Top 5 – Ridley Scott Movies

Ridley Scott is one of the best directors to ever get behind the camera.  A master of story and visuals, his filmography is as diverse as any director’s out there, making films of all genre from sci-fi, to war epic, to romantic drama.  This Friday, Scott steps back in the Alien franchise with Alien: Covenant, which is an excellent movie.  So in honor of that, here are my picks for the best Ridley Scott movies.

5 – THE MARTIAN (2015)

Between 2008 and 2014, Ridley Scott his a bit of a rough patch.  After duds like Body of Lies (2008), Robin Hood (2010), Prometheus (2012), The Counselor (2013), (though to be honest, I love The Counselor), and Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), it almost looked as though the great director may be in the twilight of his career.  That was until 2015’s The Martian, in which Scott made his best movie in almost a decade .  The story of an astronaut (Matt Damon) left on Mars by his crew and his survival until they come back is a smart, funny, captivating movie from beginning to end.  With a remarkable one-man-show performance from Matt Damon, wonderful visuals, and engaging story, The Martian re-established Scott as one of the best.

4 – BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001)

Following the Oscar winning success of Gladiator, Scott followed it up with one of the wildest and greatest war movies of all time.  Black Hawk Down takes a look at 160 elite U.S. soldiers who are dropped into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and then find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis.  Think Gladiator was Scott’s most action packed film?  Think again.  Scott is relentless in Black Hawk Down, giving us what feels like a two hour war scene that takes your breath away.  The film features an all-star cast with the likes of Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, Sam Shepard, and a baby-facedTom Hardy.  This is a bloody, brutal, brilliant film that rivals Saving Private Ryan (1998) as the best in the war genre.

3 – THELMA & LOUISE (1991)

Scott is a director known for his astounding visuals and his exciting action.  So a film revolving around two women who kill a rapist and go on a cross country trip to flee the country seems like an odd choice for a director who’s claim to fame was science fiction.  But this is one of Scott’s greatest achievements as a director.  This is a beautiful, grounded, girl-power road movie that plays as a police thriller, road movie, and coming of age tale that takes societal norms and flips them on their heads.  Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis are equally brilliant as out titular criminals, giving strong, rounded, fully realized performances that should have garnered them more awards love than they received.  This is a film about friendship and awakening and features one of the most iconic, powerful endings ever in movie history.  It is one of Scott’s more subdued films, yet one of his best.

2 – AMERICAN GANGSTER (2005)

I usually have a wildcard pick on these Top 5 lists, and this is Ridley Scott’s wildcard.  I absolutely LOVE American Gangster.  This is a dark, gritty, violent, epic movie ripped straight from the 70’s.  Denzel Washington gives one of his best performances as Frank Lucas, a New York drug dealer who cornered the market by getting his product direct from the source.  Russell Crowe gives one of his most underrated performances as Richie Roberts, the straight cop tracking Frank and Josh Brolin is a scene stealer as the corrupt Detective Trupo who is fighting against Frank’s business and Richie’s morals.  Spanning over many years, Scott keeps this epic tightly wound, having us on engaged the whole time as we watch the rise of a kingpin and the men chasing him.  This is a gangster classic and the best movie Scott has made in the 2000’s.

1 – ALIEN (1979)

Alien was Ridley Scott’s second feature film and he has never been better.  This is the movie that really set the standard for who Scott was as a director, with it’s great characters, gripping story, and stunning, jaw-dropping visuals.  What makes Alien so perfect is the merging of genres.  This is a horror movie in space, as an alien creature terrorizes the crew aboard a ship.  The movie is as scary as any horror movie and as electrifying as any sci-fi movie.  The xenomorph is an iconic villain and this introduced us to one of cinema’s greatest heroines, Ellen Ripley, played perfectly by Sigourney Weaver.  Scott does a perfect job of building the tension, keeping us on our toes while giving us scenes of shocking violence and terror.  This is a movie that has stood the test of time to become one of the the greatest sci-fi movies ever, which is why it is the best Ridley Scott movie.

What are your favorite Ridley Scott movies?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.