Mundanity plagues the lives of many, and a night home in front of the television presents an opportunity for an escapist adventure from some of the boring aspects of daily life. So why would we want to watch a movie about a potentially boring topic after a long day of work? The answer lies with the outstanding filmmakers who guide us towards these topics through their own acclaim,often creating a pleasant surprise of a movie-going experience. Sometimes a topic typically thought of as boring in a film, say the Stock Market or working in a tech office, become near action-films when the stakes are raised by fortunes being made or lost, history being made, and the stories' biggest winners being those left totellthe story.
The most crucial component to these films is script, and these types of movies have been a sort of screenwriter’s proving ground, attracting the likes of Charlie Kauffman and Aaron Sorkin who mine ideas from the political and financial universe to make unexpectedly exciting screenplays. These types of stories have also been a boonfor authors looking to get their non-fiction optioned for the screen, and have produced many a Best Adapted Screenplay nominee thanks to the work of authors like Michael Lewis. These are films you may have avoided in the past for their potentially snooze-worthy subject-matter, but are certainly worth your time.
The following are ten exciting movies about really mundane things.
10The Big Short
One commonality among most movie lovers is a disdain for the banal, so another movie about manipulating the Stock Market seemed like a potential snooze-fest. Enter Adam McKay and his script forThe Big Short, which used a compressed narrative, smart editing andover-the-top characterslike Michael Burry (Christian Bale) and Mark Baum (Steve Carell), two hedge fund managers who operate for personal gain when they discover the housing market bubble is close to bursting. The source book was written by Michael Lewis ofMoneyballfame, and showed how these pencil pushers fleeced middle-class investors by using insider information to capitalize on subprime loans. Yes, we know that sounds mundane — just watch it!
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9Phantom Thread
Okay, we’ll admit we’d rather have seen Daniel Day-Lewis' final film role be a little more action-packed than a Period drama about a haute couture dressmaker, butPhantom Threadbenefited greatly from the specificity of P.T. Anderson’s direction, the standout performance by Vicky Krieps as Alma Elson, and the always-astonishing Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, a man who makes a successful career out of being a total control freak. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of Day-Lewis and Anderson’s previous collaboration,There Will Be Blood,Phantom Threadhas moments of hyper-engaging dialogue and clashing of egos. Anderson and editor Robert Elswit upscaled 35mm film stock to give the film its sumptuous sheen, a boon for visually-oriented audiences.
8Adaptation
Spike Jonze and Charlie Kauffman were responsible for two, incredible Surrealist films in their short collaboration,Being John Malkovich, and the anxiety-riddenAdaptation, which caught Nicolas Cage at peak A-List status. Cage plays a version of Charlie Kauffman and his fictional twin brother Donald, a sort of dybbuk for Kauffman that becomesrepresentational of his anxiety. Meryl Streep brings order to the film’s frenetic pace as Susan Orlean, the author whose novel Kauffman is adapting for the screen. While we wouldn’t normally associate a film about writer’s block and artistic agency to be an exciting one, Cage’s unhinged performance and the avante-garde directorial style of Jonze gave the film plenty of energy, rounded-out by Kaufmann’s innovative idea for merging real-life and fiction.
The wine biz doesn’t exactly seem like fertile ground for an action-packed comedy, but the unexpected performance by Thomas Haden Church, who till then had probably been best known as the comic relief onWings, gaveSidewaysa jolt. His pairing with Paul Giammati has anOdd Couplefeeling to it, as the wine aficionados (snobs) navigate the world of middle-aged singles in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. The topsy-turvy plot and Merlot-bashing hatefest made for a film without a delete-able scene, thanks to writer-director Alexander Payne’s rare brilliance. Payne has had a less prolific career than fans would have hoped for, given his incredibly depthful approach to stories that, at first glance, don’t seem catered to the big screen — but always pay off.
6Office Space
Anyone who has worked a 9-5 job would obviously be keen to avoiding a film based around office work, which might explainOffice Space’s slow start at the box-office. The intelligence of Mike Judge’s script, however, is precisely what gets the boredom-based humor the film’s biggest laughs, whether it’s Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) and his coma-inducing delivery, or the sheer pity towards those who must wear flair. Whether you cherish Michael Bolton’s entire catalog or not, you certainly must have gotten a chuckle out of the redundancy of TPS report editing, why “it says paper jam when there is no paper jam,” and the merits of “doing the drywall at the McDonald’s down in Vasco Lindas.” Come to think of it — is there a more workplace-quoted script in film history?!
Related: Exclusive:Beavis and Butt-Head are Dad’s in Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head Clip
5Wall Street
A film about the Stock Market would seem to be a good choice before bedtime when you’ve been short on sleep, but that may have backfired if the film you selected wasWall Street. The slicked-back suave of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) made every yuppie want to rip cigs in a corner office while adjusting their suspenders.Leave it to Oliver Stoneto use a clever story of betrayal to ramp up the stakes in the film, which was referenced in writer-director Ben Younger’sBoiler Room, when a party full of junior brokers take turns quoting Gekko while watching the fabled film. The homage showed how canonical the film has become for those in the financial world, and certainly provided enough entertainment for those without an investment portfolio.
4The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sometimes, the “artsy-ness” of a film is what makes a quiet subject into a loud triumph, as in Julian Schnabel’s masterpiece,The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The 2007 film chronicled the once-decadent life ofEllemagazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, based on his memoir. Bauby is played by Mathieu Amalric, best known to American audiences as Bond villain Dominic Greene inQuantum of Solace, a French actor who shows the agony of Bauby after a massive stroke induces a subsequent locked-in syndrome, as the physically impaired man must rebuild a life within his own mind, thanks to the help of his friend Celíne, played brilliantly by Emmanuelle Seigner (wife of Roman Polanski). The film may seem like a bore from the trailer, but immediately places you in the point-of-view of Bauby, who struggles to write his memoir through a lack of motor reflex and speech.
3The Social Network
Writing code doesn’t exactly appeal to the average film audience, but the cutthroat, backstabbing world of tech’s biggest moguls made the stakes a bit higher inThe Social Network, especially since Facebook had already become a global phenomenon by the film’s 2010 release. Add in a perfectly neurotic and paranoid Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) character, a hyper-cool Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack, and the dark and crisp visuals of David Fincher, and you have the first masterful film about social media. The public image of Facebook’s Cyborg-in-Chief has never fully recovered from the film’s revelations, based onThe Accidental Billionairesby Ben Mezrich. Zuckerberg’s reputation has risen and fallen ever since, but the film began a trend of heightened wariness of the social media giant.
2Moneyball
To begin with, most Americans nowadays wouldn’t rate professional baseball as themost excitingteam sport per se, nor would working in the front-office of a team, the Oakland A’s, who are now abandoning the city where this underdog story,Moneyball, takes place. Oh, wait, we forgot this was a Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin script, adapted from Michael Lewis' eponymous book, and starring Brad Pitt!!! Talk about a murderer’s row! Despite the top-flight talent surrounding the young actor, Jonah Hill outshone everyone as Peter Brand, the film’s only fictional character and the brain-power behind this unlikely story of side-armed ingenuity, garnering an Oscar nom for Hill (who some say was robbed when he got pipped by the elderly Christopher Plummer in a possible career-nod).
1The Breakfast Club
Detention. Not a topic you’d automatically assume would make an exciting high school movie — but this was the genius of John Hughes. The setting was the perfect format for pitting several rebellious teenagers together on a soul-searching mission towards compatibility. Whether it was Ally Sheedy’s dandruff snow shower, Judd Nelson’s douchery, or Emilio Estevez’s somersaulting dance routing,The Breakfast Clubhad its audience invested at the first coalescence of the fabled Brat Pack. Molly Ringwald’s camera-ready elegance and the youth of these now-veteran actors still makes watching the film an experience. And don’t even get us started on that soundtrack! Sitting through 97 minutes of a film we’ve easily seen 97 times is always worth that Simple Minds time warp.
