8MM

8MM (1999) is a crime thriller from director Joel Schumacher that you can watch online on iFILM. Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) takes what looks like a quiet job: a millionaire's widow found an old 8mm reel in her late husband's safe, and a girl appears to be murdered on it.

Welles has one question to answer — is the film real or staged? He traces the missing girl, meets her mother, and the trail drags him into the underground porn scene of Los Angeles. His guide is Max (Joaquin Phoenix), a jaded clerk from an adult bookstore who knows which doors to knock on. The further Welles digs, the more distance grows between him and his wife, his home, his ordinary life. Along the way he crosses sleazy operator Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini) and a masked figure known only as Machine.

The script comes from Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Se7en, and that same bleak streak runs through every scene. Cage plays a man slowly hollowed out by the case rather than a hero who solves it. Stream 8MM (1999) online on iFILM.