In Memorium, Tony Scott

Unfortunately yesterday British director Tony Scott committed suicide, personally ending a solid action film career spanning four decades.  Tony Scott is director Ridley Scott's young brother, and never quite received the praise he deserved from critics.  While Ridley made acclaimed classics like "Blade Runner" and "Gladiator", Tony Scott directed crowd-pleasing action films, often starring the ultimate crowd-pleasing actor, Denzel Washington.  He was a man who just made movies, it didn't matter what kind of movies or what they were supposed to mean or represent, he just made simple entertaining movies.  Unpretentious fun, right to the very end.  Tony Scott lived an interesting life, he was born in 1944 but spent nearly as many years directing commercials as he spent directing feature films.  So if you've never heard of Tony Scott, I'll briefly list his filmography below, and I'm sure one of your favorite action or thriller movies is listed below somewhere:

• "The Hunger", 1983 - I haven't seen this yet, but its a vampire movie
• "Top Gun", 1986 - one of the best movies ever made, still Tom Cruise's best movie
• "Beverly Hills Cop 2", 1987 - all around decent film in the franchise
• "Revenge", 1990 - a Kevin Cosner thriller, I haven't seen this either
• "Days of Thunder", 1990 - a Tom Cruise NASCAR movie, pretty infamous for being awesome, now at the top of my Netflix queue
• "The Last Boy Scout", 1991 - a Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans cop movie, I can't recommend this
• "True Romance", 1993 - a stunning crime movie filled with amazing actors in bit parts, but all around awesome, easily Tony Scott's best movie
• "Crimson Tide", 1995 - excellent submarine thriller with Denzel Washington vs. Gene Hackman for the fate of the world
• "The Fan", 1996 - a psychological basketball thriller of all things, I haven't seen this either
• "Enemy of the State", 1998 - Will Smith stops doing SciFi for a second and makes a decent government thriller
• "Spy Game", 2001 - Robert Redford and Brad Pitt work together in what was a surprisingly cool spy movie, probably Tony Scott's best directorial work
• "Man on Fire", 2004 - Denzel Washington kills a lot of people to save Dakota Fanning, pleasurable fluff
• "Domino", 2005 - this movie was honestly disappointing to me, but for a film written by Richard Kelly, its amazingly lucid and can be a bit of fun if you aren't expecting too much
• "Déjà Vu", 2006 - sorry Tony, but this movie sucked >_<
• "The Taking of Pelham 123", 2009 - this was a lot of fun, especially when John Travolta gets to bully Denzel Washington the entire time
• "Unstoppable", 2010 - Denzel Washington stops train, saves world, pretty much exactly what you'd expect from Tony Scott, simple fun, a solid popcorn flick.  Not every movie needs to be a classic, some of them just need to entertain the masses, and that's what Tony Scott did best.  The world is a worse place without him.