Donnie Darko

Before he became one of the country's most bankable stars, Seth Rogen appeared in Donnie Darko as the portly sidekick to a switchblade-wielding psychopath played by that one guy who was in Phantom Planet but wasn't Jason Schwartzman. And that bit of casting is actually one of the least weird things about Richard Kelly's 2001 cult film, a druggy mishmash of '80s teen dramedy and time-travel tragedy that launched the career of star Jake Gyllenhaal. Kelly has so far proved unable to repeat his film's critical success, irking critics with his reviled 2007 sci-fi drama Southland Tales and leaving audiences cold with 2009's The Boxthough both of those films were better than S. Darko, the Donnie Darko sequel that went straight to DVD in 2009 without Kelly's involvement.