Let’s get this out of the way up front—National Treasure is not the best movie ever made. It probably doesn’t even cut into the top 100 adventure movies. The concept deserves all the eye-rolling it generates: Benjamin Franklin Gates (yes, that’s really his name) races against a team of greedy mercenaries after discovering the Declaration of Independence boasts an invisible treasure map. However, National Treasure is just. . . fun. The creative team understood how goofy the underlying idea was (making well-placed jokes about it throughout) and played it as a tongue-in-cheek, family-friendly version of The Da Vinci Code. Substituting Christian lore with American history, scribes Cormac and Marianne Wibberley kept much of the structure intact. Gates (Nicolas Cage) jumps from city to city within the United States’ original 13 colonies, discovering clues and artifacts that both advance the treasure hunt and provide interesting tidbits of American history. The script never takes the concept too seriously, and neither does Cage or the…

Take James Bond. Exaggerate all his negative traits. Turn his sexism, narcissism, alcoholism, egocentrism, bachelorism all up to eleven, add in a dash of Oedipus, and you’d get Sterling Archer. Codenamed “Duchess” (the name of his mother’s deceased dog and the show’s original title), Sterling would be nothing more than an offensive 007 caricature in other hands, but creator Adam Reed deftly balances his protagonist’s not-so-appealing lifestyle by imbuing Archer with a strong sense of empathy and making sure the joke always lands on him. It also helps that Archer is one of the funniest shows on television. (Deservingly, the show has won four consecutive Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Animated Show and has been the only winner in that category since the award’s inception.) But despite inspiration from Ian Fleming, Archer never resorts to simple Bond parodies, and the show would work even if Bond never existed. The reason? Archer has the most unique comedic voice on television. The show features an odd mix of lowbrow…

Named after the cheap, pulpy serials popular in nineteenth-century England, Penny Dreadful plays almost like a Victorian edition of American Horror Story but with an air of campy sophistication. The show pulls characters from classic literature, specifically Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but is still accessible to viewers unfamiliar with Gothic fiction. Everything, from the acting and writing down to the costumes and sets, is flawless, and the rare misstep still makes the series more entertaining than its peers. The show centers around Vanessa Ives, a possessed woman played by Eva Green, whose performance is currently the best on TV (she’s so good that Penny Dreadful might as well be called The Eva Green Hour). Vanessa is already in the supernatural thick-of-it, so we get a point-of-view character to introduce us to the world and the unnatural threats: the sharpshooter Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), an America performer…

Conflict is the bedrock of storytelling. Without conflict, there is no story. And without interesting characters, there is, naturally, no real reason to care. Perhaps the best movie of 2014 (and certainly in contention for best of the decade), Whiplash not only has as much conflict as many summer blockbusters but also features two of the most interesting, intense characters in recent memory. Andrew, a music student, aspires to be the next Buddy Rich. Fletcher, his instructor, considers greatness not good enough and abuse the same as inspiration. What follows is one of the most unorthodox, fierce, intense student-teacher relationships ever brought to screen. Anchored by J.K. Simmons’ profanely brilliant performance that alternates between terrifying and hilarious, often in the same scene, Whiplash brims with conflict. Fletcher pushes Andrew further than most would willingly tolerate, but most don’t have aspirations to become legendary at any cost (even friends, family, and physical well-being). As Andrew puts it, “I’d rather die broke and…