9. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The story of Joel and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine is one of cinema's greatest love stories. Eternal Sunshine comes from the mad head of Charlie Kaufman, who gave us such gems as Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Synecdoche, New York, so really any one of his films could have made the list. What edges Eternal Sunshine into the #9 spot, however, is the ingenuity of the story. Kaufman makes the brilliant decision of never really explaining the how or why of the memory erasing procedure and, director Michel Gondry fills the movie with endless invention behind the camera. It really does keep you amazed from start to finish by presenting a genius story combined with some incredibly striking visuals. At this point, the image of Joel and Clementine lying together on the ice has become somewhat iconic, and the madcap scenes of Joel inside his mind trying to save his memories of Clementine are as heartbreaking as they are amazing.