Royal slaughter

Forest Whitaker rules in The Last King of Scotland | Priya Abraham

There are moments in The Last King of Scotland (rated R for some strong violence and gruesome images, sexual content, and language) when you think Forest Whitaker deserves every last Oscar nod he's getting—when, as former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, he plays the bluff jokester, then later whips around in paranoid, barking rage, his lips and eyelids quivering.

Amin was both delusional and shrewd, brutal and childlike. He had fetishes, too, like his obsession with Scotland and liberating it from the English—hence his self-proclaimed title as the nation's last king. He took power in a 1971 coup and ruled Uganda for the next eight years, butchering 300,000 of his countrymen. Whitaker makes the film mesmerizing as he harnesses pure evil on screen.