Matt Damon on the red carpetImage via ACE/INFphoto.com
There’s a reason why studios invest in A-list talent; they’re hedging their bets not only on the stars’ popularity at the time, but also in the foreseeable future. In most cases, a good movie will speak for itself, but when the movie doesn’t measure up, the A-list talent involved will often do the heavy lifting. This is one reason why Night Hunter, an all-but-forgotten thriller with a 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes, is perpetually among the most-watched movies on HBO Max. The filmmakers made the astute decision to cast Henry Cavill as the lead, alongside Stanley Tucci, Ben Kingsley, and Alexandra Daddario. But what happens when a movie is packed to the brim with top-tier talent both in front of and behind the camera, and also happens to be a stone-cold classic?
That’s when you get a hit like Saving Private Ryan. Directed by Steven Spielberg, who remains the highest-grossing filmmaker of all time, the movie featured Tom Hanksand Matt Damon, both of whom remain at the tippy-top of the A list to this day. Even if an audience member isn’t checking Saving Private Ryan out because they’ve heard great things about it, or because of the reputation of Damon, Hanks, and Spielberg, they could be watching it because Vin Diesel plays one of the tertiary characters. According to FlixPatrol, the World War II classic was among the most-watched movies on the domestic Tubi chart this week, nearly three decades after its groundbreaking theatrical release.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
‘Saving Private Ryan’ Remains Influential Today
Saving Private Ryan debuted in 1998 and was immediately hailed as a classic. It tells an anti-war story of a group of soldiers during World War II who go on a mission to locate a missing compatriot after three of his brothers are killed in action. The movie received widespread acclaim for its realistic combat sequences and for its broader themes. Saving Private Ryan holds a “Certified Fresh” 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes; it received 11 Oscar nominations, winning in five categories including Best Director for Spielberg. It grossed more than $480 million worldwide against a reported budget of $70 million, and was the highest-grossing World War II movie ever made until it was overtaken by Dunkirk. Spielberg and Hanks reunited to executive-produce three television spin-offs — Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Masters of the Air. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
