5) High-Rise – Laing Eats The Dog
As contemporary leading men go, few have an image as wholesome as Tom Hiddleston. Rarely has an actor managed to appear so charming and utterly, pleasantly English even while playing the villain. It’s why he’s a favorite to be the next Bond. You suspect it’s also probably why Ben Wheatley hired him to play Robert Laing in his black comic satire High-Rise, and in the process perversely upend our very idea of one of cinema’s nice guy actors.
High-Rise is full of shock value – there’s murder, torture and rape. There are orgies, and there’s ABBA played repeatedly on the soundtrack – but nothing braces you quite like the film’s opening scene. Wheatley’s first images are of Hiddleston, amiable Hiddleston, roasting someone’s pet dog on a spit. That’s his dinner.
You’ll never look at the guy the same way again.