Joanna Roos

Patterns -- When Fred Staples is recruited onto the board of a high-powered New York corporation, he finds his ethics and ambition at odds.

Screen legends Warren Beatty, in an auscpicious debut, and Natalie Wood are perfectly cast in this sensual, sentimental and romantic drama set in rural Kansas. At the end of the Roaring '20s, Wood and Beatty are teens in love, torn apart by family and sexual and peer pressures. At the beginning of the Great Depression, Wood is an emotionally broken young woman who revisits her past while trying to rebuild her life. Oscar-winner Elia Kazan ("On the Waterfront," "East of Eden") directed, and the screenplay by William Inge ("Picnic," "Bus Stop") won an Oscar, with a nomination for Wood. Recently selected by the prestigious American Film Institute as one of the 400 greatest American films of all time.

In 1952, star Kirk Douglas, director Vincente Minnelli, producer John Houseman and screenwriter Charles Schnee teamed for what manyconsider the greatest drama ever made about Hollywood: The Bad and the Beautiful. Ten years later, they took another powerfulinsider's look at the movie business, this time adapting a book by Irwin Shaw. Douglas portrays has-been screen idol Jack Andrus.Just out of a sanitarium, Jack grabs at a small role in a movie shot in Rome by a director (Edward G. Robinson) whose career is alsoon the skids. When the director falls ill, Jack takes over, realizing this is his last shot at personal and professional redemption.Trenchant, confrontational, intensified by Minnelli's genius for color, Two Weeks in Another Town captures the passion of creativepeople facing the abyss.

Has-been screen idol Jack Andrus just out of a sanitarium grabs at a small role in a movie shot in Rome by a director whose career is also on the skids. When the director falls ill, Jack takes over, realizing this is his last shot at redemption.