Best Movies Starring Only One Actor

Buoyed by a career-making performance by James Franco, “127 Hours,” is one of eight films on our list with a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critics score of 90% or above. Franco played a mountain climber who while exploring a remote canyon in Utah has an arm pinned by a boulder. He faces the excruciating choice of either cutting off his arm and trying to find his way out of the canyon or remain there and die.

“Moon,” a sci-fi psychological thriller, is the creation of director Duncan Jones, the son of rock legend David Bowie, who captured the alienation of space in his song “Space Oddity.” In “Moon,” Sam Rockwell plays a lunar miner who’s coming to the end of his mission and looking forward to reuniting with his wife – but he experiences headaches and hallucinations and meets what appears to be a younger version of himself.

Charles Martin Smith, who played the accountant in “The Untouchables,” here takes the role of a research scientist sent to the Canadian tundra to find out if wolves are depleting the caribou herd. He gains knowledge of wolf behavior while discovering that it is humans who pose the greater threat to the cycle of life in the wilderness. “Never Cry Wolf,” the first Disney film to be released under the Walt Disney Pictures label, is the only movie on our list with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes Freshness score.

“The Guilty” is an acclaimed pulse-pounder from Denmark, directed by Swedish filmmaker Gustav Möller. It is about an alarm dispatcher and former police officer played by Jakob Cedergren who answers a call from a woman who’s been kidnapped. When the call is abruptly disconnected, a frantic search for her and her kidnapper begins. Rotten Tomatoes critics called the movie “a high-concept thriller that wrings maximum impact out of a handful of basic — and effective — ingredients.”

Matt Damon plays an astronaut stranded on Mars after his fellow space travelers presume that he is dead. While he tries to survive on the red planet, NASA, scientists from other countries, and his fellow crew members race against time to return him to Earth. Based on a novel by Andy Weir, the film was directed by Ridley Scott (“Blade Runner,” “Gladiator”) and boasted a strong supporting cast that included Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, and Jeff Daniels.