A lark for Steven Spielberg, this is based on the true story of Frank W. Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio), who spent most of the 1960s posing as an airline pilot, an attorney, a pediatrician and a college professor, all while he was between the ages of 16 and 21. It could have been a revealing portrait

The sweeping romantic drama that 2001’s Pearl Harbor wanted to be, From Here to Eternity follows the tumultuous lives of three Army men stationed in Honolulu during the days leading up to Dec. 7, 1941. A coiled, volatile Montgomery Clift stars as Robert Prewitt, a young private who loves the Army but can’t quite adjust

Despite its quirky, comic charm, The Graduate is, in effect, a tragedy. It’s the story of a man who experiences the disillusionment of adulthood far sooner than he should have to. The youth in question is Benjamin Braddock, indelibly played by a stammering, jittery, 29-year-old Dustin Hoffman. Director Mike Nichols tells us all we need

The first time Steven Spielberg mistook seriousness for art. His problematic adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel is an obvious mismatch of director and material, not that this saga could easily be translated to the screen by anyone. Purple follows most of the tragic life of a Southern black woman (Whoopi Goldberg) in early

A series of vignettes set during one hot summer day on a block in Brooklyn, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing depicts the American melting pot at boiling point. The movie’s refusal to downplay or soothe the racial tension on display is just one reason alarmist critics initially denounced it. Lee plays Mookie, the black