Novelist Philip Roth wrapped all the great American tragedies — race, sex, class tensions — into one superbly snakey narrative. Writer Nicholas Meyer and director Robert Benton have made a sinuous adaptation of Roth's work, capturing his bleak, compelling irony with unforced perfection. The leading players — Anthony Hopkins as a black professor pretending to be a white man, Nicole Kidman as a rich girl masquerading as trailer-park trash — are only unlikely at first glance. They insinuate themselves into our grieving hearts with perfectly understated passion.
Epic times call for epic art, and nothing moved us more than The Return of the King. Other things we loved: Louis Vuitton, William Boyd and BBC's The Office And to the Atlanta group OutKast, we say "Stank you very much!"