Who's in It: Gretchen Mol, David Strathairn, Chris Bauer, Lili Taylor
The Basics: The 1950s underground fetish pinup answer to Marilyn Monroe gets her own biopic, Ed Wood–style. If every tattooed rockabilly chick with dyed-black hair and severe bangs goes to see this movie, it'll be bigger than Star Wars: Episode III.
What's the Deal? If you don't know who she was then you're sort of automatically a square. But here goes: Bettie was the happiest bondage model on Earth. She wanted to act but discovered that her real talent — in an age long before America's Next Top Model — was for posing. So she did. With a ball-gag in her mouth. And this movie is her valentine.
What's Great About It: Gretchen Mol, for starters. She nails the glowing, Virgin Mary essence of Bettie Page. It's as though she was the patron saint of kinky sex, not willing or able to make anyone feel guilty about looking at her nude body.
Pedigree: It's from director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner, who also teamed up on American Psycho. And weirdly enough — and stay with me here because I'm about to get all film critic-y — the two movies share a thematic fascination with shiny visual surfaces. People and objects are shot as though they're products on a shelf, and each film has a main character you never really get to know, one pure evil and one pure goodness.
What Else Is Great: Lili Taylor. It's a smaller role, but she's never not awesome.