James Earl Jones, with his booming voice and commanding presence, has left an indelible mark on the film industry. From regal kings to fearsome villains, his versatile talent has made him a household name across generations. As a tribute to his extraordinary career, we take a look back at the top 10 favorite James Earl Jones movies—films that highlight the range, depth, and sheer power of his acting.

1. The Lion King (1994)

Overview: James Earl Jones’ portrayal of Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King is iconic. His powerful voice gives life to the wise and noble lion king, delivering lines that have become part of cinematic history. The father-son bond between Mufasa and Simba resonates with viewers, making this role a cherished one in his filmography.

2. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

Overview: Perhaps no other role defines Jones more than his vocal portrayal of Darth Vader in Star Wars. His deep, menacing voice made Darth Vader one of the most feared and beloved villains in movie history. Though he was never physically on screen, his contribution to Star Wars is unforgettable.

3. Coming to America (1988)

Overview: In this beloved comedy, James Earl Jones plays King Jaffe Joffer, the proud and slightly intimidating father of Eddie Murphy’s Prince Akeem. His regal demeanor and comedic timing add a layer of humor and heart to this fish-out-of-water tale.

4. Field of Dreams (1989)

Overview: In Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones plays Terence Mann, a reclusive writer who delivers one of the most memorable monologues about baseball ever written. His performance, full of grace and wisdom, elevates the film to new emotional heights.

5. The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Overview: Jones’ portrayal of Admiral James Greer in this Cold War thriller cemented his status as a versatile actor. His calm and authoritative presence contrasts perfectly with the tension of the naval conflict, making his performance unforgettable.

6. Patriot Games (1992)

Overview: Reprising his role as Admiral Greer, Jones stars alongside Harrison Ford in this political thriller. His calm leadership and wisdom guide Ford’s Jack Ryan through a maze of political intrigue and danger.

7. The Great White Hope (1970)

Overview: Based on the true story of boxer Jack Johnson, The Great White Hope showcases Jones in one of his earliest and most powerful roles as Jack Jefferson. His portrayal earned him an Oscar nomination and solidified his place as a serious dramatic actor.

8. Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Overview: In Conan the Barbarian, Jones plays Thulsa Doom, the fearsome villain who faces off against Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan. His transformation from a charismatic cult leader to a ruthless sorcerer is chilling, adding depth to this fantasy epic.

9. Cry, the Beloved Country (1995)

Overview: In this powerful drama, Jones portrays Reverend Stephen Kumalo, a man searching for his son during the turbulent apartheid years in South Africa. His performance is deeply emotional and human, highlighting the pain and resilience of those living through apartheid.

10. Matewan (1987)

Overview: Set during the 1920s coal miner strikes, Matewan sees Jones playing a labor leader advocating for the rights of workers. His portrayal adds a sense of dignity and strength to this historical drama about the fight for justice.

2024 has been an emotional rollercoaster for moviegoers. Whether it’s the power of love, devastating loss, or the triumph of the human spirit, films this year have brought plenty of tears. From heart-wrenching dramas to unexpected moments of sadness in blockbusters, these are the top 10 movies in theaters this year that made us cry.

1. Oppenheimer

Overview: Christopher Nolan’s biographical drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, leaves viewers reflecting on the weight of history and the moral dilemmas faced by the man who changed the world forever. The movie’s emotional depth builds as Oppenheimer grapples with guilt and the consequences of his creation.

Why It Made Us Cry: The intense portrayal of Oppenheimer’s inner turmoil and the devastating effects of the atomic bomb hit hard, leaving the audience grappling with the emotional fallout of war and ethics.

2. Past Lives

Overview: Past Lives is a moving story about two childhood friends who reconnect after years apart, exploring the ideas of fate, love, and missed opportunities. The film’s subtle storytelling and emotional resonance leave a lasting impact.

Why It Made Us Cry: The deep emotional connection between the characters and the bittersweet nature of their relationship, filled with “what ifs,” pulls at the heartstrings.

3. A Good Person

Overview: Directed by Zach Braff, A Good Person features Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman in an emotional exploration of grief, forgiveness, and healing. Pugh’s character navigates the aftermath of a tragic accident that upends her life.

Why It Made Us Cry: The raw performances and the movie’s powerful themes of loss and redemption create intense, tear-jerking moments.

4. The Whale

Overview: Brendan Fraser’s transformative performance in The Whale as a reclusive man struggling with obesity and seeking to reconnect with his estranged daughter is devastating and heart-rending.

Why It Made Us Cry: The portrayal of Fraser’s character’s desperation for redemption, along with his physical and emotional suffering, brings an overwhelming wave of sadness.

5. The Color Purple (2024)

Overview: The 2024 musical adaptation of The Color Purple revisits Alice Walker’s powerful story of resilience, love, and sisterhood. The film, directed by Blitz Bazawule, beautifully captures the emotional highs and lows of the characters’ lives.

Why It Made Us Cry: The film’s exploration of trauma, perseverance, and family bonds, paired with soul-stirring performances, evokes tears from beginning to end.

6. The Last Voyage of the Demeter

Overview: While The Last Voyage of the Demeter might seem like a horror film on the surface, its depiction of isolation, fear, and tragedy aboard a doomed ship draws out surprising emotional depth.

Why It Made Us Cry: The haunting story of loss and survival, combined with the eerie atmosphere, gives viewers moments of intense sorrow amid the terror.

7. Barbie (2024)

Overview: Greta Gerwig’s Barbie may be filled with fun and laughter, but it also packs an unexpected emotional punch. The film touches on themes of self-acceptance, identity, and the complexities of womanhood in a patriarchal world.

Why It Made Us Cry: Underneath the vibrant colors and witty humor, Barbie delivers poignant moments about finding one’s true self and the bittersweet experience of growing up.

8. Maestro (2024)

Overview: Maestro is a biopic about legendary composer Leonard Bernstein, played by Bradley Cooper. This film delves into Bernstein’s personal and professional struggles, particularly his complicated relationships and his pursuit of artistic perfection.

Why It Made Us Cry: Cooper’s portrayal of Bernstein’s emotional vulnerabilities and his strained marriage with Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan) hits all the right notes, delivering heart-wrenching moments of love, regret, and loss.

9. All of Us Strangers (2024)

Overview: All of Us Strangers is a surreal drama that tackles themes of love, memory, and loss. The film, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, takes viewers on an emotional journey as a man reconnects with his long-lost parents in a haunting and unexpected way.

Why It Made Us Cry: The film’s exploration of grief and longing for connection strikes deep emotional chords, creating moments that stay with viewers long after the credits roll.

10. The Boy and the Heron (2024)

Overview: This animated masterpiece from Studio Ghibli is a coming-of-age story set in a fantastical world, directed by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. It weaves themes of grief, growing up, and learning to move forward after loss.

Why It Made Us Cry: Studio Ghibli’s signature mix of whimsy and emotional depth is on full display, as the film tenderly explores the complex emotions of growing up and

Spoilers lurk in empty space stations too! 

A gang of space colonists trying to scavenge cryo-sleep pods from a derelict space station come across the remnants of monstrous creature experiments the Weyland-Yutani Corporation was conducting there! 

Following the current trend plaguing films with a long-running franchise, Alien Romulus is an interleaved sequel, which is to say the film is set timeline-wise between the events of the first Alien blockbuster and the excellent sequel Aliens. Everybody got where we are? Then make sure your futuristic ray guns are fully charged so you can take on the Xenomorphs in Alien Romulus! 

Meet Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her adopted synthetic “brother” Andy (David Johnson), who wants desperately to get off-planet and avoid the mines and further indentured servitude, which is a good deal harder than it sounds. So Rain gets together with other disgruntled colonist folk like herself – Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) – and hatch a wacky plan to swipe some cryogenic sleep pods so they can safely smuggle all of them to a nearby-ish idyllic planet system where they might live freely. This sort of trip normally takes years, hence the cryo-sleep pods. And Rain’s would-be commando pals all think it’s a pretty safe bet that this derelict space station they’ve found would have a bank of still-functioning cryo pods, so it’s off to play scavengers we go! 

The space station is indeed derelict, but it’s hardly empty. With the knowledge that the place was owned and operated by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation that’s all we the audience need to know, but our poor scavengers can’t make heads or tails of the clearly scientific experimental rooms, devoid of human presence but again, definitely not empty. And after a few rounds of catch-me-if-you-can with a roomful of face huggers, our scavengers come across someone, something if you want to be a jerk about it, that might actually be able to help them. 

They manage to get the synthetic android, Rook, the upper half of him at least, semi-functioning, and that’s all it takes for them to get a crash course in corporate greed and one particular aliens physiology and future potential, for Rook is still very much a Company man. And this means scavenging whatever information they managed to retain from their terrible experiments on the xenomorphs and their face hugger proto-form to get to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation by whatever means necessary, including co-opting and brainwashing fellow synthetic Andy to help him. 

The choice to use CGI and animatronics, built by Legacy Effects, and the visage of the late excellent actor Ian Holm for the countenance of the synthetic Rook was an interesting choice. It does keep a certain kind of continuity going in the Alien world and kind of cements where we are in the film timeline more, but I think the same effect could have been obtained with a different actor just as well. 

So the facehuggers are loose and the bigger scary-as-hell forms are starting to emerge and attack our scavenger crew, and somehow the pregnant Kay manages to get herself implanted by a facehugger, and the inevitable question of human-xenomorph hybrids begins in earnest – only a few hundred years before when it happened in Alien Resurrection. 

The whole human-xeno hybrid storyline, the proto-mashup thing that looks to me like they took an Engineer from Prometheus and gave it Xenomorph bones, and how quickly they adopt the need to shoehorn the two mismatched worlds of Prometheus and the Alien films into another Alien movie is entirely aggravating and unnecessary. The atmosphere of traditional Alien-style horror we came to love a very long time ago from Ridley Scott was carrying the movie just fine up to this point of sudden human-xeno pregnancy, traumatic birth, and the emergence (and thankfully, death) of this thing they simply called “the Offspring”. Again, the insistence to try and mashup two very different film worlds is unneeded and more likely to turn fans off both franchises. At least, former Romanian basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi and his more-than-7-foot-natural-height played the part of the Offspring, with only the tail being CGI’d, lending some vague manner of brief believability to the creature. 

It’s not as though the Alien films actually need a whole lot in the way of humans we care about, especially if there’s a pack of Xenomorphs scrambling around the station, or a fleet of green-slimed eggs that most definitely don’t have chocolate inside waiting to jump-scare the audience into oblivion. But if you’re going to have at least half the story be about the humans and their plight first, it would be better to give them something to make them less generic than “red-shirt A”, to try and give us the audience a reason to groan in sympathy when a chest-burster is born, instead of cheering for the baby xeno to go feast already! And to be fair, the first three acts of the film are quite good, in the OG Scott manner of silence-space-screaming horror that is now a genre standard. There is an almost long-standing non-tradition of being dissatisfied with the endings to the latter Alien movies anyway. 

Find out what happened to our scavengers and see if Rook takes all the pawns in Alien Romulus, in theaters now!