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Primal Fear follows defense attorney Martin Vail, played by Richard Gere. He takes on the case of Aaron Stampler. Edward Norton plays Aaron, a timid altar boy accused of murdering a prominent archbishop.

Collider ranks the film No. 7 on its list of the 10 greatest legal thrillers of all time. The outlet credited Norton’s star-making performance as the film’s greatest asset. It was his feature film debut, which earned him a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and an Academy Award nomination.

Time also included the film among its list of the best courtroom dramas ever made. The outlet praised the film’s twist ending as one of the most memorable of the entire decade.

Laura Linney co-stars as the prosecutor and Martin’s ex, adding tension both inside and outside the courtroom.

The Performance Behind Primal Fear’s Most Talked-About Ending 

Time specifically singled out the film’s ending as one of the most memorable of the 1990s. The outlet compared its impact to that decade’s other major twist, The Sixth Sense.

Much of that impact rests on Norton’s performance as Aaron. Time called his portrayal “flawless.” The publication described him as a guileless kid who might be suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Collider echoed that praise, calling the role a star-making moment for Norton. The outlet described his performance as “phenomenal, mercurial and layered yet still believable.”

Gere anchors the film as Martin, the arrogant defense attorney who gradually becomes convinced of his client’s innocence. Time described him as “sly,” playing well against Laura Linney’s “headstrong, principled” prosecutor.

Their history as exes adds an extra layer of tension to the courtroom scenes. That dynamic blends the formula of a legal thriller with something closer to a screwball comedy.

Both outlets agreed the trial scenes themselves are tightly constructed and satisfying. Thirty years later, the film’s ending is still cited as one of the genre’s best.

Related: 1973 Classic, Which Jack Nicholson Called His ‘Best Role,’ Features One of His Greatest Performances

In 1940, Gary Cooper starred in a critically acclaimed film that earned awards and has a rare perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. Decades later, The Westerner has recently been ranked as one of the greatest Westerns ever produced.

‘The Westerner’ Earning a Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score Says a Lot

On Rotten Tomatoes, there is nothing that is more elusive than a perfect score. In fact, the website maintains a ranking of the “Best Movies of All Time,” which mostly features films that have failed to reach the 100% mark. Even legendary films like The Godfather, Rear Window, Schindler’s List, and Citizen Kane have fallen short of that achievement. On the other hand, Gary Cooper’s 1940 classic The Westerner earned a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

In addition to earning that accolade decades later, The Westerner was celebrated upon its release, as it won and was nominated for Oscars. At the 13th Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Art Direction (Black and White) and Best Writing (Original Story). Additionally, Walter Brennan won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance as Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner.

Who Ranked ‘The Westerner’ Among the ‘Best Western Movies of All Time’?

On July 13, 2026, StudioBinder published its ranking of the “Best Western Movies of All Time.” That list included all-time classics like The Searchers, Unforgiven, Stagecoach, High Noon, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Westerner was listed alongside those legendary films, as it was ranked No. 25.

There are many reasons why The Westerner is a classic movie that still holds up today. The most obvious highlight of the film is Walter Brennan’s stellar performance as Judge Roy Bean, an eccentric and funny character in a typically serious genre. Additionally, seeing how Gary Cooper’s Cole Harden maneuvers having to escape the grasp of such an unusual person is extremely compelling. Perhaps most of all, the film deserves praise for how well it blends comedy and drama in the Old West.

In The Westerner, Gary Cooper portrayed a drifter who is arrested for stealing a horse and is forced to face off against Judge Roy Bean. Directed by William Wyler, the film starred Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Fred Stone, and Doris Davenport. Notably, the film’s architect, Wyler, was nominated for 12 Best Director Academy Awards during his career, which is the most anyone has ever earned in that category.

Next: 1959 Henry Fonda Film, Overshadowed by a John Wayne Classic, Ranked as an Underrated Western Masterpiece

Sixty-four years ago, on August 30, 1962, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood took the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, immediately announcing the arrival of one of cinema’s most formidable directors. While it shared this victory with Valerio Zurlini’s Family Chronicle, Tarkovsky’s film left Venice with something more enduring than the trophy: the reputation of a radically different kind of war movie.

Set during the Second World War, the Soviet film follows 12-year-old Ivan, an orphan who serves as a reconnaissance scout behind German lines. Yet Tarkovsky largely refuses the conventional machinery of battlefield heroics.

War is experienced through ruined landscapes, fractured memories, nightmares, and the psychological destruction of a child. The result did not celebrate military victory as much as it painted a devastating portrait of what warfare does to innocence.

A War Film That Started a Political Argument

Its politics were complicated. Ivan’s Childhood emerged during the Khrushchev Thaw and challenged the expectations of Soviet socialist realism by emphasizing individual suffering rather than uncomplicated patriotic triumph. Its dream sequences and intensely personal visual language became particularly controversial.

After Venice, sections of the Italian Communist press (notably the PCI newspaper L’Unità) attacked Tarkovsky for supposedly indulging in “bourgeois aestheticism” instead of sufficient class consciousness. As noted in the Criterion Collection essay:

“The Italian Communist press, however, accused the director of overplaying the lyrical elements and substituting detached bourgeois aestheticism for class-consciousness. Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre came to Tarkovsky’s defense…”

Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre intervened publicly in Tarkovsky’s defense, arguing that the film’s unusual style did not make it politically reactionary. In his letter to the editor, Sartre notes:

“How is it that for the first time in my knowledge the charge of schematism could be sustained against the articles that L’Unità and other leftwing newspapers devoted to Ivan’s Childhood which is one of the most beautiful films I have had the privilege of seeing in the last few years? It was given the highest award, the Golden Lion, by the Jury: but that has become a strange certificate of ‘occidentalism’ and contributed towards making Tarkovsky a petty bourgeois suspect with the Italian left seeing it with a bad eye. In truth, such distrustful judgements abandon to our middle classes, without real justification, a profoundly Russian and revolutionary film which expresses the sensibility of the young Soviet generations in a typical way.”

In another profound passage, Sartre wrote:

“War kills those who make it even if they survive it. And, in a still more profound sense: history, in one and the same movement, demands heroes, creates them and destroys them by rendering them incapable of living without suffering in the society they have contributed to forge.”

And so the ensuing debate turned the movie into something larger than a critical success: it became an argument over what politically meaningful cinema was supposed to look like.

The Anti-War Canon

That controversy has faded, but the film’s reputation has not. Ivan’s Childhood now sits comfortably among the most acclaimed war films ever made, with Rotten Tomatoes listing a 100% critics’ score from 27 reviews. Critics continue to praise its fusion of poetry, horror and psychological realism.

It wouldn’t be accurate to claim that the film has suddenly conquered every major “greatest film” poll, considering that, for example, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Stalker, have generally achieved stronger positions in major canon-building surveys. Still, Ivan’s Childhood has maintained remarkable critical longevity.

It has appeared in Sight & Sound voting across decades, including the 2002, 2012 and 2022 editions, demonstrating that its stature has survived changing generations of filmmakers and critics. That is precisely why its anti-war status carry significant weight.

Tarkovsky did not need speeches about peace. He showed a child whose childhood had effectively been confiscated by war. More than six decades after Venice, Ivan’s Childhood remains a haunting example of how an anti-war film can achieve greatness not by shouting, but by making the human cost impossible to ignore.

Star Wars Zero Company has been having a moment this week; it’s one of the top sellers on Steam, and gameplay clips have gone viral on social media. On top of that, the game has received excellent reviews, with an 85 on Metacritic based on 47 critic reviews. Unfortunately, many of the people who helped make the game happen in the first place haven’t been able to come together and celebrate the game’s success because they were furloughed before launch. 

A studio rep confirmed the move to Gamefile. 

“A rep for Bit Reactor confirmed to Game File today that the studio had furloughed many of its workers prior to the game’s release. They said it was a difficult decision and one that had been made before it was clear how launch would go. The rep emphasized that the call to do this was Bit Reactor’s alone (meaning not from publisher EA nor Star Wars license holder Disney).” 

Zachariah Scott, an Unreal Engine Generalist, took to LinkedIn to voice his displeasure with how the studio has handled the launch and firings. 

“It is sick and weird to have all of these EA and Disney folks as well as Bitreactor Senior staff making all of these 10/10 posts about Star Wars : Zero Company being such a huge success and praising the work of the team while seemingly concealing the fact that the team was Furloughed weeks ago.

It is a gross but all to common sight to see, Another corporate game hitting the top of steam while the team is left looking for work and cut off from any possible profit sharing. It would be such a different story if they had been upfront about it earlier, and now it feels like they’re trying to keep the team in a holding pattern with good vibes and more empty promises.

I may be a bit biased as I was fired from bitreactor after being involuntarily put on medical leave and then fired after months where I was forbidden from explaining those facts to the team and my friends, who all just suddenly found out wasn’t there anymore.  It seems like relevant context for me to share with the Bitreactor folks, who are in a precarious position where the only lifeline they have left is promises from the management team.

I wouldn’t take those odds” 

The situation is an example of the weird space the gaming industry is in. To maximize profits, companies will cut corners and fire employees just to add a bit to the bottom line. Cutting the very people who made the game off from profit sharing is just the latest example of companies putting profits over people. 

Now that the game has become such a big success and this story has come out, Bit Reactor has told Gamefile that the company “hopes to reinstate furloughed employees and restore their pay if Star Wars Zero Company proves successful.” 

Given that the game has become such a big success, appealing to players who wouldn’t normally purchase games in the turn-based tactical genre, hopefully Bit Reactor will be true to their word and start rehiring the furloughed employees.