RoboCop, 1987

Paul Verhoeven’s satirical sci-fi masterpiece, like many of the films on this list, is great for many reasons, not least of which because it works both as pure entertainment and as a film replete with meaning that rewards repeat viewings and deeper consideration. (If you want to dip your toe into just some of the lenses through which people have deeply considered this indelible film, check out the hefty “thematic analysis” section of its Wikipedia entry.) RoboCop gives us an absolutely iconic hero, exceptional on every level, from the visual design of his suit to the sound his footsteps make. It gives us eye-popping special effects (with terrific stop-motion animation charm), wonderfully over-the-top villains, and hilarious situations, like the scene in which a corporate stooge is gunned down by a “malfunctioning” ED-209 that presents violence with all the glee of a Looney Tunes cartoon.

And yet somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) the ludicrousness of so much of RoboCop, it maintains a beating human heart. Consider the scene in which Murphy, the severely wounded (declared dead) cop who remains haunted by his humanity after being crudely repurposed by the vile OCP, gets help from his partner Lewis to recalibrate his targeting computer by shooting little bottles of baby food, how much it speaks to everything Murphy has lost. Like its hero, RoboCop has a lot more going on under the hood than many suspect. — Carolyn Petit