Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (2006)

TALLADEGA NIGHTS: THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY is a Will Ferrell comedy -- really an ethics lesson re the Bush Administration, deeply embedded in satire, parody, toilet humor, a sick appreciation for the Nascar lifestyle, and a European acceptance of certain terrible realities about the American Dream. This overlong, narcissistic, self-relecting, but astonishing and frequently funny film follows a fictional NASCAR racing driver, a psychologically damaged manchild named Ricky Bobby, who lives his life according to the adage that "If you're not number one, you're last." This ideology causes problems with his best friend and co-racer (Cal Naughton, Jr., played by the wickedly talented John C. Reilly), who must always come in second to maintain his close friendship with Ricky. But Ricky gets his comeuppance as he must face an attempt to depose him by the very gay French racer Jean Girard (who reads L'Etranger while beating Ricky Bobby on the track), an intensely passive-aggressive betrayal by boyhood pal Cal, who breaks up his marriage and moves into his home, and, mostly, his own inability to understand the provenance of his problems with relationships. This movie should also win an award for product placement, although with a backdrop like Nascar, was there any other way but the American Way?

Invaders from Mars (1953)

Psychologically terrifying space-invader movie made at the height of McCarthyism centers around 10-year-old boy astronomer betrayed by most of the adults he knows, including his parents. Small and cheap, but brilliantly and boldly helmed by William Cameron Menzies -- the production designer of Gone With the Wind -- "Invaders from Mars" had enough of a timeless paranoiac jolt to be remade, albeit poorly, by Tobe Hooper in the 1980s. Back in the 50s, while Hollywood and Congress panicked and did some pretty cruel and crazy things in reaction to an alleged invasion of commies, Little Jimmy is figuring out who do you trust after learning that everything he's been told about authority -- family, the church, even the chief of police -- is a big fat lie. Interestingly, the person who defends and leads Jimmy in his insistence on conspiracy is a true alien for the time, a creature who somehow wafted through the cracks in the well-wrought PC system to become a "lady doctor." The choice of such an underground avatar is reminiscent of George Romero's use of Duane Jones as the unambivalent protagonist in "Night of the Living Dead (1968). With Hillary Brooks as mom, and British great Bert Freed as the top cop.