#5. Black Book
Paul Verhoeven is in full melodramatic cry in this dark, morally ambivalent story of the anti-Nazi underground in World War II in his native Holland. Most of the critics reviewed the director's reputation (for sexy trash like Basic Instinct and Showgirls) instead of the more sober intentions of this movie, which was to highlight the dark underside of heroisim. The man cannot help himself — he's a great, sexually charged-up action director, and the picture plays like gangbusters — but he also wants to penetrate the myths that have accreted around the wartime underground and in this he is astonishingly successful.