3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Back in the mid-90s, if you told me the guy from Ace Ventura and The Mask would play one of the most heartbreaking characters of the next decade, I'd have laughed at you. Years later, if you said the guy who played the Grinch in the live action remake of the Dr. Seuss book would be portraying one of the most fully developed protagonists in a sci-fi drama, I might have banned you from entering the theater entirely. But to the film world's surprise and delight, Michel Gondry's 2004 movie displays Jim Carrey as Joel, a broken man who agrees to a procedure in which the memories of his recent ex-girlfriend Clementine will be wiped from his mind. Clementine, we learn, has recently done the same. But when Joel starts to change his mind in the middle of the memory erase, what follows is a personal analysis of one's psyche and an exploration of what makes up a relationship, ranging from the sweet to the tragically bitter.