4. Wonder Boys - James Leer
There is very little not to love about Wonder Boys. The film by Curtis Hanson - who hadn't yet hit his Lucky You stage and was making actually watchable movies - is a wonderful experience, and should be chiefly enjoyed for the central performance of Michael Douglas, who was rarely been better. But the film is of course not a one man show, and Maguire offers one of Douglas' foils with perfect, subtle execution. It's a fairly tasking picture on paper, meshing a million different narrative strands, but concentrating most on its most powerful elements - the performances - to distract from any missed notes. Thanks to the elevating monstrosities of the situation Douglas' Tripp faces, this could well have gone awry very easily, but the script concentrates most focus on the relationship between the frustrated writer and his wonder boy, played by Maguire. They are a mirror image of each other, and for every energetic touch by Douglas, there is an equal and opposite reaction from Maguire, and he paints a portrait of morose teenage repression that many have followed since.