Minority Report, 2002

First off, Minority Report is fun as hell, a man-on-the-run story that belongs alongside The Fugitive as a terrific example of a yarn about an innocent person caught up in the wheels of a justice system gone awry (or perhaps one that’s just fundamentally fucked from top to bottom) and who will do anything to extricate himself and prove his innocence. Tom Cruise does so much running here, y’all! And like many of the movies collected here, Minority Report is a masterpiece of visual cohesion and worldbuilding, creating a technological future so rich with detail that it feels like it would stretch on if you picked a direction and kept on walking. (In fact, in writing this entry I just discovered that there’s a whole Wikipedia page devoted to “technologies in Minority Report” which explores how the film features “numerous fictional future technologies which have proven prescient.”)

And yet, as much as sites love to write lists covering all the things a given movie “got right” or “got wrong,” it’s not sci fi’s role to accurately predict the future; it’s to tell stories that explore the human condition in compelling ways that other genres often can’t, and Minority Report is one of the best of the 21st century in that regard. One of three films on this list adapted from the work of Philip K. Dick (the others being Blade Runner and Total Recall), Spielberg’s breathless sci-fi thriller shares with those its propensity to make us think deeply about how we experience fundamental elements of life. It also has an amazing, star-making performance from a young Colin Farrell, one of Minority Report’s most impressive special effects. — Carolyn Petit