Constantine

Skippable, and it has aged into a genuine cult film. On release it was criticised mainly for what it was not: the character in print is a blond working-class Liverpudlian, and the film casts Keanu Reeves and relocates the story to Los Angeles, which readers of the comic found hard to forgive.

Taken on its own it is a good-looking supernatural noir. The premise is that Heaven and Hell are not permitted to act directly on Earth, so both sides work through influence, and Constantine is a man dying of lung cancer who is trying to buy his way out of a damnation he earned at seventeen. That is a stronger spine than most films in this list have.

The design is the asset. Hell is the same city rendered as a permanent firestorm, the exorcism scenes are shot as medical procedures, and Tilda Swinton's androgynous Gabriel and Peter Stormare's Lucifer, arriving late in a white suit with bare feet, are both superb. Reeves is better suited to weary and resigned than he was given credit for.

It is connected to nothing else here. Reeves returned to the character much later, and the film's standing has risen steadily since 2005.