Benedict Cumberbatch with the world’s creepiest moustache in “Atonement”. (Photo: Focus Features)
Atonement
Have you ever wanted to watch Buckyball Commonwealth play the literal worst person on earth? Then watch Atonement.
Adapted from the award-winning Ian McEwan novel of the same name, Atonement tells the story of a star-crossed relationship and a great lie that leaves lives forever changed. James McAvoy, Keira Knightley and Romola Garai star as three people whose lives become tangled together in a terrible, awful way. (That I definitely cannot tell you about, because it will spoiler the story. But suffice it to say that Atonement is a textbook perfect example of the idea of the unreliable narrator.)
Cumberbatch has an extremely small role in this movie. But it’s incredibly memorable, because his character is a literal human dumpster fire. If you’ve ever just wanted to hate the heck out of this guy for an hour or so for some reason, here’s your chance. (And he’s definitely not playing a tortured genius for once!) Cumberbatch plays a visiting family friend named Paul Marshall. He’s a wealthy chocolate manufacturer, and also a rapist. He’s a rapist who’s so vile that he convinces his victim to marry him, so that she can never testify against him. (And from the shallow end he has the actual creepiest facial hair on earth.)
It’s probably the sign of a good actor when you can go from loving them to wanting to punch them in the face so badly, right?