1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman wrote a script for Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly that never got made, but he's incorporated some of the author's reality-bending musings in his other work. That's most apparent in the magnificent film that won him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman (and director Michel Gondry) introduce us to Joel (Jim Carrey), a sad sack who learns not only that his girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has dumped him but that she's visited a company that will erase him from her memory. (To get back at her, Joel decides to undergo the same treatment.) This is the sort of ingenious idea that could have powered a Dick novel, and the movie has a field day exploring the moral and philosophical implications of rewriting one's reality. Plus, Eternal Sunshine is just flat-out heartbreakingly romantic, the film existing in Joel's memories as he's simultaneously trying to wipe her from his mind and save the moments that made them such a great couple in the first place. This is Philip K. Dick for the date-night crowd, losing none of the author's intelligence or wariness in the process.

If Kaufman had wanted to make the Dick homage more apparent, Eternal Sunshine could have easily been called We Can Forget It for You Wholesale.