2. Perfume
Patrick Suskind's tale of obsession and murder in 18th century France shouldn't work on any level as a film; Indeed, many high-profile directors, including Stanley Kubrick, developed the screenplays floating about in Hollywood before decrying it to be unfilmable. You can understand why after reading the novel. The whole book is based around the premise of scent, has a central protagonist who is utterly dislikable, and features scenes with little or sparse dialogue-a screenwriter and director's nightmare, one and all. The 2006 cinematic adaptation received mixed reviews, but it was, for me, one of the most under-appreciated films of that decade. Tom Tykwer did as strong a job as he could with difficult source material, while Ben Whishaw makes the murderer Grenouille appropriately surly and unappealing. That the film got made at all was a miracle, that it was as good as this even more so.