Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Endlessly influential and unfailingly entertaining, the original Star Wars is a classic example of a film being even greater than the sum of its many mythic parts. The tale of a young man who leaves the confines of his (moisture) farm to join a rebellion in space, the movie follows restless Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as he finds interplanetary adventure with hermit/Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), reluctantly heroic mercenary Han Solo (Harrison Ford), two droids, and a Wookiee. But, of course, you already knew this, since Star Wars is so ingrained in our culture that even the rare person that hasn't seen the film can liberally quote it and hum a few bars of its epic John Williams score. The mystical Force that the movie reverently refers to was clearly working for mastermind George Lucas when he assembled the project—the archetypal story, snappy dialogue, imaginative production design, and impressive visual and sound effects all work wonderfully together, creating worlds and environs that are completely transporting in their fantastic, if somewhat dated, way. Okay, so many of the peripheral actors give horribly wooden performances, and Hamill is fairly (and arguably fittingly) annoying for the first half of the film—it's splitting Bantha hairs, really, because Star Wars is quite simply one of the most engaging and enjoyable movies ever made. Now if we could just get Lucas to remove those added CGI scenes….