8. Thirteen Days (2000)
I am a history nerd and I am even more intrigued by periods of history with which I am not very familiar. I like men in uniform, but they usually have to be in blue or grey. The Kennedy era was for my parents, not me, and my US History class only made it as far as the second World War. Thirteen Days is the story of the Cuban missile crisis, starring Star Trek's Captain Pike, Rex van de Kamp from Desperate Housewives and, heaven help us, Kevin Costner. No, Kevin's not the scary thing about this movie. He actually does a really good job in this movie. The movie is worth the thrill because it's an unnerving plot line that belongs in Tom Clancy novels, but was actually American history. You wouldn't think that you could be on the edge of your seat with the lack of technology, but no matter how much you know about the crisis, there's a wonderful amount of tension. The best parts of the movie are, for me, when Kevin Costner walks past a line of people wrapped around a city block waiting for confession and when he is waiting for Bobby Kennedy to finish negotiations with a Russian ambassador. The one unconventionally scary thing about this movie is that Waterworld's star, the man who has fewer facial expressions than Kristen Stewart, gives a great performance. Surrealism is always scary.
Note: For an even more incredible political thriller, see Seven Days in May. You'd swear it was written by Clancy, but it was an attempted political coup penned twenty years too early for that. And it's scarier than anything the Russians could come up with.