Compulsion (1959)

Surely Ttuman Capote, often touted as the pioneer of the true crime novel, was in fact influenced either by journalist Meyer Levin's 1955 novel, Compulsion - a fiction based on the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case - or by this movie adaptation of it which turns the disturbing subject matter (the 1924 murder in Chicago of a schoolkid at the hands of two Nietzsche-spouting teens) into an utterly compelling thriller, one that keeps so close to fact it really isn't a fiction at all - consider for example the fact that Orson Welles adopts prosthetics to look like real-life lawyer Clarence Darrow.

★★★★★

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The Stranger (1946)

Edward G Robinson's detective sets a Nazi criminal free from prison hoping this one will lead him to another hiding out in smalltown Connecticut, and from this opening scene, Orson Welles' thriller sets such a furious pace, in the end we feel like we have only cursorily looked in on these characters - one played by Orson Welles (the nazi (read 'generic bad guy' - he could have been simply a psychopath or criminal - he is not a political figure)) on the run and doing everything he can, even murder, to remain undetected - and one, a detective hot on the nazi's trail, who turns the thriller into something closer to a melodrama when he insists on commentating the various character's psychological states, including that of Loretta Young's just-married wife of the nazi.

★★★★☆

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A Man For All Seasons (1968)

A six-time Academy Award-winning historical drama screenwritten by Robert Bolt based on his play, A Man For All Seasons tells the story of Thomas More, the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532, who despite political pressure did not waver in his Catholic religious principles even when the desire for an heir with his mistress Anne Boleyn led King Henry VIII to usurp papal authority.

★★★★☆

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