2. Magic Mike
There was a fair chance that a Steven Soderbergh film about male strippers was not going to be an ordinary parade of chiselled bodies amid a vapid script, but few expected Magic Mike to be quite as nuanced as this, so much that several female acquaintances of mine were somewhat disappointed that it wasn't the soulless meat spectacle that it had been marketed as. Channing Tatum seriously ups his game here, proving that he can be a strong dramatic lead alongside another star who equally needs the push, Alex Pettyfer. Tatum is Mike, the stripper and entrepreneur who takes Pettyfer's young character under his wing in the world of stripping, where they are managed by the club's owner, Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, also doing some of his best work here). This is a film that draws interesting characters and does compelling things with them; it confounds gender expectations by having Mike be the person trying to get out of stripping so that he can make a better life for himself, while at the same time Tatum, a former stripper himself, actually serves up some extremely entertaining, athletic dance scenes. Melding all this with the coming-of-age story of Pettyfer's character makes for an unexpectedly entertaining movie for even the heterosexual male.