30. Unbreakable. Speaking as one who isn't often impressed by conventional superhero movies, I think Unbreakable is the best superhero origin story ever told on film. Relationships are at the core of the story. There are moving emotional moments, very tense suspenseful moments, and some very compelling characters. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson do an excellent job carrying the movie and infusing it with utter realism. The movie doesn't even really come off like a superhero tale until you reflect on it later. Very clever.
29. Fight Club. Never has my opinion of a movie transformed as much as my opinion of Fight Club. When I saw it in the theater, I thought it was too weird, too jumbled, and too concerned with sucker-punching the audience with a surprise plot twist. But my roommate at the time loved the film, and when he picked it up on DVD and I then caught the movie a second time, I loved it. Suddenly, I found the disjointed style utterly appropriate to the character at the heart of the tale. I found the twisted plot elements to be very cleverly and interestingly layered in. And I also fully appreciated the fantastic acting from Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. Director David Fincher made a masterpiece here that snuck up on me. This film drove me to keep checking out every movie he makes (and he generally entertains), as well as got me started reading books by Chuck Palahniuk (until he ultimately threw it all away recycling a too-similar formula a dozen times).
28. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Growing up, I so desperately wanted to be as cool as Ferris Bueller. Today, I think I appreciate the movie even more for realizing just how not mainstream-cool a character he is in so many ways. He's a computer hacker. He programs a synthesizer. He knows old Wayne Newton and Beatles songs. He likes to hang out at art galleries. I think what I realize now is that I liked this movie so much because it made a person with similar uncool interests like me be super-freaking-cool, the untouchable, charmed star of the show. And the comedy completely holds up too. This movie is hysterical, far and away the best of the John Hughes films. Matthew Broderick is perfect for the lead. Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones, Jennifer Grey, Edie McClurg, Charlie Sheen, Ben Stein -- they all add their own perfect bit of neurosis, suaveness, villainy, rage, lunacy, lethargy, and monotone to blend together in this incredibly fun cocktail.
27. WALL-E. The social commentary in this movie may be a bit ham-fisted, but the emotion evoked by this movie is absolutely genuine. And you feel all this for robotic characters who can barely speak, themselves generated on a computer. Ben Burtt's sound design is genius. That so much humanity could power through a construction of such total artifice is extraordinary. I do wish the title character were a bit more active in his own story, but you can see how highly I think of the movie even despite that misgiving.
26. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. So much should have been working against this movie. It's a sequel, and its plot isn't really any different from the "run from a killer robot from the future" plot of the original. It has at least two main characters played by actors who really don't have much range: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong. But the film rises far above these baked in problems, delivering incredible tension, pulse-pounding action, clever cat and mouse games, and even a few solid emotional moments besides. Not to mention that, at the time, its amazing CG effects to bring the T-1000 to life were blow-your-mind incredible. (And it's not that they don't hold up, because they do -- it's just that you can't say you've never seen anything like it before anymore.) Composer Brad Fiedel contributes an exciting synthesizer musical score. James Cameron films all the action brilliantly. This is simply a great action film.
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