Films

Amadeus is a 1984 American period drama film directed by Miloš Forman and adapted by Peter Shaffer from his stage play Amadeus. The story is set in Vienna, Austria during the latter half of the 18th century, and is a fictionalized biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's music is heard extensively in the soundtrack of the film. The film follows a fictional rivalry between Mozart and Italian composer Antonio Salieri at the court of Emperor Joseph II.

Amadeus is considered one of the best films of all time. It was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, which included eight Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Directors Guild of America award. As of 2019, it is the most recent film to have more than one nomination in the Academy Award for Best Actor category. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it 53rd on its 100 Years... 100 Movies list

Platoon is a 1986 American anti-war film written and directed by Oliver Stone. It is the first film of a trilogy of Vietnam War films directed by Stone, followed by Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven & Earth (1993). The film, based on Stone's experience from the war, follows a U.S. Army volunteer fighting in the war while his two sergeants  argue over the leadership of the platoon.

Stone wrote the screenplay based upon his experiences as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam, to counter the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne's The Green Berets. Platoon was the first Hollywood film to be written and directed by a veteran of the Vietnam War

Malcolm X, sometimes stylized as X, is a 1992 American epic biographical drama film about the African-American activist Malcolm X. Directed and co-written by Spike Lee, the film stars Denzel Washington in the title role.

The film dramatizes key events in Malcolm X's life: his criminal career, his incarceration, his conversion to Islam, his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his later falling out with the organization, his marriage to Betty X, his pilgrimage to Mecca and reevaluation of his views concerning whites, and his assassination on February 21, 1965. Defining childhood incidents, including his father's death, his mother's mental illness, and his experiences with racism are dramatized in flashbacks. 

Boyhood is a 2014 American epic coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke. Filmed from 2001 to 2013, Boyhood depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Arquette and Hawke). Richard Linklater's daughter Lorelei plays Mason's sister, Samantha. 

Into the Wild is a 2007 American biographical survival film written, co-produced, and directed by Sean Penn. It is an adaptation of Jon Krakauer's 1996 nonfiction book of the same name, based on the travels of Christopher McCandless across North America and his experiences in the Alaskan wilderness in the early 1990s.