13. The Fifth Estate
The Fifth Estate tackles the story of controversial hacktivist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. What's interesting about this film is that it is not merely political hagiography about the man who exposed the secrets of the most powerful government in the world, but it is also a relationship movie about the ascendance and crumbling of the friendship between Assange and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg. When you combine this with the fact the film's script was written by former The West Wing writer Josh Singer, and a lot of people are already making comparisons to Aaron Sorkin-penned film, The Social Network. That may or may not be a fair comparison, but if it does come anywhere close to packing the punch that The Social Network did, then expect to hear this name on a lot of top ten list at the end of the year. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch (who if you don't know now, you will by the end of this year) and Daniel Bruhl as the two quarreling friends, as well as actors like Stanley Tucci, Anthony Mackie, and Luara Linney. The one negative mark against the film is director Bill Condon, who is just coming off double duty with his last two films, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, but The Fifth Estate is vampire-free (even if Assange is pale enough to be one), so hopefully this will reboot his creative juices.