20. “Spider-Man 2” (2004)
Kirsten Dunst recently threw down the gauntlet to the upcoming “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” saying, “Everyone likes our ‘Spider-Man’… Listen, I’d rather be in the first ones than the new ones.” She’s not wrong, at least when it comes to the second of Sam Raimi’s Spider-trilogy, which is pretty damn close to a perfect superhero movie. Riffing on the classic ‘Spider-Man No More’ moments, and pitting Spidey against the often-sympathetic Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina, terrific), it delivers cracking action sequences (the train scene remains a high-water mark for the genre), but also a charm, and even a romantic streak, that not many in the genre can compete with. We have high hopes for ‘Homecoming,’ but it’ll have to be extraordinary to unseat this one.
19. “The Lion King” (1994)
Fun fact: the stage version of “The Lion King” is the most successful single piece of entertainment in history, having taken $6.2 billion worldwide. And it all began with the 1994 animation, probably the strongest piece of work that emerged from that excellent renaissance run in the early ’90s. It probably shouldn’t work — it’s “Hamlet” with animals, and songs by Elton John. But it really, really does: it’s big in scope in a way that surprisingly few Disney movies are, the songs are almost all great, it melds very high drama with genuinely funny comedy, and it looks glorious too. Jon Favreau surprised most of us when his live-action “Jungle Book” remake turned out pretty well, but his upcoming redo of this will have to be absolutely terrific not to pale next to this.
18. “Ghostbusters” (1984)
The second blockbuster we were talking about above that opened on the same day as “Gremlins”? That was “Ghostbusters.” What a time to be alive. Playing in a similar sort of space — effects-packed comedy with real stakes — as Joe Dante’s film, Ivan Reitman’s tale of paranormal-phenomena-fighting scientists works because it has such a sure handle on tone. It’s irreverent and often uproarious, but never betrays its reality, the comedy coming from the characters as they grapple with the memorably weird mythology that Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis’ script built. That last year’s reboot did so much right and yet still felt flat is a testament to the strange alchemy that Reitman and co. pulled off with this movie.
17. “The Dark Knight” (2008)
Christopher Nolan’s project to take the superhero seriously got off to a fine start with “Batman Begins,” but it wasn’t all the way there: the action was clumsy, and it basically ended with Liam Neeson twirling his moustache as he tried to blow up a city. But “The Dark Knight” was something else: a genuinely epic, visually stunning crime movie in superhero clothes, or maybe a superhero movie in crime clothes, that thrillingly reinvented one of the great villains with Heath Ledger’s truly frightening, ever-unpredictable Joker, but gripped even when he wasn’t on screen. Sure, it’s not perfect — the Hong Kong sequence screams of ‘we should probably put another action sequence in, right?’ — but it remains probably the best superhero movie ever made and then some.
16. “Jurassic Park” (1993)
It seems to have developed a bad reputation since it opened, at least among cinephiles (it, of course, made an insane amount of money), but we thought “Jurassic World” was mostly fine. But it really did serve, as all the other sequels in the series so far also did, to mostly remind us of how much better Steven Spielberg’s original was than everything that followed. Taking Michael Crichton’s irresistible premise (‘dinosaur theme park’) and making it feel so real that you kind of wanted to go even despite the risk of being eaten, Spielberg brought real wonder but also real fear with easily his scariest movie since “Jaws.”
15. “The Untouchables” (1987)
Turning old TV shows that haven’t been on the air in decades into movies is a rightly derided pursuit, as this week’s “Baywatch” has proven. And yet Brian De Palma did it with real artistry not once, but twice, with the aforementioned “Mission: Impossible,” and a few years earlier with “The Untouchables.” De Palma’s take doesn’t steer away from the pulpier side of its origins, in the story of how squeaky-clean Eliot Ness brought down mobster Al Capone — in fact, he steers right into it, with a movie that feels almost comic book-y in its good-vs.-evil iconography, and the broadness of its action. But for all the bigness and broadness of its characters, it grips consistently, whether’s it’s in its ace cast (Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, an Oscar-winning Sean Connery) palpably relishing David Mamet’s script like fine dining, or in some of the director’s greatest set pieces, like the famous “Battleship Potemkin”-aping finale.
14. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991)
“I love the movies, love ’em,” said the late, great stand-up Bill Hicks in the early ’90s. “Now, I’m watching ‘Terminator 2’ the other day, and I’m thinking to myself: they cannot top the stunts in this film, they cannot top this shit. Unless… they start using terminally ill people as stunt people in feature films.” Bill sadly didn’t live to see that thanks to the increasing amounts of CGI in movies, they actually would top the carnage in James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel, but he had a point. The revolutionary digital effects and unfathomable stunt work in ‘T2’ made it feel like, for perhaps the first time since “Star Wars,” truly anything was possible on screen. And yet, as ever with James Cameron, for all the bells and whistles, the story and characters are compelling enough that you’d still love it if he’d shot it in a black box for no money.
13. “Inception” (2010)
We live in a time of increasingly same-y blockbusters: catching a TV spot while flicking through channels, it can be tough to tell whether the clashing CGI characters on screen are Marvel, DC, Transformers or something else. So praise the lord for Christopher Nolan, who surfed the immense success of “The Dark Knight” into getting Warner Bros. to finance this enormously expensive, incredibly personal passion project. A spectacular heist movie with Bond movie action and Kubrickian poise, it’s heady, exciting, even moving stuff with far more to chew on than the vast majority of blockbusters. Plenty have attempted to rip it off (yes, looking at you, “Doctor Strange”), but it remains a singular experience, and we need more of those in the blockbuster world.
12. “RoboCop” (1987)
When we said earlier that “The Dark Knight” might be the best superhero movie ever made, that’s only because “RoboCop,” not being based on a comic book, doesn’t quite qualify. But in most respects — the origin story, the secret identity, the explosive action — Paul Verhoeven’s classic sci-fi delivers and then some. Set in an authoritarian near-future Detroit that we seem to be heading rapidly towards, it sees cop Peter Weller reconstructed after his gruesome death to be the perfect law enforcer, only to clash with the company that created him. It’s Verhoeven’s best American movie (maybe his best movie full stop), delivering wonderfully gruesome action and creating a fascinating future world but with a scabrous, savage satirical wit that feels more like Paddy Chayefsky than “Blade Runner.”
11. “Up” (2009)
Pixar made their name with relatively easy, understandable, hook-y premises. What if toys could talk? What if bugs could talk? What if monsters or fish or cars could talk? So it’s sort of amazing that “Up” exists, and that it proved a mammoth success (taking $700 million worldwide and picking up Pixar’s first Best Picture nomination): it’s a movie about an old man who flies his house to South America with a child that he’s not related to, where a talking dog and an ancient bird help him get over his dead wife. Hardly a high-concept premise, but in Pete Docter’s hands, it feels as accessible and emotional as any of the studio’s other movies. In fact, more so: Dug and Russell are among the finest comedy characters the studio have invented, and from those legendary opening five minutes, it ravages your tear ducts in a way that few movies can. All that, and dogs flying biplanes too.