If you've never been, the country of Viet Nam is a beautiful place. It is filled with lush landscapes, friendly people, and a rich cultural heritage. It also looks fantastic on fire.

Watching the film is like playing Thunderhorse on Expert ? no matter how hard you try, you feel yourself losing it halfway through. As you settle into Apocalypse Now, we open with a peaceful tree line, helicopters gliding through the air. Then, before your seat is warm, napalm starts raining from the skies, The Doors playing their hearts out as hundreds of acres of jungle burn. This is a complicated and interesting plot line that took an original release and a Redux to tell, a real classic in modern criticism on war and the unending struggle of man against man. But where do we begin? The rain of fire. Kudos, Francis Ford Coppola.

Before launching one of the most celebrated trilogies of all time (followed by one of the most disappointing trilogies of all time), Star Wars was just a little film with low expectations, hoping to make its way in the world. Did George Lucas realize he was about to create a domino effect of movies, merchandise, theme novels, celebrations, terrible animated series, terrible animated features, and other baffling off-shoots?

Of course not, which makes the opening to A New Hope all the better. After opening crawl, Star Wars flies directly into a the space adventure equivalent of an armored truck chasing down a toddler on a tricycle. Spaceships of all shapes and sizes! Cannon fire in all directions! This empire is in-sane!

Dolph Lundgren. Jean-Claude Van Damme. Tongues numbed with novocaine to produce that authentic Eastern European tough guy mumble. Remember that scene in Being John Malkovich where Lester (Orson Bean) says, "I've been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech"? That's how Dolph and JC feel all the time.

Then again, who needs dialogue when we have action-packed sequences from fade-in to fade-out? Just picture it ? the darkened Vietnamese jungle, pouring rain, terrified soldiers scrambling to escape the madness that is become Sergeant Scott (Lundgren). Private Deveraux (Van Damme) braves the dark to find that Scott is making neat work of exterminating an entire village of innocents. And who amongst us failed to shed a single tear when Scott and Deveraux, both men of honor, are forced to shoot one another rather than back down.

Some movies are so stylistic that we end up drawing a line in the sand, movies that came before and movies that came after. The Matrix is visually one of those movies. As soon as the movie starts, we're in a dark and seedy motel with the slick 'n' shiny Carrie-Anne Moss sitting at her computer. The cops move in to apprehend, but no, Lieutenant, your men are already dead.

And so begins a romper ride of ass kicking, building jumping, window diving, and let's not forget the first time we saw that 360 degree panning shot. Does that even have a name? Sure do - the Matrix style shot. Anyone who tells you they didn't get goosebumps the first time they saw that camerawork is a bold faced liar. Tell them so.

You know when you have that dream where you're looking at a playground full of children swinging and playing in the sand, then suddenly a nuclear blast reduces everyone and everything you've ever known or loved to statues of ash before being scattered to the winds of a man vs. machine holocaust?

With such a large gap between the original Terminator movie and its (first) sequel, it was important for James Cameron to establish right away where we were going. After watching some cute kids swinging in the sunlight, we fade into the nightmare that is the fate of humankind. Naked terminators everywhere playing laser tag. Human soldiers avoiding flying machines with search lights. Less than five minutes in, we know where the bulk of production money went to - special effects. And all we can do is say, "Thank you."

Movies that open with high impact action aren't always feel-gooders. Sometimes we have to be reminded right away that war is a terrible, terrible thing. So terrible, in fact, that we need 30 minutes of realistic combat.

The sea splashes about as the gates are lowered and the casualties begin. A soldier is shot straight through the helmet. Tom Hanks is temporarily deafened. Soldiers scramble and hide behind the giant jacks. That awful moment we see the soldier searching aimlessly for his arm. Then there's a man on fire, and he kills a guy with a trident.

When I saw Casino Royale for the first time, I remember sitting through Chris Cornell's You Know My Name, reading the credits, and saying, "Free running stunts performed by? Man, they give credit to anyone in the opening credits these days." Then I saw the beginning of the movie and realized, "Man, that's free running."

Sebastien Foucan is to parkour what Jackie Chan is to martial arts. Nimble feet, jumping through tight spaces, high ... octane ... movement ? by the time the sequence ends, you're half convinced you could run up the side of a building. It looks so easy. But Foucan gives Craig a run for his money, and it doesn't hurt to see 007 sweat from time to time.