On Bruce Willis' 2021 Comedy Central Roasthost Joseph Gordon-Levitt told this classic joke: "I loved 'The Sixth Sense.' It's a great movie, and the ending, I didn't see that twist coming... At the end of The Sixth Sense, Bruce goes back to making movies.

It's funny because, well, it's kind of true: The Sixth Sense is widely considered one of Bruce Willis' last really good movies. Sure, he had some fun performances in "Lucky Number Slevin" and "Moonrise Kingdom," but the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan horror drama was pretty much the last time Willis was the leading man in a huge critical and commercial hit.

On IMDb, The Sixth Sense has a rating of 8.2, ranking it at number 144 on the site's top 250 list of top-rated movies. It's not a surprising ranking, given how influential it has become in pop culture. People quoted "I'm Watching Dead People" for years afterward, and it became a popular sitcom trope for a jerk character to spoil the ending of a movie for another first-time character.

The film was so good that it cast a giant, somewhat unfair shadow over the rest of the director's films. For more than a decade M. Night Shyamalan has repeatedly compared his projects to The Sixth Sense, an unfair standard by which any film should be judged. The film also brought Shyamalan a reputation its big Twilight Zone-esque twists.although there is much more to his storytelling than that.

But as iconic as The Sixth Sense was, according to IMDb it's still only the third highest-rated film in Willis' filmography. His actual top-rated film came out five years earlier, with Willis playing a minor role...

Bruce Willis doesn't play the main character in Pulp Fiction, but many would argue that his character Butch is a co-protagonist in the film alongside Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). Although Jules and Vincent (John Travolta) are often seen as the main duo of the film, only Jules and Butch go through a real character journey. Jules becomes disillusioned with his life of crime and chooses to walk away from it, while Butch decides to redeem himself after his initial betrayal of gangster Marcellus (Ving Rhames). Like Jules, Butch discovers an inner sense of morality: he saves Marcellus' life despite knowing that he might die in the process, and that Marcellus might still kill him afterwards.

While Pulp Fiction can't really be called a Bruce Willis movie in the same way as The Sixth Sense, Willis plays a vital role here on and off screen. Not only is he involved in some of the film's most action-packed moments, but Willis' name on the cast list was a big part of what made the film a guaranteed box office hit. In 1994 Willis was one of the biggest names associated with the film and had a clear international appeal that helped the production attract many international distribution rights.

How did Bruce Willis become such a beloved A-lister? Well, it has something to do with his first IMDb 250 best film, Die Hard. The 1988 thriller may be "just" rated 8.2ranking him 117th overall and well below Pulp Fiction 8.9 rating but it is probably the most impressive film of Willis' career...

It's no surprise that Die Hard is so highly rated. Alan Rickman kills it as the conman, cold-blooded thief Hans Gruber. As a kid I often worried that I was a bad person for rooting for him, but upon re-watching it seems clear that the movie totally wants you to at least admire it a little. The scene where Hans pretends to be a scared hostage, and it's not at all clear how much McClane buys him, is told mostly from Gruber's point of view, causing us to stress on Gruber's behalf as it looks like McClane is going to kill him early on.

But as likable as Rickman's performance is, it's Willis as McClane who holds the whole story together, giving a tough yet vulnerable performance that left the whole world melting. And unlike Pulp Fiction, Willis is undeniably the main character here; the film lives and dies by Willis' ability to make us believe and root for this rich New York cop. Although Willis was already somewhat famous thanks to the TV show Moonlighting, this was the movie that made him a household name. It's hard to believe that Fox throw it away as a last resortbut thank god they did.