BONUS: America's Birthday: The 30 Best Movies of the 21st Century
BONUS - 4th of July Weekend special Verdict with Ted Cruz: America's Birthday: The 30 Best Movies of the 21st Century ποΈ Verdict with Ted Cruz | 4th of July Special: Hollywood, Patriotism & the Power of Storytelling In this Independence Day special of Verdict with Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz delivers a bold critique of Hollywood and the mainstream media, arguing that the New York Times' film rankings prioritize political agendas over compelling storytelling and entertainment. Cruz claims the list reflects elitist, left-leaning values, often ignoring patriotic, inspirational, or widely beloved films. π₯ Cruz’s Alternative Film ListTo counter the NYT’s picks, Cruz unveils his own curated list of 30 powerful films from the past 25 years that celebrate heroism, patriotism, and moral clarity. His selections include cinematic classics like Gladiator, The Patriot, A Beautiful Mind, Saving Private Ryan, American Sniper, Hidden Figures, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar. π¬ Personal Favorites & Movie MemoriesCruz also shares his all-time favorite films—The Princess Bride, The Godfather, Scarface, and Fletch—and opens up about his love for musicals and classic comedies. He recounts heartfelt stories, including taking his mother to Broadway and watching Dallas Buyers Club and Saving Private Ryan. πΊπΈ Cultural Commentary & Media BiasThis episode dives deep into the disconnect between Hollywood and everyday Americans, the cultural impact of cinema, and why storytelling matters more than ever in shaping public perception. π Whether you're a film buff, a patriot, or just curious about the intersection of politics and pop culture, this episode offers a thought-provoking take on what makes a movie truly great. π Listen now and celebrate the 4th of July with a fresh perspective on film, freedom, and American values. Be sure to follow and subscribe to Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to follow the show on social media so you never miss a moment! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It's so nice to have you listening today on this 4th of July weekend.
And we're going to have a little fun with today's show because it is, look, 4th of July, a lot of families hanging out, having fun, watching movies.
And there was a list that came out, and it irritated Senator Ted Cruz, the point where we're now doing a show over it, which makes me laugh.
I love this.
We're gonna you're gonna get to see the real Center Ted Cruz in this show, uh, which makes me very happy.
Center, this list came out, and you were a little cranky about it, and I love it.
Well, let me say to everyone, I hope you're having a fantastic Fourth of July weekend.
I hope you're celebrating America's birthday.
I hope you're you're grilling hot dogs and burgers in the backyard and playing with your kids.
By the way, if you are grilling burgers, I hope you're doing a better job of it than Chuck Schumer does.
Do not put the cheese on the burger while the burger is still raw.
That that that is uh that that's a rookie mistake.
Uh but if you're anything like me, holiday weekends, uh, what I love to do is is go to the movies when I was a kid.
I went to the movies with my my mom, my dad all the time.
And I love movies, and it happened this past week that the New York Times put out this list of the top 30 best films of the 21st century, according to over 500 actors, directors, and other names in Hollywood.
And and I gotta say, this is the worst list I have ever seen.
This is a list of a bunch of politicized, woke, effete, out of touch, Hollywood types, and no wonder the movie business is in trouble because most of these movies nobody's seen, and the movies that people go to don't make the list.
So I'm just gonna read you their top 30.
Starting with number 30.
Lost in Translation, Arrival, The Dark Night, Adaptation, Anatomy of a Fall, Phantom Thread, Her, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenon Bombs, Wolf of Wall Street, Zodiac, Ithumama Tam Ying,
Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, City of God, Inglorious Bastards, Children of Men, The Zone of Interest, Mad Max Fury Road, The Social Network, Spirited Away, Get Out, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
No Country for Old Men, Moonlight, In the Mood for Love, There Will Be Blood, Mulholland Drive, and the number one movie of the last 25 years, according to the New York Times is Parasite.
Now, I gotta say, there are there's some good movies on that list.
They're not they're not all dogs, but number one, I'd be willing to bet uh of that list, have you seen more than five of those movies, Ben?
Uh, I have seen maybe five.
There's a couple like Inglorious Bastards that I've I've watched.
That was pretty good.
I'll throw that one in there.
But overall, I would have to Google the majority of the list you just read, right?
Like the majority, I'd have to Google and make what is this?
They were not on my top list at all.
Well, it it is a pretentious list, and and it's a list with an agenda, and I actually liked so so Twitter was going back and forth about it, and and there's this fellow named Mike Henry who who asked ChatGPT to analyze that list of film, look for similarities, and rank the films by how woke they are.
And it came up with uh Tier One, these are straight up ideological vehicles.
Message is greater than story.
And according to ChatGPT, number five Moonlight is about black queer identity, poverty, masculinity, deconstruction.
Get out, number eight is about white liberal racism, body autonomy, and performative allyship.
Number one, Parasite is about anti-capitalism, class warfare, rich equals evil symbolism.
Number 12, the zone of interest, Holocaust, reimagined via ambient horror, villainy through banality.
Number 17, Broke Back Mountain, least surprising movie on the list if if Hollywood was putting it together, and that is uh according to ChatGPT about queer repression, masculinity, and rural stigma.
Number 18, Itobamatam Ying, Sexual Liberation, Political Awakening, Class Divide, and Number 13, Children of Men, Antifascist Immigration, Dystopian Surveillance Society.
That's what they went with.
Politics, instead of good movies, instead of movies people like, instead of movies that inspire you, instead of movies that make you laugh, instead of movies that make you hug your kids.
And so I decided to come up with my own list.
I will say a number of reporters called and said, All right, all right, you you don't like this one.
What's your alternative?
And listen, we're we're gonna put out a list of 30.
And I'm not gonna claim it is the definitive list of the 30 greatest films of the last 25 years, but these are 30 excellent movies that came out in the last 25 years.
And I tried to think about how to do it, uh, because you know, I do actually have a daydream job, but I'm not a film critic.
Uh so what I did is I went and printed out a list of all of the nominees for the Academy Awards for Best Picture, each of the last 25 years.
I figured, okay, that's a good place to start.
And starting in 2001 for the 2000 movies, the winner of Best Picture in 2001.
Any idea, Ben?
No clue.
Gladiator, one of the best movies ever made.
It is in my top 10 all time, if not top five, and these idiots didn't put Gladiator on the list.
That doesn't surprise me, though.
Like, I feel like if it's a movie that just makes you smile or makes you excited or happy, you're like, no, no, no, can't have that movie on the list, right?
Like, because that would just be too normal and sane.
Gladiator was an extraordinary, a fantastic movie.
I can't watch it enough times.
It's it's perfectly done.
You know what also came out in 2000?
It didn't get nominated to the Academy Awards, but it came out the same year.
You know what movie?
The Patriot.
Which is another fantastic movie movie.
Amazing movie.
It is an amazing movie.
It also makes my top ten.
It's not on their list.
Both of them, so 2000 was a good year for movies.
You had both The Patriot and Gladiator come out that year.
Fantastic, uplifting, nowhere on their list.
How about 2001?
2001, just from the list of Academy Award nominees.
The winner was a Beautiful Mind, which is a great, powerful, touching movie, doesn't make their list.
Also that year, and and the Academy Award didn't win it, but came out that year was Moulin Rouge, which was a musical, it was fun, it was interesting.
Uh I laughed.
It's a good movie.
All right, doesn't make their list.
How about 2002?
2002.
Uh there are two of the movies that the winner for Best Picture was Chicago.
Chicago is a great musical.
Uh you you've got Rick Richard Gere.
I I still like when he when he is is trying to get out of trouble, and goes, and now a tap dance.
And I will say more than once when I uh have been in trouble at home with Heidi, I sort of think of Richard Gere going, and now a tap dance.
Uh also that year.
All right, I got 2002.
Hold on.
Hold on, we gotta hit pause here.
I'm I'm noticing a trend.
Hold on, you're not getting out of jail on this one.
All right.
I got it.
There's a trend here.
Are you a Broadway musical guy?
I'm not making fun.
I just have never asked you this question before.
I've gone to I don't know, maybe four or five, you know, plays.
Hamilton's one of them, for example, that I've seen.
Wicked was another one.
Most of the time it's go to New York with with my wife, and and we'll go see a play because that's on her list.
But I I'm noticing a trend here.
Do you like will you go to the Kennedy Center this year for some of the plays?
Absolutely, hell yes.
And in fact, I have already.
I saw Les just a couple of weeks ago in the Kennedy Center.
It was fantastic, Les.
Les Mis or Hamilton are, I think, the two greatest musicals ever done.
I love Les Miz.
Uh, in fact, I'll tell you a story in in just a minute about Les back uh when I was living for the summer in New York after my first year of law school.
I'm living there, and I send my mother an airplane ticket via FedEx, fly her to New York, take her to Le Miz, take her to see uh uh Camelot and take her out to a fancy dinner.
We had a great weekend, just just my mom and me.
Also in 2002 was Gangs in New York.
It didn't win Best Picture, but great film, Daniel Day Lewis, rough, rugged, really well done.
The next year, 2003, the best picture winner was Lord of the Rings Return of the King.
All three of the Lord of the Rings movies came out in the 2000s.
All three were nominated for Best Picture, only number three won.
None of them make the list.
All three of them are great movies.
Uh Fantastic adaptations of probably the greatest fantasy book ever written.
All right, let's move forward to 2006.
2006, a movie that came out that is not on this list and should be is a movie called Amazing Grace.
Amazing Grace, if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you go see it.
I'd recommend you take your kids to it.
Amazing Grace is the true story of William Wilberforce.
William Wilberforce was a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and he led the fight to end the slave trade in Britain.
And Britain at the time, the slave trade was the leading industry in the UK.
And Wilbur Force is a young MP, he leads the fight, and it is inspirational, it is powerful.
And at the end of his life, he succeeds in getting the slave trade abolished.
And do you know where the title comes from, Ben?
Where's that?
The title of the movie, Amazing Grace, comes from, of course, the great gospel hymn, Amazing Grace.
The person who wrote it, who was a friar, was friends with Wilberforce.
And before he became a friar, he had been the captain of a slave ship.
And you think of the words of Amazing Grace.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.
And you think like it is hard to think of a more evil profession than being the captain of a slave ship.
He had murdered people, he had whipped people, he had obviously enslaved people, and yet he repented and and and became a friar and gave his life to Christ.
And that you think of the guilt and horror and evil that man had committed to write maybe the greatest greatest hymn ever written.
That's where the title comes from.
It's from a book by Eric Mataxis.
Fantastic movie, of course, not on the New York Times list.
You look at these movies that are left off, and I'm a I'm a true story guy.
I I love true stories.
There's some movies that I just I think of instantly.
If someone said, Hey, give me 10 movies that you gotta see.
Uh one of those, you know I don't know if you ever watched it, Man on Fire with Denzel Washington, true story, actually.
Great movie.
Incredible movie.
Uh that and I go to those and Saving Private Ryan.
I I go, um you know, the the these are the types of movies that I watch over and over again, and it's like Hollywood hates them and they were successful.
Well, and Saving Private Ryan is another phenomenal movie, and and and I went last year to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and actually got to meet Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
And and look, both of their politics are are left, but I said to both of them, thank you.
Thank you for bringing bringing World War II alive to so many people.
And I will say the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan went when they're landing on that beach and the war.
I I will tell you that genuinely changed my view about war.
Listen, I've never I've never served in the military, I've never been in combat.
And you know, look, when you're growing up as a kid, as a young boy, you're like, okay, if I was in war, I'd be tough and I'd try to survive.
And and one of the things that opening 30 minutes for me like made me see in a way I never had before was how utterly random it can be.
One guy is dead because his head was in the wrong place.
And if his head had been six inches to the left or right, he'd still be alive, and just the utter randomness and brutality of it.
And I'll tell you something interesting, Ben.
My uncle uh was a Vietnam vet, and and he spent about 40 years as a counselor at the VA.
And he said when the movie Saving Private Ryan came out, it was the first movie that had gotten the sound of warfare right, the sound of gunshots and ricochet.
And and my uncle said he had vets who'd been at Vietnam and the movie triggered their PTSD.
They were back in combat, and he they would come in and and and seek counseling because it brought them back.
And I mean, that's the power of cinema to trans transport you to a different life, a different time, a different world, and and and it's it's powerful and beautiful if it's not just just a agenda for left-wing propagandizing.
Yeah, and and you go back to as you mentioned, propagandizing, and and that's one of the core things here.
I I also look at some of these movies that are on this list, and they do have just a disdain also for family.
Did you notice that?
Like it's it's the extreme of Hollywood that they're promoting is quote the best.
No, I think that's exactly right.
Um and it's there is well look, the fact that people don't go see these movies, people like to see movies.
There, there are a lot of big blockbusters.
It it's just uh the the folks running Hollywood don't actually like anything that that moviegoers go see.
You know, if you move on to to 2007, 2008, 2009, a couple that were on the list.
Um No Country for Old Men, great movie.
I agree with them on that.
There will be Blood, another excellent movie.
Uh one of the movies they left off was The Departed.
Departed is a great, great story and and and fighting organized crime, and it really well done.
And then another one they included that I agree that I agree with is The Dark Knight.
And and The Dark Knight, I gotta say, was a fantastic superhero movie, yes, but but Heath Ledger's Joker was twisted.
It I I think it will go down as one of the greatest villain portrayals uh in cinema.
It's right right up there with with Hannibal Lecter.
It's right up there with Darth Vader of like classic all times, the the creepy nonchalance of the evil of Heath Ledger and Dark Knight was was was truly spectacular.
All right, center, let's get back into it.
I I do want to ask real quick.
You're if you were on a desert island, this is when I love doing shows like this.
You're on a desert island, you can only take five DVDs with you.
I'm not even giving you Blu-ray, but I'm giving you above VHS quality.
Only five.
What five movies are you taking with you and why?
Oh, look, my number one favorite movie is the The Princess Bride.
I've probably seen it a hundred times or more.
Um I would take the Godfather trilogy, and I would take Scarface.
Those are my top three.
Uh I might well throw Fletch onto that list.
Fletch is pretty fabulous.
Uh great, great movie.
Uh, funny as as as all get out.
Um early Eddie Murphy.
I love just about everything.
But Beverly Hills Copper trading places are probably two of the very best early Eddie Murphy that are just hysterical.
Um so that and Gladiator might well make the list.
So, you know, I'm sort of rejecting your hypo and taking more than five, but but but that's that that would be the bag from which I was pulling.
And and you?
All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you there's a difference.
There's a difference between you and I, by the way, because in AIDS, this is when it shows.
Senator, I have never seen the movie Fletch.
I just Googled it as you said it.
It came out in 1985.
I was four years old.
You were obviously older than I am.
Uh, and we're able to see it.
So I don't even know what Fletch is about.
Okay.
Ben, I love you, but you're a communist, you're a Philistine.
You you have been raised by wolves in a cave.
Um go watch Fletch.
It's Chevy Chase, it is hysterical.
I've probably seen Fletch 50 times.
And and Ben, you know well Grant, who heads up my security detail.
Grant and I are about the same age.
And and I think the only way Grant and I communicate is in movie quotes, most of which are from Fletch.
Like it's it's every line of it, much like The Princess Bride, every line of Fletch is exquisite.
So it's Chevy Chase, but what's the premise of the movie?
Uh so Fletch, Erwin Fletcher is an uh investigative reporter for the LA Times.
But it's a comedy, and so he he uh goes undercover, but he wears all sorts of different uh outfits on the beach, and he's investigating drug dealing on the beach.
Uh, but it's just it's funny as hell.
There are all sorts of lines.
Uh Love Your Body, Larry, it's all ball bearings these days.
None of it, this will make sense without uh I will say one scene that that any everyone who knows the movie knows is Moon River.
Uh I I will say that that that would that would be when uh when Fletch was getting an exam uh and uh he he does does uh say to the doctor uh ever do time, Doc?
At the end of the day, he said, I'm sorry, I I couldn't find anything.
Well, it's not for a lack of looking.
All right, you you convinced me now I need to watch this movie.
I I just hope they still have it out there.
It may have to borrow.
Do you have it on VHS or is it or is it like beta case?
That's probably Betamax.
Like there's a point where Fletch falls asleep and he's sleeping and dreaming and he's watching a Lakers game, and he and he Erwin Fletcher, the star of the Lakers, 6'5, 6'9 with the Afro.
And it has him flying through the air and like biting people's arms and defense.
It's it is one of the best comedies ever written.
But it is not in the last quarter century.
Back to the Hollywood list.
Let's get to 2008.
Inglorious Bastards.
They put it on their list.
They're right.
Terrific movie, Quentin Tarantino.
Just about everything Tarantino does is great.
He's a fabulous writer.
But in Glorious Bastards is a great pro-America film about killing Nazis or Nazis, as as uh Brad put Brad Pitt puts it, Nazis killing me some Nazis.
I mean, it's it's exquisite and powerful.
Um, go to 2011, another movie that came out in 2011 with Brad Pitt in it, Moneyball.
You're a big sports guy.
Moneyball, both the book and the movie.
Changed true story, but changed how everyone thought about baseball and putting a baseball team together.
All right, so you're gonna laugh.
So at Moneyball came out, and I I I love again true stories.
Like if it says true story, there's a 99% chance I'm gonna go see it.
I love sports.
The movie comes out, and uh I was so excited to see it.
I kid you not, my my wife fell asleep in the movie, and I was like rivets.
She's like, that was one of the most boring movies I've ever seen in my entire life.
And I was like, How did you fall asleep?
Like this kid figured it out, and then like he got traded for him, and it's Brad Pitt.
Like, you should have just stayed awake because it's Brad Pitt, for goodness sakes.
And she so to this day, I don't think she's ever watched the entire movie.
I've probably watched that movie every time I'm on United, you and I fly a ton.
You're on United probably 99% of the time.
And Moneyball's on there right now on their flights.
And so I literally watched it like five days ago.
And and I'll tell you, by the way, Heidi falls asleep in just about every movie.
I mean, she she doesn't do movies, and she can't sit still for two hours.
And if you put her in in in a dark room with the lights out, she'll she'll be asleep within 10 minutes.
Now you like going to movies, by the way.
I like being in the theater.
I like the big screen, the sound, the popcorn, every bit of it.
I like the real experience.
All right, now Senator, this isn't making her break a question.
It's gonna it's gonna show how true you are to the theater experience.
Are you a must-get there for the previews movie goer, or do you say the movie says it starts at 8 15, so I'm gonna get there at 828.
I usually sit through the previews, but I I don't cry if I'm a few minutes late and miss a preview or two, but but I'm usually there pretty close to on time.
On the back end, I stay till the very end of the credits.
I will not leave.
I view it as like there's a complete experience that the artist have put this together, and and so many of the movies have like a uh a tiny bit of content at the end of the credits anyway.
And I learned something.
I read the credits and I learned something.
I bet you half the movies I I see.
I learned, oh, that was so-and-so, or the or you you just find interesting things in the credits.
Hey, I love that.
It's you're giving credit to those that made the movie well played on that one.
All right, let's get back to the list and and where they got another one, maybe right.
All right, 2012, Zero Dark 30.
That did not make their list, of course not, because it's a true story of taking out Osama bin Laden that makes you cheer for America.
That could never make their list of the of the best movies because America's got to be the bad guy.
One of my top five, by the way, on my list is Zero Dark 30.
I I bought the Blue Ray right when it came out, paid full price because that's how much I want to support movies like that being made.
Amen.
All right, let's go to 2013.
The winner of Best Picture that year was 12 Years a Slave.
Great story, true story uh uh about a uh an African American man who was who was kidnapped and and sold into slavery and spent 12 years as a slave and escape.
It it's an amazing story, and it's a true story.
Didn't make their list.
Uh The Wolf of Wall Street, that made their list, and I agree.
Wolf of Wall Street was terrific.
It was fun, great acting.
That's on their list and belongs there.
But I'll tell you what didn't make their list.
Same year.
Dallas Byers Club.
Fantastic movie, another true story, and and Dallas Byers Club, Matthew McConaughey is the late.
Yeah.
So you've heard this story.
I I spent several years ago, got got to s hang out with with Matthew McConaughey and spend spend a weekend with him and his wife and his kids and uh another couple of their kids and our kids.
And and great guy, really enjoyed getting to know him, hanging out with him.
But we talked a lot, and we talked about Dallas Byers Club, and it's a true story about uh a guy in the rodeo in Fort Worth who gets injured and has a blood transfusion, and he ends up getting HIV AIDS.
And this is early on in the AIDS crisis, and and so he's he's dying, there are not a lot of treatments.
Uh, and and you're right, for the movie McConnell, he lost, I don't know, like 40, 50 pounds.
He was emaciated by the end of the movie.
But he began driving down to Mexico and buying AIDS medicines on the black market in Mexico and bringing them back to Dallas and Fort Worth and selling them to AIDS patients, mostly mostly gay men who had contracted AIDS in the 80s.
And I was I was telling Matthew, I said, you know, that is a profoundly conservative movie.
And and and he didn't he didn't quite see it through that lens, but you know, he asked me, well, what do you mean?
I say, look, it's all about government regulations, ridiculous regulations from Washington, that made it illegal for people to get life-saving medicines, medicines they needed to have, they they had a right to have.
I'm a big believer in right to try.
I think the FBA FDA puts huge barriers to getting medicines we ought to be able to have.
And it's a true story of in in the face of that oppressive regulation.
This guy can't just went down to Mexico and saved countless people's lives.
It's just a fantastic movie.
All right, so what's next on the list?
All right, in 2014, American Sniper, another true story, the story of Chris Kyle, someone actually I got to know the Navy's deadliest sniper that we ever had, sadly was killed uh by a fellow veteran with PTSD.
Uh terrific movie.
Another movie that same year was The Imitation Game, another another true story of Alan Turing, that the scientist who who cracked the Nazis code and helped us win World War II.
Great movie.
Neither of those make their lists.
Uh instead, they go with movies where America's the bad guy, and and anyone fighting to defend America is especially the bad guy.
All right, so we've done 20.
We have 10 more to do uh uh of movies that came out in the 21st century.
In 2016, two movies in particular.
Number one, Hidden Figures, great movie, terrific movie.
I I took my my wife, my daughters, my mom to see.
True story of the African American women mathematician who were foundational to NASA going to the moon.
It's an amazing story.
And and Ben, as you know, my mom was also a mathematician at the dawn of the computer age.
Hidden Figures begins with Sputnik being launched and the space race being being started.
My mom in the 1950s worked at the Smithsonian, and one of her first projects was helping to compute the orbit of Sputnik.
And and actually, in honor of this movie, I introduced legislation that resulted in the street where the NASA headquarters is in DC being changed to Hidden Figures Way to honor those African American women mathematician who were foundational in our going to the moon.
It's not on Hollywood's list either, but it's a great movie, and it's a fabulous family movie.
Another great family movie, La La Land, same same year.
It's a musical, it's fun, it's light.
Uh it's about Hollywood.
It it is it's a terrific movie, and yet it's nowhere on their list.
2017, 2017, a great movie, the darkest hour.
Uh Winston Churchill in the middle of World War II, powerful Gary Oldham does a terrific portrayal of Churchill, highly recommend it.
2018, Black Panther, Black Panther was a terrific movie.
It's a comic book movie, but there's a reason so many people go to go like go see them because they're really good.
Uh 2019.
Once upon a time in Hollywood, another Quentin Tarantino.
I thought it was terrific, loved it.
Brad Pitt was in it as Well, Brad Pitt, when when Tarantino is directing him, is really, really good.
You then get on to 2022.
Top Gun Maverick, just a great fun movie, action film, fun to go to the theater and see the Jets rocketing through the sky fighting the bad guys.
I will note that no Hollywood uh theater will now make Communist China the bad guys because they all want to sell movies in China.
Uh so the bad guys are are always some made up uh fictional place.
On to 2023.
Two move two movies in 2023 on the list.
Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer was terrific.
True story, powerful, interesting, really well done.
Uh same year, Killers of the Flower Moon, another true story, really powerful, well done.
All right, full disclosure, I I missed that movie apparently when it came out.
What's it about?
Because now I'm interested.
So Martin Scorsese did it, and it's based on on a true story.
So it's set in Oklahoma in the 1920s, and and it focuses on a series of murders of Osage Indians uh after oil is discovered on their tribal lands.
And and and it's got a fabulous clas uh cast.
Leonardo DiCaprio's in it, Robert De Niro is in it.
Um and and look, it's it's brutal.
It doesn't paint a pretty insanitized picture of history, but it but it is our history has moments of of brutality, moments of of evil and oppression, and and Scorsese can can tell a story as as well as anyone in the business.
Awesome.
I'm gonna have to grab that movie and check it out.
Keep going.
Well, that takes us to 28.
And and for the last two, I said, you know, I figured all right, who ought to decide what are really good movies?
And and I came up with a crazy idea.
How about the ticket buyers?
And so I just pulled what are the top ten highest grossing films from 2000 to 2025.
Uh any idea what the number one film of the last 25 years has been in terms of box office dollars?
And that's a hard one.
I have no clue.
Go for it.
I'm ready.
So number one is Avatar, 2009, and it it it uh brought in 2.9 billion dollars.
And Avatar, I'm gonna put Avatar in my list because it's a great film.
It really was novel how it sort of stretched, but brought you into an entirely different world.
Uh in and the effects were fantastic.
It was a well-done story.
The number two grossing film of uh of the last 25 years was Avengers Endgame, and that and that brought in 2.8 billion dollars.
I'm gonna I'm gonna include both of those as the final two on my list.
They're the top two grossing films, they're fantastic.
I I like most comic book uh movies, but I do think Adventures Endgame was was really, really good.
And it says something.
If you look at the list of top ten, none of the top ten grossing films are on Hollywood's list.
Uh you have number three is Avatar the Way of the Water, number four is Star Wars episode seven, The Force Awakens, number five is Avengers Affinity Ward, number six is Spider-Man No Way Home, which which I thought was the best of the Spider-Man movies.
Number seven was Nijia 2.
I don't know that movie.
I uh maybe Chinese, I I just don't I don't know that movie.
Uh number eight was Inside Out Two, number nine was Jurassic World, and number ten was The Lion King in 2019.
It says something when you have a product, and the people making the product don't like the product that people like and are buying, there's a real disconnect there.
Um, you know, you go back to that New York Times list.
Most of the movies on the list, nobody has seen and nobody wants to see.
And and and that really is sad.
There used to be a time.
I look, what's fun about going to the movies?
You'll notice themes.
So I like true stories.
Um, I like war movies.
I I like gangster movies, things like Godfather and Scarface.
Um, I like Westerns.
Um, I like comedies.
Uh I I like some musicals, but but I like a story.
What when I go to the to the movies, I I want to tell me a story.
It can be a sad story, it can be a funny story, it can bring me in on an adventure, you know, classic movies I grew up with, like Indiana Jones, like i it can be, you know, Star Wars, the whole Star Wars series, the hero's journey.
Actually, Ben, I'm gonna tell you something really funny.
Really good buddy of mine, uh, that I went to high school with, you you bet him, uh, Joel's his name, great friend of mine, uh, came came to uh our place in DC last weekend.
He and his family were in town and he said, Hey, can I crash at your place?
I said, sure.
And and he and I have gone to a lot of movies together, and he's a huge Star Wars buff.
And so he went to to to the Star Wars um, I guess, museum, and when I get back to my DC apartment, he's replaced my sheets with Star Wars Sheets and a Star Wars comforter and Star Wars pillowcases, and it it looks like a nine-year-old boy's room, and I just cracked up laughing.
And and then actually it was right after I had the Tucker Carlson interview that was a lot of fireworks.
So he bought Tucker Carlson's book and he re rested it on the pillowcase.
So I was doubled over laughing when I walked in, walked in Monday morning to the apartment and so and and saw my bedroom.
