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Best Movies To Show in Your Home Theater

by Lewis Robinson

Many movies are at least as much about spectacle as about story. You can, of course, show any movie in your home theater, but you'll get a lot more out of the experience if you choose those with lush special effects and booming sound. The following are films that can allow you to enjoy what your home theater has to offer to the fullest extent.

The Dark Crystal

If you're a fan of innovative cult films, "The Dark Crystal" may be just the movie to justify looking at mortgage refinance rates to fund your home theater remodel. It was the brainchild of Jim Henson, who wanted to show the world that there was much more than puppetry than just the Muppets. He wanted to show that puppets could be realistic and lifelike, convey big ideas and tell serious stories. He largely succeeded, but only a handful of audiences responded to his vision at the time, perhaps because it was so far beyond what anyone had attempted up to that point.

"The Dark Crystal" is best known for being the first live-action movie to feature no human actors. All the characters are puppets, all the effects are practical, and all the scenery and props were built by hand. The result is a lush, substantial, totally alien world that is a feast for the eyes on a home theater screen. Critics of "The Dark Crystal" often complain that it doesn't have much of a plot. This is true, but only because the story was always intended to be secondary to the big ideas that the movie was trying to convey. "The Dark Crystal" is an allegory about the destructive nature of conflict, internal as well as external, a message that is arguably more timely than ever.

Wall-E

What Jim Henson was to puppetry, the team at Pixar is to computer animation. In fact, "Wall-E" and "The Dark Crystal" arguably have a lot in common. Each is a remarkable technical achievement in its respective field and each was intended to tell its story largely without intelligible dialogue, which "Wall-E" accomplished more successfully than its predecessor did. Both the sound and the visual details are enhanced by watching "Wall-E" in a home theater.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" was the first movie to feature Harrison Ford's swashbuckling yet scholarly archeologist, Indiana Jones. Originally intended as a standalone movie, it spawned several sequels, which led to its title being retroactively altered to include the name of the hero. Whatever you call it, the movie features action scenes that are even more entertaining on a larger screen, including a lengthy chase scene involving trucks and horses as well as cars.

The Fifth Element

There's a lot to love, or at least admire, about "The Fifth Element." It features an butt-kicking female heroine, a message that is deep but not too preachy, vibrant visuals, and great sound. The sound is on full display during the iconic opera scene wherein the alien singer performs an aria juxtaposed against the heroine fighting off the bad aliens. Fun fact: The aria is a remix of a real scene from a 19th century opera called "Lucia di Lammermoor" and happens at the point of the story when the eponymous character goes insane.

2001: A Space Odyssey

"2001" is a sci-fi epic from over 50 years ago. It was groundbreaking at the time for its realistic effects, so much so that it spawned a discredited conspiracy theory that the 1969 moon landing never happened and the footage was staged by director Stanley Kubrick. Slow-paced by today's standards, "2001" was intended to be larger than life, shot in a format exceeding the standard size by two and a half times. The home theater shows this off to great effect, and the film's ambiguous ending may spark a lively debate.

About 40 years ago, Jim Henson envisioned the day when most television sets would be in widescreen and people could enjoy movies as they were meant to be experienced. Home theaters were largely unheard of then but may represent the full culmination of his prescient prediction.