My list of the best movies in English ever.

1. 'The Godfather' (1972, Dir: Francis Ford Coppola, Script: Mario Puzo & Coppola, starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino). By far the most fantastic mafia story ever told. Ideas from the plot had been adapted and reused in numerous films in other languages. But apart from the celebrated plot, the film is notable for its realistic screenplay, and a very realistic execution. 
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman). In spite of the 'Count of Monte Cristo' inspired unbelievable and impossible jail break, and the idea of 'earning' a fortune from jail in return for the sufferings, the film still makes to the list since it has one of the best screenplays ever in American film: When veteran prisoner Red asks the protagonist why he killed his wife, he says he didn't and Red's response: "Everyone's innocent in here, don't you know that? Heywood! What are you in for, boy?".....Heywood: "Didn't do it! Lawyer ****ed me!". The repeated and ambitious 'confessions' of Red before the parole board that he is now corrected and is fit for parole. A very religious and conservative Jailer embezzling money from charity funds and caring nothing for the prisoners sufferings, may be criticized as a classic stereotype, but unfortunately turns to be true every other time in real life. And the Jailer's attitude when he finds that the protagonist is not guilty. The aged prisoner-librarian shaken when his term ends, and eventually committing suicide in the outside world.
3. The Insider (1999, Al Pacino, Russell Crow). When Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, VP-R&D  at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, discovers that a chemical compound "coumarin" they have been using in cigarettes, and known as a flavoring agent, in fact increased the absorption of nicotine in the lungs, and is itself a carcinogen, he objects to its use in cigarettes. He is contacted by Lowell Bergman, the producer of '60 Minutes', a television show in CBS News for consultation on a different case. During their meeting Bergman suspects a problem, investigates and persuades Dr.Wigand to talk about the problem in the show. But CBS which was then owned by Laurence Tisch, who also owned the Lorillard Tobacco Company, refuses to air it and instead airs a much 'neutralized' version in 1995. A lot of effort from Lowell Bergman for the next one year, CBS is finally forced to air the original version in 1996, following which Bergman quits CBS having lost faith in the company. The film is much more than a silver screen portrayal of the incident. The film tells about the sufferings that Wigand had to undergo: pressures from the company to prevent a disclosure, getting fired, having to find employment in a school as a Chemistry Teacher where the interviewer herself comments "you are terribly over qualified", pressures from the wife when they have to move to a smaller house and when the children has to be moved to a cheaper school, the tobacco companies digging his past attempting to discredit him, attempts to make him act insane, and finally the wife leaving when support is most necessary. All this suffered just to bring the truth to light, and the Channel refusing to air it, it can't get more realistic than this.
4. Jurassic Park (1993, Dir: Steven Spielberg, starring: Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough). A film known for its extraordinary commercial success owing to its visual effects, but which is notable for its classic and excellent screenplay. The theory of Chaos.... life will find its way....species selected for breeding because they were pretty (Ellie: ...."You have plants right here in this building, for example, that are poisonous. You picked them because they look pretty,"...)......Grant: ....."Dinosaurs and man - - two species separated by 65 million years of evolution - - have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we have the faintest idea of what to expect?"....... spared no expense......even the Disney Land had problems when they started......going for a fully automated system and failing..... intelligence of the dinosaurs.....attacking a gunman from the behind....figuring out how to turn a handle to open a door..... adapted breeding of the dinosaurs...... The great success of the film and the possibility of reusing the animation gave way to a couple of sequels, but all of them just showed off more and more dinosaurs and more and more chases.
5. 'Mississippi Burning' (1988, Gene Hackman). Racism in the southern state of Mississippi as late as the 1960s. Cinematized from a real life incident. The film is based on the FBI investigation into the incident where three civil rights activists: James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi, on the night of June 21–22, 1964, by the racist and extreme-right Ku Klux Klan, which comprised members of the local police (Neshoba County Sheriff's Office and the Philadelphia PD) as well. The FBI investigation was dubbed internally as "Mississippi Burning". Racial disposition of court.
6. 'A Few Good Men' (1992, Dir: Rob Reiner, Script: Aaron Sorkin, starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson). Court room drama in the Court Martial of two soldiers from the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the torture and murder of a fellow soldier. The murder was inadvertent while the soldiers were employing a "code red", an unofficial torture routine, on the fellow soldier as ordered by the commanding officer of the base.
7. 'Enemy of the State' (1998, Will Smith, Gene Hackman). Eventhough very much exaggerated and very far from realistic, it does show the surveillance ability of the state and how someone in a key position could misuse it.  Apart from the exaggeration and the unrealistic plot, the unconvincing climax of the film too has to be referred to.
8. 'Crimson Tide' (1995, Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman). A difference of opinion in interpreting an executive order to launch a nuclear missile between commanding officers in a US submarine during the cold war. A really good screenplay that makes an interesting whole movie out of quite a short incident.
9. 'Apollo 13' (1995, Dir: Ron Howard, Script: William Broyles Jr & Al Reinert, starring Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon). Based on the flight of the manned lunar mission Apollo 13 (1970, 7th manned mission, and 3rd landing mission), which could not complete its mission due to the Oxygen tanks exploding while in orbit, and returned safely to earth after dealing with a few contingencies. A very rare and realistic depiction of a manned mission to the moon. Tells us about the rehearsals, the backup team, a few of the routine mission elements, the call signs of "Houston" and "Eagle", the very thin re-entry window etc, and all of these at a time when the electronics and computing technologies were not as developed as they are now. Also other commendable elements in the sscreenplay: Teenage daughter asking, "Dad, can I wear this to school?"...."Yes, wait, No".
10. 'Zulu Dawn' (1979, USA). A film on the historical 'Battle of Isandlwana' (1879) where the invading British Imperial forces were defeated by an army of the native tribal Kingdom of Zulu of southern Africa, in the worst ever defeat in the history of the British army to a non-European force. A low grossing prequel to the earlier box office success 'Zulu' (1964, UK) which in-fact portrayed the British retribution. It is interesting that the film featuring the British failure, even though almost a classic, had a failure in the box office, not only in Britain but elsewhere in the west also, when the one featuring the British success, even though rather irrelevant, succeeded in the box office. And it is also notable that in the end of the film 'Zulu Dawn', which features the British defeat, there is a scene portraying a British soldier shooting down a Zulu soldier running off with the British flag.
11. Rendition (2007, Dir: Gavin Hood, Script: Kelley Sane, starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Omar Metwally). The film throws light into the practice of Extraordinary Rendition (the transfer of a detainee - without legal process -  to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation) by CIA in post 9/11 America. An Egyptian-American chemical engineer is arrested in the US by the CIA mistaken for another person and suspected in a bombing. Having found there is no evidence against him, instead of freeing him he is handed over to Egypt following the new post 9/11 anti-terrorist policy of Bush administration. In Egypt, his homeland, he undergoes systematic torture. His wife, a European-American, tries for help. After many failed attempts to get help, a friend of hers in the CIA manages an unofficial redemption. The film is in no way a classic, but it is notable for presenting an issue in the world which largely remains unaddressed in spite of the celebrations of freedom of expression: the issue of illegal arrests, illegal renditions, trial-less and endless imprisonments, and systematic torture of terrorism suspects. 20 Extraordinary Facts about CIA Extraordinary Rendition and Secret Detention
    
    It is quite interesting to note that director Gavin Hood later directed  the film 'Eye in the Sky' (2015), which politically stands on the other side of the fence, and which harnessed commercial success as well as satisfied Western critics. 
12. 'Margin Call' (2011). A few hours before the onset of the American financial crisis of 2007-2008, an executive at a bank in Wall Street discovers that the total value of their toxic assets would exceed even their market capitalization. The top level management called in, they decide on the only possible bail out, namely selling off the toxic assets at the highest prices possible before the crisis becomes public. For this ruthless act, the company persuades their executives with incentives, but which would eventually ruin their careers once realized that they were cheating.
13. 'Planet of the Apes' (1968, Dir: Franklin J. Schaffner, Script: Michael Wilson & Rod Serling, based on the 1963 French novel 'La Planete des singes' by Pierre Boulle). An unexpected, and never before presentation of the apocalypse. An extraordinary idea. In "1972" a US team of astronauts goes to space in the first ever 'near speed of light' experiment. After the 'near speed of light' test they falls and land on an unknown planet, and finds that the year reads AD 3978 in their clock. After some exploration they find a civilization of ape like creatures on the planet. The apes take them captives, and view them as subjects for scientific research. Due the end of the film they realize that they have reached nowhere other than the Earth itself, but past 2006 years from their own time, by which most of the human race is extinct, and apes have evolved to become intelligent beings and thus the dominant race on the planet. The screenplay is almost a classic, but with glitches. Among the problems in the screenplay are the apes talking no other language than English, which the protagonists could readily follow with no need for translation or learning; the screenplay limiting speech to only one of the surviving protagonists, with the other contracting some difficulty in the throat;  and when they finally find a remain of an ancient civilization, it is nothing but the iconic Statute of Liberty, probably in New York. The writer may be meaning that just after the 'phenomenal' civilization of America the humans went extinct. Obviously both of these were meant to make things easier for the screenplay, but these make the film short of perfect. It is interesting that this film was made in 1968, a time when the imagination of the American public as well as the intellect were occupied by the spectacular manned flights to moon, and they were thinking of what would be next. 
14. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, Part 1, Johnny Depp). An entertainer with a classic screenplay, classic dialogues, and interesting philosophy, and superior humor. "You will remember this day as the day you almost captured Captain Jack Sparrow",......."a compass that doesn't point north",......"doesn't seem like the jack sparrow that I have heard of", "But you have heard of me"...... Royal Navy sailors who cant swim.
15. 'Limitless' (2011, Dir: Neil Burger, Script: Leslie Dixon, based on the novel 'The Dark Fields' by Alan Glynn, and starring Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro). The film is notable in that it gives a nice presentation of what exactly is intelligence, and it is significant because there are a lot of people out there who doesn't know what intelligence is. Small time writer facing writer's block is given a pill "NZT" by a friend which increases his abilities. He finishes the book almost overnight. Turns to stock market and make money. To make it a more profitable enterprise, he borrows money from a street vendor. Gets noticed by a large stock investor. Grows into a tycoon, and eventually gets into politics too, aiming to run for the president in the future. The film tells the story in a narration, in a docu-fiction manner.
16. 'Before Sunrise' (1995, Dir: Richard Linklater, Script: Linklater & Kim Krizan, starring Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy). One of the problems with the film is that in some places it feels like a philosophy lesson, too direct, and too much. The palm reader, and the poem writer sequences are really good.
17. 'The Last Samurai' (2003, Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe). The name might suggest yet another Kung-fu film, but it is not. A very highly romanticized portrayal of the feudal Samurai resistance to the imperial domination of Emperor Mutsuhito Meiji in nineteenth century Japan. The domination by Meiji, known as the Meiji Restoration, is associated in the film with the increasing investment from America and Meiji's pro-capitalist reforms. Interestingly it is romanticism at its extreme best for a twenty first century American film, but at the expense of being historically incorrect (history is never romantic). The fictional samurai warrior is a romanticized version of the real life samurai lord Saigo Takamori whose death ended the samurai resistance in 1877.
18. 'Wag the Dog' (1997 Prod & Dir: Barry Levinson, Script: Hilary Henkin & David Mamet, starring Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman). The President of the United States is facing election to his second term in a few weeks, and he trails back in popularity surveys (in the film, owing to a sex scandal). A spin-doctor "who does it for a living" is called in to engineer people's emotions in the President's favor. The spin-doctor plots a fake nuclear threat in a convenient third world nation (in the film, Albania), and creates a whole fake war. He hires a Hollywood producer, to create this war, with all its selling ingredients. One of these is a fake video footage of an Albanian girl orphaned by terrorism in Albania. The war is completely fake, fought only in the television and the newspapers, and is concluded in a few days when the CIA interferes fearing the consequences of an exposure. Again when the public attention returns to the scandal, the team creates a fake war hero "lost behind enemy lines" in Albania, "extracts him from Albania", and brings him back to Washington. The administration supplies an insane-convict from a classified American military prison for the war hero. The plotter of the whole thing, the Hollywood producer, even though offered the position of an Ambassador in a country of his choice, finds it hard to accept that his real world masterpiece will go uncredited for ever, while the President's win is being attributed to a mediocre ad campaign, and he threatens to expose the plot. The agency informed, he dies of a "massive heart attack" shortly. It is interesting to note that the film, although dealing with US power politics and foreign policy, was in fact made in a very low budget. The film is reported to be loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's 1993 novel 'American Hero' (reissued in 2004 as 'Wag the Dog: A Novel') which presents the 'Operation Desert Storm' aka 'Gulf War I' (August 1990 - February 1991) as a scripted and choreographed event in President George W. Bush Sr's (1989 - 1993) failed attempt to retain presidency. (In that perspective, the war was an immense success but it failed to fulfill the purpose). The novel reportedly maintains that the Bush administration took their cues from a similar war by Margaret Thatcher, the Falkland war in 1982 fought in the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. The novel analyses the factors and components that made 'Gulf War I' popular.
19. 'Valkyrie' (2008, Dir: Bryan Singer, stars Tom Cruise). The failed 1944 coup attempt on the Hitler regime. A group of high ranking German army officers (conservative elites who were loosing their influence in the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) regime, and probably who wanted to go in peace with the rest of the European elite) conspires to overthrow Hitler, while World War II is in progress. On July 20, 1944 an attempt was made by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg to assassinate Adolf Hitler, at the Eastern Front army base (named Wolf's Lair), by detonating an explosive, in a war meeting. Assuming that Hitler died, the conspirators sets the 'Operation Valkyrie' national emergency plan in motion, by which they command the reserve army to take control of Berlin, arresting top officials of the regime, and whole SS units. Finally when word comes that Hitler survived the assassination, things move back, and the conspirators are caught and executed.
20. 'Troy' (2004, UK, Brad Pitt). A realistic rendering of Iliad. That is the epic Iliad, minus the divine interventions and magic. 
21. 'Flight' (2012, Denzel Washington). The name and the promos would suggest a high-budget action movie, but it is not. When a plane with mechanically failed elevators (of a McDonnell Douglas MD80 with a T-tail) fall into an uncommanded steep dive during flight, the captain rolls the plane upside down to regain stable flight, cruises it in glide when the engines blow, and finally belly-lands it in an open field saving almost the entire crew. But as usual, either the manufacturer or the airline unwilling to take the blame, and the crash investigators looking out for somebody to blame upon, the toxicology report of the alcoholic-as-well-as-drug-addict pilot falls into their hands. Yet, the lawyer of the pilot's union successfully manages to break the report on technical grounds and almost saves him. But at the verge of the investigator blaming the vodka bottles from the cockpit trashcan on the dead flight-attendant cum lover, the pilot yields for his conscience, spits the truth, and thus compromises his career, and finds his way to jail. The screenplay  loses where it is too obvious that it is carefully engineering the events to make it so legally comfortable for the antagonist to escape the blame, but to enable him to play the emotional hero at that decisive question. The film was  inspired from a real life air crash involving an MD80 due to jammed elevators, but which had no survivors. The elevators of the T-tail were jammed owing to a worn out jackscrew not replaced in time, and the incident involved the pilot rolling the plane upside down.
22. 'The Pursuit of Happiness' (2006, Will Smith).
23. 'A Civil Action' (1998, John Travolta). A 'personal injury' lawyer sees big money in a suit against leather tanning companies in Woburn, Massachusetts. Once begun, he forgets the business principles of such litigation, takes it personal and looses. Later goes for an appeal and wins partially. The film is based on the legal struggle of Anne Anderson and other residents of Woburn, Massachusetts against the chemical industries in Woburn viz; Cryovac Inc, (a chemical industry, a division of W.R.Grace & Co), John J. Riley Co, (a tannery, a division of Beatrice Foods, which then owned many global brands including Samsonite, and Tropicana), and UniFirst Corporation, regarding the contamination of water in Woburn. Anne Anderson's son died of Leukemia, and she notices a high occurrence of Leukemia in the neighborhood, which in fact is a rare disease. The major pollutant was trychloro ethylene (TCE). The litigation started  with a suite filed in 1982 in the trial court which lost, with a later partial success in the appeal court. The concluding suite was "Anne Anderson et. al. versus Cryovac Inc et. al." at the US Court of Appeals, First Circuit. Unifirst settled out of court at an early stage with $1 million. The trial court found Beatrice not liable, and decided an $8 million on Cryovac. 
24. 'Casino' (1995, Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci). Not at all a classic film my by standards, and to make it worse, it even tells the story in a documentary-like narration. Still it tells the story of Las Vegas, and gives a picture of how the casinos are run, and there are not many films out there which does the same. But the better part of the film is what it observes about relationships.
25. 'The Tailor of Panama' (2001, Pierce Brosnan, Irish production funded by Colombia, USA). An interesting attempt. A non-comic mockery of the celebrated intelligence services of the world, a mockery especially on the thin sources they rely their intelligence on, and the element of make belief and self deception involved in the process at all levels, which usually leads to desirable intelligence than factual intelligence. But the film fails either to be an entertainer or a good film. In fact it did not interest me when I saw it, but I list it here because it is a rare genre. An MI6 agent appointed to Panama, befriends and blackmails a high profile tailor for intelligence, the tailor tailors stories about the President planning to sell the canal to the Chinese, and about a silent resistance in the making, which convinces the agent, which the agent in turn convinces his superiors in the UK, and they convinces the US, who funds to promote the resistance and later prepares for a military strike, which is aborted when the truth is revealed. The film is said to have been inspired from the 1959 British film 'Our Man in Havana'.
26. 'Spotlight' (2015, Dir: Tom McCarthy, Script: McCarthy & Josh Singer). 'Spotlight' a team of investigative journalists in the 'Boston Globe' daily (based in Boston, Massachusetts, US) investigates on a case of child molestation by catholic priests in Boston, and finally end up exposing widespread abuse by numerous priests in the whole of Boston. 'Boston Globe' won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for these stories.
27. Django Unchained (2012, Jamie Foxx, Cristoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel  L. Jackson). An unrealistic, impossible, and fictional story of freeing a slave from Mississippi in the 1850s, told in a stylized spaghetti Western. But it conveys the message quite fine, that none other than the oppressed is the greatest enemy of the oppressed. The attempted scientific explanation for the slave nature of the black race is quite interesting, and in-fact tells the evolution of racist apologetics.
28. 'U-571' (2000, Dir: Jonathan Mostow, starring Matthew McConaughey). Made up from a World War II incident where a German submarine was captured by the Allied forces. There happened 15 such captures in World War II, of which 13 were by the British, one was by the Canadian Navy (U-774), and one by the U.S. Navy (U-505, 1944). It appears that the incident depicted in the film is based on the first of all these incidents in which submarine 'U-110' was captured by the British in May 1941. The film quite shamelessly presents the incident replacing Americans for British in the plot. But yet it is notable for its quality of execution.
29. 'Gridlock'd' (1997, Written & Directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall, starring Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, and Thandie Newton).  After a friend overdoses and dies, the remaining two friends, attempting to get deaddiction from government funded deaddiction centers, but the bureaucracy standing in their way.
30. 'My Cousin Vinnie' (1992, Joe Pesci). Court room drama and comedy. A middle aged, newly enrolled lawyer, who took six attempts to pass his law degree, ends up defending his cousin in a shoplift-cum-murder case. Like in any court room drama the film capitalizes on the art of cross examination. But what is notable here is, like everyone else, the film makes us too believe that the defendants might be guilty, and drags the suspicion to the end, and finally reveals that the identifications of the defendants by the witnesses were erroneous even though honest. The key in the mistaken identification is a metaIIic-green 1964 'Buick SkyIark' convertibIe with a white top, which the defendants used, getting mistaken for a mint-green 1963 'Pontiac Tempest' convertible, which the actual murderers used. The defendant's case involves describing how one of the cars had a differential rear transmission, while the other did not, leaving different types of tyre-marks on the curb.
31. 'Easy A' (2010, Emma Stone). A teenage/high school comedy. How notoriety builds up on a teenage girl in school, how she enjoys and promotes it initially, how others exploit the notoriety for their own good and she allows it, and too late she realizes that it has gone beyond control and beyond the limits.
32. 'The Out-of-Towners' (1970, Dir: Arthur Hiller, Script: Neil Simon, and starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis). A middle aged couple from a small town in the United States comes to New York in a planned business trip, but gets lost in the 'wilderness' of the largest city in the world owing to a rerouted flight and a missed hotel reservation. The sequence of events and their cumulative results and sufferings may be an exaggeration, but it certainly shows how a big city can be scary for a visitor if the plan is missed.
33. A Time to Kill (1996, Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock). A black girl is molested by a couple of white men. The molesters are killed by the girl's father in the court lobby. The ensuing court room drama, along with the fierce racial drama. The closing argument of the defense: "Can you see her? .......beaten......broken body..........left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now, imagine she's white. The defense rests."
34. 'Behind Enemy Lines' (2001, Dir: John Moore, starring Owen Wilson, and Gene Hackman). On June 2, 1995, an American F16 fighter plane (in the film, an F18) making a surveillance flight over Yugoslavia, part of a NATO operation, was shot down using a surface to air missile by the Serbian forces; and the pilot Scott Francis O'Grady, never caught by the Serbs, and surviving on the surroundings, was rescued after 6 days, by US Marine Corps. The film merges the later (1996) discoveries of Bosnian mass graves [Ref 9] into the Scott O'Grady story.
    
    During the disintegration of 'Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia', after the independence of Slovenia and Croatia  from the federation in 1991, the multi-ethnic 'Socialist Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina', which was inhabited mainly by Muslim Bosnians (44%), Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic Croats (17%), passed a referendum on 29 February 1992, and declared independence (which gained international recognition). Following this the Serbs in Bosnia, supported by the Yugoslavian government under President Slobodan Miloševic and the Yugoslav People's Army, mobilized their forces inside the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to secure Serbian territory (Bosnian War). The Bosnian War soon became an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Bosnian Muslim and Croat population, which spanned a long 3 and a half years (1992–1995), while the US and Europe remained as mute spectators. The Bonsinan ethnic cleansing, led to the expulsion of 25,000–30,000 (1 million in certain accounts) Bosnian civilians out of the nation. In 1995 July, the war turned worst when the Serbs attacked the Bosninan town of Srebrenica and murdered more than 8000 Bosnian Muslims. It was only after this massacre that the US and the NATO intervened, ending the war in 1995. After the war ended numerous mass graves of the massacred victims were discovered. Srebrenica mass grave (discovered in 1996, second largest so far, 629[3] bodies dug up); Tomasica (discovered in 2013, more that a 1000[3] bodies, 5,000 sq m (53,820 sq ft)[Ref 3].[Ref 3-9]) Later, Slobodan Miloševic, the president of Yugoslavia, was arrested and tried for war crimes committed in Bosnia, at the 'International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia' (ICTY), until he died of cardiac arrest in his prison cell in Hague on 11 March 2006.
    
    Many things in the film go against my standards for a good film, namely the merger of the discoveries of mass graves into the Scott O'Grady story, and the too cinematic, too spectacular and unreal climax. But the film is notable being the only American film throwing light into the discoveries of the Bosnian mass graves and thus, into the Bosnian massacres in the erstwhile Yugoslavia. Probably that's why this films is so hated by western critics. It is notable that the film received negative reviews from American and European critics, quite interestingly citing jingoism for a reason, while overly jingoistic films like 'Air Force One' did not call such criticisms. The film depicts one of the best visualization of an aircraft marked by a guided missile, and the counter measures. 
35. 'Bowfinger' (1999). A satire on film making in the Hollywood. "Non Americans get all the punch dialogues" complains the actor. The actress is ready to act in a topless scene: "You'll do this?" "If I have to. If it's for the movie, and you really want me to. If it's artistic and says something about reality.... If it's in character and for the scene..." "Right, right".
36. 'The Butler' (2013, Dir & Prod by Lee Daniels, Written by Danny Strong, starring Forest Whitaker). The film presents at a glance the progress of black civil rights in the United States over a span of five decades, through the life of a fictional (but loosely based on the life of Eugene Allen) African-American butler employed at the White House. The problem with the film is that it presents the story more to feel like a docu-fiction than a feature film.
37. 'Moneyball' (2011, Dir: Bennett Miller, Script: Steven Zaillian & Aaron Sorkin, starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill). New General Manager of a baseball team selects undervalued players based on performance statistics, and achieves a season record. GM tries to avoid personal connection with players in the beginning. Too stressed so that he never watches a game through out his term. Team fails consistently in the beginning. Even his ten year old daughter asks whether he is going to loose his job. Straight forward and abrupt firing of players. Argument of one team manager that Baseball is not science, that players should be hand picked.
38. 'The Terminal' (2004, Tom Hanks). Modern day Robinson Crusoe 'lost' in the JFK airport.
39. The Matrix (1999, Part 1, Keanu Reeves). A film which was noted, and became a commercial success for its ground breaking visual effects. For its fantastic presentation of the philosophy of 'Maya', the illusory world, something which is too difficult to convince otherwise. But the character of 'Oracle' is something which I can't digest yet.
40. 'Ray' (2004, Jamie Foxx). Biography of  Ray Charles, a successful American musician who was blind. In a concert, after he has finished the songs, and the organizers won't allow to stop since time remains per contract, he makes a new song spontaneously.
41. 'Les Miserables'. I think the one I saw was the 1935 American movie. One of the numerous cinematic renderings of the epic novel. The film features a prisoner branding scene.
42. 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' (Part 1). Except for the magic the film reminded me of my school days: The splitting into houses, the broom training session (practical class) etc. The self reading letters, and other practical magic were good.

[Document integrity check: Total: 42.]

The best entertainers ever.

1. 'The Fugitive' (1993, Harrison Ford). A classic commercial formula. A high budget chase film with all its thrills and entertainment. The US Marshals chasing a fugitive. Bus mishap, train crashing in, miraculous escape, US Marshalls coming in, systematic fugitive-hunt, fleeing in ambulance, chasing in a chopper, encounter in dam tunnel. It has everything you need in an entertainer. Neat work. The background issue of drug research is relevant. But the film and its climax all are unrealistic.
2. Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991, Dir: James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger). A classic chase film entertainer involving the clash between two super humans; with the lesser powerful one protecting the protagonist, and the second extraordinary one is hunting him. The story uses a scientific sounding solution for justifying the committed and unbeatable super-humans namely humanoid robots. And to answer the "we dont have that kind of technology yet" question, the story teller most appropriately brings them from the future through time travel, and goes through all the pain of building the background story of the apocalypse and the war between man and the machines. For a thrilling entertainer the screenplay is a classic. The hand skinning scene of the Terminator, only a few seconds long, is a classic, and a work of genius. With a specially made 'knife' leaving the red mark on the skin, it is an easy shot, with the major difficulty in the shot being the fabrication of the metal skeleton. The screenplay confines the film to indoors and studios, obviously to reduce the cost for outdoor stunts. The screenplay so cleverly explains this as a need "to avoid the authorities". But this is what brings the film down to the second position in this list, because the topper in the list Fugitive has excellent outdoor stunts. Part 1 is not bad, in-fact is a classic, but did not entertain me. Sequels 3 and 4 are nonsense.
3. Gladiator (2000, Dir: Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe). The opening scenes of the film presents one of the best cinematic portrayals of a Roman battle. The film is also notable for one of the best portrayals of a gladiator fight, as well as the Colosseum itself in film. But unfortunately all this happen to be part of a totally unrealistic and historically unfounded plot. A true commercial build.
4. Unstoppable (2010, Denzel Washington). A film based on the incident of a freight train 'CSX 8888' of CSX Transportation running away unmanned from Walbridge, Ohio in May 15, 2001, and stopped later at Kenton, Ohio after 2 hours and 106 km (66 miles) of un-commanded journey. After failed attempts of derailment and firing at the fuel switch, the train was finally slowed down by a following locomotive to 11mph, when a technician ran along and climbed the engine to finally stop it. While the operation was pretty straight forward and caused no deaths, the film deviates conveniently from the actual events to make it more appealing for a mass. The film adds a helicopter drop attempt which fails and ends in the death of a soldier, and a dangerous slow down attempt from an approaching locomotive that too fails and kills the driver, and heroic attempts by the protagonists to connect the vacuum brakes. In short the film kills a couple of guys and adds more action for the box office. Its interesting to compare this with another Denzel Washington movie Flight which saves lives of people to make it more appealing. The film could not convince the viewers how the train was finally stopped, and why couldn't they do it before? The helicopter attempt looked like it was destined to be a failure. In short the screenplay forcibly and unconvincingly sets the stage for the protagonists to play heroes, two employees with problems, and the heroism fixes them all. This is unrealistic, never happens in life. It is a formula made commercial screenplay, but a successful entertainer. There is an interesting reference to 'Hooters' restaurant in the film, which employs only women as waiters, that too in provocative attire.
5. The Untouchables (1987, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro). A commendable film. A US Treasury officer (before the founding of the Secret Service) is assigned to fight mafia during the 'prohibition'. He gathers a rather amateur team except for a veteran city cop. After a couple of failed attempts the team manages to seize a pretty large shipment of liquor from across the border from Canada.
6. First Blood (1982, Rambo Part 1, Sylvester Stallone). Police attitude & police torture. Psychology of any normal war returnee. What he expects from the society and what he gets. And especially, police attitude towards ex-soldiers. A clean commercial film, but good work. Apart from that there is nothing in this film other than a guerrilla fight, which is of-course very nicely and convincingly made, and commendably in a very low budget. For the good things I could have put it in the former list, but there are commercial elements that are too unrealistic to oversee.
7. Heat (1995, Al Pacino, Robert De-Nero). The post robbery shoot out scene.
8. Catch Me If You Can (2002, Leonardo DiCaprio). The story of an American forgery con Frank Abagnale who was caught by the FBI after a long chase, sent to prison, and later paroled to work as a consultant to FBI on forged documents.
9. 'Tombstone' (1993). An American western featuring real life characters like former US Marshall Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and others. The story of the west while it was still wild but began to be tamed.
10. 'Public Enemies' (2009, Johny Depp). The story a series of inter-state bank robberies which necessitated the founding of a federal investigation agency in the united states, and finally led to the constitution of the FBI.

Some significant attempts which are commendable because of the subject they present, but which failed to become good films.

1. 'In Time' (2011). A great and in someway a scary idea of viewing currency or money or even wealth itself in terms of time. An effective perspective for the socialists to question the accumulation of wealth. While most of the elements in the film could be traced back to Lee Falk's 1975 short story 'Time is money', the film in its wholeness could be considered an unacknowledged remake of the 1987 short film 'The Price of Life'. An idea if taken forward from there had endless possibilities in fantasy-realism, but which the film did not attempt to exploit the least. The screenplay I should say is poorly written and lacks imagination. What the film lacks is pure realism; the writer fails to present the idea in a realistic plot. We can't digest the idea unless we take characters in the plot as robotic beings, put in a fantasy world. 
2. 'The Long Kiss Goodnight' (1996, Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson). From the few scenes I saw, I did not like the film. But it is notable since it plots a CIA schemed terrorist bombing in New York five years before the historical Sept 11, and also says about "blaming it on the Muslims", and about having to really kill 4000 people because it is difficult to fake it. All of these to attract government funding for CIA projects.
3. 'JFK' (1991, Dir: Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner). A parallel investigation into the assassination, of President John F. Kennedy, by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, an attempt to expose a possible cover-up. Lee Harvey Oswald was found responsible by two government investigations: the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Stone described this account as a "counter-myth" to the Warren Commission's "fictional myth."

Films I did not enjoy seeing, but commendable.

1. 'Finding Nemo'. A 2D animation film, kind of a cartoon film, which tells the story of a father-fish from the Indian Ocean going on a journey to Australia to save his son, a little fish Nemo, entrapped in a home aquarium. A nice film which would tell us that keeping fishes in aquarium is not a good act.