Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams Headline State of Play, a Solidly-Crafted Political Thriller

In my opinion, Russell Crowe is at his best playing morally complicated figures as prone to darkness as they are helping people. When he's playing a straightforward biopic protagonist in something like A Beautiful Mind, I just can't buy him. Even his lead performance as the action hero in Gladiator doesn't quite work for me. But put Crowe in Noah, The Nice Guys or the 2009 movie State of Play, suddenly we're cooking with gas. Crowe's genuinely gifted at portraying rough and tumble figures who seem to have leaped out of reality rather than a studio executive's cliche-ridden idea of what a "tough guy" is.  There's actual menace and unpredictability to his best performances and he's even able to imbue a distinctly different personality to, say, his version of Noah compared to his Nice Guys role.

Observe and Report Is an Imperfect But Ambitious Dark Deconstruction of Typical Man-Children Comedies

CW: DISCUSSIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 
SPOILERS AHEAD

In his time as a comedic leading man, Seth Rogen has demonstrated an admirable ambitious streak. The films rarely turn out to be all-time classics (though at least none of Seth Rogen's vehicles have turned out as badly as modern Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler features) but movies like The Interview or This is the End tend to be centered on more high-concept unorthodox comedic premises that see Rogen and company demonstrating bolder creative aspirations. This quality could be found as early as less than two years after Knocked Up cemented Seth Rogen as a viable leading man with the black comedy Observe and Report, which hews closer to Taxi Driver than fellow 2009 mall cop movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Sugar Is A Departure From Typical Sports Movies And Is All The Better For It

A whole decade before they directed box office juggernaut Captain Marvel, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck helmed the sports drama Sugar, which takes a premise that could easily be fodder for a run-of-the-mill inspirational sports movie and takes it in a whole other direction. The Sugar of the title refers to a nickname given to Miguel Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), a baseball player residing in the Dominican Republic who, along with every other local baseball player, dreams of getting recruited for rookie training in the United States of America. That's not a turn of events that befall just anyone, but Miguel manages to score such a rare opportunity to train with the Kansas City Knights in Iowa.