Rolf de Heer’s notorious cult classic about a tortured soul (Nicholas Hope) who spent the first 35 years of his life locked in a grubby apartment still, after all these years, almost defies description, laced with boundary-pushing scenes discussed only in hushed tones.
Beetlejuice (1988)
Michael Keaton is manically transformative as a hyper-powered ghoul decked out in a pin-striped Halloween suit, whose house-haunting abilities are sought after by a couple of amateur ghosts (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis).
The Big Short (2015)
The core challenge in Adam McKay’s satire about Wall Street sharks (who saw the GFC coming and conspired to profit from it) is to make a dry subject broadly accessible. The writer/director’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach deploys narration, fourth wall-breaking and endless analogies, including the following sage words from Steve Carrell:
The Cable Guy (1996)
A black comedy; an absurd psychological thriller; an extreme drama about doomed friendship. A characteristically in-your-face, rubbernecked Jim Carrey—high on the fumes of his meteoric rise in the 90s—arrives on Mathew Brockerick’s doorstep, setting him up with illegal cable and integrating himself into the poor sod’s suddenly traumatic life
Dick Johnson is Dead (2020)
Refusing to accept that her elderly father is on the way out, director Kirsten Johnson decides to celebrate his life by killing him off in various ways—from a falling air conditioner to bleeding out on the street.
Girl Asleep (2015)
There is more than a whiff of Wes Andersonisms in Rosemary Myers’ fastidiously styled coming-of-age picture, set around and during the birthday party of a teenage girl (Bethany Whitmore) circa the 1970s.
The Half of It (2020)
Yet another contemporary take on Cyrano de Bergerac, writer/director Alice Wu finds a fresh queer perspective in the story of a brainiac student (Leah Lewis) who writes beautiful love letters for a jock (Daniel Diemer).
Happy Gilmore (1996)
The pretentiousness of golf collides with the dunderheadedness of Adam Sandler, in a comedy about the pain of watching somebody being naturally very good at something others have to work hard for
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Edgar Wright has great flair for visual expression and narrative economy. The second instalment in his beloved Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy is a genre-bending buddy cop comedy about a police officer (Simon Pegg) relocated to a boring, sleepy village—boring, that is, until all those gruesome killings start happening
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
I am far from the first critic to compare Stephen Chow’s visually zany chopsocky period movie to a Looney Tunes cartoon, but sometimes the collective wisdom gets it right.