Robert Altman’s MASH, 40-something years later still works as a funny, dark comedy and as a kinda-sorta anti-war statement, but most impressive is what Altman was able to do with his innovative sound design, still cutting edge today. Though it was a big hit film, for a number of years it was more famous as the inspiration for the then even more popular television show, M*A*S*H*, but as that show now feels musty and dated, MASH the movie is just as relevant today as it was in 1970.

M.A.S.H. stands for mobile army surgical hospital. Made during the heart of the cantankerous Vietnam War, MASH is actually about the medics near the front lines of the “forgotten” Korean War of the 1950s. These are talented doctors and surgeons, but drafted away from their private practices they fight the stifling rules of the military. They deal in blood and guts (at the time the surgery scenes were rather graphic for audiences), but when casualties aren’t mounting they drink, party, and cause mayhem just as hard as they work.

With the film JFK, superstar editors Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia were able to do some of the most groundbreaking editing since Psycho and Battleship Potemkin, which would mean some of the greatest editing in film history. Combining actual news footage, historical recreations, and a dense investigation and courtroom story with literally hundreds of speaking roles, they were able to piece together a three-hour drama that, no matter what you feel about director Oliver Stone’s politics or often ham-fisted approach, this film is now the definitive pop-culture record on the murder of President Kennedy.

There was a phony outrage and assault thrown at the film JFK before it was even released or seen. Critics of Oliver Stone howled that he should not be messing with history, slanting it to fit his picture. But of course that’s what any good biography or historical account will do. The combination of news footage and recreations were called manipulative. But after thirty years of the "mainstream" press in lock step with the Warren Commission’s cover-up, it’s about time to see a "mainstream" movie question the events. No matter how much that news footage apparently confused some audience members, the bottom line is: this isn’t a documentary, those are actors. Not to mention, there are enough actual documentaries and books out there on this subject to fill a library. Some right, some wrong, some rational, some hysterical. If you need to hear from the other end of the spectrum, maybe the best made documentary on the assassination was Oswald’s Ghost, a very persuasive piece of filmmaking, but in the end it has Norman Mailer declaring there was no conspiracy.

Adaptations of quintessentially L.A. novels tend to either work marvelously, as with L.A. Confidential, or don't quite measure up to their source material (a category I’d lump Ask the Dust into). John Schlesinger’s adaptation of The Day of the Locust was a costly misfire for Paramount Studios which spent something like 6 months on the film and a whole lot of dough. It could have been as influential as Chinatown, but it was a flop upon release, though ultimately it had some enduring appeal as a cult film in later years. Nathaniel West’s novel is generally considered to be the very best novel on Hollywood, its more grotesque inhabitants, and its tragic allure as a festering dump where dreams go to die. That makes the novel sound sobering and self-serious but this is a story about fame whores, violently degenerate midgets, sociopathic child actors, cockfights, stag films, and a movie premiere that culminates in the apocalypse. It’s brutally dark and really, really entertaining.

Back in the day, if there was one historical injustice that could get any red blooded film-geek or cinaphile extremely agitated, it was the fact that Martin Scorsese had not won an Oscar. Of course in 2006, he finally did win for the overrated The Departed, putting that controversy to bed. But before that, film-geeks would foam at the mouth, especially knowing that the Godly director had lost twice to actors making their directing debuts.

In 1990, Goodfellas was robbed by Kevin Costner's goody-goody Western Dances With Wolves. And ten years earlier Raging Bull lost to Robert Redford’s Ordinary People.