Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
I put this one off for ages because from the previews I thought it was "Chocolat 2.0" -- a boring "chick flick" for sure. Holy cow was THAT wrong. In fact it almost defies description, but the closest I can come is "American Psycho" meets "The Princess Bride" -- yes, it is THAT twisted.
And that ending! Oh my god!
From Roger Ebert's 4-star review:
"Why I love this story, I do not know. Why I have read the book twice and given away a dozen copies of the audiobook, I cannot explain. There is nothing fun about the story, except the way it ventures so fearlessly down one limited, terrifying, seductive dead end, and finds there a solution both sublime and horrifying. It took imagination to tell it, courage to film it, thought to act it, and from the audience it requires a brave curiosity about the peculiarity of obsession."
The book actually dates back to the 1980s, and Kurt Cobain called it one of his favorite books, and Nirvana did a song about it. Stanley Kubrick once called it "unfilmable", but he was wrong -- it works very well.
See this movie. It is just freaking insane.