‘Fantastic Four’
2005’s Fantastic Four is… Not a good movie. So you may be wondering why I, your humble recommender, am recommending you watch it? That’s because in the mix of a muddled, messy superhero movie, you’ve got two great performances: Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, a.k.a. The Thing. While the rest of the cast is stranded thanks to a pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe script that misunderstands the fundamentals of creating superhero movies, Evans perfectly cast as The Human Torch, and is having a blast. In fact, he’s so good it felt bizarre to see him later as Captain America. Chiklis, meanwhile, is layered under makeup as the monstrous Thing, but still manages to get the character’s basic humanity through. The movie did well enough to spawn a sequel, and I’d credit most of that to Evans and Chiklis (sorry, Jessica Alba).