder

This most comedically shocking of movie deaths made audiences jump out of their seats.

Traipsing through the jungle, movie director Damien Cockburn is so comically excited about making what he hopes will be the greatest war movie of all time — until he steps on a landmine and gets blown to smithereens.

Watch where you’re walking, fellas!

Kate Winslet as Mears in Contagion

In this pandemic disaster movie, Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer who is tasked with tracking everyone down who came in contact with an infected woman who died of this horrible illness.

The way she’s set up, you’d think Mears was going to be a main character in this movie — until she gets sick and suddenly dies somewhat early on.

One minute, she’s suffering in a hospital bed, and the next, she’s in a body bag. Sometimes, that’s just how life goes in the movies.

Steve Buscemi in The Big Lebowski

Steve Buscemi plays Theodore Donald “Donny” Kerabatsos in The Big Lebowski, an avid bowler and friend of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude.

But one of the most memorable things that happens to Donny in the movie — besides being repeatedly told to “shut the f— up, Donny” — is his death.

He suddenly croaks from a heart attack during a fight with the nihilists outside of the bowling alley. In an effort to honor his love of surfing, Walter (John Goodman) and The Dude try to scatter Donny’s ashes at the beach, but it famously ends up getting blown back in their faces.

Phil LaMarr as Marvin in Pulp Fiction

In this iconically jarring scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, John Travolta’s character Vincent asks Phil LaMarr’s character Marvin if he has an opinion about what he and Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules are discussing in the front seat of the car.

But Vincent accidentally points his gun directly at Marvin’s face, and in the heat of the discussion, he pulls the trigger. It’s truly one of the most shocking movie deaths we never saw coming.

Cue the famous line, “Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.” With Marvin’s blood spattered all over him and the rest of the car, Travolta says it about as nonchalantly as one might say, “Oh no, I spilled my beer.”

Drew Barrymore as Casey in Scream

This one is one of the most iconic death scenes of the horror movie genre.

When Casey is introduced as Ghost Face’s victim in the first 1996 Scream movie, naturally, you want to root for her and assume that she’ll get away. But she dies in the first 12 minutes of the movie.

Her death is quite gruesome actually — after being stabbed to death with Ghost Face’s knife, she’s hung from a tree. But even though her character is so short-lived, Drew Barrymore really wanted the role.

“In the horror film genre, my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was going to be slugging through at the end, but was going to creak by and make it,” the actress said on Sean Evans’ YouTube show Hot Ones. “What I wanted to do is to take that comfort zone away… I asked if I could be Casey Becker so we would establish this rule does not apply in this film.”

Brad Pitt as Chad Feldheimer in Burn After Reading

Brad Pitt’s death as the bumbling personal trainer Chad Feldheimer in Burn After Reading should be a lesson in gun safety.

Sneaking around in George Clooney’s character Harry Pfarrer’s house, Chad is caught off guard when Harry comes home early — so, naturally, Chad hides in the closet. As Harry gets dressed after taking a shower, he grabs his gun on the way to open up the closet, coming face to face with Chad.

Shockingly, Harry shoots Chad in the face out of sheer surprise, and it’s goodnight for that lovable gym rat, resulting in one of the most jarring movie deaths we never saw coming.

Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas

Joe Pesci’s Tommy getting whacked in Goodfellas is a surprise not just to the audience, but to Robert De Niro’s character James and Ray Liotta’s Henry.

James is so surprised when he’s informed that Tommy’s been whacked that he actually starts crying — a rare thing to see from men of his stature in mafia movies. But, more in line with that particular brand of masculinity, his sadness then turns to rage as he kicks in the telephone booth while Henry looks on with concern.

“It was revenge for Billy Batts,” Hill says in the voiceover, referencing the loud-mouth guy (Sopranos alum Frank Vincent) that Tommy, James and Henry beaten to death in a bar after Batts insults Tommy over his former occupation as a shoe shiner.

That’s what you get for telling Tommy to “go home and get your shinebox.”

Leonardo DiCaprio as Billy Costigan in The Departed

Billy Costigan’s death in The Departed is such a shocker.

In this iconic scene, Costigan — an undercover cop assigned with infiltrating the mob in order to ensare Jack Nicholson’s Irish mob boss character Frank Costello — is pretending to capture and hold up Matt Damon’s Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan in an elevator.

But Sullivan’s backup officers don’t know that Costigan is an undercover cop, and he gets shot as soon as the elevator doors open, stunning everyone including Matt Damon.

Haley Joel Osment as Trevor McKinney in Pay It Forward

This is such a sad scene, and it comes out of nowhere.

Haley Joel Osment plays a sweet little boy named Trevor who gets stabbed to death by his school bullies in the school parking lot. It all goes down as his poor mother, played by Helen Hunt, and his teacher/mom’s boyfriend, Eugene (Kevin Spacey) look on in horror, unable to save him in time.

It’s an absolutely devastating moment when little Trevor dramatically falls to his knees and collapses.

Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men

The death of Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men happens so quickly and with so little fanfare that you’d be forgiven for questioning whether he actually died or if your eyes are just playing tricks on you.

Poor Llewelyn is a Vietnam War vet who stumbles on $2 million in the desert, and his efforts to keep it despite being pursued by Javier Bardem’s deranged serial killer hitman character Anton Chiguhr ultimately gets him killed in another example of these movie deaths we never saw coming.

He dies unceremoniously in a motel room, breaking the heart of his sweet wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), who ends up paying the same price.

Josh Brolin as Thanos in Avengers: End Game

A tough two films for Josh Brolin! The actor also voices Thanos, the evil supervillain in Avengers: End Game, who is yet another one of the movie deaths we never saw coming.

But to most everyone’s surprise when this movie first came out, Thanos dies in the first 15 minutes of the movie.

Satisfyingly, he is beheaded by Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Honestly, good riddance, Thanos! No more infinity stones for you.

Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems

Honestly, Howard had it coming to him, what with all his gambling debts and poor decisions, but man — we didn’t expect him to die like that.

Adam Sandler plays the jeweler in pursuit of a highly valuable opal in Uncut Gems. His death is such a hard pill to swallow. After risking everything on yet another gamble, Howard is ecstatic when he realizes he’s won $1.2 million in a sports bet — only to be spontaneously shot in the face.

It’s an iconic shot by the Safdie Brothers, seeing Howard fall to the floor through the reflection of the mirror above. Another one of those movie deaths we never saw coming.

Milly Shaprio as Charlie in Hereditary

Ari Aster’s feature directorial debut Hereditary is full of gruesome moments that will haunt your dreams for years. But Charlie’s (Milly Shapiro) death isn’t so much gory as it is shocking and unexpected — another example of those movie deaths we never saw coming that will make you clap your hand over your mouth in silent horror.

Charlie’s brother Peter (Alex Wolff) frantically drives her to the hospital as she struggles to breathe after going into anaphylactic shock from triggering her walnut allergy. But when he comes across a deer in the road, he swerves — causing Charlie to be beheaded when she’s struck by a telephone pole while leaning her head out the window.

Not to be too graphic, but her decapitation is so dramatic that her head ends up in the street while her body stays in the car. That’s one of those movie deaths we never saw coming.

Samuel L. Jackson as Russell Franklin in Deep Blue Sea

This is the gold stanadard of surprise movie deaths.

Sure, some bloody movie deaths we never saw coming are inevitable in a movie about a killer shark. But no one expected Samuel L. Jackson to be spontaneously chomped right in the middle of his speech rallying his fellow scientists together in 1999’s Deep Blue Sea. They’re all there to harvest shark brain tissue that they hope could cure Alzheimer’s, but they end up getting hunted instead.

Jackson’s character’s death such a shocker that it’s almost funny. The CGI looks pretty dated today, but it still deserves the top spot on our list of 15 movie deaths we never saw coming.

Also, About Our Main Image

We used the image of Saffron Burrows (above) in Deep Blue Sea to indicate that Deep Blue Sea is on the list without saying who's death in the movie is the death nobody saw coming.

Burrows' character, Dr. Susan McAllister, has a somewhat predictable death, given that she is one of the people most responsible for the rise of super-smart sharks, and thus, under Movie Law, must be punished for her hubris.

So her death isn't on the list of movie deaths no one saw coming. A lot of people anticipated it.

Bonus: Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho

Of course Janet Leigh's death scene is the one thing everyone knows about Psycho, even if they've never seen Psycho.

But it was a huge surprise and masterful bit of misdirection when the film was released in 1960: Killing the lead character, before the movie was even half over, signaled to audiences that there was nothing this Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece wouldn't do.

As Leigh noted in a recently rerun 1999 interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air, her surprise movie death led Paramount Pictures, which distributed Psycho, to mandate that theater owners not let anyone into the theater after the film had started.

Leigh died in 2004, holding the honor of pulling off one of the greatest surprises in cinematic history.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of Gen X Icons Gone Too Soon or this list of 12 TV Characters Who Deserved to Die.

Main image: Deep Blue Sea. Warner Bros.

All their deaths were sudden and unexpected, leaving not only their friends, fans and families in shock, but also their collaborators. In some cases, those colleagues had to decide whether to finish their films without these actors who died — and if so, how to do it.

May they rest in peace.

James Dean

James Dean was a huge fan of auto racing — so much so that Warner Bros., the studio behind Giant, barred him from racing during the shooting of the sweeping drama.

After he finished shooting his scenes, and the movie was in post-production, Dean decided to start racing again. He was driving in his Porsche 550 Spyder to a race in Salinas, California, when he was killed in a crash. He died on September 30, 1955, at the age of just 24.

Dean's friend Nick Adams was enlisted for some voice dubbing of Dean on Giant, which was released in 1956 and was the last of Dean's three films as a lead actor. It earned him a posthumous Oscar nomination.

Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood, who starred alongside James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause and earned a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance, established herself as one of Hollywood's greatest stars with films like The Searchers (1956), West Side Story (1961), Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).

She was on a break from production on her film Brainstorm (above) when she went on a Catalina Island boat trip with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, and her Brainstorm co-star, Christopher Walken, as well as the ship's captain. She drowned on November 29, 1981, and investigators never determined exactly what happened. She was just 43.

Brainstorm was delayed, then eventually completed with the help of rewrites and Natalie Wood's younger sister, Lana, taking her place in some scenes. Brainstorm was released in 1983 with the dedication, "to Natalie."

Clark Gable

Gable earned the nickname "The King of Hollywood" by starring in films like It Happened One Night (1934) and Gone With the Wind (1939).

He had just wrapped shooting alongside Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits when he died of a heart attack in 1960 at the age of 59.

Gable had seen footage of the film, and agreed with people who said it was his best work to date. The film was released on February 1, 1961, on what would have been Gable's 60th birthday.

It was initially a box office disappointment, but soon proved to a classic. Sadly, it was the final film not just for Gable, but also for Monroe, who died in 1962 at age 36.

Bruce Lee

The martial arts icon died at just 32 on June 20, 1973, while visiting Hong Kong.

Lee had been filming Game of Death in 1972 when he was offered the chance to star in Enter the Dragon, the first kung fu film to be released by a major Hollywood studio. He paused filming on Game of Death to shoot Enter the Dragon, but died soon after.

Enter the Dragon was released in Hong Kong just days after Lee's death, and a month after it in the U.S., becoming the most successful martial arts film of all, and one of the most profitable films of all time.

Lee's death inspired a wave of "Leesploitation" films starring inferior imitators, and Game of Death was completed using stand-ins. It was released in 1978, five years after Lee's death.

Brandon Lee

In one of the greatest film tragedies, Bruce Lee's son, Brandon Lee, also died young. He had followed in his father's footsteps, studying many forms of martial arts, and was a rising action star in the late 1980s and early '90s whose role in the comic book adaptation The Crow was expected to be his big breakthrough.

Sadly, he was killed in an on-set accident, and died on March 31, 1993, when he was just 28. Lee had neatly shot all of his scenes for The Crow, and after some rewriting, Lee's stunt double, Chad Stahelski, was used as a stand-in, allowing the film to be completed. 

Watching The Crow is a very sad and eerie experience, however, because Lee plays a character who has risen from the dead.

River Phoenix

River Phoenix starred in films from Stand By Me to Running on Empty to My Own Private Idaho, and had been filming Dark Blood in 1993 when he died of a heroin and cocaine overdose at the West Hollywood club The Viper Room.

The film was halted, and the version that was eventually completed was only shown at a few film festivals until its DVD release in Germany in 2018.

A Guardian review said that director George Sluizer filled in scenes that couldn't be shot, due to Phoenix's death, by reading "descriptions of what is missing... a simple but surprisingly effective tactic."

Chris Farley

One of the breakout Saturday Night Live stars of the early ’90s, Farley intensely committed to his characters, and like his idol, John Belushi, would happily careen into furniture to sell a joke. He starred with SNL castmate in 1995’s Tommy Boy (above) and the following year's Black Sheep, and starred in his first solo film, Beverly Hills Ninja, in 1997.

Sadly, he also shared Belushi's troubles with drugs, and like Belushi died of a drug overdose at 33. He passed on December 18, 1997.

His voice role in Shrek had to be recast — SNL castmate Mike Myers took over — but Farley had already completed Almost Heroes, released in May 1998, and a brief role in Dirty Work, released that June.

Tupac Shakur

Tupac Shakur was of course best known as a rapper, but had also established himself as a screen star with films like Juice and Poetic Justice before he died on September 13, 1996, from injuries suffered in a Las Vegas shooting. He was just 25.

He had just completed work on the film Gang Related, which costarred Jim Belushi. It was released in October 1997.

“Tupac was great to work with," writer-director Jim Kouf said years later. "He really wanted acting to be his way out of the music world, which was controlling his life at the time. He was also going to score the movie, but was killed 10 days after we finished shooting. He was a great guy. We had a lot of fun on set. And Gang Related had one of the best casts I’ve ever worked with."

Aaliyah

Aaliyah was known for hits including “If Your Girl Only Knew,” “4 Page Letter” and “Are You That Somebody” when she made her feature film debut in Romeo Must Die (for which she appears in a promotional photo, above).

She had been recording a music video for her song “Rock the Boat” in the Bahamas when she and eight others were killed in a private plane crash on August 25, 2001. She was just 22.

Her second and final film, the Anne Rice adaptation The Queen of the Damned, was released the year after her death. Like The Crow, it's an eerie watch, because she plays a woman who is undead.

Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger starred in films including 10 Things I Hate About You, The Patriot and A Knight’s Tale before earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain.

He earned a posthumous Oscar for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight, released the summer after his accidental overdose death from medications on January 22, 2008, when he was only 28.

He died during production of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (above), so Gilliam enlisted Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp and Jude Law to play physically transformed versions of Ledger's character at different stages in his story. The film was released to acclaim in 2009.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman was born July 23, 1967 and died February 2, 2014 at only 46.

Known for his versatility and commitment, Hoffman stood out in films including Boogie Nights, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Mission: Impossible 3, the Hunger Games franchise, and Capote, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar in 2006.

He struggled with heroin addiction early in life, and successfully abstained from it for many years before relapsing. He died from mixed drug intoxication on February 2, 2014, at only 46. Heroin and other drugs were reportedly found in his home.

Hoffman had completed most of his scenes in The Hunger Games — Mockingjay Part II, though some of the film needed to be rewritten because of his passing. He's in character above as Plutarch Heavensbee in The Hunger Games — Mockingjay Part I.

Carrie Fisher

An acclaimed actress and writer best known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, Carrie Fisher was returning from a book tour when she stopped breathing on a flight on December 21, 2016. She died on December 27, 2016, at the age of 60.

Fisher had recently reprised her Leia role in 2015's The Force Awakens and had completed work on the next Star Wars film, The Last Jedi (above), which was released on December 15, 2017, and dedicated to her.

The final installment in the trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, used repurposed footage of Fisher from The Force Awakens.

If you liked this list, you may also like this list of 11 Uplifting Movies That Aren't Fake and Annoying About It. We also invite you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: A publicity still for Rebel Without a Cause. Warner Bros

Editor's Note: Corrects headline and main image.

Watching John Hughes movies is almost a guarantee of nostalgia, warmth, and sharp wit.

He's synonymous with '80s high school comedies — but he had did much more.

What Do We Mean by John Hughes Movies?

You may remember Hughes, who died in 2009 at the age of 59, for Home Alone, or Pretty in Pink, or Disney’s ‘90s remakes of 101 Dalmatians and Flubber.

Hughes is a credited screenwriter on all those films (and wrote Beethoven under a pseudonym), but he did not direct them.

You could do a fine ranking of Hughes’ writing efforts, but they say film is a director’s medium. So for this list of John Hughes films ranked, we’re focusing only on the ones he directed.

Here are all eight of the movies John Hughes directed, ranked from least good to best.

8 — Curly Sue (1991)

Hughes wrote, co-wrote, and produced many films after Curly Sue, but it proved to be the last film he ever directed. That’s unfortunate, because it also happens to be the worst John Hughes film.

Some directors have a “worst” film that is still decent — Paul Thomas Anderson, for example. But Curly Sue is not such a film. It’s basically “What if Paper Moon was bad?” Jim Belushi plays a con man who watches over a seven-year-old orphan, the titular Curly Sue.

The movie is inert, and then it ends with a silly happily-ever-after ending. Steve Carell got to make his film debut, though.

7 — Sixteen Candles (1984)

From Hughes’ last film to his first. It’s not just that Sixteen Candles hasn’t aged well, though that is true. (The less we say about Long Duk Dong, the better.) You may be saying, “But Duckie is such a fun character! And Harry Dean Stanton is so sweet as Molly Ringwald’s dad!” Ah, you’re thinking of Pretty in Pink, one of the John Hughes movies he wrote but didn't direct — which also stars Ringwald as a troubled teenager. That one is directed by Howard Deutch.

One criticism you will hear levied against John Hughes movies, and it is sometimes a fair one, is that he took a lot of license with what real teenagers were like. Characters in John Hughes movies rarely acted like people in real life. For some comedies, including some Hughes comedies, that works better.

When you aim for slice-of-life filmmaking, though, that can bump a bit more. Sixteen Candles, at its lowest points, feels like it was written and directed by an alien. It may have launched his career, but in hindsight is fairly lacking.

6 — She’s Having a Baby (1988)

Six of Hughes’ eight directorial efforts have solidified themselves into the cultural landscape. There’s a reason why we are doing this ranking, and why even when we have quibbles with, say, Sixteen Candles, we would never deny its cultural impact.

Curly Sue and She’s Having a Baby are the two that have fallen out of the Hughes canon, such as it is. With Curly Sue, that’s for the best. But She’s Having a Baby is an enjoyable watch.

Leaving teen movies behind, She’s Having a Baby is a breezy romantic comedy about adults. The movie is also unusual in that it begins with the couple together. In fact, the film follows Jake and Kristy Briggs from their wedding to the birth of their first child.

It then chronicles the ups and downs of married life, in amiable ways, and is helped by the fact the Briggses are played by Elizabeth McGovern and Kevin Bacon.

5 — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Ferris Bueller is selfish, arrogant and smarmy, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is all about a dude who breezes through life having yet-another awesome day where the world seemingly bends to his whim.

The movie is still quite a bit of fun. Matthew Broderick is such a delight that he almost (we stress almost) makes up for how obnoxious Ferris is. It’s a breeze to watch. Also, do you know who we like Cameron. And Sloane.

If Ferris were a more likable character, or the movie did not play as if though you’re supposed to like him, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would be much higher on this list, perhaps at the top. Instead, where it succeeds, it succeeds in spite of Ferris, not because of him.

Like a lot of John Hughes movies, it asks us to root for some sometimes unlikable characters. And pulls it off.

4 — Weird Science (1985)

We are not here just to tut-tut comedies of old! Weird Science is a movie about two teenagers who created a virtual dream woman using a computer. Lisa, as played by Kelly LeBrock, ends up with superpowers. There are mutant bikers. Bill Paxton transmogrifies into a talking pile of feces. Weird Science is so dumb. It operates on a superficial level of silliness and lowbrow culture.

As Roger Ebert pontificated, though, you have to meet a movie at its level to judge it. In that sense, Weird Science delivers what it sets out to do. Paxton is a delightful jerk. Anthony Michael Hall was in his bag as an awkward teenager. Lisa is ridiculous, but the movie is ridiculous. Weird Science is goofy, and at times crass, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

It's one of the wildest John Hughes movies and one of the best.

3 — Uncle Buck (1989)

It's high on the list of John Hughes movies, and even higher on the list of John Candy movies.

For many, Uncle Buck has become the defining role for the gone-too-soon Candy. The film lets him cook. Uncle Buck is a true Candy vehicle, which is not something he got to do all that often. What if a nutty, eccentric guy was asked to babysit his nieces and nephew for a while? That’s Uncle Buck.

He’s crass and brash. He’s like Buttermaker from Bad News Bears, but slightly more loveable. Oh, and he makes that giant pancake. Everybody loves that giant pancake now. Uncle Buck has been given “cult status” by elder Millennials, and while not everything needs to be reclaimed as a “cult movie,” Uncle Buck is a fun showcase for Candy, and a movie worth having affinity for.

2 — The Breakfast Club (1985)

Five archetypes walk into a library. The Breakfast Club is not realistic. It shows some flaws in Hughes’ story crafting. We will point out that Bender’s “tragic” story of getting a pack of cigarettes from his dad as a present probably sounded nice to plenty of teens who, you know, never got any presents growing up. It’s not like Bender wasn’t a smoker! Yes, The Breakfast Club is far from perfect, but through some alchemy, it all comes together.

Sure, the cast helps. Not just the teens in detention, all played by high-quality teen actors, but Paul Gleason as Vice Principal Vernon. He’s smarminess personified in a great way. In the end, when the letter is being read in voiceover, Simple Minds is playing, and Bender is pumping his fist on the football field, we get hyped. Each and every time.

That’s some legitimate quality filmmaking from Hughes, and he should be commended for crafting such an iconic moment. Also, at one point while high Emilio Estevez screams so loud he shatters glass, and that’s cool too.

1 — Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

Hughes is forever associated with teens, and teen angst, but with Planes, Trains and Automobiles he focused on two adult characters and got his best film out of it. Of course, it helps that he had Steve Martin and John Candy, two beloved comedic figures, as his leads. Those two carry the film, but Hughes handled his part of the process as well.

In a rare Thanksgiving movie, Martin’s Neal and Candy’s Del see their flight diverted and have to figure out a way to get to Chicago in time for the holiday. Neal is not happy with the situation, as Del grates on his nerves (which seem frayed on a good day), but the two have an interesting dynamic. Not just the characters, but the actors.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is funny and sweet in equal measure. It earns the spot atop the John Hughes movies rankings, and it's also, for our money, the best Thanksgiving movie ever made.

Liked This List of John Hughes Movies Ranked Worst to Best?

Thank you for reading. Please let us know in the comments how you would rank the John Hughes movies.

You may also like this list of Awesome ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember, or this list of Shameless ’80s Comedies That Just Don’t Care if You’re Offended.

Main image: Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Paramount

Editor's Note: Corrects first two images.

As Saturday Night Live celebrates its 51st season, we look back on what the current cast is trying to live up to.

Here we go.

But First

Of course, these things are subjective. Comedy, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So if you think we missed someone, let us know in the comments. Same thing if you think we got the rankings wrong.

Also: When we're talking about characters who are part of a duo or group, like the Bronx Beat ladies, we're only counting them once. And we're counting original characters, not impersonations.

OK, let's go with this list of the best SNL characters ranked, from very funny to extremely funny.

13 — Gumby (Eddie Murphy)

Eddie Murphy is one of the most singularly talented people ever to star on SNL, but he did so much it's hard to choose one character. For its sheer absurdity and originality, we're going with Gumby.

Murphy didn't invent Gumby — children of the 1950s remember him as a beloved clay TV character — but Murphy did have a brilliant take, playing him as a cynical, cigar-chomping showbiz washout with endless resentments.

Gumby (along with Buckwheat) was one of his many brilliant, meta riffs on the dark side of the entertainment industry.

12 — Lionel Osbourne (Tim Meadows)

We know, not many people would put Lionel Osbourne on a list of the best SNL characters. But as played to bone-dry perfection by Tim Meadows, we find him to be one of the most fascinating of all SNL figures, because we just imagine what's going on behind the surface.

Lionel Osbourne is a man phoning in his job hosting a public affairs talk show called Perspectives. It airs at about 4:50 in the a.m., and serves to barely fulfill a local New York station's "community programming requirement." Lionel seems to barely listen to his guests as he recites useless details to fill time.

And yet: Is this a quiet act of protest? He must know he's fulfilling a quota. His cool, low-effort performance seems like a quietly brilliant protest of the station's lack of real commitment to authentic public affairs programming.

Or he may be playing the game, giving the network what it wants. Or — or! — Lionel may just be barely awake. We'll never know, and it's hypnotic.

11 — The Wild and Crazy Guys (Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin)

The hard-boogieing Czech-born Festruck brothers, Yortuk (Dan Aykroyd) and Georg (Steve Martin), had a wide-eyed Bicentennial-era love of America, and their awkward attempts to assimilate into a disco-driven culture are impossibly endearing.

So are their malapropisms, catch phrases, and oddly gentlemanly approaching to inviting "foxes" back to their "swinging bachelor pad."

One thing that makes them some of the best SNL characters is that they aren't making fun of Czech expatriates — they're making fun of the trendy vanities of 1970s New Yorkers.

10 — The Bronx Beat Ladies (Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler)

Gossipy, cynical, but ultimately good-hearted, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler's salt-of-the-earth Bronx Beat characters Jodi and Betty are two of the most human-seeming characters ever to pass through Saturday Night Live.

Through motherhood, complicated marriages, complaints, and gentle counseling for local library volunteer Maureen Diccico (Katy Perry), the ladies get through their harried lives with wisdom, friendship, and realistic expecations, because what are you gonna do.

9 — Sally O'Malley (Molly Shannon)

The older we get, the funnier Sally O'Malley is.

A lot of Molly Shannon characters could be on this list of the best SNL characters, but the irrepressible Sally O'Malley is our favorite. Fifty years old, as she likes people to know, she still has the grace and grit of an athlete-dancer half her age.

One thing we love about the Sally O'Malley sketches is that she's not the butt of the joke — all her boasts are proven to be true.

8 — The Californians

How often does someone effectively satirizing an entire state?

The Californians is a masterful soap opera parody with recurring stars Stuart (Fred Armisen), Karina (Kristen Wiig), Devin (Bill Hader), with pop ins by Trey (Kenan Thompson) and Rosa (Vanessa Bayer).

It's actually mocking a very specific type of Californian — mostly from San Diego through Santa Barbara — who poses as laid back and relaxed but spends an inordinate amount of time talking about freeway interchanges. We think about this one every time someone says "jammed."

7 — Emily Latella (Gilda Radner)

We think about this character every day, decades later, so that has to stand for something.

Gilda Radner was the heart of the early Saturday Night Live, and misguided concerned citizen Emily Latella was one of her most endearing characters.

Her routine feels like it would have worked as well on a vaudeville stage in the 1920s or today as it did in the 1970s: She latches on to some upsetting piece of news while visiting the Weekend Update desk, launches into a heartfelt rant — and soon realizes she's misheard some crucial piece of information fundamental to her point.

But what's most impressive is how relevant the character feels in the 2020s, as people rush to comment on things they didn't watch or read carefully.

6 — Hans and Franz (Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon)

What we love about these characters is how they're almost making fun of arrogance itself – and how it slowly becomes clear that their big talk masks a lot of insecurities. They have a surprising amount of depth.

Kevin Nealon has said the Hans and Franz originated while he was watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger interview on TV and called Dana Carvey to tune in. They nailed the characters when they realized that despite their commitment to avoiding flab, they would never, ever touch a piece of fitness equipment.

Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel, Carvey and Nealon once had plans for a Hans and Franz movie that would have prominently featured Schwarzenegger, but the action star's packed schedule made it impossible. Fortunately, they gathered together to re-enact it for the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast.

5 — Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar (Mike Myers and Dana Carvey)

Hard-rocking Aurora, Illinois teens Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) may be the most profitable of all SNL characters — the first Wayne World film was a massive hit, and follow-up Wayne's World 2 also did quite respectful business. The characters kept going because Wayne and Garth, goofy as they seemed on the surface, had such surprisingly deep reservoirs of emotional and intellectual depth.

Also Read: 10 Movie Sex Scenes Someone Should Have Stopped

Wayne was the quick wit of the duo, but Garth had a soulfulness and wisdom that made him ultimately the more lovable. (Carvey based him in part on his brother, Brad.)

For our money, Wayne's World was at its most Wayne's World when Wayne interrogated the members of Aerosmith about the state of communism in Eastern Europe.

4 — Keyrock, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (Phil Hartman)

Phil Hartman, nicknamed "the glue" by cast mates for his ability to coolly play just about anyone or anything, usually went for reliably nuanced acting. But with Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer he got to play someone big and absurd, and the result is one of the weirdest and best SNL characters.

In a truly nuanced and well-observed twist on what could have been a basic fish-out-of-water routine, Keyrock cynically exploits his unfrozen identity to convince jurors that he's just "a simple caveman." The joke isn't on cavemen, it's on manipulators.

3 — Debbie Downer (Rachel Dratch)

Rachel Dratch's Debbie Downer has one joke — but what a joke. Her perfect commitment to Debbie Downer, who can find the gray behind any silver lining, makes her one of the most timeless of all best SNL characters of all. In many ways we've becomes a society of Debbie Downers — people who must always remind us of the perils of existence — and Debbie Downer deniers who just want to enjoy life.

If there's anyone who made castmates break more than Chris Farley, it's Rachel Dratch as Debbie Downer.

2 — Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker (Chris Farley)

Chris Farley's hoarse motivational speaker, who famously lives in a van down by the river, is one of the most buckle-in, frenetic, fully committed of all SNL characters. He was created by Farley and the great Bob Odenkirk when both worked at Second City in Chicago, and made his way over to Saturday Night Live, where he became, for our money, one of the two best SNL characters.

No one on the history of the show could pull a laugh from nothing like Chris Farley, and with a full-throated, magnificent character like Matt Foley, he was unstoppable. One of the pleasure of the Matt Foley sketches is watching Farley's co-stars try, just try, not to break up.

But the best thing about Foley was how somehow, Farley managed to wring out our sympathy and begrudging respect for Foley, a relentless hustler who never quit.

1 — The Church Lady (Dana Carvey)

For our money, Dana Carvey is the best all-around SNL player, and his Church Lady the best of the best SNL characters. She's a perfect, weird vehicle for Dana Carvey's quick, insightful, observational character work. Whether we go to church or not, we know a Church Lady — a person who lives to scold and does it with a surprising amount of wit and verve.

She makes us feel guilty for things it would never occur to us to feel guilty about, and yet we have an odd respect for her. Carvey imbues her with a powerful, unearned authority, and she's one of the most enduring and flexible of all SNL characters — drop her into any scenario, and she's funny.

And we loved seeing Carvey return as the Church Lady this season — with David Spade as Hunter Biden, no less. Hit it, Pearl.

Liked Our List of the 15 Best SNL Characters Ranked?

Again, please take to the comments to share your list of the best SNL characters ranked.

You might also like this list of Rad '80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember. And lots of great SNL routines not on this list are on our list of the 13 Best SNL Sketches.

All images from NBC's Saturday Night Live.

The holidays can be an especially rough time to deal with addiction.

But also a great time to take steps toward a better version of you.

But First

No one is preaching here or making you read this. It's up to you. But the author of this gallery (hi!) is a 12-years sober person who has found movies incredibly helpful in the process of quitting alcohol and other things that weren't helping my life.

All of us want to get out of our own heads sometimes, and instead of doing that with booze, I now find that movies help me escape my stresses for a few hours without hangovers, a mysteriously empty wallet or those "I said what?" mornings-after. Especially early in sobriety, I very much appreciated movies about people quitting things that harmed them.

So here are a few inspiring movies about getting sober that I like and you may like, too.

The Resurrection of Jake the Snake (2015)

Because no one trying to get sober wants a fake lecture from Hollywood, let's start with a story that's true: The Resurrection of Jake the Snake follows one of the greatest WWF wrestlers of the 1980s, Jake Roberts, after he falls on very hard times, descending into alcoholism and self-doubt.

Luckily, he has a great friend in former wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, who Roberts mentored in the 1990s. DDP returns the favor by inviting Roberts to stay in his Atlanta home, which he calls "the Accountability Crib," and coaches him back to sobriety and fitness, through a barrage of obstacles.

Flight (2012)

This film has a perfect metaphor for high-functioning alcoholism: Denzel Washington plays a pilot who can pull of miracles in the air, but is losing control on the ground.

When a freak accident — and stunning maneuver — turn his world upside-down, he's forced to admit he's powerless over alcohol and drugs.

The film is written by John Gatins, who fought his own successful battle for sobriety.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

This one stars Anne Hathaway as a recovering addict in a 12-step program who is released from rehab to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. The film addresses the awkwardness and struggle of rebuilding trust when your addictions have hurt people, and when they doubt your commitment to sobriety.

But because the story is in the hands of Jonathan Demme, one of the most empathetic of all filmmakers, it's handled with honesty, catharsis and even joy.

And life imitates art: star Anne Hathaway recently talked about being sober for the last several years.

Traffic (2000)

This movie about the war on drugs ultimately comes to the conclusion that you can't stop addiction with guns and battering rams and prosecutions: You need to cut off demand, which means treating addicts as human beings, and figuring out how to treat their addictions.

The most dramatic moments come from Don Cheadle, Michael Douglas and Benicio del Toro trying to bust drug cartels, but at its heart are the scenes about Caroline Wakefield (Erika Christensen, pictured), the daughter of Douglas' crusading anti-drug czar, who becomes addicted to drugs herself. She finds a way out through 12-step meetings and the love of her parents.

"If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy," Wakefield says. "And I don't know how you wage war on your own family."

The film was written by Stephen Gaghan, who drew on his own experiences with addiction and getting sober. It's based on the also excellent British TV series Traffik.

When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)

The only movie on this list written by a person who went on to become a United States senator. Though Al Franken was best known for comedy, prior to representing Minnesota in the Senate, he also made a foray into drama to co-write, with Ronald Bass, the story of a man (Andy Garcia) married to a woman (Meg Ryan) who is struggling with alcoholism.

Franken knew what he was talking about: his wife, Franni, has talked about her own recovery from alcoholism, with her husband's support.

Critic Roger Ebert, himself a recovering alcoholic, gave When a Man Loves a Woman four stars and wrote that it was: "a wise and ambitious film about the way alcoholism affects the fabric of a marriage."

"So many movies about the disease simplify it into a three-step process: Gradual onset, spectacular bottom, eventual recovery," he wrote. "It isn't that simple; most alcoholics never even give themselves a chance to recover. And recovery is a beginning, not an end."

Smashed (2012)

Smashed stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate Hannah, an elementary school teacher who realizes her drinking is jeopardizing her job and life. Her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul) is also an admitted alcoholic, but doesn't share her commitment to getting sober.

Susan Burke wrote Smashed with its director, James Ponsoldt, and drew on her own experiences getting sober.

Clean and Sober (1988)

Michael Keaton's first dramatic role found him playing a cocaine addict who wakes up in bed next to a fellow user who has died of an overdose. The film follows him through an odyssey of 12-step programs he doesn't really take seriously, at first.

It takes more tragedy for him to realize sobriety is his only way out of a depressing, pathetic cycle.

Wild (2014)

An adaptation of Cheryl Strayd's true, gutsy memoir about trying to rebuild her life after the death of her mother, the collapse of her marriage, and an addiction to heroin.

The film details how Strayed (played by Reese Witherspoon) hiked 1,100 miles, alone, to prove that she could and find out who she really was. It's an unsentimental, brutally honest, totally inspirational story about getting sober even when everything seems hopeless.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

A story of an alcoholic (Jack Lemmon) who lures his wife Kirstein (Lee Remick, above) into the drinking wife.

As everything collapses — endangering the life of their young daughter — he finally kicks booze with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and a dedicated sponsor. But he struggles to pull his wife out of the chasm he helped open.

This is a brutally sad movie about the trap of co-dependency.

My Name Is Bill W. (1989)

A TV movie about Bill Wilson and Robert Smith (aka Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob), the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. James Woods won an Emmy for his portrayal of Bill, a World War I veteran whose addiction causes him to lose his fortune in the 1929 stock market collapse.

He finds community and hope in his talks with Dr. Bob (James Garner) and their friendship forms the basis of Alcoholic Anonymous, a group that has helped countless people worldwide through its non-denominational, apolitical, free approach to helping people recover from alcoholism — with an emphasis not just on anonymity, but on attraction rather than promotion.

Even if you aren't interested in sobriety, this is an inspiring story about how just one or two regular people can overcome a seemingly insurmountable problem.

Walk the Line (2005)

The second Reese Witherspoon film on our list finds Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) finally getting sober through the love of a good woman, June Carter (Witherspoon). It is based on the real Johnny Cash's many struggles with addiction.

It was parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which is also a great movie. Laughter is one of your best weapons as you get and stay sober.

Resources for Getting Sober

No one here is sponsoring or promoting any particular program or approach — we only want you to do what works for you.

But free programs ones that seem to frequently help include Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

Also this article performs better on Google if we include an internal link.

Good luck!

Main image: Rachel Getting Married. Sony Pictures Classic.

Some of these shows are old, and some are new.

But all make us feel like we're hanging out with the old gang.

The Golden Girls

The Golden Girls is, more or less, built around four actors. The ensemble isn’t terribly extensive, at least in terms of who people remember. That being said, the four ladies at the center of The Golden Girls happened to include two sitcom icons and a couple other actors who became beloved thanks to this show as well.

We will start with Betty White, because we mentioned her before, and because she absolutely rules. That’s no hot take. Bea Arthur played Maude in that All in the Family spinoff, and brought a different comedic (and when called upon dramatic) energy from the other three.

While we won’t eschew mentioning Rue McClanahan, we want to highlight Estelle Getty, who had to go through an extensive makeup process to play Sophia, the oldest of the ladies. Whether this is the greatest sitcom cast is debatable, but it must be the most beloved of all sitcom casts.

All in the Family

All in the Family was provocative, political, and revolutionary. Of course, it helps that the show was also, you know, funny, and the cast played a big part of that. We must start with Carroll O’Connor. Without his stellar work, Archie Bunker could have landed with a thud, and we certainly don’t think Archie’s chair would be in the Smithsonian.

This show was no one-man operation, though. Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and the underrated Sally Struthers all deserve some love as well. Don’t forget that The Jeffersons and Maude are both spinoffs built around supporting characters from All in the Family. We aren’t saying you’re a dingbat or a meathead if you disagree with this inclusion, but…

M*A*S*H

M*A*S*H ran for 256 episodes, won a ton of Emmys, and gave us the highest-rated episode of a scripted show ever, the series finale. Set in an unlikely location for one of the all-time best sitcoms, a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War, the show has not had the same lasting legacy as some other old comedy shows. We also wouldn’t put it on the level of, say, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but this is about great casts, and M*A*S*H certainly had that.

Alan Alda and Loretta Swit were there for the full run of the show, but part of what makes M*A*S*H so impressive is that it was able to deal with ebbs and flows to the cast. Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson both left after the third season, and Larry Linville and Gary Burghoff didn’t stick around for the full run either. Jamie Farr and William Christopher became regulars, and Mike Farrell and Harry Morgan both stepped in with aplomb.

Instead of chaos and chemistry issues, M*A*S*H kept running seamlessly.

Cheers

Speaking of shows that were able to adapt. Cheers was able to handle necessitated cast changes caused by career decisions (Shelley Long desiring to be a movie star) and sad events (the death of Nicholas Colasanto). Of course, they were both great performances before that. The chemistry of the ensemble on Cheers was tremendous, especially in the first couple of seasons. We aren’t knocking Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley, of course.

On top of Ted Danson becoming sitcom royalty and George Wendt securing free beer in every bar he walks into for life, some later cast additions were also major successes. We’ll highlight Kesley Grammer as Frasier Crane, as well as Bebe Neuwirth as Lilith.

This is also a chance to shout out Frasier, another of the best sitcoms, with a tremendous cast. It would have felt like gilding the lily (or Lilith, as it were) to include both shows, but both had amazing casts to be sure.

Newhart

At this point, Newhart may be an underrated sitcom, but it should be included in the pantheon of classic comedy shows. And it’s one of the two or three best sitcoms of the 1980s. The show did have some growing pains early on (Growing Pains is decidedly not on this list), but by the start of the third season the cast was locked in, and the show started to really click.

Bob Newhart got to do his thing, but he excels when dynamic actors capable of playing eccentric characters surround him. That became what Newhart was all about. The two best performances came from Julia Duffy as Stephanie and Peter Scolari as Michael, two actors who should have won multiple Emmys for this show.

And, of course, who could forget Larry, or his brother Darryl, or his other brother Darryl?

I Love Lucy

The 1950s juggernaut I Love Lucy is one of the shows that created the template for the modern sitcom. And as Amy Poehler's fabulous documentary Lucy and Desi notes, it also revolutionized TV with technological innovations like its method of showing the program across time zones without losing quality.

But no one's watching for the technological mastery: People keep coming back for the incredible cast, led by Lucille Ball, a master of dialogue and especially physical comedy who could put people in stitches with facial expressions alone. Her real-life husband Desi Arnaz was incredibly charismatic and good at both seizing and ceding the spotlight.

And Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance) were perfect as the the Ricardos' friends and landlords.

Parks and Recreation

Speaking of Amy Poehler: She anchored Parks and Recreation, a modern-day murderer's row of modern talent: Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Retta, Jim O'Heir, Adam Scott and Rob Lowe.

The bench was so deep that Pratt ended up making the biggest hits — once he joined the Marvel CInematic Universe — but everyone on the show demonstrated flawless timing and delivery.

The cast chemistry was insane, and made audiences long for the petty bureaucratic rivalries — and occasional moments of truly inspiring local government — in fictional Pawnee, Indiana, where Poehler's Leslie Knope did her best to improve things during the show's run from 2009 to 2015.

30 Rock

Poehler's former co-host on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, Tina Fey, both starred in and created the rapid-fire satire 30 Rock, based largely on her time at SNL, and enlisted two of her SNL co-stars for lead roles: Tracy Morgan was in the SNL cast with Fey, and Five-Timers Club member Alec Baldwin has appeared on the show so often that he feels like a castmember.

30 Fire was the rare, exceptional show where every single cast member got frequent opportunities to shine, including Jane Krakowski, Jack McBrayer, Scott Adsit, Judah Friedlander, Katrina Bowden, Keith Powell, Lonny Ross, John Lutz, Kevin Brown, Grizz Chapman, and Maulik Pancholy.

And Fey added to that astonishing cast with guests including Jon Hamm, Oprah Winfrey, Paul Reubens, Jennifer Aniston, Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Kerry Butler, Megan Mullally, Peter Dinklage, Steve Martin and Alan Alda, as well as SNL vets who included Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Chris Parnell, Jimmy Fallon, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Kristen Wiig and Will Forte, among many more.

Seinfeld

This is another sitcom built upon a core four, but no sitcom has ever had a stronger quartet at its center. Yes, Jerry Seinfeld was basically playing himself and letting others shine: Seinfeld features A-plus turns from Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards, making for probably the overall funniest if not the flat out best sitcom cast of all.

The supporting and recurring cast was also impressive. Who could forget Wayne Knight as Newman, or Jerry Stiller as Frank Costanza? If anything, the supporting crew on Seinfeld is underrated, and we aren’t even including the one-off characters in the cast, and no show made use of one-offs better. If we ever make a list of the best sitcom supporting cast, Seinfeld will rank high.

Friends

The six friends of Friends became staggeringly popular. They all became major stars, and they all got their chances to be movie stars as a result. Jennifer Aniston and, to a lesser degree, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow succeeded on that front.

All six leads gave good performances, and they could all do the sitcom thing. However, no cast has ever had the sheer charisma and star power of Friends. Was Seinfeld funnier than Friends? Yes. Was Seinfeld’s main cast better at the whole sitcom thing as well? Indeed.

There is also a reason why none of those four became movie stars, while all six Friends leads got the chance. It’s remarkable the show managed to find six performers with that level of wattage — this is one of the starriest, best sitcom casts of all, and many attempts to duplicate the chemistry have failed.

The Righteous Gemstones

The Righteous Gemstones is the latest addition to our list, in honor of the show concluding this past weekend.

Danny McBride is a low-key comic mastermind, but the coolest thing he did with this megachurch satire was give everyone else time to shine. It was almost like the less you knew them before the show, the funnier they were. We expected McBride, Walton Goggins and Adam DeVine to be funny, but the less-famous (until Gemstones) Edi Patterson stole the show with the best line readings on television.

The smaller, more sincere characters — often the significant others of the leads — consistently got some of the biggest laughs. Praise be for Cassidy Freeman, Tony Cavalero, Valyn Hall, and especially Tim Baltz, who killed us with a single two-word statement in Season 3: "the elixirs."

When you have sitcom and Coen brothers veteran John Goodman as the straight man, you know you've got a funny cast.

The Office

NBC had a few sitcoms there for a minute that all could have made the cut here. There’s 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Recreation, for example. That being said, when it comes to great sitcom casts, even those shows have trouble keeping pace with The Office, which has become the defining sitcom of its era.

Naturally, we have to start with Steve Carell, who was somewhat known before playing Michael Scott, but became the anchor around which The Office blossomed. Beyond Carell, The Office was filled with faces that would become known names starting with the iconic mockumentary (which also helped popularize that sitcom format).

John Krasinski became a movie star. Mindy Kaling and Craig Robinson got their own sitcoms. Rainn Wilson, well, he’s basically forever Dwight, but there are worse fates than being remembered as an all-time sitcom character. And Jenna Fischer was the heart of the whole show.

Veep

Julia Louis-Dreyfus won six, yes, six, Emmys in a row for Veep. Of course, one legendary turn does not a great ensemble make. We mentioned Tony Hale earlier when talking about Arrested Development, and he also won an Emmy for the vulgar, brilliant HBO political comedy. Anna Chlumsky got her first significant adult role, and guys like Timothy Simons and Matt Walsh were given the chance to shine as well.

Then, as the show went on, Veep was able to pivot and bring in more impressive cast members. Gary Cole and Kevin Dunn blended in seamlessly. Sam Richardson got to be a joke machine. Even Peter MacNicol and Hugh Laurie popped in to earn Emmys nominations. So many great performers. So many nasty one-liners.

Schitt’s Creek

Only one ongoing series, comedic or dramatic, has ever won all four major acting awards at the Emmys. That show is Schitt’s Creek. Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy were already comedic legends, and both got to shine on the Canadian comedy that could. However, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy, both winners as well, were revelations for many.

Those four alone would get Schitt’s Creek on this list of the best sitcom casts. Beyond those four, though, there’s Chris Elliott and Emily Hampshire and they even managed to squeeze another Levy, Sarah, into the mix as well. The Great White North has given us many wonderful things, but Schitt’s Creek takes the cake.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Mary Tyler Moore had previously been part of the cast of a good sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show. But when Moore got her own titular sitcom, the cast was utterly stacked. Even all these years later, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is in the running for the best sitcom cast ever.

It starts with Moore, who won three Emmys for playing Mary Richards, but she wasn’t the only one with multiple Emmys. Ed Asner’s turn as Lou Grant is an all-timer, and Ted Knight won a couple for playing the delightfully dumb Ted Baxter.

Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman both won Emmys, and both got spinoffs, but when those two ladies were moving on, The Mary Tyler Moore Show did not flinch. Instead, they brought in Betty freakin’ White! The rich got richer.

Liked This List of the Greatest Sitcom Casts of All Time?

What do you think is the best sitcom cast of all? Let us know in the comments.

You might also like this list of Rad '80s Shows Only Cool Kids Remember or this list of the Funniest TV Shows We’ve Ever Seen.

Main image: The Golden Girls. NBC

From bad words to infamous protests, these moments made Lorne Michaels and company nervous.

So with that, live from New York... it's Saturday night.

Bill Murray vs Chevy Chase

As recounted by Nick De Semlyen in his terrific book Wild and Crazy Guys, Bill Murray punched Chevy Chase when Chase returned to host the eleventh episode of Season 3 on Feb. 18, 1978.

Murray had replaced Chase after the latter left the show in the middle of Season 2, and the SNL team felt that Chase "had deserted them," Semlyen writes. His return, the author adds, "was leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth."

Murray and Chase talked smack at each other prior to the taping, and finally Murray slugged the host. That escalated into "a huge altercation," according to John Landis, an eyewitness quoted in the book. "They were big guys and really going at it." Murray, however, described it as "really a Hollywood fight; a don't-touch-my-face kinda thing."

The show went on. And Chase and Murray reunited, amicably enough, for 1980's Caddyshack (above).

The Mask of Jeff Daniels

Before Jeff Daniels hosted the Oct. 5, 1991 episode, he did something many hosts do: went into the makeup department to get a face mask made.

As SNL star David Spade explained in his terrific memoir, Almost Interesting, "if the makeup department wants to make a dummy that looks like you, or there needs to be a shot of your head blowing up, a plaster-like substance is poured on your face to create a mold that can be used to sculpt a replica."

The process involves placing a stocking cap over the person's head, and inserting two straws so they can breathe through the nose as the substance hardens over the face. It usually takes 15 minutes.

But Daniels' mask had hardened so much it wouldn't come off, Spade explained. He added that Lorne Michaels had a plastic surgeon hurry to 30 Rock, and that the plaster was peeled off Daniels' face. At one point the surgeon needed to use an X-Acto knife, cutting Daniels' eyebrows and eyelashes. But the mask finally came off, and Daniels went through with the episode the next night.

"If you watch that old show, you can see his eyebrows were painted on," Spade wrote.

That's Daniels with Dana Carvey, left, at the start of the episode. We honestly wouldn't have noticed.

Chris Farley Showers With Mike Myers

The late, great Chris Farley was one of the funniest people ever to be on SNL, and a bona fide movie star for films like Tommy Boy. Backstage, he was a relentless prankster who loved crossing lines.

Mike Myers recalled on the Fly on the Wall podcast recalled a long, very weird running joke, in which Farley would regularly join him, uninvited, in the shower, pressing his body into Myers' and declaring his love for him.

"I’d beat on him. I’d go ‘Farley, get the f— out of here! Get the f— out!’ I couldn’t hit him very hard because it was so funny,” Myers recalled.

But Farley did it week after week, and Myers was so distracted by the demands of the show that he never expected it.

“Every week I forgot — you’d think you’d remember every week,” Myers added. The reason he didn’t remember, Myers explained, was that he was so distracted by the work involved in the show.

Richard Pryor Hosts

Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels went to pretty ridiculous lengths to convince NBC executives to let Richard Pryor host the show's seventh episode on Dec. 13, 1975.

Because the network feared Pryor was too profane and unpredictable, Michaels agreed to a five-second delay so that any curse words could be beeped — marking the first time that Saturday Night Live wasn't live when it first aired.

It turned out the delay came in handy. Pryor avoided any four-letter words, but did use a three-letter word that rhymes with sass, twice.

According to Saturday Night, A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingard, the censor who was running the delay device let both uses of the word slip by. But both were edited out of the taped version broadcast on the West Coast.

The Fight to Save Charles Rocket

Charles Rocket was in the cast of the very rough 1980-81 season that followed the exit of all the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players, as well as SNL creator Lorne Michaels (who returned to the show in the middle of the '80s.)

As SNL fans know, Rocket is best known on the show for a flub during a February 21, 1981 segment inspired by the famed Dallas storyline "Who Shot J.R.?." Rocket used a curse word on air: "It's the first time I've ever been shot in my life. I'd like to know who the f--- did it." (Note the reactions the instant after he said it, above.)

According to the book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, SNL producer Jean Doumanian, who had been hired to replace Lorne, went on a long campaign to save Rocket's job.

She and Rocket went to a series of meetings with NBC executives, in which they apologized again and again — sometimes laughing about it afterwards. At one point, according to the book, Doumanian told an executive, "If you're going to fire him, you can fire me."

Soon after, NBC fired them both — not just because of the incident, but because of a general sense that the show wasn't doing well.

Also

Ironically, Rocket made his flub after a monologue in which host Charlene Tilton, a star of Dallas, joked about how many people on the show had "tried to take advantage of me."

"The only one I trust is Charlie Rocket!" she announced.

John Belushi Stole Chevy Chase's Cocaine

Chevy Chase, who was on the show from 1975-76, recalled last year that John Belushi once stole his drugs.

"Back then, the big drug was cocaine," Chase said on the Club Random With Bill Maher podcast. "Obviously John turned out to be a cokehead but I had a little jar of cocaine with a little spoon that hung from it. Anyway, I had it on the piano of the stage. So I'm just playing the piano, the crowd isn't in yet, and it's just sitting. After I played just a little bit, it's gone. I had no idea how. Obviously I was looking at my hands at the moment that John swooped in and took it. So I immediately said, 'Belushi, did you take my coke?' 'No, what are you talking about?'"

A month later, Chase was invited to dinner at the home of Belushi and his wife — "and I see my little vial empty and washed, just sitting on a shelf by the books."

Belushi died of a heroin and cocaine overdose in 1982.

Protest Singer

When Andrew Dice Clay (right, with Jon Lovitz), known for his misogynist in-character routine, was brought in to host the May 12, 1990 episode, cast member Nora Dunn protested by opting not to perform.

So did the scheduled musical guest, Irish singer Sinead O'Connor.

Ironically, it wasn't Clay who turned out to be responsible for one of the wildest moments in the history of Saturday Night Live — it was one of the women who protested him.

Picking Up the Pieces

Even casual SNL or music fans know what happened two years later, when O'Connor finally appeared on SNL as the musical guest of the October 3, 1992 episode: After a stunning a capella performance of Bob Marley's "War," O'Connor declared "fight the real enemy!" and tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II in a protest of abuse in the Catholic Church.

The backlash was immediate and widespread. Less known is a silly anecdote about David Spade, who had witnessed the moment from the side of the stage.

He recalled in his aforementioned entertaining memoir, Almost Interesting, that he had "sort of flirted" with O'Conner when she was in Studio 8H that week, but decided after the incident, "I wouldn't try to sleep with her since she was now a worldwide pariah."

Sinead O'Connor, Continued

But that isn't the ridiculous part of the story. The ridiculous part is that Spade had up a piece of the torn photo as a souvenir, and that Sunday night, while doing laundry, saw an Inside Edition report about the incident, with the entire photo reassembled... except for his piece.

Spade said SNL producer Kenny Aymong, joined by two security guards, told Spade: "You might have something that belongs to us." Spade handed over his piece of the photo.

"I learned soon after that a member of the crew had stolen the ripped-up photo off the floor and sold it to Inside Edition for ten thousand dollars," Spade wrote. "He was fired, but security thought that I might be in on it." He wasn't.

Chris Kattan vs Norm MacDonald

Pranks abounded behind the scenes on SNL in the '90s — and not all were appreciated.

Chris Kattan (above) told Howard Stern that Norm MacDonald would sometimes belittle him for playing so many effeminate characters, which he didn't appreciate. Things came to an odd crescendo on a flight from Los Angeles to New York City. Neither realized they would both end up on the flight.

"It was a red eye. He was behind me and we were getting along, whatever," said Kattan, adding that MacDonald was making very loud, crude jokes. "I'm laughing because he's a funny guy."

Kattan fell asleep, and when he woke up, realized his shoe was missing.

"He stole my shoe," Kattan recalled.

Later, he responded by stealing MacDonald's jacket on an especially cold night.

Norm McDonald Fired

This one is about the ridiculousness of certain 1990s NBC executives.

Standup comedian Norm MacDonald was a fearless anchor of "Weekend Update" who delighted in crossing lines. But he went to far for NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer by delivering years of jokes calling Ohlmeyer's friend, O.J. Simpson, a murderer.

Both MacDonald and SNL writer Jim Downey feuded with Ohlmeyer, who insisted MacDonald just wasn't funny. Both MacDonald and Downey were fired in 1998, and it's been a longstanding SNL story that MacDonald was fired over the jokes.

Norm MacDonald, Continued

But Downey revealed on the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast that MacDonald could have saved his own job — if he had agreed to throw Downey under the bus. MacDonald refused.

Downey told O'Brien: "The network went to Norm and said, 'We want to get rid of Jim Downeyand we just want you to know. You're cool with that, right?' And he said, 'No. No. You can't fire him. If you fire him, I quit.' ... He said, 'I'm not doing it without him.'"

Talk about a standup guy.

Downey said MacDonald, who died in 2021, never told Downey how he'd stood up for him — Downey says he only learned about it, years later, from NBC executives.

More Norm MacDonald

Less than two years after his exit, Norm MacDonald was invited back to Saturday Night Live to host the October 23, 1999 episode. He noted how strange it was that he would be invited back.

"They fired me because they said that I wasn’t funny," he noted. "It’s only a year and a half later, and now, they ask me to host the show. So I wondered, how did I go from being not funny enough to be even allowed in the building, to being so funny that I’m now hosting the show?"

He added: "Then it occurred to me, I haven’t gotten funnier — the show has gotten really bad! ... So let’s recap. The bad news is: I’m still not funny. The good news is: The show blows!"

Money Doesn't Talk

When Will Ferrell was called in for a meeting with Lorne Michaels after a successful audition, he decided he'd try to seal the deal with a comic bit in Michaels' office. He arrived at the meeting with "a briefcase full of counterfeit money that I’d bought at a toy store," Ferrell told The New York Times.

"And in the middle of whatever Lorne was going to say, I was going to start stacking the equivalent of $25,000 on his desk: 'Listen, Lorne, you and I can say whatever we want to say. But we really know what talks, and that’s money. I’m going to walk out of this room, and you can either take this money or not. And I can be on the show.'”

But Ferrell never found a moment to make the joke, he said, because "it was just not a joking atmosphere. It was just tense. And I never get to do my gag."

He did get hired, though.

Shane Gillis Fired Before Appearing on the Show

Many people have been fired from SNL, but Shane Gillis may be the only performer to be fired before his first show.

SNL announced that comedian Shane Gillis would join the show for its 45th season in 2019 — but internet sleuths quickly surfaced audio from Gillis' podcast.

On an episode of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast, which Gillis co-hosted with comedian Matt McCusker — Gillis used a racial slur and made fun of Chinese accents during a discussion about Chinatown. SNL acted swiftly.

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," a spokesperson said on behalf of SNL producer Lorne Michaels. "We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show ... The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard."

More on Shane Gillis

Gillis said at the time of his firing (or is it un-hiring?):

"I'm a comedian who was funny enough to get on SNL. That can't be taken away. Of course, I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL but it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I am honestly grateful for the opportunity."

He later explained on Dana Carvey and David Spade's Fly on the Wall podcast that he had been trying to make fun of racist attitudes, not encourage them.

Gillis has landed on his feet. He's a very successful comedian and the star of Netflix's Tires — and last year hosted SNL.

If you liked this List of Wild SNL Behind the Scenes Moments, you might also like this list of the Best SNL Characters Ever.

Main image: Charlene Tilton hosts SNL. NBC.

But here are some 2000s movies only cool kids remember.

Let's roll.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Before he was Captain America, Chris Evans starred in this cheeky comedy drama as a high school football star who makes a bet that he can turn an awkward girl into a prom queen.

Directed by Joel Gallen, Not Another Teen Movie is a spoof on the teen movie genre as a whole, which is full of tropes like makeovers, last-minute airport scenes, and fairy tale romances.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)

Based on the book by Ann Brashares, This beloved teen movie follows four best friends who are each going through challenging periods in their lives.

Separated over the summer for the first time in their lives, they discover a magical pair of pants that somehow fits each of them perfectly. So, they decide to mail them to each other throughout the summer for good luck.

Starring America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, and Blake Lively, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a comfort movie that has aged extremely well and never gets old.

Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

Based on the Archie comics series and the 1970 Hanna-Barbera cartoon television series, this 2001 live action satirical musical comedy starred Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson as a girl band called the Pussycats.

Skyrocketed to fame overnight, they soon get embroiled in an evil scheme between the U.S. government and the music industry to implant subliminal messaging in pop music to convince teenagers to buy trendy products.

It's frothy on the surface, but also quite astute.

Tuck Everlasting (2002)

Walt Disney

Based on the beloved novel by Natalie Babbit, Tuck Everlasting stars Alexis Bledel as Winnie, a teenage girl who meets the Tucks, a family that have become immortal after drinking water from a magical spring. Jonathan Jackson plays Jesse Tuck, who Winnie falls in love with.

It's sort of similar to Edward and Bella from Twilight, considering that Jesse is actually 100 years older than Winnie but looks the same age as her.

But of course, the fountain of youth attracts some bad people who want to sell the water for a big profit, causing the Tucks to go on the run.

A Cinderella Story (2004)

In this romantic teen drama, Hilary Duff plays Sam, a Valley girl who works in a diner run by her mean stepmother played iconically by Jennifer Coolidge.

Chad Michael Murray plays Austin, the popular football player at their school who is unhappy with his father's choices for his future.

Secretly, Sam and Austin are pen pals, sharing the same dreams of going to Princeton — but they don't know each other in real life. Everything changes after prom night.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

In this iconic horror comedy — perhaps Megan Fox's most iconic role — Fox plays high schooler Jennifer who is possessed by a demon.

The demon in Jennifer starts killing and eating boys who mistakenly think she's interested in them romantically.

Meanwhile, Jennifer's friend played by Amanda Seyfried tries to stop her murderous spree.

Thirteen (2003)

Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed star in Thirteen, a drama directed by Catherine Hardwicke and co-written by she and Reed. Wood plays Tracy, a young honors student who has a tough home life and turns to drugs due to the influence of her new friend Evie, played by Reed.

Tracy's mom is played by Holly Hunter, who tries to save Tracy from falling into a life of drugs and petty thievery.

Accepted (2006)

Accepted stars Justin Long as Bartleby Gaines, a high schooler who gets rejected from every college he applies to. So he creates a fake college called South Harmon Institute of Technology (S. H. I. T.) to convince his parents he's continuing his education — but he doesn't expect other kids to apply to it.

So, alongside his friend Sherman Schrader (Jonah Hill), he starts running it like an actual university.

In the words of Jonah Hill's character Sherman Schrader: "I hope you guys have hobo stab insurance."

Sydney White (2007)

We all know Easy A and She's the Man, but only cool kids remember Amanda Bynes' movie Sydney White. In this rom-com, she plays a college freshman with a dream to join her late mother's sorority.

But, alas, she is quickly targeted and outcast by the mean girls who run it.

In retaliation, Sydney and six friends in similar social positions take over the student government to have equal rights for nerds.

The Cheetah Girls (2003)

This was very first Disney Channel Original Movie that was also a musical. So in a way, you could say there's no High School Musical without The Cheetah Girls.

Starring Raven-Symoné as Galleria "Bubbles" Garibaldi (the pink one), Adrienne Bailon as Chanel "Chuchie" Simmons (the purple one), Kiely Williams as Aquanette "Aqua" Walker (the blue one), and Sabrina Bryan as Dorinda "Do" Thomas (the yellow one), the film series follows four teenage girls who become pop stars in a girl group known as The Cheetah Girls.

Who among us didn't pretend to be their favorite Cheetah Girl at recess in grade school? Tag yourself, I'm Chuchie.

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

In this wonderful and heartwarming movie, Parminder Nagra plays Jess, who comes from a strict Indian family that doesn't let her play soccer.

Kiera Knightly plays Jules, a soccer player who sees Jess playing by herself one day and convinces her to join her local team.

Jess must hide from her parents both the fact that she's on a soccer team — and that she's falling in love with her coach, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Aquamarine (2006)

Sarah Paxton plays a real-life mermaid named, you guessed it, Aquamarine, who gets washed up on shore after a storm. In the human world, she encounters two young girls — played by Emma Roberts and Joanna "JoJo" Levesque — who are fascinated by her.

With the goal of convincing her father that true love exists, Aquamarine asks the girls for help with winning the heart of the cute lifeguard, Raymond, played by Jake McDorman.

To this day, I still wish I had a pair of starfish earrings that whisper compliments to me.

If you like this list, you might also like this list of 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

And we invite you to follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Aquamarine. 20th Century Studios.

No matter who you are or what you do, these are some nice, neutral, universally beloved things everybody likes.

Right?

Right?

Ice Cream

Whether you like regular ice cream or some kind of coconut-based ice cream or something lactose-free or that avocado stuff Tom Brady apparently enjoys, it's all ice cream and we can all agree that it's nice.

By the way, we're not saying The Simpsons are on the list of Things Everybody Should Be Thankful For.

That's just the picture.

Babies Laughing

Love kids? Never want kids? It doesn't matter — we can all agree that there's almost nothing better, in terms of pure joy, than hearing a baby laugh.

Especially good is when a baby laughs at something weird, like a sound.

Like an adult going blubbbbb with their mouth. That's something everybody should be thankful for.

Going Great So Far, Right?

No one's raced to the comments to say anything about politics or religion.

We love it!

Now on to No. 3 on our list of things everybody likes...

Batman

No one doesn't like Batman.

Even The Joker, Batman's mortal enemy, has kind of a man-crush on Batman. Of course he does! Batman is amazing.

Maybe we like different versions of Batman — you think of him as Adam West or Michael Keaton or Ben Affleck, and I think of him as Christian Bale. It doesn't matter! They're all Batman. We all like him, because he does his best to do the right thing and keep his corner of the world safe and happy, no matter how dark things get.

Even people who think Batman is a judge-jury-executioner-style vigilante have to agree he's an interesting character, even if they don't like his methods.

Yow

Everyone's a critic. Seriously? Some of you don't like Batman?

By the way, here's our list of 7 Weird Things About the Batman and Robin Dynamic That No One Likes to Talk About.

And let's try again, continuing down our list of things everybody should be thankful for...

Casablanca

If you watch it, you'll like it. We're not saying it's a perfect movie, but — you know what?

Yes we are.

Next on our list of things everyone likes is...

Paths Free of Snakes

We like all kinds of paths, but whether you like paths through public parks, paths around a body of water, or some other kind of path, everyone agrees:

Any good path has to be 100% free of snakes.

And what about also...

Little Women

The Louisa May Alcott novel and also all the movie adaptations. Just terrific.

That's Winona Ryder and Batman in the 1994 version.

Cookies

Whether we're talking about sugar cookies with little reindeers on them, chocolate chip cookies or some carefully calibrated cookies for people with all kinds of allergies, everyone likes cookies.

Some of us might even like cookies too much, but you know what? We're willing to take the risk.

Again, we're not saying The Simpsons are on our list of things everyone likes. We're talking about cookies. We're just using The Simpsons to illustrate our point.

Bill Withers and His Music

If there's soul or R&B song you like, but you're not sure you sang it, it was Bill Withers. "Lean on Me"? Bill Withers. "Just the Two of Us"? Bill Withers. "Lovely Day"? Bill Withers. "Ain't No Sunshine"? Bill Withers.

Even if you somehow don't like his songs, you have to love his story: The son of maid and a coal miner, he joined the Navy, then worked as a mechanical assembler for years while performing and shopping his demos at night. When "Ain't No Sunshine" became a hit, he refused, at first, to quit his blue-collar job because he knew how fickle the music industry could be.

Look, we understand that you're gonna check out of this gallery right now and go look up Bill Withers songs, and we aren't even mad.

Hello!

You're still here. Thank you.

You're gonna like the last three things, guaranteed.

The Sopranos

It's simply very good. There's little not to like about it. It's dramatic, sure, but also one of the funniest shows — and definitely the funniest drama.

We can argue about the finale and still agree that the show as a whole was magnificent. It crosses all generational and political lines.

Even if you hated The Sopranos you'd have to at least like it for opening the door to lots of others shows that you do like, right?

'Superstar' by The Carpenters

The way Karen Carpenter sings this is simply exquisite. The orchestration is perfect, too. Sometimes you want to have a sit and feel melancholy and this is a perfect song for those moments.

Remember that scene in Tommy Boy where the Chris Farley and David Spade characters can't agree on anything but they agree to leave "Superstar" on the radio and then the movie cuts to both of them singing along and weeping?

That's exactly right.

The Simpsons

Actually, we do think everyone likes The Simpsons.

Not every season or every episode, necessarily.

But as an entire body of work? Pretty great.

Dolly Parton and Everything She Does

Dolly Parton is the epitome of a national treasure. She's an incredible singer-songwriter, she has a fun sense of fashion, and have you tasted the cinnamon bread at Dollywood? One of the best things we've ever tasted in our lives.

She takes care not to get too political, but never hesitates to say things that have to be said. And did you know that her Imagination Library has given away nearly 240 million books to kids? Look, we don't have kings and queens in America, but if we did, we'd make Dolly queen.

She's also so brimming with common sense she'd probably be the first to tell you not to take a list like this too seriously. In these weird times we're just looking for some common ground.

Look, We Tried to Think of Things Everybody Likes, We Really Did

Have some notes? Let us know in the comments.

Also here's a list of things lots of people like, and a list of things not everybody likes, which is fine.

Main image: Casablanca. Warner Bros.

Beware that spoilers follow.

Here we go.

But First

We love Star Wars. But part of Star Wars is loving and defending your version of Star Wars — and defending it again versions of the saga that feels like cash-ins, or otherwise unworthy of the legacy.

Rogue One, above, is for us a good example of a project that brings together the best of Star Wars.

Below are all 11 Star Wars movies ranked worst to best.

The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

Look, we love Star Wars. But the sequel trilogy that started with The Force Awakens sometimes felt like new kids playing with old toys. The costumes and space ships looked right, even if the CGI backgrounds were a little distracting. But the characters just felt flat or underdeveloped. You had to ask: Why are we here? Hasn't the Skywalker saga been told?

The Rise of Skywalker felt like the most desperate film of the sequel trilogy, as it (spoilers ahead, final warning) revived Emperor Palpatine for no reason and settled the mystery of Rey's parentage (also: who cares?) by revealing that he was her granddad.

We just didn't feel the usual magic.

The Force Awakens (2015)

An unpleasant movie for all the reasons listed previously, but we have some other gripes, too: The movie brought back Han Solo just to have his son kill him, which served no purpose other than to make the whiny Ben Solo/Kylo Ren seem like a viable threat. It isn't actor Adam Driver's fault that Ren never had Darth Vader or the Emperor's sense of malice: He's written as a brat.

New lead characters Rey, Poe and Finn never caught fire — they just didn't have enough to do. And the movie made its craziest miscalculation by casting Lupita Nyong'o, a magnetic, Oscar-winning actor, as a forgettable CGI character named Maz Kanata. She should have been one of the leads — in human form. We regretfully placed both The Rise of Skywalker and The Force Awakens on our list of Sequels Nobody Needs to See.

It was nice to see the original stars back, though.

The Phantom Menace (1999)

We have never had a more disappointing movie theater experience that the opening of The Phantom Menace: Weird aliens with stereotypical voices talking about... trade routes? We waited 16 years since Return of the Jedi, then lined up for a midnight first showing... for this?

There are other bad things about The Phantom Menace — its CGI never looked as cool as the practical effects in the original trilogy, Jar Jar, the confusing and unnecessary stuff about midichlorians — but also some good things.

Natalie Portman was quite good as Padme Amidala, Liam Neeson provided a steady hand as Qui-Gon Jinn, and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi did a remarkable job of channeling Sir Alec Guinness while making his own mark. Darth Maul, played by Ray Park, was a fabulous villain and disappeared far too soon. More on that soon.

Attack of the Clones (2002)

It was fine. We like the title, and it was cool to meet Jango Fett.

Natalie Portman, again, was very good — one of the most empathetic of all Star Wars characters, and the heart of the prequels.

And we wish her chemistry with Hayden Christensen had been better. It wasn't the fault of either actor — they just had some clunky dialogue.

Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Revenge of the Sith drove home the sad conclusion that, even at their best, the prequels maybe shouldn't have been made.

Like Hannibal Lecter, Freddy Krueger, and countless other movie villains, Darth Vader becomes less interesting the more you know about him.

Still: Vader is one of the coolest parts of the Star Wars world, and it was cool to see him again, 22 years after his demise in Return of the Jedi. We just wish it didn't take three sometimes tedious prequel movies to get to this point.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

This movie has no reason to exist, other than making money: It doesn't add much to the legend of Han Solo, and instead fills in details of stories that were perfectly covered by brief mentions in the original trilogy, with our imaginations filling in the details. (Somehow hearing that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs is cooler than seeing it happen.)

But Solo doesn't do any damage to the legacy of Star Wars: Alden Ehrenreich survives the near-impossible mission of filling Harrison Ford's boots as the coolest smuggler in space, and the movie introduces enough new elements to feel fresh. It has nothing to be ashamed of, and it was fun to watch, once, though we feel no strong desire to watch it again.

We do regret that it revived the most underused character of the prequels, Darth Maul — only to relegate him to a cameo. We hope he's revived again.

The Last Jedi (2017)

This movie has plenty of detractors, but let's give credit to writer-director Rian Johnson for taking big swings.

Unlike the films that bookend it in the sequel trilogy, The Force Awakens and Revenge of the Sith, The Last Jedi tries to break some new ground by examining how average spacefolks view the war between the Rebels and the Empire (or the Resistance and the First Order, as the new films rebrand them).

It's fine. It's the best movie for Poe in the new trilogy. And it was nice to see Mark Hamill get to shine again as Luke Skywalker. He's grown into a great warrior who has replaced youthful vigor with Yoda-like wisdom. And we know, we know: Wars not make one great.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

The first Star Wars movie released after George Lucas sold his empire to Disney, Rogue One was a truly gutsy enterprise.

Rather than rehash old material, Rogue One answers one of the great mysterious of the original Star Wars: Could Luke really blow up the Death Star with a single shot? While explaining the origin and details of the plans Leia is shepherding at the start of A New Hope, Rogue One also gives us a grittier take on Star Wars than we'd ever seen before — but its honesty about the grim sacrifices made by people everyone forgets adds poignancy to the entire Star Wars universe.

Felicity Jones is an excellent lead as Jyn Erso, and Diego Luna as Cassian Andor shines brightly enough to justify his own much-praised Disney+ prequel series, Andor, from Rogue One co-screenwriter Tony Gilroy.

And the way it leads directly into the second movie in this list — with two unexpected, thrilling cameos from a father and daughter — is pure cinematic joy.

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Remember when we said the opening of The Phantom Menace was our most disappointing experience in a movie theater? Let us tell you about our best. It was the moment Luke Skywalker stepped off the plank of Jabba's execution skiff, about to fall into the Sarlacc pit, then spun around, and caught the edge of the plank — and — and — just watch it.

And pretend you're seven years old, sitting in a dark theater, going from the despair of thinking your hero is going to die, only to see him completely turn it around, with the help of all his friends — it still gets us.

There are many other excellent things in Return of the Jedi, including Luke's reunion with his father, the Ewok fight, Han and Leia — we love this movie. A perfect ending to the greatest of all movie trilogies.

A New Hope (1977)

Watch Star Wars: A New Hope again, and it's impossible not to be in awe. George Lucas pays tribute to the Flash Gordon sci-fi serials that inspired him, but also to the films of Akira Kurosawa and Joseph Campbell's studies of the hero's journey.

In the first 48 minutes of the movie, Lucas also introduces at least seven iconic, unforgettable characters: C-3PO, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and — near the 50-minute mark — Han Solo and Chewbacca. Everything that seems too coincidental on early viewings turns out to make perfect sense. (Why does Luke just happen to live near Obi-Wan? Becuase Obi-Wan has been keeping watch over him, all his life.)

The storytelling is also impeccable from the opening shot: a very big ship chases a very small ship. A two-year-old can see this movie and know who to root for.

By the Way

In Sam Wasson's excellent new book about Lucas' friend and supporter Francis Ford Coppola, The Path to Paradise, one of the producers of A New Hope, Gary Kurtz, notes that the opening scene took eight months of painstaking, analog effects.

It was worth it.

And now, on to the greatest of all Star Wars movies.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Empire Strikes Back is a film about growing up: The easiest decisions are the hardest, the hardest are the easiest. Do you finish your training or save your friends? Do you betray your friend to save your city in the clouds?

Just when things start to seem simple, everything you thought you knew turns out to be wrong. Obi-Wan... never told you... what happened to your father.

It's been said that The Empire Strikes Back made Generation X. Star Wars gave us a good guys vs. bad guys space fantasy, and then The Empire Strikes Back revealed that the galaxy is more complex than we ever could have imagined. With Coppola's The Godfather Part 2, it's one of the greatest sequels ever made, with crackling Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan dialogue that recalls Casablanca, heart-stopping action sequences, and surprises at every turn — including the big one. About what happened to Luke's father.

Can you imagine seeing the Star Wars films in the wrong order — prequels first, then the original trilogy — and being denied the greatest reveal in the history of cinema? The Empire Strikes Back has it, and much more.

It tops this list of Star Wars movies ranked, and would rank very highly in our list of the best movies, period. It's not just the best Star Wars movie but the best Star Wars period, including shows, books, comics, and everything else.

Liked This List of Star Wars Movies Ranked Worst to Best?

We understand these things are subjective. Let us know in the comments if you disagree with anything we say here — what do you think is the best Star Wars movie?

You may also like this list of All 5 Indiana Jones Movies, given that George Lucas also created Indy when he wasn't creating the majesty of Star Wars.

Main image: Attack of the Clones. Lucasfilm.

Since his big-screen debut in 1960's Dr. No, Bond has been an indelible screen presence — a man who changes with the times, but doesn't change too much. So the actors who play him need a classic quality, even as they stay at the edge of their eras.

And with that, here are all 007 James Bond actors ranked, from least good to best.

Barry Nelson (Honorable Mention)

If you're saying "Barry who?" please put some respect on the name of Barry Nelson, who was the first actor to play Bond onscreen.

He appeared in a 1954 episode of the little-remembered series Climax in an episode called "Casino Royale" that was, of course, also the first 007 novel by James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

Nelson was the first and only American to play Bond, and never played him on the big screen. But we're including him here because every time we write anything about James Bond, some super spy infiltrates the comments to remind us that Nelson, not Sean Connery, was technically the first Bond.

So here he is, honorably mentioned.

Number 7: David Niven

Does David Niven really belong on the list of James Bond actors? Many would say no, which is why he's in last place. The super-suave actor was Ian Fleming's first choice to play Bond onscreen before that honor went to Sean Connery (or Barry Nelson, if you're counting TV.)

Niven ended up playing Bond a single time, in the 1967 film Casino Royale, which is a spy satire loosely based on Ian Fleming's novel. If you don't think a film making fun of Bond films counts as a Bond film, you probably don't consider Niven a proper 007.

Casino Royale came out, rather confusingly, in the same year as the fifth Connery Bond film, You Only Live Twice. (That was certainly true for Bond in 1967, when he got to be played by two different stars.)

But wait, it gets more confusing: One of the conceits of Casino Royale is that there are multiple Bonds. And to make things more confusing still, the 1967 Casino Royale bears little resemblance to the 2006 Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig or the 1954 televised version starring Barry Nelson.

The film also holds the distinction of including several stars who appeared in other Bond films, most notably Ursula Andress, who can be seen here in a series of behind the scenes images from Dr. No.

Niven is the only actor, besides Connery, to play Bond in a film not made by EON Productions. More on that soon.

Number 6: George Lazenby

Lazenby played arguably the most tragic Bond — his sole outing as 007, in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, ends with him marrying the enchanting Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) — only to see her killed in a drive-by shooting by Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas — who, as Blofeld, doesn't love ya, baby.)

Lazenby presented himself quite respectably as the first EON Bond besides Sean Connery, who is not easy to follow. Fortunately for him, Niven had loosened up audiences to the idea that more than one actor could play 007.

Lazenby was also notable as the sole Australian to play Bond, though we could get another someday soon if Jacob Elordi fans get their wish.

Number 5: Daniel Craig

That's right, we think Craig — the latest actor to play Bond — was only the fifth best. Yes, he was the buffest of any Bond, and deserves points for that. But when the Bond producers decided to go dark and gritty for 2006's Casino Royale, they sacrificed some of the charm, and yes, camp, of past Bond films.

Good an actor as Craig is — he's especially great in 2004's Layer Cake, the role that surely played a big part in getting him cast as Bond — he was the only James Bond actor who seemed fairly miserably being James Bond.

If there's one thing we know about Bond, it's that he's learned to laugh at life, and death. Taking that trait from Craig's Bond was, in our opinion, a mistake.

Also Read: All 7 Batman Actors Ranked Worst to Best

Number 4: Roger Moore

Yes, Roger Moore is the campiest, silliest Bond, the 007 who strained credulity by bouncing from Blaxploitation in Live and Let Die to sci-fi in Moonraker. His Bond often seemed to be chasing whatever was the cool trend of the '70s and early '80s.

But Moore had a deadpan charm that made it work. He never seemed to take himself too seriously, and always seemed to be having a blast.

And after Sean Connery invented and defined the role, who can blame Moore for putting his own wilder, weirder stamp on it? Maybe Moore's Bond films weren't serious enough for some people's tastes, but at least they never took themselves too seriously.

Number 3: Pierce Brosnan

Pierce Brosnan was in many ways a perfect Bond: sly, witty, crafty, fun, dapper — but also a convincing secret agent.

Brosnan's name started getting floated as James Bond as soon as he popped up on the '80s series Remington Steele, and he almost got the role instead of the next Bond actor on our list. But it's too everyone's benefit that his casting didn't happen too soon. By becoming Bond in his early 40s, Brosnan arrived at the 007 franchise with grit and gravitas he may have lacked a decade earlier.

Alas, Brosnan suffered the indignity of uttering the worst line in any Bond movie, the one about Christmas coming but once a year in 1999's The World Is Not Enough. But don't blame Pierce Brosnan, who didn't write the movie.

Number 2: Timothy Dalton

Hear us out on this one, because we know some of you won't agree that someone who only played James Bond twice should be second on our list.

We appreciate that Timothy Dalton played the Bond who felt the most like a real person, and the most like someone we would want as a friend. In a concession to the safe-sex morality of the AIDS era, he was more of a one-woman man than past Bonds. (OK, maybe a two-woman man). Crucially, he seemed the most capable of real human emotion.

He looked just about perfect, he seemed both tough and sensitive, and he had a first-class smirk. The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill may not be the most popular Bond movies, but they provided a bridge between the fairly sexist Cold War relic Bond of old and the more thoughtful Bonds of Generations X, Y and Z.

Number 1: Sean Connery 

All that stuff we just said? In spite of it, Connery's Cold War relic Bond is still the all-time best, because he did not care what anyone thought of him.

Sean Connery's Bond was tough, funny, sardonic, self-aware, and smart. He famously got the job by swaggering out of his audition and down the street with perfect confidence, and kept it by keeping audiences perpetually amused. He is what modern audiences would consider by far the most problematic Bond, but he's also shielded by the armor of his time.

Oh: And he was the only Bond to star in both EON films and a non-EON film, 1985's Never Say Never Again.

If you liked this list, you might also enjoy this list of Bond Girl Names Ranked, from Silly to Sensational.

And please follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: A promotional image from License to Kill.. United Artists.

Editor's Note: Corrects main image.

So we're all on the same page, the MCU, or Marvel Cinematic Universe, started in 2008 with Iron Man. Iron Man came out a few months before The Dark Knight, so The Dark Knight will not be on this list — though it is on this list of the all-time best superhero movies, including those in the MCU.

Also: All of these movies also came out before the DC Extended Universe, which started with 2011's Man of Steel.

So you won't see Batman vs Superman or any other Snyderverse films on this list of the Best Superhero Movies before the MCU. But you will see plenty of Batman and Superman, starting with...

Batman (1989)

Tim Burton had a complicated job in 1989: Most general audiences knew Batman as the campy caped crusader from the delightful '60s TV show starring Adam West, but comic book audiences had come to revere him the gritty detective of Frank Miller's masterful and wildly influential The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Batman: Year One (1987).

Burton and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren threaded the needle by combining the camp of the TV show (throaway jokes, Jack Nicholson's garish joker) with an ultra-sincere, deeply wounded Batman and Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton). Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale serves as kind of an audiences surrogate, acknowledging the weirdness all around Gotham, while keeping things kind of grounded.

The film also paid homage to Batman's 1939 roots with the slickly updated Art Deco set design.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

With Spider-Man 2, director Sam Raimi improved on his original with a story about power, responsibility, and giving as much as you can, whoever you are and whatever strengths you have or don't have.

The story has real stakes thanks to the intense chemistry between Peter Parker/Spidey (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), and Alfred Molina is excellent as the tortured, power-mad Doc Ock. The subway sequence in which regular New Yorkers save a superhero is one of our favorites in any superhero movie.

X2: X-Men United (2003)

At the time of its release, 2003’s X-Men 2 came the closest to capturing the energy of the X-Men at their 1980s peak, as comics writer Chris Claremont put them through the emotional paces with a series of storylines that drew overt parallels between mutants and oppressed and ostracized human beings of all kinds.

X-Men 2 runs with the metaphor from its exhilarating openings scene of Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) invaded the Oval Office. And Brian Cox is menacingly flawless as Col. William Stryker, a very believable nemesis to our favorite band of mutants.

Superman (1978)

The film that started it all. Its earnestness and total reliance on practical effects — as well as stellar performances and moving love story between Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) and Superman, make it feel more charming and inspiring with each passing year.

Christopher Reeve will always be our Superman not just for his heroism, but for his comic chops — you get the sense that even when Luther (Gene Hackman) has him literally drowning in kryptonite, he's still too much of a gentleman to bring his full superpowers to bear on his nemesis. He also had the least elaborate of all superhero costumes, yet felt the most like an actual superhero.

Fun fact: Margot Kidder starred in both the No. 1 movie of 1978 — Superman — and the No. 2 movie, The Amityville Horror

Also, Superman is the most romantic of all superhero movies, except for maybe...

Superman II (1980)

The early '80s were a real wake up call for Gen X kids — first Han Solo was frozen in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back, and then a few months later Superman lost his powers in Superman II. Or rather, he sacrificed his powers, in hopes of a normal life with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder).

The idea of a superhero willingly giving up his powers for love — and then sacrificing that love in order to save the world — was head-spinning for young fans who just wanted superman to be all-powerful. We all learned many lessons from Superman II.

Also: Kudos to writers Mario Puzo, David Newman and Leslie Newman (who worked on both Superman and Superman II) for bringing back General Zod (Terence Stamp) and his sidekicks, relatively minor players in the first Superman, as the villains of the second one. Did they plan that all along? Yes! The two films were shot fairly simultaneously. (Robert Benton was also a writer on the first Superman, but not the second.)

Batman Begins (2005)

The Batman franchise was in shambles after 1997's Batman and Robin, and Christopher Nolan seemed an odd choice to revive it: He was best known for the low-budget indies Following and Memento, as well as Warner Bros' Insomnia, all of which were fairly cerebral crime thrillers filled with questions about morality.

But that turned out to make him the perfect person to reinvent Batman and explain how the orphaned Bruce Wayne became the world's greatest detective. Borrowing from Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, Nolan imagined how Batman might come to exist in the real world, justifying every outlandish accoutrement, from his cape to his pointy ears.

Christian Bale was a perfect Bruce Wayne/Batman, and the rogue's gallery was cast with old hands and rising indie stars like Cillian Murphy, who finally got a starring role in a Nolan film with Oppenheimer, nearly two decades after he played The Scarecrow in Batman Begins.

Batman Returns (1992)

A gloriously weird superhero movie imagines Batman as the stern ringmasters of a circus of grotesque characters, especially Danny DeVito's Penguin. He also tries to tame a feral feline villain, Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer, pictured), and of course it all takes place at Christmas.

This is Tim Burton at his most demented and we love it.

Blade (1998)

Blade will soon join the MCU as Mahershala Ali dons the vampire hunter's leather jacket, but original Blade Wesley Snipes deserves lots of credit — along with director Stephen Norrington and writer David S. Goyer — for showing us what a Marvel movie could be years before Spider-Man, the X-Men and the MCU ruled Hollywood.

And not a day passes that we don't think about Snipes' best line in the film: "Some mother----er's are always trying to ice skate uphill."

Hulk (2003)

The third time was the charm for Marvel, when it cast Mark Ruffalo as a lovable Hulk in The Avengers after Eric Bana played the green-skinned goliath in 2003's Hulk and Ed Norton took his shot in 2008's The Incredible Hulk, which was part of the MCU. (Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark turns up for a cameo that connects The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man.)

Though largely forgotten thanks to the other Hulks, Ang Lee's Hulk was a nuanced and ambitious film that tried to go beyond monster fights to tell a deeper story about childhood trauma. It's not as fun as the best MCU movies, and the CGI isn't as good.

But it is a very fresh take on a character well-known to audiences thanks to the Bill Bixby-Lou Ferrigno TV series and the three TV movies it inspired, and the cast, including Bana and Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross, was very solid.

The Rocketeer (1991)

The second Jennifer Connelly movie on our list, The Rocketeer is a throwback to the very earliest superhero movies — like the Batman and Superman serials that would play for pennies at the movie palaces of the 1940s.

Set in 1938, The Rocketeer is a gorgeously Art Deco styled caper about a young test pilot named Cliff (Billy Campbell) who finds a rocket pack that enables him to shoot through the air.

Timothy Dalton is fantastic as the scenery-chewing, Errol Flynn-mustchioed Neville Sinclair, who wants Cliff's jet pack and his girl, the glamorous aspiring actress Jenny Blake, played by Jennifer Connelly in one of the early roles that signaled her career would soon take off like a, well, rocket.

I saw this in a theater as a 16-year-old boy, which is the ideal way to see it, if you can arrange that.

The Crow (1994)

Yes, it's one of the best superhero movies before the MCU, and one of the best superhero movies, period. But it's also very hard for us to watch: Star Brandon Lee was accidentally killed by a prop gun after filming, 20 years after the death of his father, Bruce Lee. The tragedy casts a pall over a movie that was dark to begin with.

Still: The Crow has a brilliantly moody goth aesthetic and undeniable power, and took a big swing at a time when superhero movies were rarely this gloomy and disruptive.

Lee is excellent as Eric Draven, a rock star who is resurrected after the murder of him and his girlfriend and guided by a crow to seek justice. We wish he could have starred in many more films.

Spider-Man (2002)

Obviously we wouldn't include Spider-Man 2 without including Sam Raimi's original, featuring one of the most iconic movie kisses of any genre — not just superhero movies.

We were very happy to see original cinematic Spider-Man Tobey Maguire return to the fold in the latest MCU Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, where Maguire's Peter Parker teamed up with fellow spider-actors Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland.

The Incredibles (2004)

Pixar's The Incredibles is somehow both the best superhero movie for family viewing... and a dark deconstruction of superhero tropes.

(Note that Mr. Incredible bails out on the business because of legal threats, not because of bad guys.)

The animation is groundbreaking and stellar, combining dynamic character design with Art Deco touches that harken back to the days of Batman and Superman. It's funny, it's sweeping, it's curiously dark. The grainy black-and-white rescue segment takes it to a daring new level. It's a super movie in every way.

If you liked this list, you might also like this list of sequels that were better than the originals.

And we invite you to please follow us for more stories like this.

Main image: Spider-Man 2. Sony

Let’s do this.

10 — Semi-Tough

Burt Reynolds was such a huge star in 1977 that he starred in two of the films on this list. Semi-Tough is a sports comedy that features a love triangle between the very 1970s cast of Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh.

The United Artists release, which came out November 11, earned over $37 million, making it No. 10 on this list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

9 — Annie Hall

Widely considered Woody Allen's masterpiece, this romantic comedy starring Allen and Diane Keaton, as the title character, was not only a commercial but critical smash: It won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actress (for Keaton) and Best Director (for Allen) — as well as Best Screenplay for Allen and Marshall Brickman.

The film, released by United Artists, debuted April and earned $38.2 million. It's No. 9 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

8 — Oh, God!

George Burns (right), who was 81 at the time of the film's release, plays God, who visits normal-guy grocery store assistant manager Jerry (John Denver, left).

When Jerry agrees to spread God's message, his wife Bobbie (Teri Garr) isn't sure it's the best idea.

The film inspired a trilogy that includes one of the film's on this list. Released by Warner Bros. on October 7, it earned $41.7 million. It is, you guessed it, No. 8 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

7 — The Spy Who Loved Me

The third James Bond film to star Roger Moore (left) — who is No. 4 on our list of James Bond Actors, Ranked — pairs him with Soviet agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach, right) as they try to stop a plot to end civilization in favor of a new undersea world.

They're bedeviled by Jaws — not the shark from the top-grossing film of 1975, but the henchman played by Richard Kiel.

Released by United Artists on July 13, The Spy Who Loved Me moonraked in $46.8 million. It ranks No. 007 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

6 — The Deep

This thriller stars Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte as amateur treasure-hunting divers who come across the cargo of a World War II shipwreck, which puts them at odds with local criminals. It was co-written by Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel Jaws and co-wrote the film.

Released by Columbia Pictures on June 17, it earned $47.3 million. Its No. 6 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

And Bisset is on our list of Stars of the 1970s Who Are Still Going Strong.

5 — A Bridge Too Far

Richard Attenborough's World War II drama stars a plethora of great actors, including Sean Connery, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, and Ryan O'Neal. It's also co-written by the great William Goldman (All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride.)

Released by United Artists on June 15, it collected $50.8 million. It comes in at No. 5 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

4 — Saturday Night Fever

With a soundtrack that defined the late '70s, this John Travolta disco drama follows Tony Manero (Travolta) as he splashes paint and dances up a storm in Brooklyn. It's based on the New York article "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" which author Nik Cohn later admitted he mostly made up.

Audiences didn't notice, or didn't care. The Paramount Pictures release, which came out December 16, hustled up $94.2 million. It is, of course, No. 4 on the list of the top 10 movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

It also earned a place on

3 — Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Stephen Spielberg's followup to his hit Jaws, which reunited him with Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss, wasn't as big a hit as the shark epic — but few movies are.

Close Encounters — the second movie on this list to feature Teri Garr (who would reunite with Dreyfuss for 1989's Let It Ride ) — earned $116.4 million after its November 16 release by Columbia Pictures. It's No. 3 on the list of the top 10 movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

2 — Smokey and the Bandit

This Burt Reynolds-Sally Field action comedy — about a Trans-Am on a mission to distract from a truck full of beer — was the No. 2 film domestically with a total haul of $127 million. This is one time the Bandit ended up in second place.

By the way, all of these domestic box office totals are from Box Office Mojo, a fun site we highly recommend exploring.

Interestingly, Smokey and the Bandit debuted on May 27 — just two days after the No. 1 movie on our list.

1 — Star Wars

The 20th Century Fox film, which eventually became known as Star Wars: Episode IV — a New Hope, was the top film of 1977 with a domestic gross of $307 million. (Adjusted for inflation, that's $1.3 billion.)

George Lucas' story of Luke Skywalker's quest to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star — and her quest to lead the Rebellion to use some secret plans to blow up said Death Star — launched the second-most successful franchise in film history. Star Wars films have made more than $5 billion, trailing only the $11.8 billion for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The incredible box office receipts of A New Hope (we still just call it Star Wars) helped open studios' eyes to new ways of making money — not just through films, but endless merchandising in the form of action figures, remote-controlled R2D2s, and lightsabers.

It changed the kinds of movies that got greenlit, and signaled that '70s audiences — who had grown accustomed to downbeat endings — were ready for optimism. Movies would never be the same.

If you like this list, you might also like this list of All 11 Star Wars Movies, Ranked Worst to Best.

And we invite you to follow us for more stories

Main image: Roger Moore and Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me. United Artists.

Editor's Note: corrects main image.

Though most of these films are several years old, some have some very timely connections. One is even related to the current New York City's mayoral race.

Here's our list.

Dunkirk (2017)

Dunkirk is one of our favorite uplifting movies because of how closely it follows actual events. But because Christopher Nolan is at the helm, it also plays fascinating tricks with time to make the historical epic fly by.

The World War II masterpiece shows how British and Allied troops lived to fight another day against a seemingly unstoppable evil. No one comes out and says it, but if they'd failed, the Nazis might have won World War II. 

The Dunkirk evacuation required the courage and sacrifice of not just the fighting men on air, land and sea, but also the bravery of ordinary civilians who took extraordinary measures with a stiff upper lip.

Glory (1989)

Another of our favorite films ever, this story of an all-black Union Army regiment in the Civil War is best known for Denzel Washington's Oscar winning performance. But it's the rare sweeping historical film that takes time for truly moving, small moments between the men.

As far back as 1990, critics including Roger Ebert lamented that it's told from a white POV — that of Col. Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick). But we may not have a Glory if not for screenwriter Kevin Jarre relying so heavily on Gould's actual letters to his mother, which frame and personalize the story. And James Horner's Glory score may be the best in any movie.

Glory uses some composite characters, but is very much based on a true story and follows key events quite closely. It's a truly uplifting movie about astonishing courage.

All the President's Men (1976)

Yes, there was a time when cold, hard, carefully reported information could change the world.

Screenwriter William Goldman, maybe the best screenwriter of all, treats the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein like a gritty, unsentimental procedural. It's the fact-finders versus the purveyors of lies.

All the President's Men is very much based on a true story, as anyone who lived through the Nixon Administration can attest. But Goldman did make up a few memorable things — like the famous phrase "Follow the money."

If you're looking for a great Robert Redford movie in light of his passing, it would be hard to do better than All the President's Men.

Malcolm X (1992)

The second of three Denzel Washington movies on this list, Malcolm X is about growth.

Spike Lee's epic shows how Malcolm Little becomes Malcolm X and finally El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, a man who melds his righteous calls for justice with a righteous commitment to unity.

But Malcolm X doesn't sugarcoat any of the pain or struggle along the way, or offer any easy comfort to those who prop up the injustice Malcolm X tried to dismantle. It's one of the most inspirational movies because it's so universal, and yet so uncompromising. And the "I am Malcolm X!" ending is breathtaking.

Of course it's very much based on a true story. Malcolm X hews closely to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X and Alex Haley. It features some composite characters, but stays close to the facts.

And if you're looking for the latest team-up of Spike Lee and Denzel Washington, look no further than the new Highest 2 Lowest, now streaming on Apple TV+.

Chariots of Fire (1981)

The Vangelis theme will make you want to race down a beach, but this uplifting movie's true story is every bit as inspirational: Chariots of Fire, set a century ago, is the very factual story of two runners — the Scottish Christian Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), who runs to glorify God, and Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), an English Jew who runs to overcome antisemitism.

Screenwriter Collin Welland went to extraordinary lengths to ensure authenticity, interviewing as many surviving real-life people portrayed in the film as possible, and even taking out ads in London newspapers seeking people's memories of the 1924 Olympics.

The film won four Oscars, including for Best Picture, for Welland's screenplay, for Vangelis' score, and for best costume design. It's an especially good watch around the Olympics.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

The real Erin Brockovich has said this 2000 Steven Soderbergh drama — which won Julia Roberts an Oscar for best actress — was "probably 98% accurate," adding, "They took very few creative licenses."

The film shows how Brockovich, an unemployed single mother of three, got herself a job in a law firm and helped assemble a class action suit in which utility company Pacific Gas & Electric was accused of contaminating the drinking water in the small desert town of Hinkley, California. PG&E settled the case in 1996 for $333 million. It's a very uplifting movie, but also one rooted in grim realities.

The film shows Brockovich using her wits, people skills, and maybe some low-cut tops to do what needed to be done.

"Yes, I did dress that way," Brockovich wrote on her website. "I was actually taken back by the response of many people regarding my wardrobe. I just dressed that way because it was fun and I liked it. I was taught never to judge a book by its cover. My clothing was nothing more than a cover and I have never thought that anyone was smart or stupid or anything else by the way they chose to dress."

Remember the Titans (2000)

Though it takes some liberties with the timeline, Remember the Titans is based on a true story of football coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) as he battles racism and resentment while trying to lead the recently integrated  T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia to an undefeated season in 1971.

Boone has replaced white former coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton), leading to initial tension, but they overcome their differences for the good of their community and their team.

Like Malcolm X, this is a film about people being willing to grow and change.

Queen of Katwe (2016)

Not a lot of people have seen this chess drama, but for our money, it may be the best movie Disney has ever released, and one of the most moving movies we've ever seen.

Director Mira Nair looks unflinchingly at the dangers to a young girl growing up with every imaginable disadvantage in an Ugandan slum. And yet, in a fair contest, she's an absolute force.

It's vey much based on a true story — that of Phiona Mutesi — and includes excellent performances by David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong'o, and Madina Nalwanga.

Interestingly, Nair's son, Zohran Mamdani, is presently running for mayor of New York City.

Wild (2014)

Truly uplifting movies don't pretend the world is rosy — they acknowledge its hard and encourage you to trudge on. Wild is the story of a woman who packs it all in to hike the 1,100-mile Pacific Coast Trail, alone, as she tries to sort out and repair a life ravaged by tragedy, depression and drug abuse.

Based on a true story — the memoir by Cheryl Strayed —Wild is a captivating movie focused almost entirely on Strayed (Reese Witherspoon, captivating) as she takes on a journey where sudden snow or a lost boot constitutes a major crisis.

One of the best things about Wild is that it doesn't sugarcoat any aspect of the main character's struggle or try to play cute with her very real problems. It asks you to tap into your inner strength and do more than you think you're capable of doing, and leaves you longing for fresh air and a wide open trail.

Selma (2014)

A scene-by-scene breakdown of recent films by the data site Information Is Beautiful found that Selma is 100 percent accurate — the only film to receive a perfect score of those it studied. It's an important and uplifting movie about the constant struggle between compromise and demanding justice, and the power of people motivating one another to success.

Directed by directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb, it re-enacts the voting-rights campaign from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965, initiated by James Bevel (played by Common) and led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), Hosea Williams (Wendell Pierce) and John Lewis (Stephan James).

The very deep cast also includes Oprah Winfrey, Carmen Ojogo, Tom Wilkinson and Giovanni Ribisi.

Hidden Figures (2016)

Hidden Figures has a surprisingly light touch as it vividly and entertainingly details how Black female mathematicians overcame discrimination to help NASA win the space race. (Did you think we'd include four separate movies about sports (chess counts!) and not one about scientists?)

The fact that Hidden Figures is based on a true story makes it especially inspiring.

Oppenheimer (2023)

We begin and end with Christopher Nolan films. The latest Oscar winner for Best Picture was very true to life — it was closely rooted in the nonfiction book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin over 25 years.

Of course, Nolan being Nolan, he interspersed timelines in his factual account.

Even some of the most surprising moments — like President Truman calling Oppenheimer a "cry baby" — really did happen.

If you liked this list, you might also enjoy this list of 15 Black and White Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch.

Main image: Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, which according to Erin Brockovich is based on a true story and — according to Brockovich — is 98 percent accurate.