Point Break
The past 27 years have not been kind in most important respects, but one good thing has happened: Kathryn Bigelow’s film about a football-playing FBI agent named Johnny Utah who infiltrates a gang of crypto-Buddhist surfers who rob banks has, at long last, been recognized as the utter masterpiece of kinesthesia that it has always been. Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty, and Gary Busey never looked or acted better than they do here, and the stunts—from curl shooting to aerial ballet—are utterly breathtaking. If anyone tries to tell you that Point Break is just a big dumb action movie instead of an assertion of the power of cinema, just tell them to back off, Warchild. Seriously.
by Sean Nelson