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

A media critique along the lines of Network, also directed by Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon dramatizes an actual, botched bank robbery in New York City that turned into a television circus. For the hostages, for the robbers, for the cops and crowd gathered outside, it all becomes a big show, even though lives hang

A drug-addled drug movie about two bikers (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) who make their way across America – Hopper also directed – Easy Rider is, inevitably, a bit of a mess, with a loopy graveyard climax that feels like one of the first – and worst – music videos. Yet in its own laconic

Foul-mouthed writer-director Kevin Smith (Dogma) aims for the smart sentimentality of something like About a Boy with this unfairly dismissed byproduct of the Bennifer saga (Jennifer Lopez appears only briefly). Surprisingly, Smith hits that elusive mark more often than he misses. Ben Affleck plays a single dad struggling to balance his career as a high-profile

I suppose if I created a flowchart of characters and devoted a few solid hours to it, I could make some sense out of the oil drama Syriana. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the urge to do any political-science homework since college (and even then the urge was faint). As another 2005 Message Movie featuring George

Steven Spielberg’s penchant for sentimentality and narrative convention hold back The Terminal, yet the movie is far too much a flight of fancy to be kept completely grounded. Heaving a bulky accent but otherwise light on his feet, Tom Hanks plays an Eastern European traveler stranded in an American airport, resulting in a Kafkaesque piece