10) Minority Report
Body horror has never really been Spielberg’s thing, with the Beard preferring to leave that to David Cronenberg as he instead sticks to creating colorful action set-pieces. However, Spielberg’s Minority Report – which all the same still features a good deal of those aforementioned slick set-pieces – is home to one of the grossest moments in sci-fi this century.
In a movie that also finds Tom Cruise injecting a serum into his own face so it turns to “mush,” the biggest fingers-over-the-eyes moment involves Cruise’s rogue cop having his own eyes removed and replaced by a (presumably – hopefully) dead man’s, a process which eventually results in him chasing his loose eyes down a corridor.
9) Empire Of The Sun
Empire of the Sun is designed like a boys’ own adventure tale – only this one has the terrifying backdrop of WWII coming to Hong Kong, in a wave of bloody invasion.
JG Ballard’s story is partially true, and harrowing, with Christian Bale atypically the film’s sole source of joy, as the hyperactive English kid separated from his parents and imprisoned by the Japanese army.
It’s all fairly downbeat when Jamie gets to the internment camp, where emaciated residents drop like flies or are beaten by the prison guards. One glimmer of hope for Jamie is the young Japanese boy beyond the wire that he befriends. When the war ends, Jamie and the boy meet outside the fence for the first time, symbolically sharing a piece of fruit.
Then John Malkovich shoots the kid to death….
