07. Colonel Hans Landa, Inglourious Basterds (2009)

A man who knows the answer to his question before he even asks it, a man who can appear pleasant company one moment before becoming your worst nightmare the next, a man who is just so evil that it makes himself giddy, SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is one bad dude. Known by the nickname, "The Jew Hunter," Landa spends most of the movie hunting and intimidating a young Jewish girl whom he let escape his clutches in the film's opening stanza. Along the way he encounters many side quests, including one which involves the film's main protagonists. Besides being breathtakingly evil, Landa is also extremely intelligent with an amazing gift for foresight, as the film's last act proves to us. Waltz's incredible performance earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

06. Anton Chigurh, No Country For Old Men (2007)

A hitman for hire tears up south Texas with reckless abandon, searching ruthlessly for stolen drug money. The man's name is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and he proves to be the most memorable piece of a sprawling western, directed by the Coen Brothers, based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Armed with a pressurized air container that shoots a lethal dose of suckage at his victims, Chigurh is definitely a man you don't want to encounter - as so many characters in this film so horribly find out. He first strangles a cop with handcuffs, then kills an innocent motorist on the side of the road, intimidates a gas station clerk, and chases our main protagonist all over Texas with intent to kill. He also kills a few other unfortunate souls along the way. Is this a man or a force of nature? Bardem's performance was indeed something of a force of nature as it won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

05. Agent Smith, The Matrix (1999)

Nothing speaks evil more clearly than a sentient malware blocker. This is essentially what Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is in the classic sci-fi film, The Matrix. Smith wants more than to merely keep freed humans from re-entering the world created by the Matrix to assist their fellow humans in escaping it. He wants to stop the problem at its source by destroying Zion, the human safe haven in the real world. This leads him into direct contact with our heroes. Smith is cunning, intelligent, cruel, and diabolical. He wants to escape the limits of his programming which makes him a far more dangerous adversary then his other agents. Weaving pulls an amazing performance in what is the defining moment of his career.

04. Bill the Butcher, Gangs of New York (2002)

Ruthless. Racist. Xenophobic. Patriotic. Honorable. These words can easily sum the complex character that is Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). In Martin Scorsese's Civil War period film, Gangs of New York, our nation's greatest city is controlled by rival gangs. The leading one, of course, is Bill's Natives. He and his gang rule over New York with an iron fist, frightening politicians, police and fire officials, as well as the lowly individuals who live in his area of influence. Anyone who stands in his way ends up with a butcher knife in his back. This was a role Day-Lewis was born to play and his performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. While probably not his greatest performance, it is definitely Day-Lewis's most villainous.

03. Amon Goeth, Schindler's List (1993)

One of history's most evil and sadistic men, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), has his story chronicled in Steven Spielberg's 1993 masterpiece, Schindler's List. Goeth does not show up until about an hour into the movie and immediately makes an impact when he orders the execution of a Jewish engineer who is merely attempting to keep safety in mind while supervising the construction of a barracks that will house the Jewish workers. Things only get worse from there as he oversees the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto where thousands of Jews are slaughtered by his trigger happy stormtroopers. Once in the concentration camp which he oversees, Jews are picked off by a half-naked Goeth who uses them for target practice from the balcony of his villa. Most chilling of all, however, is how he behaves when he is not killing Jews. The man seems perfectly normal and even charming in front of the film's protagonist, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson). Fiennes's performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, an award he should have won but did not.

02. The Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)

Of all the characters on this list, none is more explosive, more unpredictable, or more difficult to fathom than the criminal mastermind known simply as The Joker (Heath Ledger). While most of the villains on this list have an ultimate goal in mind: world domination, power, consolidation of power, money, etc., The Joker does what he does for the hell of it. There is no rhyme or reason to his madness and that makes him unique for an antagonist. Just when you think you have him figured out, such as the origin story concerning his scars and the revelation that he made a deal with the Chechen for half of the mob's money, he throws you a curveball. He tells another origin story about his scars. He burns the money he had won from the mob. He does everything for chaos and for kicks. Heath Ledger's performance won him a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and boy did he deserve it. Ledger's performance is a benchmark for all other superhero movie antagonists to strive toward. Though it is doubtful that such a performance will ever be topped.

01. Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The greatest movie villain of the last 25 years, and perhaps the greatest of all movie villains, is without a doubt Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and his appearance in The Silence of the Lambs. While he is not the main antagonist of the film (that honor goes to serial killer Buffalo Bill), Lecter's chilling and downright horrific personality gives us a glimpse into the ultimate heart of darkness. Exceedingly intelligent and cunning, Lecter plays mind games with our hero, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and uses those mind games to unlock her deepest, darkest secrets in exchange for the identity of Buffalo Bill. His most memorable moment is without a doubt his brilliant escape from a Tennessee courthouse. He kills his guards, puts the face of one of them onto his own, and uses this "disguise" to escape the building in an ambulance. His final line in the film, "I'm having an old friend for dinner," sums up his witty and cannibalistic nature. For his performance, Hopkins won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for what was without a doubt his most iconic performance.

This post was edited on 3/19/15 at 12:39 am