4) 127 Hours
127 Hours requires you to spend almost an entire 94 minutes in the company of James Franco alone. But as agonizing as that might sound, even the film’s description doesn’t prepare you for the excruciating pain that is 127 Hours, a movie in which Franco’s hyperactive adventurer is forced to drink his own urine, cut off his own arm and stagger miles across a baking desert, having survived on nothing but his own stale piss for five days.
Based on a true story, Franco plays Aron Ralston, a man who back in 2003 truly did all those things. Danny Boyle’s movie makes the bold decision of rarely venturing from Ralston’s side, as he finds his arm trapped under a falling boulder in the wilds of Utah, and himself lodged in a mountain crevasse with no help for – yep, you guessed it – 127 hours. The most memorable scene, of course, is when Ralston loses the arm, using nothing but a blunt pen knife.
Keep your eyes and ears open for when he slices through that nerve…