A ham-fisted metaphor for US foreign policy: a sleeping menace awakens and lays waste to the cities of Old Europe, whose response is to hide and eke out a meagre existence in the shadow of this threat, until the cigar-chompin’ US military swaggers in to kick arse and take names. Huzzah!
I’m not sure movies like Rushmore and other low budget indie films count for the OP (while they are great films). I think he’s talking about mega-budget Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay/Tony Scott/James Cameron blockbusters actually worth the hype.
I would go with (by Director/Producer):
Jerry Bruckheimer
Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl (I haven’t seen the others)
Black Hawk Down (Dir Ridley Scott)
Enemy of The State (Dir Tony Scott)
Armageddon (Dir Tony Scott)
The Rock
James Cameron
Titanic
Peter Jackson
The Lord of The Rings Trilogy (taking all three movies as one comprehensive story)
George Lucas
Star Wars: Episodes I-III (not because they are good, but just because)
Robert Rodriguez
Sin City
Ridley Scott
Gladiator
Tony Scott
Man on Fire
Spy Game
Stephen Spielberg
Munich is probably good but I haven’y seen it
War of The Worlds (ok, the ending was weak but you can partially blame H G Wells)
Catch Me If You Can
Minority Report
Saving Private Ryan
Quinton Tarrantino
Kill Bill I/II
Wachowski Brothers
The Matrix Trilogy (taking all three movies as one comprehensive story)
V For Vendetta
Aesiron - The Devils Advocate is one of the best movies ever and a
Which, even ignoring the shoestring budgets, the OP’s probably already seen or is at least aware of, being a self-proclaimed movie-snob and all.
I completely spaced on Man on Fire and recommend it and, even though IMDb says its budget is slightly under the $50M budget I arbitrarily chose as defining a “big budget” movie, Training Day.
A what? I’m somewhat surprised to see a Keanu-movie-that-isn’t-The Matrix getting any non-ironic love on the SDMB.
I love Coppola’s Dracula. Reeves (like Carrot Top) is one of those whom it has become cool to bash, and many people do so with little or no knowledge of their work. He wouldn’t be so prolific and in demand if he didn’t have chops.
Like I said; good silly fun!
oh…sorry.
I was going to say something about it having one of the best Al Pacino ranting monologues.
Speaking of which, I also like The Recruit.
OK, *Rushmore * was probably too indie, but to reiterate, I did put the caveat in that I was substituting “very wide release” for “big budget” since I can think of only two “big budget” movies in the past decade that are even remotely snob-worthy (Saving Private Ryan and the Matrix). And even those two aren’t all that.
The movie snob is asking - can I safely skip the big budgets of the past decade? Answer: yes, you can safely skip them. LOTR is about as good as they get. There just hasn’t been an Alien, Jaws, Exorcist, Apocalypse Now, or E.T. in the past ten years. Or even a Schindler’s List, *Unforgiven * or Goodfellas. Even the Star Wars movies weren’t a Star Wars.
That’s not to say there haven’t been some spectacular movies in the last decade. But they aren’t big budget movies.
Seabiscuit and Cinderella Man were big budget films, and were also excellent.