11. Bound

It’s not hard to understand why Bound was overlooked upon its release. The concept sounds like exploitation -- lesbians versus the Mob -- and indeed the first ten minutes play like soft-core pornography. Butch ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon) comes over to "fix the sink" of her bisexual neighbor Violet (Jennifer Tilly) only to end up entwined in her oh-so-shapely arms. You can almost hear the straight-to-video dust heap dragging them down to obscurity. But then in walks Violet’s made-man boyfriend (Joe Pantoliano), and from there this extraordinary thriller defies our expectations at every turn.

The gals soon plot to steal $2 million in a scheme marked not by elaborate structure (as most movies of this sort would), but by the ingenious simplicity of a magician’s misdirection. Naturally it goes completely wrong, leaving the pair to scramble, sweat, and brass their way clear of some very nasty foes. The twists come in their ability to think on the fly, conjuring imaginative solutions - which Bound unveils like a kid at Christmas.

By turns knuckle biting, blood-soaked, and grimly funny, its trump card lies in the pulpy pseudo-trash relationship at its core. Corky and Violet maintain their con because their adversaries never consider girl-girl infidelity -- a queer turn on the classic femme fatale which gives Bound a quietly subversive kick. Oh yeah, and the directors are a couple of guys named Andy and Larry Wachowski. I wonder whatever happened to them… (Rob Vaux)