Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

This weekend, the all-star cast of The Suicide Squad, a reboot of the first, lackluster film, will probably take its spot at the top of the box office. To give each their due would be difficult, so I chose the best films for each and then selected the five best overall to come up with this list. The actors I’ll be covering are David Dastmalchian, Viola Davis, Idris Elba, Joel Kinnaman, and Margot Robbie.

28 Weeks Later (2007)

There are two recurring themes running through this week’s selections. The first of these involves the first film on the list, 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to Danny Boyle’s re-invigoration of the zombie subgenre of horror films 28 Days Later. This film’s featured actor, Idris Elba, supports as an Army general attempting to re-settle the infected area after the zombies begin to die of starvation. The running theme here is that Elba appears well before becoming a top-billed actor and prominent figure in cinema.

Although Boyle wasn’t on deck, the film still managed to prove quite interesting, looking at the zombie pandemic that swept the United Kingdom in the first film just weeks removed from the event. What’s most fascinating about 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later is the realism with which they treat their material. Rather than going for the sensational and the outlandish, audiences will easily get the feel for what might just happen were there really a rogue virus turning people into zombies. These films, while building on horror tropes, have a more intense feeling of impending dread, making them feel like a cross between zombie classic Night of the Living Dead and modern disaster classic Deep Impact.

Doubt (2008)

Based on his award-winning play of the same name, John Patrick Shanley took the director’s seat for his own screenplay, turning out one of the few modern stage-to-screen adaptations that feels at home on the big screen. The film stars Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. Streep plays the headstrong and deeply faithful principal of a Catholic school, Hoffman plays the school’s resident priest, Adams plays a young nun, and Davis plays the mother of the school’s only Black student. The film follows the suspicions and questioning of faith that surrounds the potential molestation of the young Black child by Hoffman’s priest.

Davis had accrued a number of film credits prior to appearing in Doubt, but she hadn’t quite reached the zenith of her talent and popularity. Doubt was the film to turn her into an industry sensation who picked up her first Oscar nomination out of to-date four. Streep, Hoffman, and Adams are all sensational in the film, as is Davis. It’s a rigorous and fascinating film that asks the audience to question their own faith along with those of the characters when something so heinous and dastardly could be perpetrated by a man of the cloth.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The other running theme in this week’s post is the actors from The Suicide Squad who had incredibly minor roles in the selected films. Joel Kinnaman is the subject of this particular film, appearing in this re-adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s popular novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Why Fincher felt the need to helm an American version of the already terrific Swedish adaptation is a mystery, but he manages to execute the material in a superlative way. While it remains inferior to the Niels Arden Oplev original, it was an enjoyable film though perhaps featuring a miscast Daniel Craig in the leading role.

The premise of the film is that of a disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Craig) hired to look into the murder of a wealthy businessman’s (Christopher Plummer) grandniece. In pursuit of the culprit, the journalist is joined by the hacker vigilante Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) who seeks vengeance against any man who would sexually assault women, a coping mechanism for her own past trauma. It’s almost unfair to cite this as Kinnaman’s one film since he’s barely in the film as Mikael’s magazine’s art director. That said, his filmography is rather weak in general and of all the actors I could have selected, he was chosen by the narrowest margin alongside the actor in our next film.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

In Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant sequel to neo-noir masterpiece Blade Runner, David Dastmalchian appears in a minor role as a lab technician at the Los Angeles Police Department. It’s another tiny role (like Kinnaman’s), though he does have an important part to play in the film, even if it’s a very small one. The film is rather about Ryan Gosling’s replicant K, a blade runner for the LAPD who seeks out and kills rogue replicants, but who is regularly tested to make sure that he himself hasn’t gone rogue.

The film plays out as K discovers that a replicant may have given birth and the resultant child might lead to war between the humans and replicants. While he’s initially tasked with locating the child and eliminating it, things are, of course, not as they might seem. The winding narrative exposes corruption and lies within both the LAPD and the Wallace Corporation, which is conducting a clandestine operation of its own. Gorgeously filmed, Blade Runner 2049 is a superb follow-up to that seminal Ridley Scott film of 1982.

Birds of Prey (2020)

For The Suicide Squad star Margot Robbie, I could easily have cited I, Tonya, her Oscar-nominated performance as the disgraced former figure skater, as in that film she gave Tonya Harding some much needed humane qualities. Yet, last year’s pre-pandemic release of Birds of Prey showed that she was so much more than the wise-cracking villain depicted in the first Suicide Squad film.

Cathy Yan’s feminist comic book adventure found Harley Quinn breaking away from the abusive relationship she had with Joker and moving into a world of crime all her own. Yet, the insidious machinations of Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor) and his serial killer sidekick (Chris Messina) get in the way as they try to reclaim something she stole from them. As Harley learns that she can’t do everything on her own, she teams up with a number of other female vigilantes, heroes, and would-be heroes (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, and Ella Jay Basco) to take Sionis out. This raucous, brazen seriocomedy is everything Warner Bros.’ DC Extended Universe has not been, namely fun. It also has a lot of strong sentiments to put forward about women’s roles in society, the struggles they face in order to be taken seriously, and the systemic sexism and sexual assault that permeates the simulacrum of New York City that is Gotham City.