Forrest Gump is often known for its revolutionary use of actual archive footage, which was realized through a laborious augmentation process that at the time changed visual effects in movies. For these shots, Tom Hanks was filmed against a bluescreen, given a grain filter to match the archive footage, then put in with the necessary adjustments, such as when he had to shake John F. Kennedy’s hand. In addition, the art director had to recreate some of these locations exactly and the lips of these past figures had to be morphed to move to a recording replicated to sound like their voices.
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Yet there are more groundbreaking special effects in this ever-popular movie. That includes Lieutenant Dan’s amputated legs, which were realized by actor Gary Sinise wearing bluescreen stockings and elements painted into the frame digitally to sell the illusion. That includes the digital ball put into the ping pong matches. That includes putting Tom Hanks into the movie Birth of a Nation. That includes the crowd around the reflecting pool in Washington DC that was made with only a crowd of around a hundred people. That includes the intro shot of the feather—the longest special effects shot ever done at the time. There’s so much to this one-of-a-kind blockbuster that made it not only a dazzling spectacle but a textbook example of a universal crowd-pleaser that has something in it for everyone.

Based on the book, “Alias Madame Doubtfire” by Anne Fine, director Chris Columbus describes Euphegenia Doubtfire, one of the most beloved movie characters of the 1990s, as “the grandmother you’ve always wanted.” Certain actors offered the role of Mrs. Doubtfire included Warren Beatty and Tim Allen, but it ultimately proved itself to be a role only Robin Williams could bring to life. Every single joke he improvises is absolutely hilarious, and that especially goes for the many deleted/alternate scenes that showcase more of his comedic power! To transform him into his iconic role, Robin had to sit through 3-5 hours of makeup prosthetics every day, and the result turned out so convincing that he wasn’t recognized even by his fellow cast members.
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When working on the screenplay, there was a point when the studio wanted the main divorced couple to get back together in the end, but that idea fell through because those against this ending knew it would’ve been really phony. This turned out to be the right decision—the movie ultimately found that healthy balance between expressing sensitivity toward the topic of divorce while also being one of the funniest pieces of family entertainment ever made. No other movie exists like Mrs. Doubtfire: a textbook example of how to do comedy, as well as a new gold standard on realistic makeup effects to transform an actor into a completely different person of a separate gender and age.

PG-13 (DLS)
Comedy
2 hr. 5 min.

Watch it for FUN
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

Everyone knows Jurassic Park as the pop culture phenomenon that shook up the entire visual effects industry, yet it’s also a spectacular showcase for Steven Spielberg’s expertise in staging suspense. The first scene establishes the danger of the newly revived dinosaurs, the illusion of danger complete with the extra strange flashlight patterns. Then just a few scenes later, Doctor Alan Grant explains how vicious a velociraptor attack can be, using a claw fossil as a visualization, and the next velociraptor seen from there is funnily enough a baby fresh out of the egg. But then a reminder comes up again about the raptors’ destructive power when they gobble up a poor bull to the point where the carrying harness is shredded to ribbons. It expertly pays off in the climax when the velociraptors go after the kids.
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These techniques work as well to make the t-rex attack scene so iconic: the water ripples, the rain, the minimal lighting around the giant lizard, her toe on the wire to indicate the electric fence is out, the one flashlight, it’s a technical marvel in cinematography and editing. So it’s not just the revolutionary digital effects of the dinosaurs that made this so influential to how movies are made—the imagination behind these artists proved how magical a major motion picture can be, and how grand of a spectacle the theatrical experience still has potential for.

PG-13 (DLV)
Action/Sci-fi
2 hr. 7 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

While John Krasinski originally didn’t plan on a Quiet Place sequel, he still picked up on the success of his horror smash-hit by building on all that it had the potential for, including the possibility of this concept turning into a franchise. The expansion of this world devastated by an alien invasion is such a keen exercise in allowing the setting to dictate what the characters’ personalities and struggles are like, particularly in how others outside the movie’s main family were affected. The family by the way is now deprived of their familiar resources at the farm and is stretched beyond their limit, the deaf daughter, Regan, most of all. While this sequel isn’t nearly as focused on silent communication as the first movie, Regan takes on more of a protagonist role to inspire other girls, women, and the entire Deaf community.
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This form of entertainment is accessible to everyone, with large action set pieces that required a lot more hands-on work than the first movie. The open-endedness of the finale likewise proves that there’s still more room for this concept to grow into a third installment, or perhaps even a television series. But even if those don’t ever happen, A Quiet Place Part II shall solidify its legacy as an ideal blockbuster to set the standards for how to create effective popcorn entertainment while also crafting a narrative that delves into the psychology of loss and survival.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 37 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

A Quiet Place only has 2-3 minutes of dialogue, with a screenplay of only 67 pages, but it still works tremendously as a blockbuster that continues to challenge what defines popcorn entertainment. Its post-apocalyptic world is built with some frightening sound effects, dark lighting, and a slow-moving camera that are masterfully implemented to generate a sense of urgency. It’s a genius work of utilizing ambiance instead of dialogue to tell the story, and it had proven so effective that the audience in the movie theater was reportedly too afraid to eat their popcorn, thus making noise, while watching the movie.
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When John Krasinski was brought on to direct, write, and star in this groundbreaking exercise of orchestrating thrills, he pulled greatly from his own experience raising his newborn daughter. His efforts with this hefty project grew even more personal when his casting decisions relied on instinct rather than auditions, as his decision to cast his wife Emily Blunt to play his character’s wife added to the impact of the film’s major events. Also in this cast was Millicent Simmonds, a deaf actress who played the deaf daughter, and she along with a deaf coach on set ensured that all ASL communication between the family was clear and accurate. Ultimately, no movie exists quite like this one, and no movie may ever be quite like it either. Except of course, for its sequel.

PG-13 (V)
Horror/Sci-fi
1 hr. 30 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to feel AFRAID.

It demanded an immense amount of technology to create… to fit a vision that had never been done before in cinema, yet Titanic defied all odds to become the most successful movie ever made, pushing the medium forward with its use of old and new visual effects tricks. For the ship itself, a 775-foot-long replica of the exterior was built and broken into three segments that could be tilted at different angles. Some of the elements in the replica were actually made of rubber for the scenes where people were falling during the ship’s destruction, and if it couldn’t be made of rubber without looking totally fake, human dummies were used for padding instead.

​There also were several miniatures of the ship, and for the extreme-wide shots, mocap actors created some people to populate the decks, making this one of the first movies ever to use this technology. But besides just the immense innovation of digital effects, this movie formulated genius approaches to old-school effects too, such as breath created practically by actors against a black background and then added in post-production to make the actors look like they were out in the cold. So while the movie’s love story is groanworthy, the main character is a selfish brat, the message is preachy, and the historical accuracies are numerous, James Cameron’s ultra-smash-hit motion picture deserves its reputation for making blockbusters today so extravagant.

PG-13 (DLSNV)
Historic/Romance
3 hr. 14 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

In this grand finale to the iconic trilogy, more props and costumes were built than what the other two movies offered, with more CGI utilized in ways never seen before. The most beautiful setting in this movie, or any of the three movies, is Minas Tirith, with its exterior made mostly out of a miniature set piece, and scenic designs that are of the finest artistic craftsmanship. Settings like that, along with the epic musical score, help make the film feel every bit as huge as Middle Earth should be. While Gollum returns as viciously cunning as ever, more digital creatures make a proper debut to showcase all that CGI had the potential for.

​The Mûmakil set the stage for one of the most complex war battles in cinema’s entire history, while Shelob the giant spider is animated in a way like no other CGI creature up until that point. Even the Army of the Dead, which wasn’t even necessary for the plot in the first place, was present to run the extra mile in showcasing how much could be done in combining digital effects with innovative costume design. It’s so stunning how every single scene in this final movie of the trilogy is its own visual effects showcase, proving why The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, along with its two predecessors, are perhaps the most influential films of the 2000s.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
3 hr. 21 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

​The next adaptation in J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy could not possibly top what the first one did, right? Bzzt, wrong! The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in fact introduced even more new visual effects techniques that left a permanent effect on blockbuster movies. More enormous set pieces were built on location, such as Rohan, Isengard, and Helm’s Deep, while many more sets were built completely from scratch inside a soundstage, such as the Dead Marshes. Plus, a massive portion of the third act’s runtime is taken up by a battle at Helm’s Deep, which fully utilized the tools at its disposal: the heavy rainfall, the special makeup effects, the complex camera movements in the air, the miniature sets, the practical fight choreography, it’s mesmerizing to imagine the production challenges posed within every single frame of this sequence.

​Plus, Gollum is one of the first-ever instances of motion capture technology in film, and it could never have worked without Andy Serkis’ performance behind the mocap dots to bring so much humanity into the role. Furthermore, the CGI Ents move like no other digital creation had looked before, especially during the scene where they attack Isengard together. The computerized effects may have been the accomplishment most celebrated in this trilogy, but it’s ultimately more noteworthy how a massive project such as this could have possibly been completed in the first place.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
2 hr. 59 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

For so long, everyone thought adapting the entire Lord of the Rings book series into live-action motion pictures was impossible, yet Peter Jackson did it, hooking audiences in with this first of the epic trilogy. Under his direction, an immense plethora of previously established special effects techniques were expanded upon, and those new techniques went on to inspire other movie studios with their tentpole blockbusters. Today, these originally out-of-the-box approaches to combining digital and practical effects are still at work in the industry and are still growing fast.

​Among those techniques included the miniature sets surrounded by digital backgrounds, yet the biggest achievement was the use of forced perspective to make the actors playing the Hobbits appear tiny when next to the other human characters. To sell the illusion, duplicate versions of the same set were built, with one at a smaller scale when filming shots of the regular-sized human characters. Even then, the extra mile was run: digital shots combined Ian McKellen and Ian Holm into the same frame and had them exchange props with one another, extras with giant animatronic hands passed by the actors, and dummies were used when the Hobbit actors’ faces didn’t have to be seen. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring set the stage for what the trilogy did for movies—now any filmmaker can feel comfortable with adapting anything.

PG-13 (V)
Fantasy/Action
2 hr. 58 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

This deserves the same type of praise as the previous editions of the saga: it’s a groundbreaking spectacle that builds upon the potential for special effects in blockbuster films. The precisely crafted action includes the throne room battle where Rey and Kylo Ren team up together against Supreme Leader Snoke’s guards, a sequence built without any quick editing or jerky camera movements. Even when there isn’t action going on, the engineering wizardry is put on full display. Just one of the locations the crew filmed on was a special effect spectacle in and of itself… the island of Ahch-To.

​​On this island full of rough weather and terrain conditions, the struggle to keep puffins out of each shot was just one of those many environmental factors that made production much more challenging. Yet these challenges gladly weren’t enough to make the crew’s efforts suffer, in fact, they encouraged further creativity, as the solution to eliminating the puffins resulted in the newest alien creation: the cute little porgs! Director Rian Johnson however wanted to go the extra mile with building the environment of Ahch-To, and decided to include extra shots of the porgs made out of complex puppets, with the controls removed by bluescreen technology. It’s really quite amazing how with each rewatch of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the more masterful techniques come to light, and the deeper the viewing experience becomes.

PG-13 (LV)
Sci-fi/Fantasy
2 hr. 32 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.