Last Updated on March 3, 2024
Nobody is going to argue. Tom Hanks is a great guy and a fantastic actor. If you love watching his movies, then you are certainly in the right place. We have collected his best comedies, dramas, romance films and more!
1. Apollo 13 (1995)
Based on the remarkable true story of three astronauts lost in space, the Apollo 13 craft launches on April 11, 1970. Carrying Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, everything goes fine until NASA requests that the crew activate the fans inside the liquid oxygen tanks. One of the tanks ruptures and the explosion causes the craft to careen off course.
A desperate race begins to keep the astronauts alive inside the damaged Apollo 13 and to bring them home.
2. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
During 1944, at the height of World War II, the United States Department of War in Washington, D.C, learns a tragic truth. Four Ryan brothers have gone off to war, three are confirmed to have been killed in action and the last one is missing. Determined to bring back the surviving brother to his family, the orders are given to find and bring him home.
The task is given to Captain John H. Miller and his men. As they search for Ryan, the horrors of war ensure that not all of them will survive the rescue mission.
3. Toy Story (1995)
Andy Davis has a room full of toys that come alive when humans aren’t near. The toys are always nervous when Andy gets gifts, afraid that something better might replace them. When Andy gets an action figure, Buzz Lightyear, for his birthday all the toys are relieved. But Andy’s favorite toy, Sheriff Woody, is jealous of all the attention that Buzz is getting. Soon enough, their rivalry causes them to get lost and they have to work together to find their way back home.
4. Forrest Gump (1994)
Despite having a lower-than-normal IQ, Forrest Gump is an endearing character who influences everyone around him. As he tells his life story, the comedy shows how Gump met several presidents and influenced historical things – like the Watergate scandal and John Lennon’s song Imagine.
But despite becoming famous several times in his life, all Gump wants is to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart and marry her.
5. Cast Away (2000)
Chuck Noland is a workaholic Fed-Ex employee and during a Christmas dinner with his family and girlfriend, he leaves for a work emergency. But the cargo plane he boards crashes into the Pacific Island, killing everyone except Chuck.
He makes it to an uninhabited island where he learns to survive on his own. The story is a spellbinding take on what isolation does to the mind and one man’s will to survive.
6. Philadelphia (1993)
Andrew Beckett seems to have it all. He’s young, handsome and works as a senior associate at Philadelphia’s largest law firm. But he’s hiding a secret that can kill his career – Becket is homosexual and an AIDS patient.
When one of his co-workers notice a lesion on Beckett’s face and recognize it as being AIDS-related, Beckett becomes suspicious when he is fired shortly thereafter. He enlists the help of a lawyer called Joe Miller who has to overcome his own fears of HIV and homophobia to give Beckett justice.
7. The Terminal (2004)
Viktor Navorski has just landed at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. But he soon learns that the US does not accept the new government of his country, Krakozhia, due to a coup. Viktor’s passport is deemed invalid and he cannot leave the US or step foot on US soil. In other words, he has to live inside the airport until the issue is resolved.
Viktor becomes a thorn in the side of management but endears himself to the airport’s employees and customers as he is always there to help. He’s also on a mission to fulfil his late father’s dream and that is why he carries a mysterious peanut can with him wherever he goes.
8. The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Robert Langdon is a Harvard professor visiting France on business when he is drawn into a particularly macabre murder. Soon realizing that the police suspect that he is the killer, Langdon escapes with the help of the victim’s granddaughter, Sophie, who believes he is innocent and that her grandfather had left her an important cryptic clue.
The clue takes them down a rabbit hole of hidden history and secrets that threaten to destroy the very foundations of Christianity.
9. Splash (1984)
Allen is unfulfilled with all of his romantic relationships and at the heart of his troubles is the memory of meeting a little girl underwater when he was 8 years old. One day, he is working at sea when he falls off the boat and a strange woman rescues him.
The woman, who chose the human name of Madison, is the young mermaid he met all those years ago. She tries to hide her identity as she spends time with Allen in New York but a scientist who knows she’s a mermaid is hell-bent on exposing her.
10. Inferno (2016)
In this thriller, Harvard professor Robert Langdon returns for another exciting, action-packed mystery. While following a trail of clues about the great medieval poet, Dante, his research turns dangerous.
He wakes up in hospital with no memories of the last few days. When he attempts to find out what had happened, Langdon realizes that he has uncovered a deadly plot to release a plague that is designed to kill half of the world’s population.
11. The Ladykillers (2004)
When Mrs Marva Munson puts up a room for rent, the strict, religious and elderly widow meets Professor Dorr. Insisting on quietness, she allows him to hold band practice in her root cellar to minimize the noise. What she doesn’t know is that Dorr and his men are using the cellar to plan a casino robbery.
When Mrs Munson becomes suspicious of them, they decide to kill her. But the deadly group meet their match in the fearless old lady.
12. The Man with One Red Shoe
Two CIA agents are determined to see each other’s downfall. One of them, Ross, is embroiled in a scandal and knowing that his opponent, Cooper, wants to use that, Ross starts a rumor that a man will soon be arriving at the airport who will clear him of the scandal.
Cooper’s agents wait for the man, who is picked at random by one of Ross’s agents to shake hands with and convince Cooper that this is their man. It happens to be a violinist called Richard Drew who is allowed to go on with his daily life, oblivious of the CIA is following his every move.
13. The ‘Burbs (1989)
When Ray Peterson takes a week off work, he looks forward to getting some relaxation. But then the Klopeks move in and Ray becomes suspicious when he spots them digging in their back yard one night.
When one of his friends disappear and Ray’s dog digs up a human bone from the Klopeks’ yard, Ray and his other buddies become convinced that the new family is a satanic cult that performs human sacrifices. This dark comedy follows their attempts to find out the truth about their new strange neighbors.
14. Sully (2016)
Based on a true event, the movie follows the untold story of Captain Sully who infamously and successfully landed an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after it struck a flock of birds shortly after takeoff on January 15, 2009. All his passengers survived.
Largely hailed as a hero, several investigators believed that the crash could have been a human error and also felt that Sully could have landed back at the airport. The movie shows what he endured with the media frenzy, the accusations and his fight to prove that nobody could have turned that plane around and that a water landing was the only option.
15. Captain Phillips (2013)
Captain Richard Phillips is wary of a pirate attack when he is ordered to take a cargo ship through the Guardafui Channel to Mombasa, Kenya. Despite training his crew to repel pirates and actually warding off one attack, the ship is successfully boarded by four Somali pirates with weapons.
Phillips manages to hide his crew just in time but he bears the brunt of the pirates’ growing frustration with not having their demands met. Based on a real-life event, this film is a must for true drama fans.