The Best Movies to Watch in Your Home Theater

The room is complete, and everything is hooked up and ready to go.

Here are the best movies to watch in your home theater with a great surround sound system to get you started.

You finally did it! You were able to pull together all the scratch necessary to create a stellar home theater.

You got all the essential equipment, put out some oversized chairs, and blacked out all the windows.

You—and your theater—are ready, and now it’s time to show off to the crew. What should the first screening be, though?

There are hundreds of thousands of titles to choose from, and we all have our favorites.

What's important?

Your TV, surround sound system, and movie source. Here are a few resources, in case you need some pointers:

>>>Why You Should Upgrade to a 4K TV

>>>3 Easy Ways to Improve Your TV Viewing Experience

>>>4 Steps for Setting Up the Perfect Entertainment Center

>>>4 Tips to Turn Your Living Room Into a Movie Theater

>>>How to Plan Family Movie Night

The best movies to watch in your home theater will showcase the surround sound and the HDTV at the same time.

Here is a shortlist of some great movies that will make your friends jealous.

The Best Movies to Watch in Your Home Theater

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The first installment of the Indiana Jones series is one of the greatest escapist action movies of all time.

Nonstop action sequences keep the plot moving and the hero cheats death.

The rich and layered sound effects during the “snake pit” scene make it feel like you’re in there with them both.

Subtlety is the hallmark of many of these scenes, but there are plenty of loud gunshots and an amazing original score to raise the room’s excitement.

RELATED: 3 of the Best Helicopter Scenes in Movies

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

The fourth installment of the Mad Max saga is nothing short of a masterpiece by director George Miller.

It’s two hours of nonstop, gas-fueled adrenaline, complete with high-speed car chases and crashes.

The gritty dystopian future is full of gnarly characters all fighting to survive.

The movie won two Oscars in 2016 for Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing.

The Dark Knight

Considered the best of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, most of the action scenes were shot in IMAX.

Each frame on the camera negative is eight times the standard size and has eight times the detail.

The movie is shot mostly at night, but the visible details during action sequences are unmistakable.

Saving Private Ryan

The World War II epic won an Oscar for Best Sound and one for Best Sound Effects Editing.

The opening scene of the movie shows the war’s chaos and brutality like no other movie before or since.

You will hear bullets whizzing by your head and feel the impact of land mines underfoot. The color was washed out in editing to give the movie a grittier, more realistic feel—and it was successful.

Looking for more movies worthy of your amazing surround sound system? Check out these 18 Oscar-Winning Movies on Netflix.