9. Serenity
After Joss Whedon's cult TV favorite Firefly was canceled after only 14 episodes, a rich universe was sadly left almost completely untouched. Fortunately, the cast and crew of the show were given one final go at it in 2005's Serenity, a standalone movie that serves as the series finale that the show was never given, and Whedon more than delivered, with one of the best cinematic combinations of humor, action, and imagination of the last decade. Despite somehow being a box office failure, Serenity has, just like the show, attained its own cult status. The main strengths of the film are undeniably the cast, with Chiwetel Ojiafor, Nathan Fillion, and Summer Glau being the definite highlights, and the screenplay of Joss Whedon, which sparkles with endlessly quotable quips and one-liners. With a very small budget for a science fiction film, the CGI and action scenes are competent but unspectacular, yet you rarely find a movie that has this much heart. As a send off to one of the most criminally abused shows in TV history, Serenity is just about perfect.