The saying goes: “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Or so says 18th century Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean on his deathbed at least. But it is noteworthy that his quote is transcendent enough to still apply 188 years later. And it certainly does when you’re talking about the general lack of respect comedy gets compared to more “serious” fare in the art world.

Time and time again, comedy is treated as inferior to drama by both critics and even casual fans with the general perception being that to be successful, something must bother you emotionally to prove effective or meaningful. Too many times, laughter and joy are relegated as unimportant or superfluous and films that aim for that reaction are labeled derogatory terms such as “cheap” or “easy.” But just ask any actor who is worth one’s salt and they will tell you that the effort and skill in creating a character that is endearing and genuinely funny is exceedingly difficult. Those not in the know seem to have the common thought that a master thespian should be able to just flip a switch in their brain and all of a sudden be charming, endearing, clever and witty. That is just simply not the case.

But just because it is difficult, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. There have been several instances where actors have worked against type and have turned in great comedic performances, changing their perception in the process. Whether it is a proven action star relaxing their muscles and showing their softer side, a squirrely character actor revealing their depth when the spotlight is upon them, or anyone with a stoic presence reminding you that, yes, they too can be silly; here are ten great comedic performances from certified non-comedians.

1. Anthony Hopkins – The Road To Wellville (1994)

Anthony Hopkins is undeniably one of the greatest actors to have ever lived. With a resume that includes seven decades in the film industry, over fifty acting awards and eighty six combined nominations, nobody would ever accuse him of being unqualified for any role you can think of. But it was a bit surprising to see Hopkins take on the role of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in the 1994 film The Road To Wellville. Despite being based on the true story of the real life wellness enthusiast, the film is more or less a slapstick comedy that focuses heavily on Kellogg’s quest to run a clean-living asylum in Michigan that became known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

While Kellogg notably engaged in plenty of controversial and shocking activities throughout his life, including sterilization, castration and mandatory eugenics, Hopkins plays the role like a bombastic Foghorn Leghorn cosplayer, bug-eyed, sneering and smirking through scenes with maniacal energy and lunkheaded wonder. He is clearly having a blast being able to shed his menacing image and instead strap on a pair of comically large buck teeth and a goofy mustache and really seems to revel in the absurdity and fart jokes that the film paints Kellogg around.

2. Jeff Daniels – Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Coming off of co-starring roles in the prestigous historical drama Gettysburg and the action thriller Speed, Daniels was an unlikely choice to pair alongside Jim Carrey for 1994’s Dumb and Dumber. However, Daniels rose to the challenge by matching Carrey’s boundless energy and over the top performance while adding a loveable innocence and hilarious naivety to his character, proving as a perfect counterpart to Carrey in the Farrelly Brothers classic tale of idiocy.

In the years since, Daniels has continued to shift effortlessly back and forth between both comedic and dramatic roles; winning the lead actor in a dramatic series primetime Emmy award back in 2013 for his work on the HBO series The Newsroom and scoring a Golden Globe nomination for 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. But despite his many accolades, many will forever remember him for having the most noteworthy explosive diarrhea scene in film history.

3. Kathy Bates – The Waterboy (1998)

After her career defining role in the 1991 horror film Misery, which netted her a best actress Oscar, Kathy Bates became one of the most prolific actors in Hollywood, with roles in a wide range of films such as Fried Green Tomatoes, Dolores Claiborne, The Late Shift and Titanic, specializing heavily in deeply layered character studies. So it surprised more than a few people back in 1998 when Bates was cast as Adam Sandler’s mother Mama Boucher in the cult comedy The Waterboy.

Given a fairly generic, one-dimensional trait of “be overprotective” with the script, Bates still found a way to have fun with the role, with her charm and distinctive volatile personality adding a lot of intangible depth, much needed gravitas and heart to a character who would be completely forgettable if played by a lesser actor. Bates is one of Hollywood’s rare stars who can do literally everything well and she has continued to deliver wonderful roles, both comedic and serious in the years since.

4. Meryl Streep – Death Becomes Her (1992)

Without question, Meryl Streep is one of, if not the most, respected actor of her generation. Compiling a mind boggling THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY EIGHT combined award nominations over her nearly 50 year career. Bow down, all hail, Queen Streep. She has certainly earned the right to choose any role she is interested in taking, but it was definitely unexpected when she starred alongside Goldie Hawn in the 1992 comedy fantasy Death Becomes Her. It’s a comical tale about dueling rivals who both end up drinking a magical potion that promises to give them eternal youth but instead finds them turning into the walking dead.

Despite it being a technical marvel of a film, DBH relies heavily on the characterization between Hawn and Streep to make their feud feel important enough to escalate to the wild and violent state it deteriorates into. Streep brings everything she has to the role and delivers a clever, catty play on the general fear of aging and narcissism as a whole. Streep’s fury and fire really help sell the idea and her comedic timing matches up with Hawn’s perfectly. It’s also just a fun novelty to see the world’s greatest living actor starring in an over the top, violent, screwball comedy.

5. Leonardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Consistently good in consistently good films, Leonardo DiCaprio is often regarded as one of the most under-rated actors of all time. In a career that spans historical dramas, political war thrillers, neo-noir psychological thrillers and science fiction action epics, just to name a few, DiCaprio turned in a truly inspired comedic performance for the ages back in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Proving that reality is much stranger than fiction, it is the true story of wall street magnate Jordan Belfort, who lied and schemed his way to fame and fortune throughout the 1990s.

The film takes the approach of showing you how toxic excessive living can be and DiCaprio plays the oblivious Belfort perfectly as he falls down rung after rung of the commercial and emotional ladder. With his character truly believing he can drive perfectly fine when he’s blackout drunk or that ludes give him strength such as spinach does for Popeye. WOWS is ultimately a sad story of manipulation and greed in hindsight, but DiCaprio is truly hysterical in his blissfully ignorant performance.

A great film score must succeed on multiple levels. Not only must the music itself be interesting and well composed, but it should suitably flow with the narrative at hand and enhance the richness of the film. The best film scores are the ones that are iconic for the music itself and their context within the story. Consider the scores of the late great Ennio Morricone; the musical riffs in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West will instantly transfer the listener to the scenes in question.

Sometimes a great score is obvious, and sometimes it takes multiple viewings to understand why the music in a film works as well as it does. The Academy Awards often recognize great scores, but like most Oscar categories, the award for Best Score tends to play it safe. That’s not to say that any recent Best Original Score winners have been undeserving, but that some of the more experimental and interesting scores have been passed up.

Looking back at the past decade, some of the most effective pieces of film music were snubbed. Here are ten great recent scores that were snubbed for Oscars.

10. Steve Jobs – Daniel Pemberton

One of the most underrated scores from one of the most underrated films of the decade, Daniel Pemberton’s score for Steve Jobs combines the electric excitement of new technology with an operatic quality reflective of the film’s unique structural nature. It is remarkable that the energetic soundtrack never distracts from the briskness of Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue, and in fact enhances the rhythmic nature of the words.

Pemberton is called on to score many powerful moments, and an intercut scene of two impassioned conversations between Jobs and John Sculley (Jeff Daniels) is overwhelming in how intricate and energizing the themes are. Pemberton was able to craft three unique styles of music for the three timelines the film covers, each with their own precise voice. Steve Jobs was passed over for many accolades, but it’s snub for score is among the most disappointing.

9. Tron: Legacy – Daft Punk

Like its predecessor, Tron: Legacy is a visual and audio marvel that features breathtaking effects, and both films have become a source of cult appreciation. Tron: Legacy is one of the most visually distinct blockbusters of the past decade, but it is best known for the incredible score from Daft Punk. Much of the Tron films revolve around the wonder of a digital world and the possibilities of futurism, and the synthesizer heavy score from Daft Punk transports the viewer straight into the heart of the grid.

Each feature within the game stands out due to the unique element of the score, and in particular Sam’s first grid battle feels as exciting as it does thanks to the accompanying themes. Bizarre characters like Castor (Michael Sheen) pop out thanks to the equally eccentric music, and the slower scenes between Sam (Garrett Hedlund) and his father (Jeff Bridges) become unexpectedly emotional. It is unfortunate that Daft Punk haven’t scored a film since, but Tron: Legacy was certainly worthy of an Oscar nomination, as it has become one of the most iconic film soundtracks in recent memory.

8. Good Time – Oneohtrix Point Never

The Safdie Brothers have become some of the signature filmmakers of their generation thanks to their unique combination of hyper realism, crime fiction, philosophy, and meditative meandering, and their accompanying scores have solidified the unique ways in which they tell their stories. Good Time is a film that often plays out like a stream of consciousness, and the phenomenal soundtrack from Oneohtrix Point Never is able to sell these drastic tonal shifts and shocking events.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Connie (Robert Pattinson) and his brother Nikas (Benny Safdie), and the score meditates on Connie’s failures as a guardian and the lengths he must go to atone for his actions. Although the score is frequently anxiety inducing in its complex movements, the recurring themes are quite somber and reflect the continued failings of Connie’s odyssey.

7. Blade Runner 2049 – Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch

It is often hard to score sequels, as the soundtrack to a successful film must honor the music established in the predecessor while also introducing new qualities that distinguish it. This was a particular challenge in the case of Blade Runner 2049, as the Vangelis score of the 1982 original easily ranks among the best sci-fi scores of all-time. Thankfully, the score from Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch captures the same eeriness and mystery, using the sci-fi noir genre as a means of exploring both morally dubious institutions and the overbearing power of technology.

The film’s dialogue is sparse, with oftentimes music being the only thing that gives a voice to Roger Deakins’s beautiful cinematography. Sequences like the sex scene between K and Joi or the artificial memories from Stelline are both hauntingly beautiful and fleetingly tragic thanks to the score, and while Zimmer and Wallfisch are mostly imaginative in introducing new music, they brilliantly bring back the iconic “Tear in Rain” theme to end the film perfectly.

6. Drive – Cliff Martinez

Drive was a landmark film in the way it mixed genres; while much of the plot feels like an elevated version of any number of L.A. crime fiction sagas, there is a deep romanticism and glossiness that comes from the connection between the Driver (Ryan Gosling) and Irene (Carey Mulligan). Nicholas Winding Refn has often described the film as being a “fairy tale,” and Cliff Martinez’s terrific score helps to incorporate these fantastical themes within the slick stylized nature of the action.

The Driver is often a wordless character, and the interactions he has with Irene are often felt purely through the beautiful music and cinematography; while the film is relentlessly paced, there is a lot of time spent languishing in the environments, and Martinez uses these moments to find unsung beauty. Martinez and Refn have a great working relationship that continued with Only God Forgives, The Neon Demon, and Too Old To Die Young, but it all began with the brilliance of Drive.

These are more actors than you think that are universally recognised as all time greats. There have always been those sitting comfortably at the top, known by anybody with even a mildly passing interest in cinema, such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino or Tom Cruise, however for those more interested by film there are a shocking amount of instantly recognisable faces belonging to stars.

However, just because they’re well known and big deals in Hollywood doesn’t mean that they aren’t sometimes in projects that don’t receive the deserved attention, and it certainly doesn’t mean that their performances receive praise, so… let’s take a look at ten performances from some of the most recognisable and famous actors in cinema that deserve more credit than they’ve had up to this point, shall we?

1. Johnny Depp in Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009)

Now, as someone who can’t typically stand Johnny Depp in much other than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam), this one came as quite a surprise. As a mega-fan of Michael Mann’s films, especially his 21st century films, the temptation was enough to tolerate Depp, however it turned out that he gave a complete showstopper of a performance as John Dillinger.

Stripping back his usual over-the-top and comic antics as charismatic pranksters in most of his other films (an unfortunate case of typecasting!), Depp plays Dillinger completely straight and manages to slip perfectly into the role of the harsh gangster whom Mann paints as more delicate than one would think – certainly more human. Depp is so well suited to what Mann wanted for his portrayal of Dillinger that it’s honestly quite arresting, as Depp works with Mann to shatter the tired tropes of the crime biopic by humanising the criminal at the centre as opposed to sensationalising them. It’s an incredible film helped a great deal by Depp’s shocker of a performance.

2. Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012)

Of course, Pattinson is generally very acclaimed now thanks to films like The Lost City of Z (Gray), Good Time (Josh and Benny Safdie), High Life (Denis) and a few others that he has carefully chosen in the later half of the 2010s, however, many will also remember the absolute critical blasting that should have shot down his career before he ever got to show his talent over his turn as Edward in the Twilight adaptations.

Cosmopolis came out before Robert Pattinson had become a newfound star, born again as a great character actor in indie films, and yet it must be the film that started this total 180 shift in his career. Based upon a book by the great Don DeLillo of the same name, Cronenberg and Pattinson focus intently on trying to capture the very unique, distanced style that DeLillo communicates so well on page with the camera. Pattinson is so brilliant at detaching himself and delivering the (intentionally) obtuse and clunky dialogue with his co-stars, marking the moment of re-birth for a young star who now has proven himself as an assuredly strong performer.

3. Isabelle Huppert in Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994)

Similarly to the style of David Cronenberg and Don DeLillo as mentioned above, Hal Hartley’s character always deliver their dialogue in an intentionally clunky and awkward fashion. Hartley overwrites a little, blocks his sets a little awkwardly and lets the characters all bask in the slight discomfort that comes from his excellent scriptwriting, and in Amateur, it is Isabelle Huppert who makes a surprising turn in the spy thriller comedy that Hartley would go on to really perfect a decade later when he directed the astoundingly good Fay Grim in 2006.

However, Huppert’s performance in Amateur is a huge part of what makes the film so charming. Helped along by a host of Hartley regulars, Huppert acts as a fish out of water stuck in Hal’s brilliant world of cautiously timed cause and effect that always sees things play out exactly as a playwright would dream they could.

Perfect timing, hilarious coincidences and the hand of fate controlling a huge group of characters, pulling them all together and orchestrating a distinctly merciless brutality upon them when they do finally meet mean that Amateur becomes a wonderfully funny film of worst (and best) case scenarios, and Huppert acts as the slightly more solid centre to the chaos that ensues. She stands out in all the right ways and gives one of her most surprising performances to date in a film that generally deserves much more recognition.

4. Tim Roth in Meantime (Mike Leigh, 1983)

After getting his career started with the brilliant Alan Clarke film Made In Britain just a year before (with an absolute beast of a performance as a second wave skinhead in 80s Britain), Tim Roth starred in a film for the other truly great British filmmaker of the time, Mike Leigh, in what would be one of his greatest and most underrated projects – Meantime. It seems that the curtain is slowly being lifted on this one, seeing as it recently received a Criterion upgrade and has been discussed much more since, becoming known as one of the prime examples of a film documenting life in Thatcher’s Britain, however the credit is still most definitely due, and shining a little more light on a personal favourite is always fun.

Meantime focuses itself upon a family struggling with unemployment in London in the early 80s, a problem that effected a huge amount of people in the UK generally at the time. Taking a slow burn approach to try to detail the boredom of wiling away the days in any way possible – of wasting the time that otherwise could be used so crucially – Leigh does a fantastic job of authentically capturing the life of the lower class unemployed whilst also ensuring that the film stays plenty entertaining via his usual improvised character work and his subtle yet hilarious dialogue.

It’s certainly one of his best works, and by using Tim Roth as the centre-point of the drama (giving him an entirely different role to the one that kick-started his career a year earlier), the film becomes all the more touching and meaningful.

5. Robert De Niro in The Fan (Tony Scott, 1996)

Let’s face it – De Niro needs absolutely no introduction. He’s been in practically all of the greatest crime films of the last fifty years or so, from his work in the early 70s with Brian De Palma and Scorsese all the way to his more varied work today (seeing him try comedy has been wonderful, even if it hasn’t always gone so smoothly), and he shows no real signs of stopping after giving one of the best performances of his career in the recently released The Irishman (Scorsese). In Tony Scott’s The Fan, he tries something a little different but similar enough to some of his other works that he still feels plenty confident enough to pull it off, and it shows.

Channelling more of his energy from The King Of Comedy/Cape Fear (Both Scorsese works too!), in the film De Niro plays Gil Renard, an obsessive fan of his favourite baseball player Bobby Rayburn (played by Wesley Snipes, who also gives a really good performance here!) whose obsessive behaviour turns expectedly more sinister.

Whilst the film doesn’t exactly try anything new, Scott’s stylised direction (as usual!) and De Niro’s high energy performance bring out the best of this type of film and really improve what would otherwise be more mediocre than great. De Niro toes the line between a seemingly nice gentlemanly type and the much darker, much more unpredictable version of himself that comes out when he or his obsession are in any trouble. This is a great watch for any fans of Joker, for sure.

Some of the most memorable performances in the history of cinema have come from great actors playing the dastardliest of villains. Whether it’s the sublime subtleties of Anthony Perkins’ performance as Norman Bates, the masterful physicality of Heath Ledger’s Joker or even the unforgettable voice of James Earl Jones coming out from behind the mask of Darth Vader.

However, it is not uncommon for even the best actors in the industry to fall short of the mark when playing the ‘bad guy’. Here are some examples of thespians misjudging the type of performance needed from them, or even in some cases, being completely out of their depth.

10. Chloë Grace Moretz – Carrie

To call Carrie White a villain seems to be more than a little harsh, after all she was product of an overbearing religious mother and the victim of constant torment from her sadistic school bullies. However, if you end up murdering your schoolmates and teachers it’s probably fair that she is made out to be the villain in what should have been her redemption story. The original Brain De Palm film is a bona fide masterpiece of horror, where Sissy Spacek plays the titular Carrie in what is now seen as one of the all time greatest performances in a horror film. When a remake was announced to come in 2013 with Chloë Grace Moretz taking over the role, it’s fair to say that hopes were high. Turns out, we really should have lowered our expectations.

Spacek played the role with such an incredible amount of awkwardness, so much so that she seemed more like an alien from another world than a troubled high schooler. Whereas it’s impossible to see Moretz as anything other than cool, to the effect that it’s utterly ridiculous to see her as the victim of mass bullying. Equally wrongheaded is the film’s direction to show Carrie as a ‘nottie-turned hottie’, or to present the troubled teenager’s discovery of her telekinetic powers as a superpower rather than a curse. Thankfully Moretz’s career hasn’t been affected too much by the film’s failure and continues to be a rising force in the movie business, Carrie however remains a blemish on an otherwise impressive career for an actress that’s not even past twenty-five yet.

9. Topher Grace – Spider-Man 3

After the huge success of Spider-Man 2, which still seen to this day as one of the best superhero movie ever made, the expectations going into the third film of Sam Raimi’s franchise could not have been higher. Then with the announcement that the web-slinger’s greatest foe, Venom would make his cinematic debut in the film, the excitement of Marvel’s fan boys only grew. So imagine the disappointment when they saw one of the most beloved comic book super villains of all time being reduced to a snarling glob of waste.

To be fair to Topher Grace, the end result of his performance as Venom was not entirely his fault. According to reports that came out after the film’s release, Raimi was never a fan of the character and only put him in the movie because of studio insistence, which in turn relegated Venom to one of three villains in the movie and was arguably the most ineffective and uninteresting of the bunch.

Raimi defended Grace by stating that Venom represented the dark side to Spider-Man. However the whole point of the character is that he is a terrifying violent psychopath, three traits that nobody would ever associate to Topher Grace, who instead played the role as a sniveling little weasel. Granted Tom Hardy’s version as the character in not the full vindication that the fans wanted, but it’s still a huge improvement over Grace’s bungled performance.

8. Cate Blanchett – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

There is absolutely no argument that Cate Blanchett is one of the best working actors today. She has proven time and time again of having unparalleled range while displaying an almost chameleonic immersion into the characters that she plays. Her immense talent has earned multiple awards, including two Oscar wins out of seven nominations. However when, it comes to her mainstream, summer blockbuster work, it’s fair to say that her work is hit and miss.

Her performance as the Soviet agent, Irina Spalko in the fourth Indiana Jones movie was in hindsight, not the best vehicle to showcase Blanchett’s acting abilities. For most of her screen time, she is relegated to being to being perhaps the most boring Russian villain in movie history, and that’s saying something.

Despite her attempts to give the character any kind of personality, she instead comes across as hammy. But perhaps the most damning indictment of this performance is that it comes in a franchise that has provided a wide array of classic villains who gave the audience a sense of menace that put everyone’s favourite archeologist in serious peril, there was however no feeling of this with Spalko who in the end was so uninteresting that it was impossible to take her as a threat to one of cinema’s greatest heroes.

7. Morgan Freeman – Wanted

Having a filmography that stretches back forty years, Morgan Freeman has built his reputation over those four decades to become one of Hollywood’s most well respected actors. Having being in many acclaimed films, his work with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, the latter earning him his only Oscar to date, being the standouts in a very impressive career. However what he is not famous for is his reputation as a movie villain, Freeman tried to rectify that with the 2008 action film, Wanted, albeit to a less than stellar response compared to his previous work.

Wanted was praised at the time for it’s stylish action scenes and crass humour, but watching back with present eyes, it’s a blend of distasteful ‘lad’ humour that only thirteen-year-old boys would find amusing and set-pieces heavily inspired by much better action films, The Matrix being the most obvious. Freeman’s performance as the leader of a shadowy organization of assassins, who later turns out in a less than shocking twist to be the big bad, was singled out as a positive when the first reviews came in.

But again on rewatch, the actor is sleepwalking his way through the film, signifying that he could not care a single iota about how the movie turns out. That seems to be a constant trend in his recent movies, as it seems like it’s been years since we have seen a truly motivated performance out of an actor with such a prestigious pedigree as Freeman.

6. Helmut Bakaitis – The Matrix Reloaded

It is hard to think of a more revolutionary action film than 1999’s The Matrix, with it’s elaborate set-pieces, visual effects, cinematography and sheer value for entertainment, the Wachowski’s had truly struck gold. In the years since, the original film is still seen rightfully as a classic of the genre, however it has also become difficult to differentiate the film from its two sequels, which are nothing more than huge disappointments that only damage the reputation of the first film in the trilogy.

The one question that the first movie raised that fans clamoured to the sequels for an answer was who created the Matrix? Who is the puppet master in charge of our protagonist’s fate? Just who is exactly was the Architect? In the first sequel, we got that answer and the Architect revealed himself, portrayed on screen by Helmut Bakaitis. Yes, that Helmut Bakaitis, German born actor and star of Australian soap opera, Home and Away.

It’s fair to say that The Matrix Reloaded was Bakaitis big break into Hollywood and introduction to a worldwide audience, and it’s fair to say that within an almost ten minute scene where the Architect spouts endless exposition to Neo, cinema-goers everywhere where stunned as to how an actor with zero screen-presence and next to no reputation could land such an important role in one of the most highly anticipated sequels ever made. And to think Sean Connery turned the role down, oh what could have been.

People often associate soundtracks with memorable melodies, resounding cues and grandiose orchestration – Francis Lai’s Love Story theme, Bernard Herrmann’s cue for the shower scene in Psycho, and Max Steiner’s Gone with the End theme are some examples in that order of very famous soundtracks, recognizable even by people who are not knowledgeable in the genre.

What makes a movie score famous? Sometimes the movie itself helps. If a movie gets public or critical recognition, chances are that the soundtrack will follow the same path. Sometimes mediocre movies hide great soundtracks inside them. Other times the soundtrack is relegated to the movie’s background, so it doesn’t get the deserved acknowledgement. Occasionally some movie composers get all the praise for their most famous works, which leaves aside other works different from their trademarks, but yet as brilliant as their celebrated compositions. This list focuses on soundtracks that for the reasons above mentioned are as not as popular as they should be.

20. All About My Mother – Alberto Iglesias

Pedro Almodóvar and Alberto Iglesias have teamed up for many movies since their first collaboration, The Flower of My Secret, in 1995. Iglesias has three Academy Awards nominations – The Constant Gardener, The Kite Runner, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – but one of his best works is this untypical score for Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother. Mixing mute-trumpet phrases that evoke the sadness of Miles Davis’ Ascenseur pour L’Échafaud, beautiful string arrangements, and Astor Piazzolla-esque bandoneon parts, Iglesias could compose a remarking soundtrack, full of beauty and sadness like the movie.

19. Apocalypto – James Horner

Best known for his work in Titanic and his orchestral scores, James Horner’s soundtrack for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is an underrated beautiful score. Using a large collection of exotic instruments, such as the Tromba Marina, Swedish bark trumpets and Ugandan wildebeest horns besides synth pads, Horner could provide a tribalistic and primal feeling to the movie. The highlights are the use of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan as a one-man band voice provider and tracks that combine percussive explosions with bizarre horn squeaks.

18. Under the Skin – Mica Levi

Under the Skin soundtrack is a masterpiece on the art of displaying human feelings through the lenses of an inhuman creature. Mica Levi could create a soundtrack that sounds organic and robotic, just like Scarlett Johansson’s character in the movie. Inspired by avant-garde composers such as John Cage, Giacinto Scelsi, and Iannis Xenakis, Disney movies’ music and Dr. Dre, she could compose a groundbreaking masterpiece on her first score. Regarding unsettling music in movies, Under the Skin is in the same league as Stanley Kubrick’s selection of Penderecki and Ligeti for The Shining,

17. Tron – Wendy Carlos

Tron was a futuristic project made by Disney that revolutionized computer animation in movies. The film was a major flop during its release, but it slowly gained a cult status and many followers around the world. Nowadays its visual technical innovations seem outdated and uncouth, but the soundtrack still sounds good and visionary. The combination between synthesizers and orchestral music makes this soundtrack a great achievement in movie scoring, influencing many movie scores after.

16. The Ghost Writer – Alexandre Desplat

For this Hitchcock-esque thriller, the French composer Alexandre Desplat composed a score with a lot of influence from Bernard Herrmann Herrmann influence, mixed with Shostakovich and Philip Glass. Desplat is a successful and prolific movie composer with eleven nominations for Academy Awards. He usually resorts to sentimentality and melodies, which is not the case in The Ghost Writer.

Anxious bass clarinet ostinatos, scary fog horn melodies that refer to the sea in the movie, and electrifying percussion crescendo build until it releases tension on the title track. The whole score has a permanent feeling of apprehensiveness, as if someone is always lurking behind. There are many Herrmann-esque cues, but Desplat also puts his own imprint in many moments, using one of his specialties: beautiful counterpoints.

15. The Secretary – Angelo Badalamenti

The Little Italy composer is most famous for his works for David Lynch. His creepy soundtracks, using dark jazz and minimalist ambience, had contributed a lot to Lynch’s movies like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. But in this sadomasochist tale by director Steven Shainberg, Badalamenti’s music differs greatly from his traditional scope.

Whereas Badalamenti’s music adds up a lot of tension and darkness to Lynch’s movies, here it is used to make things softer, as if the images on screen were already strong enough. The soundtrack works as a perfect background for the submission-dominance story of the movie, evoking also the tragedy and joy of Lee’s and Dr. Grey’s relationship.

14. The Birds – Oskar Sala

For his 1963 thriller about bird attacks, Alfred Hitchcock decided to not use any incidental music. Instead, he hired German electronic pioneer Oskar Sala to provide sound effects for bird calls and noises. The composer used an instrument developed by him and Friederich Trautwein called Mixtur-Trautonium, a predecessor of the modern synthesizer.

The sounds produced by the Mixtur-Trautonium are generated by saw-tooth oscillations of low-voltage neon lamps and can be varied with filters. It is an innovative soundtrack – precursor of many modern film scores that are filled with synthesizers, noises and electrical devices to explore sonorous and musical possibilities – and also strangely scary, it is almost impossible to notice that the birds violent squeaks are produced by an electrical device and not by a flock of angry birds.

13. Blow Out – Pino Donaggio

Brian De Palma’s homage to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up was a major box office and critical flop but the movie is a great thriller about corruption and the art of cinema. Pino Donaggio had previously made two notorious scores for De Palma, Carrie and Dressed to Kill. Blow Out is on the same level as them, although not celebrated equally.

There are Pino Donaggio’s trademarks – the theme is a strikingly beautiful melody that repeats itself during different moments in the score with different arrangements – and thrilling moments, funky cues, and guitar driven instrumental pieces. The result is an eclectic soundtrack, embracing different genres and arrangements, without losing its unity and cohesiveness.

12. Punch-Drunk Love – Jon Brion

“I think what you actually want is the thing to feel like a musical, but nobody ever breaks into song,” Jon Brion told director PT Anderson when they were discussing the movie soundtrack. “Exactly!” the director said back to Brion. So then they made Punch-Drunk Love the ultimate anti-musical movie. This sardonic approach is seen throughout the whole movie, as if music and visuals were falsely leading the audience into the conception that the movie is a type of musical or romantic comedy.

Jon Brion is one of the most underrated soundtrack composers and Punch-Drunk Love can be considered his magnum opus. There are disturbing percussive moments that express the turmoil inside Adam Sandler’s character, Hawaiian melodies, cynical doo wop songs, easy listening cues- but the highlight is Overture, a track that mixes avant-garde noises, sad harmonium melodies, beautiful classical arrangements, jazzy interludes and the Punch-Drunk Love Theme, a beautiful melody that resembles Nino Rota’s Amarcord theme.

11. Kwaidan – Toru Takemitsu

“I wanted to create an atmosphere of terror. But if the music is constantly saying, “Watch out! Be scared!” then all the tension is lost. It’s like sneaking up behind someone to scare them. First, you have to be silent.”

Toru Takemitsu’s own description of his music for the Japanese horror Kwaidan emphasizes the importance of silence in the score. Differently from his more popular works of film music – which embody classical grandiloquence and beauty – the Japanese composer used silence and wood noises to provide the terrifying atmosphere for Kwaidan. Without his music, Kwaidan would be an excessively beautiful movie incapable of scaring anyone. Combining the Japanese folkloric instrument biwa, wood noises and silence, Takemitsu could create a groundbreaking masterpiece.

In many of his earlier films, Bong Joon-ho addressed numerous important social issues, like environmentalism, corporate greed and class inequality. That is hardly a surprise, considering Bong majored in sociology at the prestigious Yonsei University. In his native country of Korea and in cinephile circles, he is known for his nickname Bongtail (the combination of his last name and the word “detail”). By combining impeccable editing, brilliant sets and unforgettable characters with incredible attention to details, Bong demonstrated his ingenuity and brilliance once again.

As a result of his familiarity with the subject of class inequality and his eye for subtle and sophisticated symbolism, we got a modern masterpiece in the form of Parasite. Although crucial, the massive success of Parasite can’t be attributed solely to these reasons. A considerable factor in the historic accomplishments of the movie must be found in its universal relatability. And we have our global intertwined economies to thank for that.

Wealth and income inequality have soared in the last few decades all over the world. Famous economist Thomas Piketty and his team showed that between 1980 and 2016 the richest 1% received 27 cents of each dollar of global income growth. This was more than twice the share of the bottom 50%, who secured only 12 cents of every dollar. The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who account for 60 percent of the planet’s population. Wealth inequality is ever-present whether you live in Nigeria, Italy, Korea or in the United States, and that is why this movie resonated with audiences across the globe.

1. Upstairs, Downstairs

From the opening scene of the movie, we can already get a glimpse of Bong’s visual narrative when the camera pans down from the ground, yet remaining above Ki-woo’s head. From the start of the film, the director uses camera movement to insinuate the socioeconomic position of the Kim family.

The central metaphor in this symbolism-rich movie are the stairs. Bong views stairways as a crucial tool in conveying the message of social mobility to his audience. Our characters are constantly seen going up and down the stairs depending on their position in the social hierarchy. Even the ensemble cast made jokes about Parasite being a staircase movie.

When Ki-woo starts his journey to the Park house for the first time, he can be seen going upstairs just to set his foot on the ground. To get to the rich neighbourhood, he needs to climb hefty amounts of ground. It then seems that the Park’s gate is located at the highest point of the already very elevated wealthy area. Having climbed another set of stairs in the backyard, he finally enters the house.

Relying solely on the astonishing visual language of his work, Bong successfully managed to show us the incredible contrast between extremely wealthy and poor members of today’s society. The most impressive example of this is probably the sequence of scenes in which we follow the Kims escaping the Park mansion in what almost seems like a never-ending journey of descending an infinite number of stairs.

2. A place in the sun

Exposure to sunlight represents another important metaphor in Parasite. Kim’s household has only two windows (second, ironically in the bathroom), so their exposure to natural light is limited to maybe an hour a day. Unlike the Kims, the Parks can basically bathe in the sun every day. They own a massive backyard with vast amounts of open space and their house is full of enormous windows.

It is no coincidence that in the scene when Ki-woo climbs to the Park house, as the camera follows him from the back, the audience is temporarily almost blinded by the sun. In fact, the Park house is purposely built at an angle that allows for that scene to happen. That’s just how vital this symbolism was to Bong. The higher up in society you are, the closer you are to the sun, both metaphorically and physically.

3. The semi-basement and the absence of middle class

The Kims live in a semi-basement, which is half overground, half underground. A semi-basement is used to symbolize the simultaneous existence of hope and fear in the minds of the Kim family. They can catch a glimpse of the ground from their windows, and they hope to climb up the social ladder and live above ground someday. But they are also aware that they can end up even further down, completely underground.

In most of the countries in today’s world, the middle class is slowly but surely disappearing. And in Parasite, all characters are either rich or poor. There are only poor and poorer, and the middle class is nonexistent. That can’t be a coincidence in a Bong movie.

4. Who’s the real parasite?

There are numerous examples in which Kims are alluded to as being parasites in the movie. Foreshadowing a future event, Chung-sook compares her husband Ki-taek to a cockroach at one point. The bug extermination scene at the beginning of the film is another example.
In the first scene, in which Ki-woo is in the rich Park neighbourhood, we can see him next to what appear to be creeper and liana plants surrounding the walls of buildings.

What characterises these plants is their invasive and fast-growing nature as well as the damage they bring upon surrounding plants and their hosts. They represent another possible allusion to the parasitic nature of the Kims.

Bong even played with the names of the Kim family. In Korean, the word for Parasite is Gisaengchung. The names of three out of four members of the Kim family start with the syllable Ki (Ki-taek, Ki-woo and Ki-jung), and since Gi and Ki are pronounced the same in Korean, that means they have the same first syllable as the word for Parasite. And in Chung-sook’s case, the first syllable of her name is the same as the last syllable of the word.

But does that mean that in Bong’s eyes, the Kims are the parasites after all? Not necessarily. All of this symbolism can just mean that the society sees Kims as the parasites, not that they are the real parasites. After all, Parks are the ones who are incapable of doing what most of us consider basic and everyday chores and responsibilities like cooking, cleaning and childcare.

In that sense, the Parks are dependant on the hard labour of the Kims, giving them only small and meaningless amounts of their money in return. Can’t that be considered leeching too?

5. The scholar stone

The key plot device which is used to start the main series of events in this feature is a scholar stone. When Ki-woo’s friend, Min, brings this unexpected and weird gift to the Kim family, he says that the rock is supposed to bring material wealth to its owner. Later, it turns out that the rock was just an excuse for Min to visit his friend and offer him a job which Ki-woo is going to gladly accept.

However, this stone is not just a simple plot device, it represents something far more important. The stone symbolizes Ki-woo’s hope and desire to become a member of the high society, something he so desperately wants. Ki-woo views the stone as his entry ticket to the rich and privileged world. The rock also personifies his friend Min, someone who Ki-woo sees as the best version of himself.

Ki-woo clings to the stone even when the flood destroys his home and he carries it with him to the Park house, once again relying on the stone to become an ultimate “solver” of his problems. But in the end, he was almost killed by it. He almost became a victim of his own aspirations.

In May 2020 we celebrated the 30th anniversary of David Lynch’s film “Wild at Heart.” It was initially released in 1990 to mixed reviews. There were group walkouts in the first few screenings and there are stories of people heckling the movie at Cannes, even though it ended up winning the Palme d’Or. At the time of its release, Lynch was slowly beginning to build his reputation as an auteur. “Blue Velvet,” however divisive, showcased that Lynch had a fresh voice paving a new path for independent American cinema. It’s easy to consider David Lynch as an iconic director right now, but even though some critics hailed “Blue Velvet” to be one of the best films of the decade, others (Roger Ebert among them) were having trouble adjusting to Lynch’s cinema.

Ebert called the film “repulsive” and “manipulative,” a film hiding behind a “copout of parody,” but that’s the very reason why “Wild at Heart” is an interesting case. “Blue Velvet,” however satirical and ironic, had a certain sincerity at its core (a certain ‘magical realism’ if you will) while “Wild at Heart” did away with the sincerity and built its fundamentals entirely on artifice. It’s important to consider that this is a re-visiting of the film, 30 years after its release. The film has a much different meaning now than it had at its release date.

All intended meanings set aside, apparent superficial meanings are equally valid subjects for criticism, so consider this list a mixture of “intent” and “extent,” a merging of the profound, the artificial, and the superficial to criticize a piece of film that has a deeper relationship to American cinema and the American psyche than it does to life. “Wild at Heart” is not a representation of American life – it’s a representation of a representation of the American psyche.

David Lynch has produced many films worthy of a deep-dive, almost all of which are more critically acclaimed and more successful than “Wild at Heart,” but seldom has a David Lynch film made such bold, subversive statements. Before “Wild at Heart,” Lynch’s films were obscene and explicit, but they still had a certain nuance to their expression. With “Wild at Heart,” Lynch throws away all nuance and bares his cinema for the audience. Through the exploration of several aspects of this film, this list will explore five reasons why “Wild at Heart” makes Lynch’s most subversive work to date.

This list contains numerous spoilers.

1. Nicolas Cage: An American Emblem of Individualism

By 1990, Nicolas Cage had a mixed bag of performances on his resume. He had charmed audiences in both “Moonstruck” and “Raising Arizona,” but he was still a new face on a long road to stardom. With his machismo and eccentric acting sensibility, he was beginning to attract odd characters and strange roles disguised as cookie-cutter Hollywood roles.

Watching Cage on the big screen in 1990 must have had a completely different meaning to the audience than it does now. Cage’s performance as Sailor delivers a whole new message to audiences in 2020. In 1990 he may have been overlooked or underestimated, but in 2020 his performance as Sailor is one of the first pivotal “Nicolas Cage” moments. There are devout Nicolas Cage fans who organize large screenings of his movies just to watch him deliver his lines in his signature bombastic and highly stylized manner, and when they do so, they do not watch his Oscar-winning performance in “Leaving Las Vegas” or his Oscar-nominated performance in “Adaptation.” They instead watch “Vampire’s Kiss” or “Wild at Heart” to witness the genius of a truly unique American actor.

It seems acting under David Lynch provided the much-needed free reign for him to experiment with his acting style. Sailor’s character may be one of the absolute most ridiculous and over-the-top characters in the history of American cinema; however, there is an unwavering sincerity behind his artificial acting. The film begins with a knife fight where Sailor kills his assailant, after which Cage turns toward the screen, panting. There is a cigarette in his mouth, and with a single finger raised he stares at Marietta (Diane Ladd) with the most uncomfortably unnatural expression. This scene perfectly showcases what Ethan Hawke once said about Cage in 2013, that Cage has “taken us away from an obsession with naturalism.”

Cage may have done away with naturalism, but his exaggerated performances have opened the door for a new sincerity that has laid bare all absurdity of acting. Sailor may not be “natural,” but he is infinitely more flexible and believable as a person than most naturally-acted characters. Sailor is a caricature of the freedom-seeking American hero, but as with all caricatures, the exaggeration is the message.

2. Music as Cultural Compartmentalization

David Lynch has always had a love affair with music and musicians. His use of music is deliberate and calculated, and he frequently uses musicians as actors. With “Wild at Heart,” Lynch takes his cultural knowledge of music a step further.

The music is highly codified in “Wild at Heart.” When Lynch wants to make a cultural statement, he first lures the audience in with codified music. His encyclopedic musical knowledge of American subcultures and countercultures is at its peak in this film, something that American filmmakers like Tarantino started using satirically soon after.

Throughout the first half of the movie, violence and sex is often punctuated by Powermad’s “Slaughterhouse” that pretty much acts as the film’s theme for the first half. Peppered throughout the film are scenes of Nicolas Cage lashing out at simple events surrounding him, and every time, his violent outbursts are cued with a few power chords from Powermad. Lynch wants us to connect the violence to the music and attribute it to the supposed violence inherent in heavy metal music. However, through the blatant portrayal of such violent outbursts and sexual content with metal music, he is in no way trying to perpetuate the stereotype, but instead highlighting its opposition to the musical status quo, which in the film is chosen to be Elvis Presley’s seductive crooning.

Throughout the film, Elvis (though entirely unnamed) and his dreamlike serenades of young women seems to be portrayed as the ideal faithful young man who will go to any length to stand by his woman. The irony is that in this rock and roll/metal dichotomy, Lynch pits the counterculture of two generations against one another. Elvis Presley, a man who represented rock and roll and was criticized for the dangerous counterculture that he brought to the American youth during his prime, has now been peacefully assimilated to the American status quo, and is now an American ideal against the new counterculture posing a danger to the American ideal. And the musical tension throughout the film seems to be between the dangerous, rebellious heavy metal counterculture, and the now revered and idealized rock and roll.

3. Sailor and Lula: The Art of Adaptation

The screenplay for “Wild at Heart” was written by David Lynch, an adaptation of Barry Gifford’s pulp novel of the same name. The film adaptation is mostly faithful to the source novel; however, the small tweaks are what gives the film its Lynchian atmosphere.

What the film introduces is the metal music, the Elvis Presley songs, the Wizard of Oz references, and the entirety of the ending. The film starts with startling fidelity to the novel; the first 40 pages of the novel are acted out pretty much line by line, but as the film approaches the one-hour mark, the big changes begin.

The first hour revolves around the mystery of a house fire caused by Lula’s (Laura Dern) father years ago. The audience is led to believe that the story is driven toward a natural unveiling of that mystery, but as the characters unfold the mystery of the fire (not once, but three times with varying degrees of subtlety), there is an immediate shift in the tone of the film. Lynch narratively leads us with plot lines from the book, but simultaneously raises a big middle finger toward the story and slowly convinces us the film is about something entirely different.

That something else seems to be the eerie violent idealism of the American dream. Another minor tweak from Lynch’s part is when Sailor is narrating a past sexual experience. Everything is the exact same as the book, except the simple addition of assault rifles scattered on the bed where the woman is offering herself. Sailor’s sex story is a huge turn-on for Lula, who even repeats some of the sentences the seduced woman was speaking to Sailor in the flashback. This scene of pure wish fulfilment is further affirmed by Lula’s response and shows that Lynch has added the assault rifles to the mise-en-scene as a caricature of the violence in Pulp Americana.

The most significant addition, however, is the Wizard of Oz storyline, which deserves its own header.

4. The Wizard of Oz: The Puritanical Morality of American Suburbia

Of David Lynch’s additions to the original source story of “Wild at Heart,” none is as consequential to the movie’s ideology than the Wizard of Oz storyline. In the very beginning minutes of the film when Sailor gets incarcerated, the prison cell is depicted in a crystal ball, an image that may leave the audience to ponder before the Wizard of Oz storyline further develops.

Throughout the film, many discussions about the nature of good and evil receive a response that alludes to the Wizard of Oz as an ultimate reference for morality. When Lula speaks of her cousin Dell, whose severe mental illness caused much distress for the family, Sailor responds by saying, “Too bad he couldn’t visit that Wizard of Oz and get some good advice.”

The moral navigation through Wizard of Oz anecdotes (including the film’s depiction of Diane Ladd’s character as Wicked Witch of the East), seem to be trivial and superficial for the majority of the movie. However, it’s the ending that raises the importance of the Wizard of Oz in the film’s narrative.

Toward the end of the film, Sailor gets released from jail a second time and meets with Lula and his son; the whole scene plays out with maximum fidelity to the book, down to every line of dialogue. However, the book ends with Sailor bidding farewell to Lula and his son, walking away. In the film we continue to follow Sailor to a back alley where he is cornered by a comically multi-racial street gang who beat him up after Sailor calls them a slur. After Sailor is beaten to the ground, he has a vision of the Good Witch who convinces him to go back to Lula and take a chance on love. He gets up, apologizes to the street gang, and goes back to reunite with his love.

The Wizard of Oz acts as a spiritual divining rod leading to the picturesque happy ending where Sailor sings Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” and serenades her love with a backdrop of shining sun, like a Spaghetti Western’s emblem of “happily ever after.”

5. Be-Bop-a-Lula: The Death of Nuance

Most major critics of David Lynch have attacked his tongue-in-cheek, crude filmmaking, and “Wild at Heart” is pretty much the peak of Lynch’s crude filmmaking. It’s as if Lynch has done away with all subtext and employed all text instead.

When Sailor is released from prison, Lula brings him his snakeskin jacket (hilariously belonging to Nicolas Cage himself) and Sailor responds, “Did I ever tell ya that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?” We don’t have to wait for the narrative to tell us what Sailor represents; we are spoon fed what Sailor represents in the first 10 minutes of the film, so the audience can stop guessing and pay deeper attention. It’s a deadly seduction from both Cage and Lynch’s side. Where most filmmakers bluff, Lynch reveals his cards from the beginning, or so it seems.

Lynch seems to have a profound distaste for subtext, so he often complicates things by explicitly cutting out the middleman to give voice to certain mental connections that are often made subconsciously. There are far too many examples of literal exposition, as if the film is being pitched in an executive’s meeting. While Farragut drives to New Orleans, a voice on his radio station sings “baby please don’t go down to New Orleans,” which overshadows the dark fate that awaits him there. When Marietta confronts Sailor in the bathroom, she calls him a piece of shit, and the camera quickly cuts to a toilet.

One time, during one of the film’s sex scenes, the music changes from Powermad to “Be-Bop-A-Lula she’s my baby”; and last but not least, at the time of Sailor’s confession about being involved in the mysterious house fire, Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” plays, and at the moment when the song is bound to start saying “world was on fire, no one could save me but you,” Sailor confesses to being involved in the house fire and receives support from Lula nonetheless.

The film is peppered with crude scenes; but in its crudeness is where “Wild at Heart” dissects the underlying logic of the American psyche. Lynch shows you the connections that the audience would have made if given the chance, and leaves them to question why such seemingly disconnected ideologies, subcultures, and imagery are connected. “Wild at Heart” existentially unravels the mental schemata set in place by the prevalent culture of America, and makes the audience question how they arrived at such conclusions.

In the end, there seems to be a reason behind the harshness and unpalatability of “Wild at Heart.” If it seems “manipulative” and “repulsive,” that’s because it is. If it is hard to watch, it’s because it wants to be. “Wild at Heart” is a great cultural product that informs through the discomfort that it imposes on its viewer. It is David Lynch at his most satirical and subversive.

The ending of a horror film is paramount. The feeling you take away all rides on the finale of the film. A good ending can leave you disturbed forever. It can etch itself into your soul. The ending can make or break the film. The final image is the last attempt to truly impact you, one last attempt to leave you with an image or idea you can’t forget, and when it works, it can haunt you far beyond the 90-minute runtime.

Nailing the finale is not so easy though, countless horror films have attempted the final scare, the last thrill, but most of the time it’s just as soulless as the many cliché scares that came before it. It takes a special magic to create a truly disturbing ending, and here is a list of the films that did it best.

For obvious reasons this list is ripe with spoilers.

10. Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008)

One of the more prominent films to come out of France’s extreme horror trend, Martyrs is a brutal exercise in tolerance and religion. Set around a cult that wishes to torture people in the belief that a martyr can experience the outer realm of existence, and thus prove if there is indeed anything beyond the physical realm, the film showcases some of the most extreme and gruelling imagery to date, and the ending is the most shocking part.

Both thematically and visually, Martyrs is a heavy film, and the ending is the heaviest moment. When the captive girl, played by Mylene Jampanoi, has been tortured to her physical limit by being skinned with all but her face remaining, she finally reveals what she sees, but we the audience never find out. Although one message is clear, whatever the martyr saw, it was not the heaven they hoped for and the film ends with a depressingly dark climax that leaves you feeling very unoptimistic.

9. The Human Centipede 2 (Tom Six, 2011)

The human Centipede trilogy is an experiment in shock. Six pushes his audience but always leaves a sense of humour present, something the second film truly capitalises on. Easily the most disturbing out of the trilogy for its British realism aesthetic and its sombre tone, Centipede 2 is a hard pill to swallow.

When the film finally reaches its climax, it ramps up the grotesque to absurd levels, babies being crushed under acceleration pedals, blood, guts, and everything else! And when it is all over, we see Martin, played by Laurence R. Harvey, still alive and ready to try the dreaded experiment all over again. An open end you’d much prefer closed.

8. Begotten (E. Elias Merhige, 1989)

How can you explain Begotten? Unlike any film before it, unlike any after it, Begotten is a truly unique piece of art. The film very loosely depicts the creation of earth. The film became an underground cult sensation with theorist Susan Sontag even championing it from the start. It struggled to find an audience but over time it has become a staple of avantgarde art.

Still to this day it is a hard to watch meditation on the very cinematic form it exists in, and its ending is just as twisted as the entirety of its narrative. The ending to the film is so powerful because it reveals nothing, it feels sombre and dark like the images that proceeded it and it leaves you with no sense of equilibrium.

Begotten feels like you have been ripped from the womb too early. You feel like you are seeing images that you will never understand, you can never comprehend, and when it is over you feel vulnerable and dirty.

7. Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)

Cronenberg’s defining surrealist achievement enclosed in the iconography of a sci-fi horror. This film is a masterpiece of cinema. The film is the crescendo to many of the ideas Cronenberg had been exploring in his early career. His biological horror seemed right at home in the story of TV president Max Renn, played by James Woods, and his discovery of a pirate channel named Videodrome. He slowly becomes infatuated with the channel as it warps his mind and distorts his perception of reality.

The film slowly builds as does Renn’s insanity, until the climactic ending leaves a sense of dread and insecurity as Renn ends his own life. Well, that is what the film depicts visually but thematically it feels very open-ended. What was real, and what was not? Like the very channel that plagues Max’s mind, Videodrome feels like an insane fever dream where reality and dreams collide, and the ending further justifies that sense of disturbing surrealism.

6. The Fly (Kurt Neuman, 1958)

When you think of The Fly you would not be hated for thinking of Cronenberg’s 1986 body-horror first, because without hesitation it is a far superior film. Neuman’s Fly may be a cheesy B-movie, but its iconic imagery is still pop-culture relevant today, and its ending is still a unique finish to a pretty standard monster movie.

The thing that sets Neuman’s film apart from Cronenberg’s is the ending, and while it may be the less superior film, its ending is arguably the better of the two. In the 1958 film, when scientist Delambre, played by Ali Hedison, enters the chamber and fuses with the fly he simply emerges with a fly head and arm, unlike Cronenberg’s slow transformation.

When the ending reveals that the fly that has been pestering the characters is actually Delambre’s head attached to a fly body (the reverse of what we believed to be Delambre), we are shocked due to his presence being known for so long. When this is revealed though it is too late as we watch him caught in a spider’s web as Vincent Price puts him out of his misery.

A chilling ending for 1958. A disturbing classic. A true example of how an ending can truly propel a film into a different league.

Though many predicted it could happen (and many hoped that it would), it was still a massive surprise when Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture at the recent 92nd Academy Awards. Parasite immediately made history by becoming the first international film to win Best Picture as well as being the first South Korean film to receive recognition from the Academy. As well as winning Best Picture, Parasite also won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film.

Parasite has also won other numerous accolades, including the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Parasite was directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won. The film stars Choi Woo-shik, Jang Hye-jin, Park So-dam, Cho Yeo-jeong, Song Kang-ho and Lee Sun-kyun.

Parasite originally premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Palme d’Or with a unanimous vote – the first film to do so since 2013’s Blue is the Warmest Colour. After its release, Parasite went on to gross over $206 million worldwide, becoming one of South Korea’s highest grossing films.

As with any film that wins Best Picture, Parasite will be thoroughly analysed and critiqued by audiences to determine whether it is a worthy winner. Previous recipients of Best Picture have been found wanting and declared as unworthy – so, will Parasite join those unlucky films?

After viewing Parasite, it would be very difficult to class it as an unworthy winner as Parasite is such a well-made, complex and watchable film. Perfectly calibrated and choreographed, every frame of Parasite is perfect and precise. There are so many small details in this film, from its symmetry to its social commentary, that it is a film that audiences should definitely deem a worthy Best Picture recipient.

1. Talented ensemble cast

Though it can happen, it is slightly unusual for a Best Picture nominee not to also have at least one acting nomination. Parasite did not gain any acting nominations at the Academy Awards. While this could be seen as a negative, suggesting that the performances in Parasite are not as good as the other nominees, this may actually be to do with the fact that there is not one performance that outshines another in this film – rather the cast all make up one of the best ensemble casts of all the Best Picture nominees demonstrated by the film’s Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Each cast member perfectly portrays their role and encapsulates their character with aplomb. This is what helps elevate the film even more – the audience is not straining to see the character through the actor as can sometimes be the case with other films. Great characters are another facet of what can make a film appealing, and Parasite reminds us that these characters do not even need to be particularly likeable. In truth, there may not necessarily be one character that we are really rooting for in Parasite. But in that is a cleverness that means that audiences are invested in all the characters’ outcomes and it is also shows how they are all intricately linked.

2. It marks an important step forward for diversity

Parasite made history when it became the first foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Not only was this an incredible achievement in general terms, as it is for any film that wins the accolade, but Parasite’s win was even more phenomenal because of what it represents.

There has been much talk and many headlines that have lamented the lack of diversity at awards shows, and in particular the Academy Awards, with hashtags such as #oscarssowhite trending. There was a lack of nominations for minority groups at the 92nd Academy Awards, and many believed that this meant that a foreign language film would never be able to scoop the top award.

Parasite’s win has propelled foreign language films into the spotlight. Audiences who have never even considered going to see a foreign language film are now lining up to get tickets to go and see the film, as well as now seeking out other foreign language films to watch. This type of visibility can only be a great thing, allowing audiences to experience other cultures which in turn leads to acceptance and visibility.

3. It seamlessly blends genres

These days almost every film can be called a combination of genres or categorised into a sub-genre – romantic comedy, psychological thriller, action horror to name but a few. Films may even begin as one genre before evolving into a different one. This blending of genres is certainly familiar to audiences, but this method is not always done seamlessly. Ideally blending genres should be something that happens smoothly and coherently, in a way that means that it is not too jarring for the audience or that it makes the film feel disjointed. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and the result can be a film that ends up being quite disorientating and confusing to watch. Alternatively, the mix of genres can be something that audiences find disagreeable and becomes an issue for which the film is criticised for.

Another example of a Best Picture nominee that mixed genres was Jojo Rabbit, a film that began very much as a satirical comedy but that later evolved into a much more dramatic and emotional film. Some audiences criticised this evolution of genres and felt that the change was too abrupt. This was not the case however for Parasite.

Parasite is a film that has been called a mystery thriller, a family drama, a tragicomedy, a black comedy, and a contemporary horror. The truth is that Parasite is all these subgenres and possibly even a few more. And what is also true is that Parasite involves dozens of tonal and genre shifts, but these shifts are done flawlessly and even though audiences will no doubt notice some of them, they are not jarring in any way. Parasite’s transitions between multiple genres is an integral part of the film, mirroring the transitions of the characters and of life itself. Blending genres is something that Bong often does in his films and is a trademark of his filmmaking.

4. It has universal themes that resonate with all audiences

Class struggles, the divide between rich and poor, family ties and ambition are just a few of the themes shown in Parasite – a film which is rich with both overt and underlying themes. And these themes are most certainly universal, not only to individual audience members but to audiences from around the world. Though Parasite has many trademarks that can be attributed to it being a South Korean film, it also feels like it could be set anywhere in the world. Bong recently talked about how Parasite could easily be set in London, after he saw how expensive it was to buy a house there, or in New York because there were so many homeless people and yet others lived in million-dollar apartments.

Parasite also uses its characters to further express its socioeconomic themes and class themes. Neither the poor nor the rich family are made out to be the villains of the piece. Though the poor family are essentially conmen, they are not bad people and though the rich family are privileged, they are not evil or cruel. In this way, Bong lets the audience ruminate on both how we view people and how we treat others based on our preconceptions of how they should fit into society.

As well as the more obvious themes, there are the clever underlying themes used by Bong that also help illustrate the film’s overall themes. For example, throughout there is the theme of the importance of our senses and in particular the sense of smell – something that becomes a key part of the film in the third act.

5. Incredible cinematography

There is one particular sequence in Parasite that can be found at the end of the first act. It is a montage that lasts for around five minutes and is made up of over fifty different shots. During this montage, the audience is given a story within the story and shown multiple Easter eggs and small, rich details that propel the story forward without any unnecessary scenes or expository dialogue. That is just one example of many of how Parasite uses incredible cinematography.

Cinematography is also used to reflect the film’s themes. Scenes with the rich family are flooded with natural light and sunshine, whilst scenes with the poor family are much darker and use artificial light. This was done to show the difference between the families’ situations – the rich family can afford to live in a beautiful house on a hill with floor to ceiling windows whereas the poor family live in a sub level basement apartment. The rich family can see the sun all day whilst the poor family only get glimpses of it.

Light is used to great effect throughout the film to reflect the families’ differences. Another scene which depicts this is when the members of Ki-taek’s family have to run through a rainstorm back to their house from the Park’s home. As they run back to their apartment, the streetlights gradually change from the expensive LED lights of the wealthy neighbourhood to the poor neighbourhood’s red lamps.

Parasite’s cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo and Director Bong worked together closely to produce a film that uses so many elements of cinematography in a way that is so effective and impressive. From mirroring shots to the almost balletic rhythm of certain sequences, from sharp angles to smooth parallels – Parasite more than deserves its Best Picture win for its cinematography alone.

6. The storytelling

Parasite may have picked up the Best Picture award, but it also won Best Screenplay. This is testament to the intriguing story that Bong came up with, as well as the fantastic screenplay co-written by him and Han Jin-won. A great screenplay is the first step to producing a film with compelling storytelling, and Bong further enhanced this with great direction.

Parasite has three very clear acts, which makes it a fluid and coherent watch for the audience – even though multiple events are happening with multiple characters all the time, the audience is never too far removed from the core of the story. Bong keeps the audience at the heart of what is going on, yet he also keeps the audience guessing with twists and turns. To use these two contradictory methods in harmony with each other is an extremely clever feat of storytelling, and the result is a film that is endlessly engaging.

7. The sharp social commentary

Intricately weaved throughout Parasite, is a compelling message of social commentary. At its heart, Parasite is a parable about the struggle between classes and the ever-growing divide between rich and poor. Bong has used similar themes in all his previous works, but Parasite was a unique filming experience because Bong had never focused any of his stories on a rich family before as well as a poor one, preferring to just follow the lives of poorer characters. Bong explained, “This is our first time filming rich characters. Even in Mother and The Host, my films have always featured poor characters. This was our first time filming a rich family and a rich house. Even Captain America…he was dressed in rags in Snowpiercer!”

Bong also drew directly from his own experiences – he too tutored a for a rich family whilst in college. He said of the film, “The sequence that depicts when he enters the house was pretty similar to what I experienced. I grew up in a middle-class family that’s in between the poor and the rich family in this film, but despite that, when I first entered, I had this very eerie and unfamiliar sense of this house. Actually, they had a sauna on their second floor – at the time it was quite shocking to me!”

The social commentary of Parasite is also at the very heart of the film in regard to the title of the film itself. Who or what we believe to be the ‘parasite’ can speak to how society treats certain individuals – is the parasite the poor family? The rich family? Both? Or is Parasite a reference to something else entirely?

Bong uses Parasite as a way to express his observations of the class divide in his home country and how it is something that only seems to be getting worse rather than better, but the truth is that Parasite is probably relevant to almost every country in the world. Bong said, “I think that this film is talking about something that we all feel, and we are all aware of, but we just never talk about. That’s what it is showing on the big screen.”

The acting nominees this year seemingly disappointed more people than usual. Maybe it’s because of the time schedule changes done by the Academy, or the wrong campaigning strategies by the studios, or just a competitive race, but many great performances couldn’t make into the cut in the end, despite some being widely predicted and most of them being “safe” choices. Before we move on to the list, I have to note that this list includes performers who are either in Best Picture-nominated films, or have been nominated for or won at least one major film industry or televised award.

10. John Lithgow – Bombshell

Okay, Christian Bale (“Ford v. Ferrari”) was also considered for tenth place here, but Bale is a frequent in award season. Since ever his awards breakthrough with the “The Fighter,” he often gets nominated whenever his film is in contention. Sure, this year he’s snubbed, but he was way close (SAG, Globe). Instead, it’s better to put the spotlight on this American veteran’s great performance as Roger Ailes.

“Bombshell” is a film with an uneven tone, but John Lithgow still manages to come off as a frightening and engaging presence, even when the film makes some strange choices. His performance is actually great and nowhere behind Charlize Theron or Margot Robbie’s and they had both got onto the Academy’s final list. Sure, they’re in different categories but Lithgow has similar strengths; he’s a veteran, a previous nominee, playing a transformational role, and playing a real-life figure. A terrible human being, sure, but Russell Crowe just recently won a Golden Globe for playing the same terrible character in a less-acclaimed TV series.

Unfortunately, the only industry award Lithgow got nominated for ended up being the AACTA. Sometimes their taste ends up being similar to BAFTA, but Lithgow couldn’t surprise there. Lithgow has been a legendary presence in cinema (two-time Oscar nominee), stage (two-time Tony winner), television (five-time Emmy winner), and also a four-time Grammy nominee. He’s obviously overdue for an Oscar win and third nom. While Roger Ailes is not the role that would bring him a win, since the film had been losing buzz and it’s not the kind of a character they tend to award, it’d be nice to see him getting nominated after all those years.

9. Jennifer Lopez – Hustlers

The critics raved over her turn as Ramona, but Jennifer Lopez has long lost respect as a credible actress – maybe because of her pop diva persona in the media, her constantly trashed films since 2001, and her turning into some kind of a “brand” rather than an actual respected actress. But “Hustlers” is where Lopez is back to her character actress roots – when she was working with Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola, and getting Independent Spirit award nominations for “My Family.”

Here, she’s doing it without losing the star charisma she displayed in Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight,” “The Cell” and her Golden Globe-nominated performance in “Selena.” Yes, her intro scene is great and she does a lot of physical work in the film, but what makes Ramona a great character and fine showcase for J-Lo’s talents is more than that. Lopez didn’t have such a strong part before; she’s funny, yet she has some very dramatic moments. She’s charismatic but she has her own weaknesses. She’s manipulative in a way that you keep wondering if her warmness and the way she takes others under her wings is a genuine way of her trying to help others or just a way to use them for her plans.

Critics probably needed to push her harder, given the film is not something that would appeal to major voters and many people still have a distaste for Lopez’s image. However, “Hustlers” was a great big step in her career in a way that she finally managed to get an independent film role over yet another major studio rom-com where she doesn’t get to do much. Her snub was harsh for her fans, especially in a weak year like this. However if she uses the goodwill she got from here and does more character work, who knows what future will bring.

8. Eddie Murphy – Dolemite is My Name

One of the biggest comebacks of the year has to be Eddie Murphy. The man was one of the best-known comedy actors in the world in the ‘80s and had an inconsistent but still decent run in the ‘90s with some great work like “Life” and “Bowfinger.” His 21st century filmography did not feature his best work, to say the least, even though he occasionally had his moments, including an Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning turn in “Dreamgirls.” Murphy decided to come back – he hosted SNL once again, he’s going to back to stand-up, and he found the right role to showcase his talent.

Unlike most roles Murphy has played in this century, Rudy Ray Moore is an interesting figure with complex and contradictory emotions, and Murphy gets a chance to explore his personality. He was able to completely vanish into the character. Not only does he deliver a great performance, but it once again reminds people what kind of charisma he holds on screen and how he’s still one of the most gifted comic actors on the planet, because unlike some of the other work he has done, it’s a role that is he obviously deeply cared about; unlike, say “The Adventures of Pluto Nash,” this is actually a serious project written and directed by talented people.

We’ve yet to see what Murphy has still to offer to his stand-up fans, but comeback is glorious so far. It’s disappointing that he didn’t get a nomination, but seemingly his film was not even the third priority for Netflix, which had many films this award season. An honorable mention should also go to another comeback story: Wesley Snipes. He came close to stealing the show from Murphy even. It’ll be interesting to see what they will deliver again in the “Coming to America” sequel.

7. Taron Egerton – Rocketman

Maybe it’s a post-”Bohemian Rhapsody” effect or whatever, but despite “Rocketman” receiving much better reviews and being a much better film overall, it didn’t get the attention it deserves. Who knows if it’s because Elton John doesn’t have the same popularity anymore; if it was because of the release date; if it were for the fact that it was an R-rated film; or maybe unlike Rami Malek, Taron Egerton is not a popular name, but he was amazing in this film. İt only shows that singing with your own voice can be such a great instrumental element to your performance.

What was distinctive about “Rocketman” was that it was an actual musical where characters were breaking into song by adapting Elton’s songs into different parts of his life. Egerton is full of energy; his singing voice is great, but it’s more than just a terrific performance on a musical level – it also works on an emotional level. His scene with his dad in the middle of the film is heartbreaking.

Another honorable mention should be gone to Jamie Bell who – crazily – didn’t receive a single major nomination for his performance as Bernie Taupin. However, this movie is also a friendship story and some of their scenes together were special highlights. Not sure what turned voters off; maybe they liked him but it was just a competitive race, but Egerton would be a worthy nominee. Regardless, thanks to his performance here, he finally got some major recognition and will probably get better movie opportunities from now on.

6. Awkwafina & Shuzhen Zhao – The Farewell

Maybe critics needed to push it harder, and it was interesting that they didn’t do enough to make it come to broader attention as they really, really loved the movie when it came out. “The Farewell” is an excellent film all around, a very warm story that can make your eyes get wet, but its not without its occasionally funny moments. Hopefully Lulu Wang will get more opportunities to tell such stories. And of course, some of the best parts of the film were the understated, nuanced performances. Awkwafina proved herself to be a very solid lead actress and her performance is mesmerizing. While she’s more focused, the show is almost stolen by Shuzhen Zhao, a veteran Chinese stage actress who has appeared in more than 100 plays for the Harbin Grand Theatre.

It’s unfortunate that Zhao, or “Nai Nai” as the internet refers to her after the film, didn’t receive much traction for the role. Sure, Laura Dern is great in “Marriage Story,” but she already had enough buzz. Wouldn’t it be great for critics to push Zhao a little more? Since it’s a type of film that needs more recognition to be widely seen. Awkwafina had a strong moment when she won the Golden Globe, but unfortunately it went unnoticed. Who knows what went wrong; probably many Academy members again didn’t bother to watch a film since it required to use subtitles, which are a damn shame as these two are giving two of the loveliest performances of the year.