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

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