1981 · George Miller · 95 min · Action Sci-Fi
The film that defined post-apocalyptic cinema, delivering vehicular mayhem of such visceral intensity and mythic scope that four decades of imitators haven't diminished its impact.
1995 · Mel Gibson · 178 min · Historical Epic / Drama
Braveheart takes enormous liberties with Scottish history and doesn't apologize for any of them, because it's not trying to be a documentary. It's trying to make you feel something, and on that front it succeeds completely. The battle sequences still carry a visceral impact that most modern war films, with all their digital tools, struggle to match. Gibson's direction finds the emotional core of a rebellion story and holds onto it for nearly three hours without losing the audience. Historians will wince at details throughout, but the raw power of the filmmaking earns the film its place among the great epics.
2016 · Mel Gibson · 139 min · War / Drama
Hacksaw Ridge is a film of two halves that probably shouldn't work together but somehow do. The earnest, occasionally hokey first act builds a foundation of conviction that makes the brutally visceral second half feel like more than just combat spectacle. Andrew Garfield's Desmond Doss is genuinely inspiring without becoming a plaster saint, and Gibson's direction of the battle sequences ranks among the most intense war filmmaking of the 2010s. The tonal whiplash between the romantic first hour and the ultraviolent second can be jarring, and the early scenes rely on familiar formulas. But the central idea, that one man's refusal to carry a weapon can constitute its own form of courage, lands with real force.
1987 · Richard Donner · 109 min · Action Comedy
The film that defined the buddy cop genre, pairing Mel Gibson's unhinged intensity with Danny Glover's weary warmth in a formula so effective that it became the template for decades of imitators.
2002 · M. Night Shyamalan · 106 min · Thriller
Signs is a masterfully tense alien invasion film told from the ground level, through the eyes of one family on a Pennsylvania farm. Shyamalan's gift for building suspense from silence and shadow is on full display, even if the film's resolution doesn't satisfy everyone who made the journey.