Raging Bull (1980) - Quentin Tarantino tells a great story where Brian De Palma, after completing what he believed to be his masterpiece, Scarface, sat down in a cineplex to see a new movie. The new movie began with one of the all time great opening shots: a stunning black and white image of a single boxer, condemned to solitude and isolation in the boxing ring, bouncing up and down with hood up, hands in the air, up, all in dramatic slow motion. De Palma cries out in shame and artistic frustration: “there’s always Scorsese. No matter what you do and how good you think you are, there’s always Scorsese staring back at you.” That movie was Raging Bull.

Into the Wild (2007) - Remember in high school or college when you had to study Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau? Those giants of literature championed American Transcendentalism, the philosophical movement that believed man’s structures were implicitly corrupt and broken, that tells us we have to cultivate the innate goodness found in each human being, and, usually, that meant a deeper connection to nature and one another. If that sounds “far out” that’s because it sorta was, but more than a hundred years after Thoreau and Emerson had died, a young college graduate felt revitalized and awakened by their ideas and begun living outside of society. His name was Christopher McCandless. He planned to return home but first traveled through parts of South Dakota and California and eventually made his way to Alaska, all to explore different ways of life. What truths his journey uncovered are left to interpretation, but his undeniably fascinating adventure was written about in a 1996 non-fiction book called Into the Wild, which Sean Penn adapted into a film. I can promise you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before, and that means something.